Tuesday, August 4, 2009

40 hours and 2300 miles later...

Friday, July 3rd we began our journey to Florida! Start: Provo, Utah
Our last picture before we hit the road!
We drove through Wyoming,

Colorado, where the rain hit and didn't stop until we arrived in Florida,
found a road named after us :), and drove through Nebraska,

then made it to Kansas where we spent the night in Junction City.

We were up the next morning and on our way to Missouri and saw the Arch in St. Louis

After that we drove through Illinios, Kentucky and then Tennessee, which I thought was beautiful and I loved their accents!


After Tennessee came Georgia and their peaches!

And then finally.....FLORIDA!!!!!!! Finish: We actually arrived in Tampa around 8pm Sunday night. Jeff knows the mission president in Tampa, Pres Colton, and they were nice enough to let us stay with them for the night! We were exhausted and very ready to be done driving. We were thankful though that we were able to arrive safely in Florida and had no problems along the way. The drive really wasn't all that bad except for rain, and the last day I was very antsy and ready to be out of that truck! Jeff was amazing though and drove the whole time...he is a machine! :)

Monday we began the apartment search. We had been looking online before we moved and had two places picked out that we wanted to see and hopefully like one of the them. We immediately fell in love with the second apartments we looked at. They are brand new and just built in February. They are 100% smoke free and considered a "green" community. We were excited that we found ones we liked and we're thinking we could just move in haha but it was much more complicated. We had to do background checks, credit checks, set-up utilities and all this stuff but finally Tuesday afternoon we were able to move in. I was just praying that we would be able to because Jeff had to go to work on Wednesday and we wanted to get somewhat settled in before Wednesday. It all worked out and I was able to work on unpacking while he went to work. The website for the apartments is http://www.circleatcrosstown.com if you want to check them out but here are just a few pics off the website.

This is the pool and there is a gym and the front office in the buildingThis is off the website but this is the lay-out of our kitchen. I love it!


We got a two bedroom apartment so if you are ever in Tampa and need a place to stay let us know! We are pretty much all settled in now and I love our new little apartment! :)








Monday, August 3, 2009

Farewell

It has been over a month and I have much to make up for! I think I have been putting off blogging because there is so much to catch up on. It's time to get started though so I'll just do some quick updates over the next few days of what has been going on the past month of our life. I will start with our good bye party!
We had family pictures and then afterwards my family gave us a going away party. We went to The Pie for pizza which was perfect for a large group of people. I have never seen such big pizzas before! My family was really sweet though and they did a lot for us before we left. We were given gifts and cards but most importantly were all the words that were expressed. It made us feel very much loved! Sometimes I think we take for granted being so close to family and friends and when we take a step back from that we realize how much love is truly there and the difference family can make. My sister, Candice, made us an album where everyone in the family wrote notes to us and it is something I will treasure forever! It is a great keepsake and I am so thankful for it. We thought that night was going to be goodbye but everyone ended up coming and helping us pack up the truck the night before we moved! We truly appreciated everyone's help and they made the process so much easier. Here are just a few pictures of our last days in Provo.

Ryan, Justin, Jeff, Dallin, Me and Tyler after pics

My parents
They gave us some gifts for our future new home!
The boys playing around our house for the last time!
Our sturdy Budget truck! It was great except for a little small leak in the trailer that with all the rain some of the stuff got wet. No damage was done though so it was ok!

Just about all packed up!

All hitched-up and ready to go for early the next morning!