The end of an Iowa era

**I'm sorry.  I know it has been a while.  We just got our internet hooked up today and I only had time to do one blog post.  There are a few more posts coming, but I had to get to a few other things today (like downloading our finacnes and balancing our budget).**

Ok.  Now onto the post.

---------------------------------------------


After six years it finally happened.

We moved from our little condo in Iowa.

It was surreal.  But most of all, it was bittersweet.

We packed the Penske truck on June 28th.  The temperature was of course the worst it has been all year long.  At 7:30 am the real feel was already 87 degrees.  Before we disconnected the internet I took a screen shot of what the weather was supposed to be like on moving day.  Yep--a real feel of 115!

At 6:05 pm I checked the temperature on my phone and it said it was 105 degrees!  Ugh.  It took us a little longer to pack the truck because we had to keep taking water breaks so that nobody suffered from heat exhaustion.

Thank you to the Bells, the Reeves, to Lael, and to Dan for helping us pack the truck.  It was a service we will never forget.  And thank you to Brookie for watching Hannah.  It would have been impossible to pack the truck with her running everywhere.  

The more we packed the truck the more I felt our Iowa roots being uprooted.  It was sad.  After all, this was our first home that we "owned."  This was the longest we have ever lived in one place.  And, this was Hannah's first home.  It was truly the end of our Iowa era.

This I had to take a picture of.   The first night we stayed in our condo in Iowa we slept on the floor because our bed was in storage and we couldn't get it till the next day.  Well, for our last night in Iowa we had to sleep on the floor again.  As we started getting ready for bed I went to go blow up the air mattress and I noticed that there were no batteries in the pump.  We had the batteries packed in the Penske.  Ha!  In a way it's kind of funny.  Not too funny though because we got a horrible nights sleep! 

The next day, we packed up the rest of our belongings, said a prayer of gratitude (and one for safety), locked the front door and slid the key underneath it, and left our condo in Iowa at 7:30 am for the last time so that we could start our next chapter in life.  We also shed a few tears in the process.

On a happier and funnier note:

This is Hannah enjoying the boxes before the big move.  By the way, we only had to buy ONE BOX for our move, and it was a wardrobe box!  We got so many boxes from my former employer, from Nathan's employer, and from fellow ward members that it stocked us for our entire move!  Thank you everyone for helping us out.

And this is Hannah's new face that she has been making lately.  It is so funny.  You just have to ask her "do you want to go outside?" or "can you go find Pooh-bear?" and she makes this face.  It's too cute.