July -- oh and we are moving

Yes, you read the title of the blog right:

We are moving to Alabama.

You may recall a few months ago I posted about a trip we got to take to Alabama.  Yeah, it was for a job interview, and (spoiler alert) -- we got the job.  So we are headed down south, y'all!

Our month has been a little crazy with getting the house up for sale, de-cluttering the last of the stuff in the house, packing up Nathan's office, selling things we don't need to take with us, etc.

Besides trying to prep for a move, we did try to have some normalcy happen during the month.


Swimming

Hannah finished her swim lessons.  She was so bummed about this.  She loved going to the pool. 

To help soften the blow, we told her we were moving to an area that has a pool and she got super excited.  So much so that she has used her money she has been saving up to buy goggles, and a flotation device for the pool.

She also got to go play in her friends pool up the street.  Emily (centered in the picture) and Hannah have been best pals since we moved here.  This is one of the saddest things for me knowing that these two don't get to pal around anymore.

Optometrist

Hannah had her last check up here with her optometrist.  Her left eye has improved, but she still needs to wear her eye patch and glasses each day for a few hours.  She loves going to doctors offices for check ups.  I wonder when that will die down.

Independence Day

We had a cloudy, slightly chilly, and eventually rainy 4th of July.

We spent the first half of the day working on the house.  Then we headed to a friends house for some swimming.  The water in the pool was cold, but that didn't bother Hannah one bit.  She and Nathan were so tired that they napped in the car as we headed to another house for a party.

The next day, our neighbors invited us over for their own fireworks that were taking place in the street.  They had lots of sparklers which Hannah enjoyed.  She really liked the big, bright sparklers.

Youth Conference

Nathan and I were asked by our stake to be counselors at a multi-stake youth conference in Pittsburgh. Normally, multi-stake youth conferences involve 4 to 5 stakes.  This one was

12 STAKES!

Yep, 12! There were stakes from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, West Virginia, and a small sliver of Kentucky that came.

It was held at Robert Morris University, which is a smaller and compact school.  So the size of the university was perfect for our youth conference group, but there were so many steep hills, and stairs. Oh man, those stairs.  Our first full day there we took 23,773 steps, climbed 49 flights, and walked 10.43 miles.

Despite the physical exhaustion we all had, we had a great time.  Nathan and I got to be in charge of a "company."  We had 22 total in our company: 10 boys and 12 girls.  We'd split up at night: Nathan had to go sleep in the dorms with the boys, and I had to go with the girls.  That bummed Nathan out. I'm glad that both Nathan and I had awesome roommates, and neither of them snored!

Kenneth Cope came and stayed the entire week.  He is such a neat guy, and he really connected with the youth.  They loved him.  His workshops were well attended by the young men and young women.

Sister Carol F. McConkie came to our youth conference too.  It was so neat to hear her speak and the youth were really impressed by her as well. Especially the young women.

I got to talk with Sister McConkie some as I was turning in our companies dorm room keys.  I found out that her husband is a stake president back in Utah right now.  Wow.  Can you imagine trying to juggle those schedules?  She also mentioned that she has never been to a youth conference this large, and that this was one of the best experiences she has ever had.  Hopefully she'll talk about it some at the next general conference (if she speaks).

We also had lots of fun things to do too.  We got to participate in company games.

There were also 2 dances.  Nathan and I danced mainly on the slow songs.  We were so tired we didn't have any energy.  We had one girl come up to us during a slow song that said "make sure you keep Jesus between you two."  We laughed.

One of our favorite things to do was to sit down and watch the youth dance.  We were so entertained and we kept saying "did we dance like that when we were that age?"

While we were at youth conference, Hannah stayed with some friends of ours.  She enjoyed every minute it!  In fact, I think she enjoyed herself a little too much based on the pictures I got throughout the week:

My favorite is the last picture.  Even the cat was out.

That was our busy month.  And I'm sure that August will be just as busy for us as well, if not busier.