Posted in Grandpa Shirley's Ice Cream Parlor

We've moved into the new house! The big, old house on 8000 W, with the half acre lot. It's ours! The rest of this post is just streaming thoughts; more of a journal entry than anything else.

Well, we still haven't signed the papers, but we are in. And it feels great. That extra 700 square feet and that huge yard feel so nice. Everyone in the family feels like they've finally come home.

Moving day was an experience. Daryl made arrangements for a 26 foot truck from his work. I drove him to get it, then went to buy donuts and juice for our crew of helpers. While I'm getting the donuts from Roger's Bakery in Magna, my phone rings. It's Amy, and she's all antsy because the only "crew" to show up is Daryl and Lessa's friend Garret. I look at my watch, it's only 8:45. Fifteen minutes before I told anyone we were going to start loading.

Once I get back to the old house, Daryl and Garrett have already started getting boxes loaded. About 9:00 members of the High Priest group start showing up. Eldred Heaton, Dana Williams (our former Bishop), Gerry Poulsen (the current Bishop), Dirk Groen and a couple of other men. Mark Petersen is the only Elder to show. (Bit of a dissappointment, but not a big surprise). As we're loading, Kirt Lamb shows up with Pizza and soft drinks. (If there is anyone in the Colony ward I'm going to miss, it will be Kirt and JoAnn.)

About 1:00, we had the truck ready to roll, both of the big passenger vans loaded to the gills, Eldred's and my pick-up trucks full, but we still had plenty left. We staged as much as we could before we rolled with the first load then rolled to the new house. Per the contract, we wouldn't get "possession" until 3:00 PM, but we'd made arrangements to stage in the garage while the Baileys moved out. Both RJ and Laura had long since moved on their own, but their two sons and one girl friend were still living in the house, and were resisting the move. The one son got into an argument with his mother, and actually spit in her face. I didn't see it, or there might have been a call to the local sherriff's office. I could have a friendship with Laura and RJ, but I wouldn'd give two bits for the sons.

I had told the Elders' Quorum President in the new ward that we'd be there about 2:00, and we arrived at the new house a bit early. Eldred had driven his pick-up and broght Dana Williams and his son, but otherwise it was just us to start unloading amidst the altercation between Laura and her son. But that soon changed. Right at 2:00 the Elders started to show up, along with the young men and young woment from the ward, and a couple of other folks. Michael Harmon and Leeland came over, and even Sam(antha) Whittington came and helped for awhile. We unloaded in practically no time at all.

After we unloaded the big truck, both vans and Eldred's pick up, we took the big truck and Rollo's van back to the old house for round two. We completely filled the big truck a second time, and still didn't have all of it. This trip, I drove my pick up; which nearly killed it. The water pump is failing (and needs to have the timing belt replaced along with the water pump, so it is going to be expensive to fix) and the engine temp went right to the red line. After I got it to the new house, I turned the engine off and let it cool down. When I went back to start it again, it was compleatly dead! I thought at first that the engine may have siezed, then realized that it was electrically dead. Battery terminal had come loose.

By this time, the Bailey's had left and we had possession of the house... But they didn't leave us any keys to the outside doors. Which was OK, because with the way the Bailey boys were acting, I wanted to change the locks as soon as possible.  One of the basement doors had been broken and was unusable since we'd looked at the house, and it looked like several others had been kicked.

By the time we finally had everything, we had filled the big truck twice, made five trips with the vans, and done two pick-up loads from the old house. Yesterday Amy picked up one load from Rod's office. She got the dining room table and the love seat, as well as some boxes. It felt so nice last night to finally have enough room to have our entire family sit around the table for dinner. There was even room for Grandma!

There are still two or three trips to Rod's office to make before we actually have everything at the house! I can't believe how much stuff we have.

We've got the cable hooked up for internet, and we've decided to do TV since Amy's brother gave us a nice 52 rear projection TV, and we're doing VoIP over Comcast for phone (as soon as we find a phone to hook up to the modem). Bryce was outsmarted by the closed captions on this TV, got frustrated with it and was going to throw it away.

Amy had Lessa's boyfriend, Billy, and Mirinda's boyfriend, Michael, go with her on Monday to get the TV while Lessa was having her wisdom teeth extracted. I wasn't sure the TV was going to survive as they had to disassemble it and it had a bit of a rough time going down the stairs. When the cable guy tried to hook up to it, he couldn't get it to work (other than a blue screen), but once Amy and I got a new universal remote and we fiddled with it a bit, it works perfectly.

Since we'd staged everything in the garage, and one of the garage bays has no door, I had asked Mirinda and Damia to move all of the electronics into the house. They decided that my 21in monitor was too heavy and didn't move it or tell me they hadn't moved it. When I brought it in on Wednesday so there'd be a computer for the cable guy to hook up to, it was dripping with condensation. I'm hoping it will still work when I hook it back up.  I'm still searching for some of the other pieces, like the KVM switch. And I haven't found all of the hardware for my desk yet.

Amy is wanting to start school stuff as soon as possible, so the computers will become a priority so Mirinda can access the On Line HS. I'd rather wait for a bit so I can finish the family room a bit more, but I guess that will have to wait until summer. We've decided to put the two family computers in the family room,  near the north walls. One will go into a little alcove in front of the storage room and by the boys room, and the other will go to the side of the storage room. 

The family room is huge. We have almost all of the book cases in there (only the short blonde ones are not) and still have plenty of room for the blue love seat and my recliner and a coffee table the Bailey's left behind.  I'm going to have to do some framing on the south wall to cover some water pipes and we'll want to sheet rock the east wall. The west wall is unfinished sheet rock, whcih goes around to the north. For reasons unclear to me, the storage room walls are sheathed with plywood. The floor is bare concrete, but it is clean and in much better shape (despite the age of the house) than what we had in West Valley. There is no ceiling, but the Bailey's had put up some sheets over part of it. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before I can get to finishing it. (There is a ton of stuff ahead of it.)

I'll have more to say about the house as we go on. There are going to be lots of projects.