Here's What's Up

A few months ago we decided we were paying way too much money to stay in our place and that we needed to move. We looked at a few places near where we were but nothing seemed right. Then Rick went up to Phoenix to work and he was going to stay there for "maybe a week" which ended up being 6 weeks. While it sucked to be away from him, we were just happy to have him working, and very grateful that he had family to stay with up there. We still knew we needed to find a new place but weren't really pressed for time, until a few days before we went up to Utah when I came home from work and noticed our ceiling was dripping water onto our living room floor. I cleaned it up, put a bucket under it, told Rick, and then we were off to Utah. When we came back, pockets of water were all across a 6 foot span of our ceiling, dripping water everywhere. Not wanting to get mold poisoning and die alone in my apartment while Rick was in Phoenix, we started taking house hunting a little more serious. We told our landlord, but didn't hear back from him. A few days later I was awoken by someone pounding on my door. It was our neighbors telling us that they just went to pay their HOA fees and found out our water was going to be shut off. The place we lived at wasn't an apartment complex, we were renting a condo from a guy who owned it, and the HOA fees, water, garbage, and maintenance were all his responsibility, but he hadn't been paying it. We had until Friday to get it paid or they'd shut it off. We finally got in touch with our landlord and said that they were going to shut it off because he hadn't paid it and that we would be moving soon. He said okay. We later found out that he hadn't been doing anything with the place except for waiting for it to go into foreclosure. Awesome of him to let us know what's up.

Since Rick has the possibility of going back and forth between Tucson and Phoenix for work, depending on his seniority, and the family I work for could possibly end up in Phoenix, we decided to look at places between Tucson and Phoenix. Rick looked at some and said "they are super cheap, in the middle of no where, and it's really dirty there, but I still think we should move there." I wasn't sure what he meant by "dirty" like was there garbage on the street or what? On our days off we went out there and I found out that dirty literally meant dirty. Do you know what a haboob is? It's a huge dust storm. They've been crazy in Arizona this year, and we went there right in the middle of one. When we left I could feel dust in my eyes, hair, nose, and teeth. Disgusting. But we ended up finding a really cute place that we love for HALF the price of our other place with TWICE the bathrooms. TWO! TWO BATHROOMS!

We had to wait until the next week on our days off to move, and by this point our water had already been shut off for a week. They turned off the water to the bathroom so we couldn't shower, flush the toilet, use the sink, or do laundry. They kept the water in the kitchen on so I could brush my teeth and wash my hair there, and we were still able to do dishes. Chad and Christy opened their home up to us and let me shower and do laundry there after I would put the boys to bed. On my days off, Rick and I would give each other what he calls "billy baths" but what I call "camping." One of us would get in the shower and the other would fill up a bucket with water from the kitchen sink and then stand on the toilet and pour it on the person so they could "shower". I will never take running water for granted. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and run to the bathroom to check if we have running water, and we do, and I'm so thankful for that.

We set a date to move and then found out who our new Bishop would be. We called him and asked him if we could get some help moving, he told us his son would be able to help. The day before we moved we called to get our electricity and water all set up. The water place said that they only accept cash so we couldn't make a payment over the phone, and that whatever day we pay the water will be turned on the next day. It was already too late for us to go there before they closed so we knew we'd have to wait until the next day to pay it, which also meant that we'd be waterless for one more day. We got up the next day and put everything in the Uhaul. We had our neighbor help us with some of the big stuff, but for the most part it was just me and Rick, and contrary to popular belief, I am neither strong nor am I a good sport about anything. I tried to help Rick with some big stuff, but I was just getting in the way, and he ended up carrying our couch and mattresses by himself, holding it over his head while walking down a flight of stairs. I'm such a good wife. In the middle of all of this we decided to get some lunch and then leave to get the water set up. We left at noon, they closed at 5, it should have been an hour long drive but halfway into it traffic came to a dead stop on both sides of the freeway. We were totally stuck and had no  idea what was going on when my Sister-In-Law texted me and said "You guys okay? I just heard there was a 30 car pile up on the I-10, both sides of the freeway. Bad dust storm, wait it out." We sat there for 4 hours. At 4:45 we called the water place and told them that we wouldn't make it to pay, but could they please schedule our water to be turned on and we'd pay them when they opened the next day? That was when the lady told us that our water was already on, we just had to switch it to our name. They failed to mention that to us the first time. So we did some very illegal maneuvers and headed back to Tucson, now almost 5 hours behind schedule. We weren't going to make it at the time we told the Bishops son to meet us. Rick called him and said we wouldn't be there until late that night, the guy said he'd probably be asleep. We got the rest of the stuff packed up. I was tired and whiney, Rick was exhausted (from holding couches above his head) and we finally left at 9:30 that night. We asked Rick's Brother, Sister-In-Law, and Niece to meet us there, and bless them they did. They got there before us when Megann texted me and said "people from your ward are here." When we pulled up there was our 3 family members, the Bishops son, his wife, another guy from the ward, and our neighbors who said "Hey we're your neighbors and we're Mormon too!"

A miracle of freaking miracles! Are you kidding? It was 10:30 at night, and they all showed up and got right to work. It took me and Rick 12 hours to pack up by ourselves, and it took us all 30 minutes to unpack. That's the kinda stuff that goes in the Ensign. Bless them.

After we got unpacked we chatted with our neighbors for a minute and that's when we noticed that our front window had been shot at with a bbgun and the window was broken, and then our neighbors told us that they've been broken into twice in the last 6 months. After that we headed to Walmart so we could buy all the proper security stuff to make our home safe. I wanted to just Home Alone the place with glass ornaments by the windows and saran wrap with glue on it but Rick wanted to go the more traditional route with door alarms and sealing off our windows and attic (apparently people here break in through the attic? What?)

I really love our cute little 2 bedroom 2(!!!) bathroom apartment. We've lived in BYU central when we lived by the library, which I hated. We lived in the middle of a city in Tucson, which I liked, and now we live in farm lands where we're surrounded by cotton fields and if we want to run to the store we have to "go into town." It's a nice change from the busy city. It's quiet. We live near a bread factory which frequently smells like freshly baked bread, cinnamon rolls, cookies, etc. We also live near a sewage plant which smells like I-15 between Pleasant Grove and American Fork. They have no street lamps in Arizona City which is actually pretty creepy but at night I can see the milky way and I've seen several shooting stars. I love living with Rick again, even if we are on completely opposite schedules and hardly see each other, he still comes home every morning. I love that it's getting "cold" here. Rick complained that he was "freeeeeeeeeeezing at work last night! Seriously it was like 45 degrees I swear I could almost see my breath." We are so spoiled by Arizona climate. I love it. And I really really love having running water.

Before 2 months ago, my idea of romance was if Rick got me flowers or chocolate or if I came home and he had cleaned, but during this time that all changed. Real romance is Rick filling up the bucket for me as many times as I asked him to for my billy bath, or coming home from work to see that he had filled the toilet up with water and filled the bucket up with water and set it next to the toilet so that I could flush the toilet twice without having to fill up the bucket. During all of this, Rick had a birthday, and we didn't get to see each other on his birthday or celebrate it in any way. I asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he said to move into our new place so we could live together again. The older he gets the nicer he gets. Maybe next year for his birthday he'll want an ipad for his wife.