Gettin' back to my roots

I grew up in a lovely tiny town called Blanding, Utah. I loved growing up in the middle of nowhere and I always felt like it was the best place in the world. I always thought that it would be great if I could raise my children there but I knew that would be unlikely to happen if I married a non-Blandingite. When I met Taylor and we decided to get married I figured I was sealing my fate to being stuck in the “big city.” Taylor grew up in West Jordan and his parents and sisters all live within about 20 miles of each other. Luckily I really do like SLC and I figured at least we would always be close to his family and we would likely always be close to at least some of my siblings, being that four of them live in Utah County currently. After one of our first trips to Blanding together as we were driving home Taylor said something to the effect of how much he loved Blanding and that he had a strong feeling that we should try to find a way to live there. Of course I was super happy to hear this, but I made myself stay rational by remembering that it is very difficult to find good jobs in the middle of nowhere and I also worried that Taylor might regret saying he wanted to live there. But as time passed he only became more sure of wanting to live there so we decided to start passively looking at job openings. We assumed it would take quite awhile for us to find the right job opportunity and for us to feel ready to give up city living. Well it did take awhile, but not quite as long as we had thought. A job opening came up at the court in ‘Cello late last year and multiple people told me I should apply. At first I was hesitant because this was the kind of job that I knew I would have an actual chance of getting and I didn’t want to apply if we weren’t serious about moving there this soon. After Taylor and I talked about it a lot and read through the job description a few times we decided I should apply. Well to make a long story a little less long, I ended up being offered the job last week and we have decided to take it. It took fasting, praying, temple-going and even a few tears for us to decide that this is the right thing for us. That is not to say that we are not scared out of our minds, but we know that it will all be ok and we’re super excited for this new chapter in our lives. Unfortunately we bought our townhouse at the exact wrong time and the market has only dropped since then so we don’t have much hope of selling it for close to what we paid for it right now. So we have decided to rent it out and hope that the housing market rebounds sooner than later. We are going to stay with my parents for right now; for their sake hopefully that will end up being a short-term arrangement. As scared as we are to be taking on this new endeavor, I am so so excited to get to be around my parents. They’re two of my top favorite people in the world so I’m so happy that they’re willing to let us crash their empty nest. We are really sad to be moving far away from Taylor’s family and most of my siblings; we will miss getting to see the kids as often as we do. But now we get to hang out with Kristi and Jeremy and their kids so much that they’ll probably be sick of us after a week so we’re looking forward to that! Anyway, the moral of the story is that we are moving to Blanding; we are equal parts excited, scared and sad. I think I am really going to enjoy my new job and I am going to LOVE only working 40 hours a week and not having to stop at any traffic lights or deal with traffic jams on my way to or from work. I think that Taylor and I will adapt very well to laid back Blanding life. People keep asking us what they can do to help. The two things that would be the biggest help for us right now would be for someone to find Taylor a job and for someone to want to buy an overpriced, but very cute townhouse. Since most likely you won’t be able to do either of those things then just cross your fingers for us and hope that all goes well with the move.




GIRLS NIGHT
My super fun sister Noelle hosted a very fun “girls night in” at her house last Friday. She put a lot of work into making it an awesome night for everyone, especially my cute nieces. We all had a blast; we were just sad that Kristi, Kera and Aleyah couldn’t make it. I am just going to post some cute pictures, but if you want more details of the fun evening (as I’m sure you’re all dying to know every last detail of what we did) then you can check out Heather, Marilyn or Noelle’s blogs (I assume my mom will blog about it at some point too).

CUTE CUTE McCoy was the only boy that got to crash the party