The Move to Springville

We are all moved in to our nice little house in Springville UT.  The move went very well. This is largely thanks to my wonderful in-laws. How many people would take their vacation time to fly 2/3 the length of the country, pack up boxes, load U-Haul’s largest truck and then travel over 660 miles in one day to unload it? Not many. We were able to leave almost nothing behind because my father-in-law put his Tetris-like mind to work packing the van as tightly as could be. He did this being over sixty and with a cold.

We had lots of support on both ends of the move. More people showed up to help load the van than I expected. All four missionaries and three friends from the Branch came in addition to Dad and Penny who stayed about half the day. I was shocked at how much garbage we were holding onto. The branch president offered to haul it the next day for me, for which I was very grateful. There was a branch movie night at the Church that evening which gave Becca and me the chance to say goodbye to the many people we had served side by side with for over three years. We miss them a lot.

Grandma Barbara was an excellent hostess the night before the move, seeing us off at 4:30am. Walter had hitched up our little blue Toyota the night before so all we needed to do was load the cats into their crates with me in the moving van. Becca, Walter and RossAnn and the dogs followed me in the little gray Toyota up until Reno, NV. Dad had told me not to put any academic type podcasts to listen to on my iPod on the ride over and he was right to say so. I turned them off while approaching the mountains when I realized that, for the first time ever, they were putting me to sleep. How did I stay awake? I found that singing worked best. I made it 2/3 of the way through Les Misérables before my memory started to fail me and I couldn’t remember anything more than the highlights. The bumpy roads scared the cats tremendously and their loud meows sounded like a chorus accompanying my howling rendition of Who Am I?

Walter accompanied me the rest of the way. It was grueling to travel that long stretch between 45 and 60mph but we had plenty of time for conversation. That’s good because we don’t see Becca’s family as often as we would like. We arrived in Springville at about 7:45pm, just as the last rays of twilight were fading. I was a bit concerned to only see about five guys from the ward there waiting for us but, as we were unhooking the car from the trailer, another 15 magically appeared. We unloaded everything in under an hour. Walter’s bucket-line system kept things very efficient, so much so that several people said that it was the most efficient move they had ever participated in.

 

We were particularly grateful that the electricity was on and the water was running when we got there. Because the sale on our house closed in three weeks we weren’t sure about when we could get the utilities in our name and turned on. Fortunately the City of Springville was willing to work with us and we didn’t have to pretend we were camping that first weekend.