Moving-Part 2

Overwhelming. That's the best word I can think of that describes what our first week in Logan was like. Like I mentioned, we arrived here around 9:00 pm on a Sat. night. Not the best time to try and find someone to help you unpack your Uhaul and help you move into an upstairs apartment. Before we could even go inside and check out where we were going to be living for the next several months we had to call the on-call R.A. (yes, we have R.A.'s in our married housing apartment...weird!) to give us our key and let us in. It took her about 10 min. to get there and when she did arrive she decided it would be an excellent time to show us all around the apartment complex: where the laundry room is (no more having our own washer and dryer...tear!), the housing office, volleyball courts, playgrounds, etc. It was a nice thought, but we were SO exhausted and not looking forward to unpacking tonight so we were more annoyed than anything else. She finally leaves us be and we have a second to kind of take in our new surroundings before the next wave of constant moving takes over. Small does not even begin to describe the size of our place. It's a 2 bedroom, 1 bath shack with 3 windows and a roof. Awesome! It takes only 3-4 steps to be in any new room in the house and if you spin in a circle in the middle of the room you're guaranteed to hit one of the four walls. I don't know if it was the tiredness or the pure ridiculousness of the situation (a family of, soon to be, 4 living someplace like this!) but we just started busting up laughing and dancing around like goons in our empty apartment. (I'll post pics later) Tyler just sat on the floor staring at us. Wow, we're the coolest parents ever! Around 10:00, when we got all our wiggles out, Bobby went down and began unpacking some boxes and some essential things we would need just for the night. We didn't want to have to leave everything 'till Sunday, but we were so tired and there was no way we were going to be able to move everything by ourselves anyway so we took a gamble that maybe people wouldn't be too judgmental and would look at helping us move in as doing service, therefore an acceptable sabbath day activity. Thankfully, just as we were closing up the Uhaul for the night, the R.A. for our building saw us and came over to see if we needed help. It was close to midnight so we told him we were done for the night and he said that he would send a couple guys from our new ward over to help us the next day after church.

Sun. morning we woke up to a horrible smell in the apartment. We walked around everywhere trying to figure out where it was coming from and although you could smell it anywhere in the house, it was the worst in the kitchen. We realized that the "light" smell we had picked up on the night before had either gotten WAY worse, or we were just too busy to really notice it. What was the smell you ask? I'm not exactly sure how to describe it, but apparently the family living below us is from Prussia (not sure if that's how you spell it) and their bodies have a VERY distinct odor. It is so strong, and the walls so thin that their smell just seeps up into the apartment and no amount of leaving windows and doors open, cleaning with every cleaning product imaginable, or holding your nose can keep it out. And to top it all off the husband of the family is a big smoker and although you're supposed to be 25 feet from the apartments when you smoke, he smokes on his back porch. Lovely. We found out later that our apartment had been vacant since Jan. because nobody could stand the smell. That's what you get for finding an apartment online and not checking it out before you move in! I thought it might just be me with my more sensitive pregnant nose, but it even made Bobby sick so I knew it really was bad. Every time I would walk in the door I was running to the toilet because I just could not stomach it.

Later that evening 8 guys showed up to help us move in and it only took them about 45min. to completely clean out the Uhaul. I couldn't believe how willing SO many people were to spend their Sun. afternoon helping out perfect strangers. The blessings seemed to be coming so fast now that I couldn't keep up with them all! Just another testament that Heavenly Father DOES answer our prayers and pours out the blessings when we are in the right place for us to receive them. After everything was moved in, our R.A. (who is also the 1st counselor in our Bishopric) invited us to come to a dinner get together with a few other couples from the ward. We were grateful for the offer because we had NO food and were just planning on making a trip to the gas station for some snacks to hold us over until tomorrow when we could go grocery shopping. But at the same time, after the last couple of days we'd had we really just wanted to go inside and sleep. Not have to make first impressions, not have to make small talk with people we would probably not remember and we desperately needed showers! But we didn't want to be rude so we told him we'd be there in about 30 min., enough time for us to clean up a bit. Apparently they wanted to have dinner right then so he told us to come over in what we were wearing and not worry about changing. Nevermind that we had not taken showers, I had NO makeup on and was wearing a pair of Bobby's swim trunks with a tee-shirt that had holes, and had a headache that was quickly turning into a migraine. Sigh. So even though it was so generous of them to invite us over, we were in a little bit of a sour mood...basically because we're snobs. Let me explain. We're just not really "people" people. We kind of like to stick to ourselves and do our own thing. We had 1 or 2 good "couples" friends that we hung out with, but that was the extent of our friend circle. That's just how it was in the last several wards we lived in. Nobody really went out of their way to be friends with you, have you over for dinner, have game nights, parties,etc. (Not that I'm saying it was everybody else's fault, we never made the effort either) But we just got used to being that way and now it works for us. I guess we're out of habit of being friendly, something I'm going to have to get used to because people LOVE to be friendly here! Anyway, back to the dinner. So we get there, all grubbed up, and are met by 3 other couples all still dressed in their church clothes. And none of them had kids. Not that that would normally matter, but Tyler was being a beast and their apartment was not even remotely baby proof. We spent the entire time chasing him around, trying to hold him on our laps during dinner, because of course they didn't have a high chair or booster seat, and tried to keep him from crying every 5 seconds because he was ridiculously exhausted. Poor guy hadn't had a real nap for days and hadn't been to bed before 10:30 in the past week. So of course now everybody thinks we have a whiny kid that we don't know how to control. That was the kind of thing I was hoping to avoid by turning down the dinner offer. And to top it all off there wasn't even CLOSE to enough food for everyone and I was starving!! The girl that had us over made 4 chicken breast for 8 people! And not the big Costco size breast (come on people, chicken breast!), that you can split between 2 people and still get full off of. I guess it was sort of like a pot luck thing, so everyone else brought a side. There were mashed potatoes (about enough for 3-4 people so everyone got about 2 bites of potatoes), rice (that was burnt) and rolls. Good thing nobody was on a no carb diet. Oh, and salad, but by the time it got to me it was all gone. After dinner they wanted to play games, but we excused ourselves to go home. People without kids just don't understand that is almost impossible to sit down and enjoy playing games with other couples when there are not other children for your child to play with. Tyler would have been all over us the whole time, putting pieces in his mouth, and crying because we'd be taking them away. Just not my idea of fun! So now you know. The Brickers are snobs. We don't like people that are nice to us. We snub our nose at free food and we think we are too cool to be friends with people who wear socks with sandals and/or jean jumpers. Don't hate, just understand that we are awesome and we know it.

This next part seems SO silly now looking back, but it was a pretty big turning point in not only our attitude about being here, but in our relationship as well so I feel it's important enough that I want to write about it so I don't forget. We walked into our apartment that night after dinner feeling a lot of negative feelings. Discouraged, overwhelmed, worn out and confused. Despite all the blessings that we had received, I think the fatigue from the past week just took complete control over our emotions and we just let ourselves fall victim to despair. I sat down on the couch looked over at Bobby and said, "I don't like it here, I want to go home." He sat down next to me and held my hand and said, "I know, me too. This is hard." I laid my head on his shoulder and just started to cry. I missed my friends, my normal friends that made enough food for everyone to eat, that dressed normal, that loved me for me even if my kid was being a little out of control, that loved me for my sense of humor even if it's not always the nicest, that just loved me. Bobby got off the couch and knelt down in front of me and held my face in his hands. He didn't say anything for along time, he just cried. (Never has he cried since we have been married) Then he told me that he was scared too. Scared that he wouldn't do well in school and would have moved his family for nothing. Scared that I would hate him for taking me away from my friends. Scared that we wouldn't find our place here. Scared that I would be disappointed in him. Of course this only made me cry more because I could NEVER be anything more than proud of him. I told him that I believed in him. In his ability to successfully finish school, in his ability to pray for and receive revelation for our family, in his role as father and husband, and in him as a person. I would not have made this move if I did not believe in him and in us. We both reaffirmed our belief that this is where we are supposed to be at this time and got down on our knees and apologized to our Father in Heaven for not appreciating our blessings and allowing our emotions to take us to negative places. We thanked Him for opening the doors that led us to this place, for keeping us together as a family, and for helping us to pull together during this struggle and lean on each others' testimony and strength (lesson learned from previous experience during my first couple mo. of being pregnant) rather than pull apart and suffer individually until it was too much to bare, leaving us to make choices we might regret.

The next day, Mon., we decided to talk to the housing department about moving apartments because the stench was too much to bare! The apartment right next door happened to be vacant so we asked if we could move over, and said that we would willingly pay any sort of fee to do so. Thankfully they said that wouldn't be a problem, they didn't have anyone scheduled to move into this one for about a month and they would just reassign them an apt. And to top it off, no fee! We had really been praying that we'd be able to move apts. telling Heavenly Father that this would be the absolute last thing we would ask for for a long time!:) Bobby had to work all day Mon. so we started Mon. night and finished up on Tues. and it has made such a difference. I don't recommend moving twice in one week, but at least it was just right next door and we didn't have to go up or down any stairs!You can still smell it in this apartment but it's not nearly as strong so it's actually liveable. I still get sick almost every time we come home from somewhere because the smell is really strong in the stairwell, but I'm getting better about holding my breath and running up the stairs as fast as I can! If they leave their doors or windows open we have to close ours because then the smell does get really bad, but we don't have to worry about that too much because it's so hot that we just have the air on most of the day anyway. (Which is another thing-no air in these apts. so we're renting this huge air conditioning unit from the housing dept. At least they have them for rent so we don't have to buy one. I'll have to post a picture of it later!)

So here we are. Settled into our new, and then new again, apartment, making friends (sort of; we're really working hard on our snobby thing!) and doing lots of exploring(future post) in our new city. Since this job for Bobby was just part time he is only working 3-4 days a week and I LOVE it! He has every Tues. Thur. and every other Sat. off and we spend all day on those days out and about doing fun things, really trying to take advantage of this break before school starts. It is absolutely beautiful here and has a wonderfully small, home town feel. We are lucky to be here and are looking forward to many more "fun" adventures!