Still Here

Since it’s been 23 days since we last blogged, some of you may have wondered if we survived the move from Virginia to Indiana. The answer is “yes”—we survived; some of our possessions, however, did not.

Due to Megan’s negotiating prowess and sucker-punch smile, we were able to pick up our 26-foot Penske truck (plus car towing device) on Friday night at closing rather than first thing on Saturday morning as originally planned. We thought we would take advantage of these extra hours and get the boxes all loaded so that when the kind volunteers from church showed up all that would remain to load would be the two-man sized items. In about 2 hours we had built the most beautiful box-wall at the back of the truck that you’ve ever seen. I doubt any Level 10 Tetris masters could have done better. As we called it a night, I had to move the truck to a less middle-of-the-street location. I considered tying everything down, but then I decided against it given that I only needed to move the truck about 100-feet around only one corner. Megan also had the thought to tie things down, but opted not to vocalize it. As I gently pulled the truck around we heard a faint tumbling sound like the sprinkling of pixie dust in the back of the truck. I was sure it was nothing, but decided to open up the back—just to see. To our horror, the whole box-wall had tipped over and we found the box of glass cups broken, as well as spilled contents of other boxes all over the place. Kaitlyn had prayed that morning: “…bless that we will have good ideas...” If only we had listened to them!

Besides all that, we only suffered major stains and discoloration on our white dressers, washer, dryer, couches, chair and ottoman from the furniture pads we rented; we are currently learning how fun the claims process is.

The first night we were here the sirens sounded to indicate a tornado warning. The next day’s headline: “Tornado Rips County.” I thought to myself, “What is this place we’ve moved to? What have I done?” So, after only two days with our surviving stuff in our new home, we decided we needed some perspective and drove to Nauvoo. (Either that or we had planned the trip a month ago to see my brother, Craig, perform in the BYU Dance Ensemble, I can’t remember.)

In Nauvoo, we were reminded of all that the early members of the church went through for their faith. Max learned about Joseph Smith’s face…

..and Grandpa’s face.


We all learned about the Martyrdom at Carthage and felt those special feelings of gratitude when pondering about Joseph and Hyrum.



However, Kaitlyn especially learned about the statues in front of the Visitor’s Center.


We were able to see Craig dance and were highly impressed by his mad dancing skills and red pants. We had no idea that Craig could do such amazing multi-cultural maneuvers! After seeing him perform, the girls danced around everywhere for days.


My sister Michelle and Alison were buddies all week (except, of course, at night when they had to share a sleeper sofa bed and Michelle learned that Ali likes to sleep perpendicularly).


We gave Nauvoo a pretty good touring and were impressed that the members of church sacrificed for five long years to build a temple that they would only ultimately use for a few months before leaving essentially everything behind.



Considering what they lost, our uglified furniture from the move didn’t seem like such a big deal after all. It was probably right about then that we got a phone call from Megan’s parents informing us that Indiana had just received record rainfall (about 12 inches in 10 hours) and that they were experiencing the worst floods since 1913. We quickly got online, hoping to find that the flooding was in some far-off town, but instead we discovered that a road only 6 miles from our house was two feet underwater and that our very area was greatly affected. Fortunately, the key to our new house that we left with Megan’s parents didn’t work so we were able to worry all weekend long until we sped home on Tuesday. But, we were blessed and our home (and basement) were dry and safe.

When we went to church on Sunday half in the congregation were wearing yellow t-shirts and jeans, and we were informed that there would only be sacrament meeting. (“What is this place?”) After sacrament meeting we were to form work teams (along with members from two other stakes who came down) to go assist people in the areas which were most affected by the floods.

My group drove to a neighborhood about 45 minutes south of us which was situated between two lakes. Most of the homes had walkout basements to the lake. One of the residents told us that the water rose one foot every five minutes until the water level rose about 16 feet and filled their basement to the ceiling with water! The waters had receded, but everything in every basement in the neighborhood was totally ruined. So, we spent the Sabbath moving muddy, wet debris from basements that now smelled like fecal material into huge heaps the size of 26-foot Penske trucks in front of people’s homes.


I again felt deeply grateful that we were not affected and was completely humbled by the experience. A little stained, but completely functional furniture really doesn’t seem so bad after all. So, what lessons can we learn from this collection of experiences? Never own nice stuff. And, I guess there is that little bit about the things that matter most being the things that can’t be taken away…

Next post? Remind me to tell you about the many, many house projects we’ve tried to get done before I start my new job. But…check out this custom scrapbooking desk that I built for Megan!