Next time we’ll just move

As part of my usual introduction let me apologize for the long delay since our last posting. In our defense we’ve been all kinds of busy. “How busy?” you say, or perhaps “Busy doing what?” Well, let me tell you.

When we last checked in here in the world of blogging Jack had recently been blessed and various family figures had come and gone. After that we briefly settled back into our routines. I’d work on campus in the morning while Hilary stayed home with Jack, then I’d come home at 11:00 so that Hilary could go to work.

We knew we had to move soon and Hilary, master packer that she is, had been packing up our stuff systematically and continued to pack in the mornings. For my part, I took to deep cleaning such areas of the apartment as I could.
We also took the time to climb Y mountain one weekend. As always, the hike was beautiful once we got past the Y.
Jack was riding in a front back the whole way and was happy to get out once we got to the top. He got fed and then just lay on his back kicking his legs enjoying being outside and free from pack restraints. He also happily tried to eat and ant that crawled into his mouth. We got the poor thing out, but it had already drowned in Jack’s drool.

We then wrapped up July and started into August. The first week of August saw Hilary’s last day at Ultradent. After her two year stint in their quality control lab she was happy to leave the job, and sad to leave the people. All in all Ultradent is a class act as far as taking care of employees is concerned, so we’re going to miss them.
As our time in Provo was fast coming to and end we tried to see most of our friends before we left. We were also lucky enough to spend some time with Jon and Lara Beer who moved to Provo just before we were leaving. I’ve known Jon and his twin brother David since I was born (our mothers were friends when pregnant and our birthdays are eight days apart) and we all got back together a few times before we left town. This nicely sets up the following picture. Now, David, Jon and myself were all married during different years but still managed to all have our first child within four months of each other.

In the picture we’re all together and so are all our children. This perfectly sets up my being able to tell Jack that he met Matthew and Naomi and therefore should remember them.

We then flew up to Seattle to spend some time with family before going up to Alaska, to spend more time with more family. Specifically, Hilary’s brother Tom and his family recently moved to Anchorage, and they were kind enough to let five adults and one Jack stay at their house for a week. These times marked some important milestones for Jack, his first time in Washington, first time in Alaska, and first plane ride. He also got to have his second, third, and fourth plane rides in short order.

As for us, let me first say the weather was wonderful. After spending my days in the small, hot, stuffy, dimly lit, poorly ventilated, uneven floored, tiny kintchened, uninterneted apartment the cool, moist and seemingly clean weather of Seattle and Anchorage came as a breath of fresh air.

The scenery in Alaska is quite wonderful as well. We were only able to go on one hike, activities being somewhat limited by Jack and our two year old neice Celia,
but it was great. Unlike the Utah mountains we’d become more familiar with, the Alaskan mountains were the rich green thousands of well watered plants. On other days we drove to other sites of interest, like picking blueberries in the alps,
seeing iceburgs and glaciers,
but by far the hike up flat top mountain was my favorite part of the trip.
Some other exciting things happened while we were in Alaska. We finally closed on a home in Maryland, largely due to the help of Hilary’s father so one again thanks to Ted for being an amazing human being, which meant that we officially had someplace to live in September. I also officially graduated from BYU with my Masters in physics. So, on the whole it was quite a good week.

But, all good weeks must end. We flew back from Anchorage to Seattle on Monday August 16th. On Tuesday we drove from Seattle to Provo, giving Jack his all important firsts in Oregon and Idaho. On Wednesday and Thursday Hilary spent far too much time making her friends wedding cake which had to be done for the reception on Friday.

Oh, did I mention we had to pack all of our stuff into semitruck trailer in Salt Lake Wednesday evening. Well we did. And it was quite the fun time let me tell you. Our ward did their usual amazing o and being amazing. They organized a group to move the boxes and furniture into a pickup truck and onto a trailer which was borrowed from our High Councilor. We then left in two groups to meet up at the center in Salt Lake where we had to load the semi.

Just after we left the team in the truck discovered that the trailer had no working lights. Being fans of safety on the freeway they decided to replace them. This ended up taking about an hour. We in the other car didn’t know about this development until we were in Salt Lake, which meant we had to entertain ourselves for an hour next to an empty truck. Still, they came when the could and we loaded up our stuff quickly and efficiently. The downside was that we didn’t get home until about midnight, and Hilary wanted to work on cake stuff.

So, Thursday morning dawns on a couple of very tired individuals who need to super clean the apartment and make cakes. Thus, we spent the bulk of Thursday cleaning and cooking. Once again we were up late into the night and once again we woke up early. Friday opens with more last minute cleaning with the added attraction of needing to pack the car. We have to pack the car such that we can leave Provo with the cake (which was in two large pieces at the time) and give a ride to Hilary’s former roommate to and from the ceremony in Bountiful and then construct the cake for the reception in Salt Lake.

Because we had to make room for cakes and former roommates we didn’t have all the space we might have desired for our personal belongings. So, some of our neighbors got some free stuff that morning and we wish them the best with our little parting gifts. At long last we left Provo for the last time (for the next little while) and headed north. Hilary was freaking out the entire time because one of the layers was collapsing on itself, but we just had to assemble it and go.
We weren't there for the recpetion but this is how it would have looked if we were thhere. (Thank goodness for being able to steal others peoples pictures from facebook!) As is usually the case things always take longer than you’d planned. In this case, what with one thing and another we didn’t leave Salt Lake for parts east until about 6pm. This was unfortunate as the hotel we’d made reservations for was a solid eight hour drive away in Sidney, Nebraska.

Well, that’s a lot of text for one entry. We’ll tell you more soon.