THE BIG MOVE

We've had a lot of people ask us if we made it to Texas okay. Well, depends on what you mean by "Okay". We are here and we're alive, but making it here was a bit of an adventure with the jewel of a truck we rented from Penske.

First, let's start with loading-the-truck day. First thing Saturday morning we decided to drive down to Ryan and Cassie's house right down the road to pick up a couple peices of furniture. We had to turn the massive 26' truck around, so at my suggestion Zach attempted a 1-point turn - the one point being the neighbors' driveway. The Penske people did not tell us to avoid steep inclines. In hindsight it makes perfect sense, but just not something we thought about. As Zach pulled forward the hitch on the back of the truck dug itself into the pavement and pretty much lifted the two back wheels off the ground. See below. Since the truck is rear-wheel drive, when he tried to reverse, the wheels just spun.

Panic! We called Penske and they had a tow truck out there pretty quickly to get us out of our predicament. Luckily the $100 insurance we purchased for the truck covered the towing fee. And luckily the hitch was still usable. Whew!

We had a lot of help loading up the truck and cleaning our apartment and we are so thankful for everyone's help! Here's the truck with our car on the dolly. We had a lot of space left in our truck, but I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have fit in the next size down.

Inside the truck. Yes, those are my plants, and yes they all lived!

The drive to Texas was eventful to say the least. We made it just fine to Albuequrque but after that is where the problems began. Just outside of Albuequrque our truck staring shaking - like it had a flat tire. There was a small little exit coming right up so we pulled off the freeway to examine things. Everything looked just fine. We decided to give it a go again. But now we were presented with the challenge of turning the massive truck around and getting back on the freeway. With a car being towed behind the truck, we could not reverse at all. Period. We started to follow a promising frontage road only to come upon a dead-end sign. Our only option was to turn into this little hilly area - we saw a big brown building that looked like a school or something that we thought would have a big parking lot to turn around in. Wrong again. We took the small windy road up to the building only to come upon "Private property, no trespassing" signs.

At that point there was a big dirt area were we attempted to flip a U turn. No luck. We had to take the car off the dolly and take the dolly off the truck so we could reverse the truck and get turned around. Then I drove our little car to scout out the freeway entrance and called Zach to tell him how to get back on. The truck was shaking again for just a bit, but then stopped so we just kept going.

Soon after that we stopped at a big deisel fuel station and had the most frustrating time trying to fill up. I get angry just thinking about it so I must stop there. It took 45 minutes to fill up.

Back on the road...now about 9 pm. Now instead of our trucking shaking it starts to stall in the middle of the freeway. We'd be going like 65 mph when we would just lose power and get down to like 30 or 40 before it would kick back in again. Bad news. We called Penske and they told us to just get to the next big town, Tucumcari, and they would send someone out to look at it. Tucumcari was 150 miles away at that point. We drove the 150 miles and the truck seemed to be doing okay, so we decided to pass on having the mechanic come and look at it. We crashed at a Motel 6 and got going again at 6 am.

After about an hour on the freeway our truck starting acting up again. Then it just died. We were about 5 minutes outside of Amarillo. We got a mechanic out there within 30 minutes and he replaced the fuel filter and seemed to have it running just fine. We got back on the freeway, took the next exit for a bathroom break at Home Depot, then our truck died again on our way out of the parking lot. We called the same mechanic back. He was fiddling with it for another 45 minutes or so. He did not communicate AT ALL. He didn't say a word the whole time - when he left he said that he had "cleaned up some corroded connections" - whatever that means. It was running okay for awhile and then the same problem started up again. We decided we'd just keep driving it and get as far as we could and hope it didn't break down again.

So, for the last 400 miles of our trip our truck was stalling on the freeway. It would happen about every 15-20 minutes or so - especially when we got around other traffic and had to slow down and speed up a lot. We had some people in the ward scheduled to come help us unload at 6 so we were trying to get there in time. We just had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel just praying we could keep the truck moving. We had to call and push back the unload time to 7, but we made it to Dallas without any more breakdowns.

Here are some pictures that Mom Alleman took at our new place while we were unloading.

So far our time here in Texas has been great. If you've ever moved you know there are a lot of things to be done to settle in. We've been very busy getting those things taken care of and our apartment still needs a lot of attention.

I was able to keep my job with Synergy and I am just working remotely from home. It has taken some time to work out the kinks and get everything functioning properly, but I think it is going to work out really well. I was really worried about how I would handle being at home all day alone instead of being in an office, but it's actually not bad and there are definitely some perks!

Zach has been going a bit stir crazy since he had 2 full weeks here before dental school orientation started. Since I have been working all day every day he has had to find things to fill his time. While I always have 100 things to do running through my head at any given time, Zach has been very bored and restless. Orientation finally started this week so he has been a lot more busy.

He is THRILLED be starting dental school. He has already met so many people in his class and he says that everyone is SO nice. He is just itching to start classes, get his first assignment, and just start digging in. I'm glad my husband is so ambitious :) He probably won't be singing this tune in a few weeks though :)

Since we have been here, Zach's brother Chris and he wife Darlene had their baby! (they live just 1/2 hour from us) He came a bit early which Mom and Dad Alleman were not thrilled about - they left for Utah for 2 weeks the day before baby David came. I'm sure they are just DYING to see him. He is so cute!

We love our new ward! It's very different from our Utah ward, but so great. We have a lot of really old people in our ward who have lived in the area forever. But we also have a bunch of young families that we are already getting to know and I think we're going to have a lot of fun. One couple had us over for dinner on Sunday night and we had the greatest time visiting with them. And all of our teachers at church are amazing.

Last week I was sitting in Sunday school and looked over and saw my 6th grade teacher from Utah! She was pretty much my favorite and I could hardly wait to go talk to her after class. It turns out that her son and daughter-in-law are in the ward. Her son is in the bishopric. She was just in town visiting. But she said she comes every 2 months or so to visit. She was so stinkin nice and was insistant that we get together the next time she is in town. Love it.

Other random things I love about our new life in Texas:

-Our apartment - having a stove, an oven, a dishwasher, and a disposal are more wonderful than I ever remember. We also have a ceiling fan in our bedroom which I now know I can never live without. Two sinks in the master bedroom and more counter space...yes, thank you. Amazing carpet.

-Walmart is closer. Target is way closer.

-I'm actually learning how to communicate with non LDS people. I know, sounds weird, but it's definitely different here.

-Zach's hands are smooth as a baby's bottom. The humidity here has completey healed is chronic cracked, dry hands.

-Milk is $0.98 a gallon. Gas is $0.40 cheaper than Utah.

-I don't have to commute to work every day!

-The temple is 4.5 minutes from our house.

-No state taxes :)

Things that will take some adjusting to:

-No Gold's Gym pass :( I morn the loss of a personal TV on every peice of cardio equipment - I had my workouts perfectly planned to fit the schedule of my favorite shows. And no more step classes. Snif, snif. We decided to just use the gym at our complex, which isn't bad, but definitely an adjustment.

-No TV :( In Provo we had free cable and tivo, now we have nothing. There's still a glimmer of hope that we might get the basic channels like NBC, ABC, and Fox, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm not a huge TV watcher, but there are usually 1 or 2 shows each weeks that I love. Right now it is So You Think You Can Dance. It's killing me to have to wait a week until the episide airs on hulu.

-Dogs, dogs, everywhere. I seriously think 90% of the people in this complex have dogs. How did we manage that one?

-HOT!!!!

-Our apartment is surrounded by trees and shade, which is great for the electric bill, but my plants don't like it. I might have to give up on my plants for this time in my life :(

-Grandma Sycamore's bread is not sold in Texas

-I saw my first cockroach. Oh my heck - SO BIG and gross

So there you have it. We are so excited to be here and to be starting this new chapter in our lives. I love change, so I'm just loving this whole experience. Just so my family knows, my excitement for being here doesn't mean I don't miss you like crazy :)