Lock your doors!

Hide your children!

Today is the first day BYU-I students are allowed to move in to their complexes. Our quiet little Rexburg has been invaded. There are people all over the place unloading trucks and carrying boxes. Let me just say, I'm glad I'm not one of them. Remembering what it was like at Wal-Mart the last two years on move-in day, we have made a conscious effort to avoid it.

Last year on this day, Erin and Bryce had followed me (in the Subaru) up to school the night before. We stopped at my Aunt Karen's house and packed up the Subaru with all my school junk that she so graciously let me store at her house over the summer. We drove to Rexburg and stayed the night at the Super 8 and then I was up EARLY to check in to La Jolla only because I needed to be sure to get a parking permit or else having the Subaru would be kind of an inconvenience. I got a parking permit and moved some stuff in. When Erin & Bryce got up, I showed them around campus and then they left to go to Craters of the Moon and make their way home. I returned to my La Jolla apartment and started unpacking stuff, bringing it in from the car one box at a time. About noon, I get a call from one Chad Busath, asking me if I wanted to go to Island Park with him to get the rest of his stuff from the place he worked at over the summer. I remember thinking that was random, but being already bored of unpacking, I went with. This was the first time I spent any significant amount of time with Chad's family. It is during this visit that Chad's dad decided he liked me, and kept asking Chad what was going on between us, at which point we were just friends. Good thing Chad's dad talked some sense into him! ;o)

Anyways, in other news, Chad and I had a successful weekend in CA. We drove down on Friday, getting into Elk Grove at about 8:30pm.
The next day we prepared for and
had our reception from 6-8pm. Sunday we got up and packed the van and drove to Provo where we stayed the night in Erin & Bryce's empty house. Monday we hung around with Mollie and Kyle until Erin & Bryce got home. We left shortly thereafter to make the trip back to Rexburg, leaving Provo a little bit after 6. The past few days since then have been filled with trying to organize our apartment to include the new gifts we got in CA. I have never in my life gotten so many gifts for one occasion. ... We feel kind of spoiled. If any of my readers were included in said gift-giving, we thank you for being so generous.















































The above pictures are from the CA reception. Chad's parents hosted it in their backyard. It was a little breezy at first, but it calmed down into a nice, comfortable evening. Chad and I greeted guests for the most part. They were pretty evenly spaced so we kept busy. Everything was very nice.

Below is a picture of the vacuum we've been waiting for - this will be helpful as you finish reading my post.





So, having a new vacuum, we were excited to finally be able to clean the floor in our apartment. If we don't wear shoes, our feet are literally black within a few hours of walking around on the carpet. We're pretty sure it has never been professionally cleaned and we doubt it was even vacuumed before we moved in. Today I vacuumed. And if you saw the pictures, you know that the square footage of carpet available for vacuuming can't be more than about... 50. And this is what the vacuum collected in that much space.
It was pretty gross. No wonder our feet were black.

Anyways, we also got the mirror put up. I feel much better now that the mirror has made it's way safely from Grandma's wall to ours. Now, in Grandma's house, this mirror always looked nicely matched for the wall it hung on - and it looked moderately sized above the upright piano. But in our tiny little apartment, we found that this mirror is actually HUGE.

We really underestimated its size, having not measured it before we brought it up here. The wall that it hangs on is really the only wall big enough for it. But it makes our bedroom look a lot bigger. And I know that's one of those Trading Spaces cliches, but it really does! And with about 300 sq. ft., we could use all the visual tricks we can find to make this place feel bigger. It's pretty nice, actually. We're happy.

Random endnote:

This picture is from our CT reception, but it's off of Chad's mom's camera so I don't think anyone else has this one, and I like it. Except Sawyer doesn't look too enthused.