Some Fun, Blessings and Disasters

I have so much to catch up on, but here's the best I can do for now...you'll see why.

So we had a delightful, but exhausting 4th of July weekend. Rob's cousin, Matt, got married to the sweetest girl and we had a delightful time doing wedding stuff all weekend and then had a great time watching the fireworks in Kaysville Saturday night. We had such a fun time and Grace loved watching the fireworks and dancing to the music. It was probably the best thing we've done all summer, if you ask her!

Us at fireworks.
I forgot my camera so it's taken from Rob's phone.

So Saturday afternoon, we were trying to make a decision on a place to live. We were offered a 2 bedroom house, but weren't feeling completely sold on it, since we had originally wanted 3 bedrooms so Rob could (hopefully!) be home to study more often than on campus. This 2 bedroom was in a good location, but was a little expensive plus we would have to pay all the utilities including water, sewer, trash, electric, etc. which wasn't so appealing to our meager budget, but we were feeling like maybe this was as good as we could get so we could get this done and have some peace of mind. But Heavenly Father knew better and took care of us big time. That afternoon we got an email from someone in the ward out there who we'd asked to look at a 3 bedroom house for us and he loved it. He said it was everything that he and his wife were searching for when they bought a home last summer. We were really excited, but not sure if it would work out since we had until Monday morning to tell the 2 bedroom place yes or no and it was a holiday weekend, no less Saturday evening! So we called the landlord on the 3 bedroom and she took us right on the spot without knowing much about us besides the few emails that she and Rob had traded about the details of the house. It is really cute, within our original budget with water, sewer and trash included with a huge backyard, a garage and hardwood throughout. What a relief and blessing! Here are a couple photos our friend took:I guess since we were breathing a sigh of relief, something else needed to happen to enliven things a bit. We were looking forward to a nice holiday yesterday so we could re-group and start to figure out what needs to be done and start doing those things. The morning was great but in the afternoon as I walked through our bedroom, the carpet felt funny and when I looked down my footprints were full of water! The apartment building boiler which shares a wall with our bedroom had somehow malfunctioned and was streaming water through the wall into our apartment. I think we caught it pretty quickly and were able to move everything out with only damage to a picture frame and bookcase. But since the whole back part of our apartment had water damage, we had to move everything out of the bedrooms, closets, laundry room and mud room/entryway into the kitchen and living room of our apartment so they could rip out the carpets and pad to dry everything out. Seriously? I could do without moving all our stuff around so often! Since there's barely a walkway through the "liveable" house we are staying with Rob's parents for now. The apartment will take until Friday at the earliest to dry out, then we have to get the carpet guys to come in and put the carpet back down again, so we're looking at a good week homeless :) At least we'll be camping this weekend in Zions so that's at least a few days we don't have to worry about. The good part in all of this is that we're going to get moving ReloCubes (like pods) tomorrow so we can start packing into them over the next few weeks, so that should lessen the stress of packing at the very end. The best part of the flood was when Grace wanted to be part of the action, but didn't like wet feet she got her little bathroom stool and put it in the hallway so she could stand on it and see all the action, but with dry feet. Silly girl! I can't say I blame her though!

Thanks everyone for your support and prayers for us through all this craziness! We really appreciate it! I think that we're about through with the bad luck...I can feel good things coming!