North Carolina

I haven't had a chance to really document some of the details of our decisions and journey that has lead us to North Carolina....

We had a really great situation in Woods Cross.  We had a great house that we had bought cheap and fixed up.  Our mortgage was really low ($795!).  We lived on a street full of great friends for us and the kids.  The school was great and the boys were doing a French Immersion program which we loved!  We were close to family and could have Sunday dinner with them (mine or his) twice a month.  Kendall had a job that he didn't love, but he got every other Friday off. We loved that!

Last Spring, I went for a quick weekend trip to Albuquerque to see my sister's new twin baby girls.  Betsy, one of my other sisters, came in for the weekend from Toronto as well.  While I was sitting at my sister's church that Sunday, I had a clear thought come into my mind. It was "Kendall needs to go."  I cried. I knew what that meant....that Kendall needed to move away, to leave Utah.  And, of course, that meant that the kids and I needed to as well.  I didn't tell Kendall about this for months (I didn't want it to happen yet!). But, having had that experience, when Kendall's job function changed in the early summer and he was suddenly traveling more than half the time and when Kendall started talking about looking for a new job and started bringing up lots of places around the country, I kept my mind open.  And when he started going to interviews in California and Illinois and North Carolina, I started doing my research on those places.  I knew we were going to go.  I am so grateful for that Spiritual prompting I had had months earlier because it provided me with peace in the face of a big change.  And when Kendall was asking, "Are we sure this is what we should be doing? We can make things work here. Is this just for me?", I could answer confidently that I felt this was the right thing.  By that time, I also knew that it was not only Kendall that needed it, but all of us.

After a lot of interviews and waiting, Kendall was offered a job in Asheville, NC.  All along, I would have guessed that's where we would end up, but it was a long process and we never knew for sure.  We prayed about this and felt good about it, but felt like we needed to include the boys in this as well.  We had a family night and told the boys about the job offer and what that would mean for us.  Sam was on board and excited!  Luke wasn't at all.  Brigg was back and forth and Dodge acted excited but didn't really know.  As a family, we made a pros and cons list.  We went around and added things to the list.  Brigg was in tears when he said he would miss his teacher (we love Mme. Taylor!).  Luke was so sad about leaving his adorable friend Ben Bodily.  He and Luke are 2 peas in a pod.  Sam was excited about not having to do French, but the rest of us were sad about that.  We were excited about an adventure and the places we could visit in the East and the idea of big trees in our yard.  We were excited about what seemed like a really great job for Kendall.  We were sad to not see our family as much.  In the end, the Pros of taking the job out weighed the cons (though barely) and we knelt and had a family prayer to ask if that was right.  It was a neat night and experience. We had a family hug and talked about that, no matter what, we'd all be together and that was important! By morning, Luke was still sad but said he felt okay with it and everyone else was ready to move forward.  So, we accepted the offer!

Here's some of those good friends we miss! There were several "goodbye" parties thrown....

Zack, Luke and Ben

Our next door neighbors. the Call's threw a little party for the people on our street to say goodbye. 

These kids all live within a few houses from us. 

Carson and Dodge

Our boys and the Call boys (Taylor and Andrew). We loved having them next door!

A major perk of the offer is that it included a relocation package!  This ended up being a lot of details to keep track of, a lot of paperwork and getting permission for this and that and also a HUGE blessing! It covered all our realtor fees, included a moving company to not just move our stuff, but pack it up first and covered most of the travel expenses.

We had a crazy few weeks where I painted every door jamb and door in the house, finished tiling the basement shower, installed the board and batten in the basement Family room, landscaped the area outside that door in the backyard, cleared out some clutter and picked up a few more decorative things at yard sales for "staging" sake, etc.  Kendall was out of town for a chunk of this, so we even called a handy man to come in and help us with a few things. He ended up trying to fix a leaky bathtub faucet and completely broke the guts of the faucet instead and spent the next 9 hours (!) at the house cutting a hole in the wall and installing a completely new faucet.  At the end of that day, he had not only not helped us with the list of things we wanted him to do, but we had a hole in the wall that we had to sheetrock and patch.  That was the same day that our van suddenly sold and we were without a vehicle. Kendall was leaving out of town on Monday (this was Saturday), so he went into SLC to buy a van that day so that I'd have something to drive and not have to worry about buying a vehicle on my own with all the kids in tow.  He ended up buying a 2012 Toyota Sienna which we love and should last us until Sam goes on his mission, even with yearly drives across the country and every where else we want to go.  However, it was expensive and we kinda regret the purchase.  We still might sell it and go a little cheaper.

After all the work, we got the house on the market with a real estate agent that we loved.  His name is Dan Nix and I would recommend him whole heartedly.  We had 2 offers come in after it was on the market for about 10 days!  During those 10 days, Kendall and I went to NC to look at houses.  The boys stayed with my parents for that weekend.  I came back Monday night but Kendall stayed as that was his first day of work in NC.

That trip to North Carolina was tough.  We had taken the red eye in and got there Friday morning.  We met right away with our Realtor who started driving us around.  She knew we weren't ready to make an offer on anything yet (our house wasn't under contract yet at that point), so she was trying to give us an idea of the different areas and neighborhoods.  We looked at a number of houses and a lot of neighborhoods. We looked in the North, closer to Kendall's work and farther South, which seemed like a better fit but meant a bigger commute.  Oh! That was after we found out that the address google had for his work was wrong and it was actually much farther North than we thought. :) We saw what we liked and didn't and that things were more expensive than we wanted them to be.   On Saturday evening, Kendall and I went to dinner at an Italian place called Ianucci's (it had a Groupon:) ).  We ate and talked and by the time we were done eating, I went to wait in the car while he paid because I was in tears and didn't want to make a scene. I felt like it mattered where we lived, but I didn't know what was the right place or even area.  I didn't know where I was that entire weekend.  The roads are a mess with no order and I felt lost.   (I had spent Friday night plotting all the houses we had seen on a big map to try to get my bearings a little).  We took Saturday night off after that and went to a movie and walked around a cool shopping area.  We looked forward to Sunday! This was going to help narrow things down a little....we were going to attend 2 wards (in the north and south) and see which we felt better about.  We got up and ready Sunday morning and drove to the Weaverville building in the north.  The parking lot was completely empty.  Turns out, it was stake conference!  I called over to the other building and some random person answered and told me it was stake conference at that building.  We went there and sat in the over flow in the RS room.  I was so discouraged!  This was supposed to really help me, but now I didn't know anything about the wards and couldn't talk to anyone. I was praying for some comfort during the meeting, but really just felt a little angry.  I just wanted to leave when it was over, but Kendall made us go over and talk to some people.  They weren't from the area we were looking at , but  stopped a teenager from one of the wards who directed us to the Soliai family as someone to talk to.  I met Jen Soliai from the Asheville Ward who had just moved there about a year before from Utah.  She said she knew exactly what we were going through, gave me her phone number and a hug and told me we would love it here and it was going to be okay.   I knew that, but I was bawling anyway and felt dumb because she was a complete stranger. :)  I know that was an answer to my prayers that day. Jen was the perfect person to talk to and is a great friend to me now.  Monday morning, Kendall went to work and I toured a few elementary schools in the area.  I then drove our tiny rental car an hour to Greenville SC to catch my flight home.  Just a few miles from the airport, I got a flat tire and had to pull off and put on the spare.  Some guys helped me, though laughed that I had the instruction booklet out to make sure I was doing it right.

There's the tiny car that got a flat tire. 

Back at home, we went full swing into preparations.  Kendall was living in a hotel in NC.  A few days later, our house was under contract.  Kendall started looking more seriously with the Realtor and would send me the listings to look at and some videos and pictures.  Meanwhile, inspections and appraisals were happening in Woods Cross.  After the inspection, it turns out there were high levels of CO coming off one area of our furnace.  The buyers wanted that fixed and so we had someone look at it.  There were cracks in the something or other (I can't think of it right now) that meant we had to replace the furnace.  Awesome.  So, we had a company come put in a "like" furnace. About a week later, the buyers wanted to see the building permit and inspection form from the install of the new furnace. What? We didn't have those things.  Turns out, you are technically required to get those things when installing a new furnace and the buyers were going to back out if they didn't see them.  So, we had to work with Woods Cross City and pay a fee to get them.  It also required getting the license number from the company that installed it.  Well, after an initial phone call with them about this, they never answered my calls again. I don't think they were actually licensed, as they claimed.  Anyway, Woods Cross worked with us and we were able to get the license as a homeowner and write a separate letter about our situation with the company. Then, the inspector had to come out and give the "okay" with the install.  I was really nervous about this after that company that installed it was in the wind, but the inspector said it looked great.  Phew! This was just a few days prior to closing and the same day that the packers were at the house.  So glad that everything worked out with that!

This is what our bedroom looked like by the end of that day. 

The house was packed up and then loaded in a truck.  Some of my great friends helped me clean the place up and then it was done!  The boys and I stayed at John's house for the rest of that week. While I was working on things with that house, we had been praying and stressing about the house to buy in NC. There was one we really liked and felt good about, but the buyers weren't budging on price at all. So, we put it aside and kept looking.  After another week of looking, we ended back at that house.  The buyers ended up coming down a little and we were under contract. At the end of that moving week, Kendall flew in to Utah late Friday night and we woke the boys up early Saturday morning and got on a plane to NC!  There was also a little drama because when we booked our flights the first time, they called us back a few days later to tell us that our cat couldn't go on that plane (even though I had talked to them about the cat when we booked it) and we were going to have to change flights,etc. Anyway, travel day with the kids went great. Cougar even survived, so that was good.  We moved into our hotel where we would live for the next week until we could close on our new house.

  Saying goodbye to family.....

Grandpa Andersen. So nice to let us live there for a few days!

Great Grandma and Grandpa Porter. 

Grandma and Grandpa Porter

And here's some pictures of the travel day....