Comment on the culmination* of a summer's work....

AKA putting my family to work/payback for me taking off so much time for all the weddings....

(my last night at Adagio apts in my bed-sleeping with puppy)


So as mentioned in my previous posts from forever ago-I bought a townhouse. It was a quick process that seemed to consume my entire life for a couple of months, which was a total departure from what I thought I'd be doing this summer. But when I get this idea in my head-"hey buy a residence" I have to run with those thoughts. And when things fall into place easily then it makes even more sense.

Not that it was easy. There was a lot of prayer and phone calls and research and stress and loss of sleep that went into this decision. First of all-the decision to buy the townhouse verses the condo with the unattractive door. It was a pro/con list that was pretty even. What tipped me over the edge was my mom saying "your dad wouldn't want me to tell you this-but he thinks you should get the townhouse, it's a smarter decision". That pretty much sealed the deal. Plus I love the carpet! And the master bathroom! And the stairs!

Then the negotiation. Little did I know that the former owner, we'll call her Crazy, was, in fact, crazy. She didn't like my offer (I low-balled of course! I haven't watched hours of HGTV House Hunters and My First Place for nothing!), she didn't even want to counter-offer, then she was ridiculous on the moving in date which caused me to have heated conversations with my realtor (a saint-Keith Callister Equity Realty) whilst getting my hair colored-my voice was raised, I may have been worked up-I know, hard to believe. Right now as I'm typing this I'm thinking this wasn't too bad, but at the time it was serious. The fact that I work nights and would do all of this negotiating and document finding and sending and such during the day compounded the problem I'm sure.

My moratorium on diet coke ended during this time. So did my moratorium on swearing.

When we actually decided on a move-in date that worked for Crazy and her realtor which was, of course, the day we needed to be out of our apartment, things kicked into high gear. I had the carpets cleaned the day before, due to negotiation times (I won't bore you here), Crazy was still finishing up "cleaning" whilst I was waiting for the carpet guys. She was nice but so weird! She had to walk through the place a few times before she left for the last time. She told me I could pay her to come back and clean regularly because she does that sometimes (no freaking way!). I had the locks changed the day I moved in.

You'd think I'd be done with Crazy, but I'm not. She's still plaguing my Saintly Realtor with phone calls about her mail. Apparently she's very concerned about her mail still coming to this address. Keith in all of his wisdom told her she couldn't have my phone number, so she keeps calling him, then he calls me. The best thing is that no mail has ever come here for her since she's moved. Keith says she's told him she'll only call one more time. Keith says he longs for that day.

Anyway enough about Crazy. The good thing about her is that she kept a very clean, spotless house with one of the best inspections every seen by my house inspector. Fabulous.

I expected signing the closing papers to be stressful, but it wasn't at all. The most stressful part was that I worked the four nights before and had to sign at 10am after a shift. Also a member of the carpool was on a lifeflight trip to montana and was therefore running late. Don't worry-I drank an entire rockstar at 6am (entertaining for my co-workers I've been told) and was able to get home in time (thanks to some sacrifice on the part of our driver). Signing the papers took all of 15 minutes. The most annoying part is that I couldn't get ahold of anyone in my family afterwards to say hey guys I'm done!

Move-in day was fantastic. If it wasn't for my fantastic family it would have been horrific. The siblings and in-laws drove down from Pocatello Friday night with plans to move in on Saturday with Lisa's dad bringing up a trailer for the big furniture pieces. Well, with DJ (little bro) and Kory (BIL) being who they are, they decided a good idea would be to move as much as possible in the night on Friday. It was a great plan-it was dark, not so hot and not as much traffic. With my parent's Tahoe and the CR-V we got the majority of it done. They worked so hard and it was actually pretty fun! I love my family so much! And they've almost made up for the fact that I took 3 weeks of vacation time for all of their weddings-haha!

So here's a few pics (Jenny (SIL) and Jenna (sister) have more but I still need to educate Jenny on downloading pictures on a computer. Seriously.

Saturday morning: DJ fully snoozing-note that Jenny has already rolled up her sleeping bag and is getting ready for the day:


This is Kory 10 minutes before RJ was arriving with the trailer. Everyone wondered if Kory was going to emerge from his self-made bear cave


And he's up! Oh and so is DJ! Success!


Roxy was not handling the bustling of moving well. So she was relegated* to my closet in the apartment with the door of her cage facing the wall so she would know she was in time-out. She was TICKED!


Jenny hard at work


Kory hard at work: (don't you love this-welcome to the family in-laws-Let's move J's into her new place-talk about initiation!)


And at the townhouse:

Jenna works with Roxy to go through the doggy door. This is hard for Roxy. She'll go through it now but you have to actually lift the "door" for her. She's too much of a princess to push it with her head.


A final picture of the help hard at work:

All in all it's been a whirlwind but it's been a good decision. Thanks to all of you who had to listen to me complain and stress out about everything and to my family and the Pope's for helping us move-you guys are amazing!

*I know these are big words but I am using them correctly-I had to check google just to be sure I hadn't made them up in my mind or something

Comment on my 2 boxes.....

So my parents are pretty big on us not becoming pack rats. It's like my mom's goal in life or something. I think I succeeded because my childhood momentos are all found in these 2 boxes (the third box is journals from my mission/pre-mission years):

Since I'm moving and I don't want to move more than I have to (also learned from my parents and years of moving) I thought I'd go through these boxes to see if there was anything I could toss.

I enjoyed going through these boxes-kind of. I forgot that I started a class newspaper in 4th grade and that as the editor I referred to myself as "Jenny The Great".

I obviously had a healthy self-esteem that year.

I read my autobiography I wrote in 6th grade. I read about my birth and how I was taken away from my mom right after I was born because I was too small and needed oxygen (cute!) and that I had a sister named Jenna who "most people think is cute and she is the only blonde in the family" and that I had a brother named "David who is known as DJ and is only 2 weeks old and likes to hiccup and is already spoiled". I cringed as I looked through my yearbooks from Timpview-Ugh. I would never go back to those years of my life, and smiled as I read notes passed between my friends at Cibola.

Some things I'd forgotten:

Barkins the mechanical dog and the reason why I would love to have a chocolate brown dachsund-

A craft my mom got me for my room and something I can pass on to my brother's wife aka Jenny Mills the 2nd


My collection of Baby-Sitters Club books that I must have packed away so Jenna couldn't get her grubby little hands on them (and they are in an unmarked box so you won't find them so don't get any ideas!!)


And proof that in elementary school I wanted to be a doctor or nurse. If I had stayed on that plan maybe I could have gone into nursing a lot sooner!

And in case you're wondering-yes, I did throw a few things out-aren't you proud Mom?

Comment on a must-try....

I decided to go grocery shopping today for actual groceries with an actual list. You may wonder why this event needs to be announced, but when you realize that my usual grocery shopping begins with me going to Harmon's for bananas and ends with me walking out with $50 worth of stuff that doesn't amount to anything, well, you get the picture.

So my list and I went to Wal-Mart and I picked up these little gems (and yes, they were on the list):


Yes, pretzel M&M's. It's the best of both worlds-you get the crunchy salty pretzel covered with chocolate and a hard candy shell that melts in your mouth and not in your hands. Why doesn't it melt in your hands? Because you eat them so fast it doesn't have a chance.



I purchased the 30oz bag for $6.98 because it was a better deal than the 15oz bag, and lately I'm all about deals or something.

Also, it makes me feel better about myself to end the day knowing there's still some left in the bag. I don't think that would have been true if I had purchased the smaller bag.

I recommend you pick some up. So far we've only found these at Wal-Mart but I'm sure they'll start becoming available at more places as the word spreads.

As a side-note: these are perfect for slamming down when you're in the middle of yet another day of real estate negotiations over things like closing dates and replacing missing window screens. Is a window screen really that hard to not lose track of? And not just one window screen, but like 15 of them? Really people? Really??