Move To South Dakota

Road Trip

Friday December 6
Tiffany (myself), Lachoneus and Tiberias left Logandale in the morning.
It was a very cold weekend to be outside. It had been pretty warm just before but the temperature dropped drastically all around. In NV, UT, WY & SD....all four states we were to travel through in the next three days.

We drove up to Provo stopping only once for a long lunch/play break at McDonald's in Cedar City.
The boys did awesome being in the car for those 5 hours because they had not been on a long road trip in a while.

My parents drove up to Provo that day as well. They attended a Boren (my dad and his sibblings) party at the Roney's home.
My boys and I stayed at Mom Roundy's house. Her home was decorated so beautiful inside for Christmas! Stockings, trees, lights, Christmas carousels, nativities, nutcrackers, etc. It was so fun!

Hannah was there and mom and dad. Travis came home from work just before my boys went to bed that night.
I left the boys with Hannah while mom and dad helped me get my van ready for cold days and nights. We bought chains for the tires and a window scraper. Dad filled my gas tank and my windshield water with stuff to keep it from freezing. He even took the van out and filled the gas tank so it would be ready for the trip the next day.

In the morning we ate homemade muffins. The weather was really bad. A storm was coming so we wanted to leave early to avoid it if possible.
My dad dropped my mom off to us and we got out of our trip. From Provo, UT to Rawlins, WY. The weather was not too bad. We were driving in snow off and on but never too bad. The roads were a bit snowy but not too bad. We were able to make it to our destination without any trouble.

Wyoming is really windy and the 2 days we were there were so cold and full of snow.
We got checked into our hotel. I had received no cell phone service all day...since about Provo Canyon. I hated not having service because I could not let Sterling know how our drive was or find out how his was. He began his drive Friday is well but his weather and roads were pretty bad. He did not make it to his first day destination Friday because of a storm.
At the hotel in Rawlins I still had no phone service.

In Rawlins mom, myself and the boys went to Shopko and bought snow gloves. Then we let the boys play in the snow which they loved! It wasn't wet enough snow to stick together in balls for creating a snow man though.
We then went inside the hotel to warm up. We ordered pizza to be delivered to us and enjoyed staying in that evening. Sterling called me at the hotel to see if I had arrived and was alive.
His travel day had been much better than the first day and he had caught up on his travel distance.

Sunday morning we ate breakfast and checked out of the hotel. By this time the boys were tired of being in the car. That day they started driving me kind of crazy. Ty kept whining for me to hold him while we were driving in the car. I'd say "I can't hold you! Not while we are driving!" And "You have to be buckled up or we will get in trouble by the police. You have to stay buckled up to be safe." But he kept asking and asking and asking to be held.  We tried distracting him with fun things to do but he wouldn't stop whining to be held.
Every time we stopped for potty breaks I would hold him but he still drove me crazy asking when we drove.

My mom was so helpful, handing the boys snacks and toys and teaching them games. She taught them "I Spy" and tried teaching them "Go Fish."

We reached Casper and I finally started getting phone service. It was still windy and so snowy and cold.
 When we got into South Dakota there was a bit less snow on the ground and not quite as cold.

We made it to Rapid City by 3pm! Sterling had gotten there before us. He checked into our hotel on base.  The base is actually in Box Elder, not Rapid City.

Our New Life Begins

The hotel has a little kitchen and a pullout bed couch. Mom and the boys stayed in the living room.
We started house hunting online. Trying to decide if we should live on base or off base and if we should rent or buy. It turns out it's really expensive to rent here so buying might be a good idea.
The problem is that the baby comes in about a month and it takes 30-45 days to buy a house. We don't want to be in the hotel for over a month and through having a new baby. It won't be fun if we are in the hotel for Christmas but I think that might be the case.

There are four bedroom houses available on base but the housing office workers are all gone to a conference until Friday!

I met Brenda Lifeger in the hotel laundry room. She has two little boys around the ages of mine. She and her family got here about a month ago, house hunted, went to visit family then came back. Their realtor just found them a house.

We got our boys together a few times in the few days before their move. One time we watched the boys run up and down the halls of the hotel to get out their energy.

Our first night here Sterling, mom, the boys and I went to Denny's for dinner. It was so cold outside but so nice in the restaurant. 
Monday I let the boys play out in the snow and taught them to make snow angels.

Mom and I took the boys to the mall Tuesday. Brenda's son was ill so they did not come with us.
We played in the play area and the arcade (without spending money). I went to Gymboree because the whole store was on sale for under $20! I bought some way cute stuff for Athena!
And we ate lunch at the food court. Then we stopped at the Dollar Tree on our way back...my mom loves the dollar tree. She bought the boys some toys. I bought Christmas wrapping paper and potty training suckers for Tiberias. He picked out the candy. I'm not a fan of suckers because they last longer in your mouth giving your teeth cavities. 

Sterling was at work doing in processing stuff. He was assigned to "tower" and not "radar" which I think is a really good thing. Instead of being in a dark room looking at screens all day he will be high in the tower looking through windows and doing stuff there.

Tuesday afternoon mom watched the boys so Sterling and I could go on a date. We went shopping at the grocery store on base and brought back mint ice cream for mom and the boys. Then we went to the hospital which was 30 minutes away...in bad snowy weather. When I go into labor it may be bad snowy weather so that's good that I know how long it takes in the snow.
We just had to drop off the copy of my medical records at the office. Then we went to Walmart to finish Christmas shopping. The boys are having a small Christmas this year. At Walmart we were tempted to buy the boys a motor buggy, two seater. They are usually $250 up and we never thought we'd get one for our boys. But Walmart has them for practically $150. You buy it and they give you a Walmart gift card so it's like you're paying $150 for the toy. Both boys could fit in it and enjoy it a long time. But Sterling told himself he would never spoil his kids with one of those. And we realized that they would not be able to use it well in the snow...so only certain months of the year they would be able to use it. So we did not buy it.

After shopping we went to The Texas Roadhouse. We'd eaten there once before...in Idaho with Jon's family in July. It was delicious!
We enjoyed the food just at much at this location too! Yummy rolls. Mostly meat. I got a Cowboy drink and it was great. Then we put a lot of our food in to go boxes and ordered a chocolate brownie with ice cream on it, to share. Dessert was amazing!!!

We went back to the hotel and laid down with our boys on the hide-a-bed watching "Mickey's Christmas Carol." 
It turns out mom had helped Brenda out by taking her boys so she and her husband could have some alone time. So all four little boys played and had a blast and ate mac and cheese dinner together in our hotel room while we were gone. Awesome.

This morning, Wednesday, Sterling took mom to the airport and put her on a plane.  At 11am we met with Brenda's realtor, Michael Frybarger, whom she highly recommends.
The funny thing is that we had been house hunting online and saw Michael Frybarger's ad as he had listed a house we were interested in. We set an appointment with him and then found out that Brenda's realtor whom she had been telling me I should meet was the same guy. She had even told him about us and he was interested in helping us out.
Michael Frybarger helped them find a house and put up his camper as collateral so they could move in early!

So we met him at 11am. The kids played in a kid area with toys right outside Michael's office for the hour we were in there. We looked at some houses available and picked seven we were interested in looking at.
Michael directed set up a meeting right away with the financial guy, whom Brenda also recommended, Josh Campbell.

Frybarger is going to setup for us to view all seven houses tomorrow morning! The kids are coming with us.

We went from Frybarger's office to the financial office. I dropped Ster off to take care of that while I took the boys to Wendy's for lunch. Then went and met the financial guy myself.

We are hoping that tomorrow we will like one of the seven houses enough to buy. So we can start the buying process and get into a house early January...before Athena is born.
We are thinking we will stay in the hotel until then. We will have Christmas in the hotel, although Sterling will have a hard time with it. He has been in a hotel for four months already.

We wont get our stuff, from government storage, until we move into a house. So Christmas will be without decorations and a tree.
If that is the case I will buy a poster board or multiple so we can colour a Christmas tree to put on the wall. And we will buy a few decorations for the hotel room...for the sake of the little boys. I can get some construction paper and teach the boys to make Christmas decorations...maybe red and green chains or something.

The hotel has a kitchen with a stove/oven/ dishwasher/ pots/pans/utencils etc.

I can take the boys to the base library but I heard from Frybarger that the library is town is amazing. So we'll check that one out too. We love the library...the little boys and I.

Sterling has the next week off of work to find a house. We were going to apply for a house on base so we could go see them and decide if we liked them enough to give up having a large yard. We heard the housing on base is awesome. But the housing office is basically empty all this week. And now we have a realtor and things, we hope, are going to go well with buying a house instead.

Today is the day Brenda's family moves into their new home. So Luke and Ty won't have them to play with any more. But I'm betting we'll get together sometime...I really like her.
Sunday we will have our first day at church here and start to meet people though. Hopefully meet some friends for my boys.

Luke won't start school until January after the Christmas break. As soon as we figure out where we are going to live we can see about enrolling him in the nearest school for Kindergarten.


                                                        The weather

The roads have been pretty slippery since we got here. Sterling and I are going to get use to driving in slippery snow quite fast.

The weather has been really cold but we are told that it's worst than usual. Usually at this time of year it's not this cold or snowy. I think I'm getting use to the snow already though.

We can't stay out in it too long because it gets too cold. But in the late morning and early afternoon it's not too bad.

Still, even at night when it's dark and the temperature is lower, we go out. I have not been hidding indoors to avoid the cold. So this is good! I'd much rather live here in the snow than in Biloxi MS, where Ster was, with the beach. Those beaches are shark infested.

Life is great. Now that we have a realtor and will start house hunting tomorrow we are less stressed. It seemed it was going to take forever to find a house just hunting online without a realtor. Things are going to be smooth and fast in comparison.