July 2018: The Move & Another Wedding

Oh, July.

A month I was both anxiously anticipating and dreading all at the same time. I HATE MOVING. Have I ever mentioned that? You would think after living in West Virginia, Florida, California, Utah, and back to Florida in the last five years (plus two separate moves in Utah and two in Florida) that I would be an expert and it would be a piece of cake by now, but it’s not and I’m not.

We got home from our Utah trip, enjoyed the Fourth of July, and set the dreaded dates for moving. To touch briefly on the 4^th, Brian had the day off and we spent it at the beach at Honeymoon Island with a picnic lunch and lots of swimming, then headed home to get cleaned up, eat some Buffalo Wild W

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ings, and catch fireworks at downtown Clearwater overlooking the ocean. It was pretty much the perfect, all-American day.

The next weekend, we started packing and moving. We enticed my grandma with Wimbledon to come over and be at the house while Tatum napped so we could start taking some stuff over to the house. It felt good to start getting stuff packed up and out of there, especially a lot of boxes that we never unpacked before in our apartment because we just didn’t have the room. I was doing a happy dance for our third bedroom and garage at the house!

The next week, we spent most of our time packing and prepping for the big move on the 14^th. I got everything packed up, we rented a moving truck for the day, and we had so much help from our friends and family! We had everything packed into the moving truck, driven to our house, and unloaded inside the house in an hour and a half flat. SUCH GREAT FRIENDS. It took some time to get the house in order and I’m still adjusting to a smaller kitchen, but we got unpacked in record time and all set up before I left for Maryland/West Virginia the next weekend.

Onto that trip… I have the best husband ever. My parents will tell you that they’re witness to the fact that Tatum and I both are grumpier before Brian arrives. He always encourages me to visit family a few days before he flies up so that I’m not bound to his PTO schedule, so Tatum and I flew up on Saturday the 21^st and came home on the 29^th. We’ve been saving all Brian’s PTO for the holidays this year, so he flew up on a Friday evening (the 27^th) and flew home with us on Sunday evening. Talk about a trooper! He was literally there for less than 48 hours and spent time with all my parents plus attended the wedding (the main reason for the trip) with me.

The start of the trip was rough. I specifically booked a flight that left at 8 PM on Saturday so that Tatum and I could spend the whole day with Brian and then hopefully she would fall asleep on the plane. We were supposed to arrive at 10:10 PM. Our flight wound up taking off 45 minutes late, Tatum didn’t sleep the whole flight, and as we were about to land in Baltimore 1000 ft off the ground, we were suddenly shooting back up to the sky. They tried to land 3 times but the winds and storm were so bad that they rerouted us to Philadelphia. Oh, joy. We wound up landing back in Baltimore at 1 AM, got our bags and were in the car with my dad at 1:45, and Tatum finally fell asleep once she was in her car seat. Talk about a long day.

Sunday, we were up by 9 am despite the previous late night. We had a huge breakfast with my dad and stepmom and hung out and played before heading to West Virginia. We stopped in the middle to have a dinner and girl’s night with my best friends from college. I love trips home because it’s an excuse for everyone to get together and we don’t get to very often! My friend Sam has a little girl who’s a year younger than Tatum and the two of them sat together and laughed and shared food and it was the cutest thing. Three hours later (the waitress probably hated us) and we were on the road again headed to my mom and stepdad’s house.

Growing up, I probably took for granted how much their house is a child’s paradise. They live in the middle of nowhere, on top of a mountain surrounded by woods, with a creek at the bottom of the hill, and a personal petting zoo. When I was growing up we had chickens and horses, but my parents have expanded that to include goats, sheep, ducks, and a million other things. When we were there this time, they had baby kittens, ducks, and goats and they were the cutest things ever. Tatum adores my mom’s house cat and calls him “ee-shee” for kitty. She spent every minute inside the house looking for or petting him and he was surprisingly tolerant of her.

Monday was a pretty laid back day of hanging out at their house and visiting my stepdad’s mom, now warmly referred to as “GG” for great-grandma. Tuesday, Tatum and I headed to see my two Brittany(ney) friends and have a playdate with their littles! One has a little boy that’s two weeks older than Tatum, and the other has a little girl two years older and a little boy three months younger, so it’s always fun to see them “play” together and have some girl time to catch up!

Wednesday was the best because I drove to Cumberland to see my Alysha! It’s always funny to us how we became friends and the circumstances that led us to be so close. This girl is such a rock to me and no matter how long we have to go between seeing each other, we always fall right back into place. It was perfect timing because the day before she had taken her licensing boards to finally become a physical therapist and she passed! We grabbed lunch with a friend and spent the day catching up and laughing my guts out, like usual. Everybody needs an Alysha in their lives, and I’m so grateful for mine.

On Thursdays, my mama leads a bible study group at the local nursing home where my grandma stayed for a while after she couldn’t live with us any longer. As if I needed any more reason to love and admire my amazing mother, she gave me another. I wasn’t planning on dropping by originally, but we wound up getting all packed up and ready early so I took Tatum in and caught the end of her class and got to meet a few of her favorite residents. Everyone loved seeing Tatum and I’m happy that I decided to drop in after all. We grabbed some lunch with her after and then headed back to my dad’s house in Columbia.

I usually plan my weeks out better since it’s a two-hour drive in between my mom’s and dad’s houses but with Brian flying in on Friday and the airport only being 20 minutes from my dad’s, it made more sense to stay there Thursday and Friday night. On Friday, my dad was able to work from home so Tatum got to spend more time with her Poppy and we took walks and played at all the playgrounds I used to go to when I was little. After I got her in bed, I picked Brian up from the airport. His plane was delayed an hour also so you know, that was great… -___-

Saturday was the day of one of my best friends since middle school, Ardath’s, wedding. We drove back up to West Virginia, hung out with my mom and stepdad for a bit then headed to the wedding. The ceremony was in Ardath’s dad’s church where he has been the pastor since we were little. My other three best friends from high school were there and it was kind of my favorite day of the entire month getting to watch our best friend marry the love of her life and celebrate all night. Her reception was held where we used to have prom together and it gave me all kinds of nostalgia. I think Brian caught a small glimpse of my life growing up as we sent Ardath and Kenneth off after a huge circle swaying to Country Roads, singing at the top of our lungs, with tears in people’s eyes. I’m so grateful for these incredible women that made me who I am today and the bonds we still share.

Sunday, we had to head back to Maryland and fly out that evening. We did breakfast with my mom and stepdad, said bye to GG, lunch with my dad and stepmom, and headed out. Thankfully, our flight home wasn’t delayed and we were home by 8 PM, got Tatum in bed, and we resumed life as usual. 

Trip 3 of 7 for 2018 done, with wedding 3 of 4 in the books.

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June 2018: First Sour, Ending Sweet

I’m normally super excited for June because June normally means the true beginning of summer, but in Florida, the lines of when summer begins are so blurred and it’s so outrageously and uncomfortably hot that I can’t say I was looking forward to summer, only that I was looking forward to getting out of Florida as much as possible. Especially after the way June came steamrolling in…

May 31, I went to Sam’s Club to get some grocery shopping and came out to find that my Jeep wouldn’t start. It wasn’t the battery because all my lights and AC would come on but it would just click when I tried to start it all the way. I had to Uber home with Tatum and all my loose groceries and tell my stepmom I couldn’t pick her up at the airport the next day anymore because I wouldn’t have a car. Friday, (June 1) Brian got a phone call from our renters in Utah saying the garbage disposal broke. Saturday, the Jeep was still at Sam’s Club and after breakfast out with my stepmom and grandma, Brian waited around at Sam’s Club for THREE AND A HALF HOURS waiting for them to tow the Jeep to my grandma’s where he would have room to work on it since we still lived in our apartment at the time. Once it finally got to my grandma’s, Brian spent 5 ½ hours attempting to get TO the starter to check it, but Jeeps are apparently the worst and he had to remove the entire drive shaft. Probably 15 trips to the store later for tools and parts and it still wasn’t resolved that day because at the last minute (and as it was getting dark), Brian realized he needed something ELSE he didn’t have.

Sunday, I woke up with a splitting migraine and the water shut off to our apartment due to a major pipe break in our building. We took showers at my grandma’s and saw my stepmom off, and that night Tatum woke up with 104.3 degree fever and we had an almost entirely sleepless night. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the water wasn’t restored to our building until 5 PM the next day so I was feeling gross but more importantly I couldn’t give Tatum a bath to try and bring her fever down. That night, Brian had another three hours of working on the Jeep before he ran out of daylight and Tuesday, he gets the Jeep fixed only to have to go buy a new battery for his car because it died. WE COULD NOT CATCH A BREAK.

If you saw my previous post, you saw that we bought a house and closed the first week in June! This was a very exciting and a very stressful time, especially with everything else that happened to us the first weekend of the month. There were a few things that the owners were supposed to have taken care of in advance that they suddenly said they wouldn’t be able to do in time. While it was annoying and they were in breach of contract, our options were to let the house go and know it would immediately be snatched up (we were in a bidding war and know there were at least three other offers on the table when they chose ours) or accept closing credits and take on the burden of a few projects ourselves. We chose the latter.

We were very strategic about when we put an offer in. Putting an offer in on the house in May gave us a closing date in June and our first mortgage payment wasn’t due until August, which is when our lease ended on our apartment. That meant we had from our closing on June 8 until August 16 to clean, paint, and get our stuff moved in before our lease ended, and we only paid double on rent and mortgage for half a month. We got most of the stuff done in June so we could move our stuff in July before I went on a weeklong vacation home for a friend’s wedding. We painted everything except the kitchen that we’re replacing the floor on (so I wanted to wait and choose a color once I bought the tile) and the third bedroom that’s getting a facelift in September.

All of our free time in June was spent working on the house with a few fun breaks. Brian turned 26 and we got a babysitter and went out for dinner at Bonefish Grill, then took a sunset walk at the beach. I made him his favorite homemade chocolate cheesecake and we celebrated my favorite person in the world, so it was a great day.

The day before Father’s Day, we went and used our last Disney day at EPCOT and quite literally ate our way around the world. We had macaron ice cream sandwiches and ham and cheese croissants from France, Brats and chips in Germany, gelato from Italy, Fish & chips in the United Kingdom, and snacks from pretty much everywhere else. EPCOT is great because wait times are way less than every other park and we rode everything. Tatum loved Nemo & Friends and Frozen Ever After, Brian and I rode my favorite (Soarin’ Around the World), and Tatum got to meet Ana and Elsa and take pictures with them. Father’s Day was spent at church and home with Brian’s favorite foods and desserts and it was a great end to a great weekend.

At the end of June, we made our second trip to Utah in 2 months. We planned this trip perfectly because Kevin and Amanda were in town visiting and one of Brian’s best friends, Glen, was getting married. We flew out on a Wednesday after Brian got off work, and Thursday we spent all day at Lagoon with Brian’s parents, Kevin and Amanda, and all the nieces and nephews. It’s so fun letting Tatum play with her cousins. She evened the count on the Baldwin grandchild side, so now there’s 4 boys and 4 girls.

Glen and Kelsey’s wedding was on Friday, so we left Tatum with Lindy and her cousins and went to their sealing in the Salt Lake Temple. This was my second time going to a sealing at this temple and it was so beautiful! We had some time to kill after the ceremony until the reception, so we grabbed some In ‘N Out (of course) and caught up with some friends in between. That night, Brian and Lindy and I went to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom because everyone else had gone during the day while we were gone and Lindy had the little kiddos. I love me some Chris Pratt!

Saturday was pretty laid back, but we had a late celebration of Brian’s birthday and an early celebration of Braxton’s 12^th birthday that evening. A friend of Brian’s since he was little had a wedding reception that evening that he headed off to and it felt like a really fulfilling trip that so many big events happened while we were there again. Sunday, we went to church and visited all of Brian’s grandparents that we’ve really missed seeing every Sunday! Monday, we had to head out again but not before shopping a little at Station Park and grabbing more Utah food! It’s always how we end our trips LOL.

It was nice to really get a lot out of our two trips out there, but we’re both happy to not be traveling west again until November! Tatum is such a trooper on airplanes but the long flights aren’t easy on anyone, especially with layovers and tons of delays... Airports just don’t seem to be able to get it together as much as they used to these days. Another busy month in the books! And we’re very happy it ended much better than it started…

Here's a mixed up compilation of photos of our adventures!

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