We made it!

 After driving 1,700 miles through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming we made it to Utah on Sunday night! We were so excited to have finished the drive. We originally planned on arriving around noontime on Monday but changed our minds. We realized we might want a little time to relax on Monday after unpacking the truck before the week really started. So we spent Sunday night in a hotel, because we could not check into the apartment, and grabbed some Mexican food before calling it a night.

Unloading the moving truck on Monday went well. Patrick and I unpacked about half of the truck when a couple of neighbors started helping us. This made things go much faster and was awesome since that half of the truck was packed pretty densely. We quickly realized that all of our things would not fit and so our desk and white dresser from our old kitchen are currently residing on our balcony.We hope to sell them soon.

We finished unpacking and putting things away on Wednesday night and are pretty happy with how things are. We still have too much for the size apartment we have but are learning to deal with it. In the old apartment there was a large closet we put a lot in and this time we are using the study or second bedroom as a closet room. It's really packed but there's a built in desk that Patrick will use which is nice.

Patrick's been busy this week with orientation which will carry over into next week. I've spent the week organizing our apartment and job hunting. Later today Danielle and Chad will visit us for the weekend!

This is our new apartment building. We are on the ground floor second from the left. The shade from the large tree is helping us get through the hot days without air conditioning.

This building is one of my favorite things about living in this apartment complex so far. It's right next to us. The first good thing about it is it houses the mailboxes. Getting the mail is one of my favorite things to do everyday. The second is that it's the laundry building. Earlier this week I was able to do five loads of laundry all at once!

This cupboard in the kitchen is another one of my favorite things about living in this apartment. There's enough space to lay the spices down so now we are super organized.

We are so excited to be in Utah and for Patrick to start MBA school later in the month! 

Day two of driving...

Last night we drove a little past Lincoln, Nebraska. We planned on stopping for the night in Lincoln but all of the hotels in our price range looked runned down, kinda unsafe, and like we might get bed bugs. So we drove on and stopped at a Super 8 a few miles off of the highway. It was very clean, quiet, and had a soft mattress.

Today's drive been going well. We left the hotel at 5:30. I've had a few naps and Patrick's been driving the whole time. We've seen lots of cows and some llamas. At one of our last stops we saw an interesting looking restaurant. Here's a picture of it. Patrick's not the only Mexican Irish man out there. Apparently blending the two styles of food is working here in Nebraska.

We calculated how many miles per gallon we're getting and it's a whopping 9 ! We plan on making it to Provo tonight. Just ten hours to go!

Ashy's turn...

After driving 7 1/2 hours, ashley decided that I was done driving and that it was her turn.

We have driven 427.3 miles with a trip top speed of 71 miles per hour. We're somewhere in illinois and have another 370 miles of driving left today. We are actually doing better then expected.

Roadtrip breakfast...

Patrick and I headed out shortly after 5 this morning to Utah. Here we are enjoying breakfast. Really though we did each have half a muffin, although the muffin was white chocolate raspberry. We've also opened all of our snacks and candy to sample them.

Apartment walkthrough?

This is ashley and I waiting for a member of the maintenance team to come to our apartment to do our walkthrough before we check out. They are 21 minutes late.

Update ... We called the apartment office and it the first question they asked was, " are you moving out?" Unfortunately, I've called on two occasions to confirm our appointment. Bummer.

Momma Flynn's visit...

In July Patrick's mom came to visit us! Our plan was to pack as many unique Michigan places in as possible.

We headed up to Frankenmuth and started with the Christmas extravaganza that is Bronner's!

Here we are by the Cheese Haus. We walked around town sampling fudge, nuts, and cheese.

Linda loved the bridge over the river.

 

Linda wanted to visit some graves of relatives that were in the area. So after Frakenmuth we headed to Saginaw. We couldn't find the grave we were looking for but enjoyed walking around anyways.

 

We tried grave searching another day and were successful! We had searched the entire cemetery and were about to give up and then we found it!

The cemetery where we found the grave.

 We watched The Wizard of Oz at the Redford theater.

 We took a tour of Meadow Brook Mansion which is on my school's campus.

We also got to go inside the playhouse on Meadow Brook. It is a little house built 2/3's scale.

At The Polish Village Cafe in Hamtramck.

 We walked around Cranbrook.

 I enjoyed the diamond pattern to the flower beds in this garden.

 Us exploring the Asian Garden.

 The owls by the science museum, we almost forgot to stop and see them.

 We made a trip to Kirtland, Ohio to visit some church historical sites. We took a tour of the Kirtland Temple to start with.

Then we went to visit the sites that our church offered a tour of. Here we are in front of the Witney store. We all enjoyed being in an area where so many important things happened for our church.  

We loved our visit with Linda and having her all to ourselves for almost a whole week! We are so glad she was able to come.

Picked up a few back to school necessities...

Before heading out to Utah in a few days, Ashley and I decided there were a few things we still needed. A week ago I sold the apple desktop computer on craigslist. After a lot of research we decided another pc laptop was best. After even more research I found a deal on one at, of all places, Best Buy!  The price on the laptop was good enough that we would have bought it alone but when we found out that microsoft was giving away free xbox's with a purchase of a pc laptop, we weren't going to refuse. We decided why stop with a new laptop and xbox so we bought a new TV to go with them. From what I learned, BYU's MBA program is supposed to consume all of my time/life for the next 8 months. So we view the TV has Ashley's replacement or substitute for me.
Really though, we are very excited to be moving on to another stage of life in a few days!