Packing, Moving, And Cleaning

takes a lot of work!  And we had the added bonus of a major winter snowstorm on Tuesday night and Wednesday which prevents trips back and forth to Syracuse as we had originally planned.  Gary slipped up on Tuesday with one load before the storm hit and then made another trip later on Wednesday.  But it still left two trips for Thursday.  

Collection of our gifts--The Church History Book for families was from our entire zone

Sister McClure gave us some yummy Hawaiian chocolates in these beautiful bags.

The Semadenis had just been in Arizona and brought back fresh oranges from their son's tree. 

Jena got more gifts than we did and she wanted me to post a picture of this sign and the jewel.  She loved it.

The Tuesday evening before the storm hit in earnest....

Salt Lake City ended up getting 17.3 inches of snow over the two days--the second highest on record.  They didn't have prayer meeting that morning because they did a late start of the buildings.  A great day to stay home and clean....

Wednesday was busy with packing and cleaning.....

Thursday--done with all of the mission kitchen supplies on the table as instructed!!

And to think, we are going to do this again in 19 months when we leave Arkansas.....are we crazy?

Thursday was a pretty sunny day...with snow everywhere.  Sister Collins (our next mission president's wife posted that it was 58 degrees and sunny in Arkansas)

Karla offered a downtown stairs closet for us to hang the bulk of our Church clothes so we headed there Thursday morning.....

A picture of their house
I don't know if I ever took one of this
townhouse where my dad and Karla have
lived for several years

Back to our apartment for another load ...someone had given us some carbonated apple grape juice so we toasted our last day on our mission!

Heading up State Street to this pretty view of the Capital Building

I grabbed a picture at the top of the hill of the clock in the car...the original plan was to be completely out of the apartment by 12:00.  Unfortunately, we had one more load to go due to the storm.  We headed to our temporary vrbo home in Clearfield, unloaded, and then I ran to a doctor's appointment. 

Our family practice doctor had retired in December and I needed to check in with our new provider to make sure my medications were covered as we moved to Arkansas in April.  He has been our "back up doctor for years and the one I have taken Ben to for years because they have a great rapport.  Turns out that he served a mission in the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission (which is now the Arkansas Bentonville Mission) in 1976-1978....and even crazier..he served in the Springfield 2nd Ward in Missouri until February of the year we got married in March.  He is so excited to have us over to see his pictures and talk about that part of the world.  We hope to do it at the end of March when we are back in Utah.

After my appointment, we all headed back to the apartment...one last time to pack up the remaining stuff......

the evening view of the Capital from the balcony

Jena was a hard worker.

Goodbye, #605!  We loved living here.

And heading west on 1st Avenue....one last time!

It was finally done....just a few final things left to do...