Life is Just a Chair of Bowlies, Sometimes

When we started this journey about a month ago, figuratively, I thought I knew exactly how it would turn out.
 We would drive out to Massachusetts.  We would find an apartment within a few days in this fabulous new city that we live in.
We would be experiencing this fantastically friendly, welcoming great new community that we live in.



Not all of that has been true.  Not all of that has been untrue.  A whole lot of it has ended up that way, but not started out that way at all.

Take for example our excitement as we FINALLY approached our new city home.  Excitement was written all over Reed's face as he drove the freeway, seeing all the signs announcing our new home.
He was so excited to see his new campus! We took the exit to his school and within a few minutes were driving through some of the scariest looking roads we had ever seen. Scary in a "rundown buildings, graffiti on the walls, broken windows, lots of people who looked like they belonged there in the ghetto".   Worse than Caldwell, even down by the railroad tracks of Nampa.
*(I'm laughing right now.  We clearly had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.)*

Reed tells me now, 5 days later that he was so disappointed when we drove into town to his campus so he could check in that first day. I stayed in the car. (With our kids so tightly packed into their car seats with whatever we could pack around them so that we could bring those last few "important" items with us. Poor kids.  Completely broken to the idea that they had to be buckled into their seats at all times, stuck in the car driving driving driving. Every day. With very few complaints. Have I said how much I love our little girls? They have endured this all so well.) Back to the story.  So I stayed in the car with the girls, looking at the people walking by, taking in all the sights around me. Reed's campus was nice.  The neighborhoods surrounding his campus, the neighborhoods we wanted to move right into with our girls were not so nice. In fact so not nice that we questioned the safety of moving anywhere NEAR Reed's campus. 
As I sat in the car, I thought of all the tender mercies we had experienced in the last few days.  No snow on any of the roads, kids who (mostly) very patiently sat and sat all day while we drove. Our ability to drive large lengths of time and miles with 2 kids in the car.  I thought of them all and came to the conclusion that Heavenly Father got us this far and it would be better as soon as we got an apartment to live in.  And as soon as we got to go to church.  Going to church is a great commonality because the gospel ties us together no matter our life experiences.  So I gathered up my courage and decided I would just suck it up and we would be fine.
When Reed got back to the car, I unlocked the door for him and he opened it.  And our car alarm that we have never used went off.  Loudly. For at least 3 minutes. We scrambled to know what to do.  Luckily we had our car's handbook to try to help us.  We sat there for 25 minutes, trying one thing after another, unable to actually drive anywhere because the car wouldn't start even though the alarm had stopped honking, it was still armed and thought we were stealing it. We finally figured it out, thanks I'm sure to the Spirit, and called my sister to set up a motel for the night through one of those hotel-deal websites.  Which suckered us out of a good chunk of money, sending us to a little known local motel that sounded a bit underwhelming. Long story short, we had made our bid, so we were stuck with their reservation. So, we sucked it up and found a closer motel and spent the night there instead.
The next morning, we woke up to falling wet snow, and *luckily* we were still pulling a VERY heavy trailer. *Please sense my sarcasm.*   I was glad that Reed was the one who drove us all to his school for his orientation, and VERY scared at the prospect of driving the girls back to our motel. On the drive to the school, our GPS sent us up the steepest, scariest hill I had only seen in my nightmares. Or while jeeping. And better yet we were pulling a trailer to boot! Reed gave it his best, leaving a little rubber on the road as he tried to get our car to pull its heavy load up this hill, but finally and luckily was able to back down safely.  We safely arrived at his school, but I was terrified of my turn to drive. I had glimpsed now that we were living in a land of hills. Steep steep hills. It took me an hour to get back to the motel, but I managed to avoid steep hills and kept to the not so steep ones and in spite of the falling snow, also managed not to slide into anyone! :)
Our next hardship came that afternoon when I picked Reed up at the school.  I had managed to call the U-Haul rental place and arranged for our free storage unit rental so that we could unload our dangerous load and get back to driving just our car around in all this snow.  After too many minutes in the car with crying Bronwyn, I went in to see what was taking so long.  They were going to have to drill out the lock Reed had put on our trailer because he had lost the key to it. They finally accomplished that and we went to the storage unit area. Where Reed proceeded to pull up into this VERY steep parking lot and parked in front of this INCREDIBLY steep snow covered hill. He walked up there and opened the door for me, and I asked him if this is where we were supposed to unload our things. He answered in the affirmative. I gritted my teeth and tried to think of it as an adventure. As I slid back down this hill, (seriously this would have been a great sledding hill), and climbed back up this precarious hill with a few things, I pondered how this would someday make a good story. Luckily within a few minutes some employees showed up. And took pity on our plight.  Showed us another entrance, farther away from our storage unit, but not up a scary snow covered hill.  Then they proceeded to help us load everything into our storage unit for the next 45 minutes. Incredible people.  I hugged the only lady among them, and we thanked them all over and over.

I could go on and on.   Essentially, people, this whole experience has so far not been anything like I expected. We still have nowhere to live. The place we're considering living in has a fenced in parking area and a lockout building, with drug dealing going on in the front and prostitution as well.  And this is one of the better options we have close to Reed's university.

I find myself, in times like these, trying to remember the feelings we had as we prepared for this move back in Idaho. We felt like we were needed here. That's a great feeling. I wish it would have come with a little explanation. But that's not how Heavenly Father works. And I know someday I will look back at these things that are so trying now and I will laugh.  Laugh and laugh and laugh.  And be glad that I'm not going through this all again. I do know that Heavenly Father is here and helping us and that it will all be okay.