Going from "Popular in Elko" to "Vacation in Elko". MOVING!!

I don't know if I ever explained the "Popular in Elko" title to the blog.  We moved to Poplar Drive, and our first week in Elko the lady at the bank opening our account kept writing "Popular Drive".  She just could not get it right!  I mean, the popularity just oozes out of us.  So we were permanently Popular after that.

 This was the picture wall.  And the awesome sunburst clock that Raegan made for one of her YW value projects.  I had to snap one more photo before taking it all down...

Well, we finally decided (more like were able) to buy a house!  I've looked for years, but we just couldn't find the "right" thing.  I think we finally did! Boy, is moving the PITS.  We had a couple of months to prepare because the closing kept being postponed, (a very long trauma with the VA not getting us the docs we needed for the VA loan until we were literally down to the wire), but it happened.  A miracle.  We kept praying that if it was meant to be, Heavenly Father would help it to happen, and if not, it wouldn't.  Brent and I both felt at peace either way.  But we sure are excited to finally OWN again and to be done renting.  Our landlord at Poplar was a gem, and sad to see us go, but she'll rent it out in no time.  Elko is like that.  Poplar was a great house for us!  Since all my pictures are of our full house, here are a few of the empty space:

This was a great house for our family.  We will always remember Popular Drive with fondness!  Bless Romney's heart, she scrubbed and painted and packed and hauled vans full of loads for about a week before the moving guys came, and then for days afterwards until we could finally hand over the keys and say goodbye for good.  I couldn't have done this without her!  Amidst all the crazy days of cleaning and packing and organizing and loading the car with stuff for FISH (our version of DI), I saw Scarlett's TO DO list.

 I should have made my list more like hers!  "I love my list".  Do cartwheels.  

 We scheduled Wednesday night, January 28th 2015 for our move.  I was holding back tears as 6pm came...we had an army show up to help us move, including a dozen or so men and young men from our new ward, the Elko First ward.  So many people came to help!  We rented the biggest U-Haul truck in Elko, a 26-footer, thinking we'd have room to spare.  Nope!  We totally filled it up, plus the backs of about 3 pickups that the men had outside, and Brent and I and the kids STILL had to head back to Poplar one more time to grab all the bikes and scooters and a few more things that we had missed in the garage.  It was never ending!  But it's finally all here in our new house.

So now, we're National Lampoon's Vacation living on Griswold.  As in Clark.  And the funny thing is that the previous owner's last name WAS Clark.  Clark on Griswold.

 Our new house!

It will be good to save these pictures on the blog because I have stared at them for so many hours wondering if this was the place and where we would put all of our STUFF.  It's a very Tai Pan-ish house, but after looking at so many other houses, we seriously walked into this one and both Brent and I instantly felt something different.  We weren't planning to like it because it doesn't have a basement and isn't the square footage we were hoping for...but we love it!  It's already home.  It's fun to pull up to a new place now, on the other end of town (kind of).  There's a lot to do to make it "ours", but we'll just take it one step at a time. And not invite Cousin Eddie over any time soon.