I'm Home!

Sorry if you came to see pictures...but I haven't found the port to my camera to upload pictures. But I'm here to blog what happened while I was gone, and hopefully tomorrow I'll find the port for my camera.

I left 4 weeks ago for Utah to help drive my sister-in-law (Evie) to Florida. It was my understanding that once I got there everything was done and ready--all I would have to do is a yard sale and help her drive a uhal back to Florida. WELL--That wasn't the case. She has had her little sister (Sandi) and her baby living off of her and not helping her out. So nothing was done. Since--their mom died in October...Evie has had problems in Wendover and Sandi has been stealing her blind. Not only that her water heater gave out and dumped the whole 50 gallons of water in her house and she had to find someone that knew what they were doing to fix it. (Let me tell you that isn't easy in the middle of the desert.) So when I got there I had to deal with her major problems first and then deal with what didn't get done.

Her house was sold and the title company couldn't find her account to put her money in. So that had problems all in it's own (as you can guess). So I finally called the title company and told them that I had called my attorney and he wanted to know what was taking so long in getting her money to her. Once we worked that problem out we had the water heater to deal with. While as you have guessed we couldn't be in the house with no water...so we finally found a nice man that knew water heaters...and he had to drive almost 2 hours from Wendover into a real town to get a water heater that would fit into Evie's house. (I think she had a water heater for a double wide...so normal water heaters were too big.) It took the weekend for him to get back with us...and once he got it up and running we started cleaning small areas of the house (because Sandi still was using the house without running water...so the bathrooms...we just won't go there...and the kitchen was covered in dirty dishes). We spent that night in a hotel and the next morning we went back to the house and the water heater dumped the water again. So I had to get a hold of the man who was helping us...he finally came and tried to figure out why we were having problems. Come to find out the house never had a pressure regular on it so there was 150 pounds of pressure being pumped into her house and blowing the water heaters. He had plans to do other jobs in other towns for the next few days so we had to wait our turn...and he had to drive to a real town to get the part. He was very sweet and didn't over charge us for what he was doing. So since Evie's house had no water--there was no cooling system because out there they use swamp coolers that use water. So we could only be there for short periods of time.

So after a week and a half of only being in the house only during the day we started to noticed that there were water bugs...HUGE water bugs...and if you know me that isn't a good thing! So we sprayed and sprayed for bugs...every night and every morning.

I did forget to say she had problems with her car while I was there. I should say that in December while she was on her way here for Christmas--Sandi got hit in her car...after months in the shop it was "fixed". She didn't pay the body shop off because she wanted to drive it to see if it was okay...well the day I flew in the body shop wanted her to stop and see how things were going...so she did and the wanted to keep the car...the took her keys and won't give them back. Sandi had the extra keys so she took Evie's car back. So I had to deal with that too while I was there.

But the house had boxes from their mom, Sandi and Evie...and even some of Don's stuff. So we had to unpack and repack boxes. We worked most days until Midnight or 1 am and then would start back up around 8 or 9 am. Plus with trying to do a yard sale to get things out while we were getting ready to leave was a challenge. Some people would come every day just to see what new things we dug up...and then we had those that just wanted to dig through boxes just to do it. I have to say that we did a great job for dealing with what we had to deal with. But I was not happy to know what it wasn't already to go when I got there. Evie and I did all the work...and Sandi was just crappy if we sold things that she didn't have time to go through or didn't get to see. But after 2 days of her empty promises and seeing that she was just walking off with stuff--I didn't much care if she saw anything that we sold or not. I did take things that I knew we could sell later for a better price then what we would have gotten in Wendover...like a box of Coke collectibles.

We tried to give things to church groups because there was a ton of women's cloths and kitchen things that didn't sell...but no church group wanted to return calls. So we left alot of stuff for Sandi to deal with...she wanted to be able to go through stuff so we talked with the people that bought the home and worked out a deal that she could have a few days to get a storage unit and move the stuff after we left.

We left Saturday after we got the truck packed. My friend James and his girlfriend Jessica drove in from Provo to help me out (that is about a 3-4 hour drive one way). And we got a few men from the church come out to help also. They got it packed in about 2 hours. Evie and I headed towards Provo (really Springville) to stay with some friends of Evie and Don's. Ken Condie was Don's young men's leader years ago...so they had LOTS of good stories to share with me. It was just so good to walk into their home and feel the warm spirit that was there. Because out in Wendover the only spirit I felt was not a good one. So the Condies' put us up for 3 night. Their girls were wonderful about being kicked out of their beds and asked to sleep elsewhere in the house. The girls were excited Sunday when was asked to stay another night and leave Tuesday. I'm so glad to know that there are good members of the church that we could turn to and have the feeling of being safe and part of their family.

Tuesday we headed to Gallup, New Mexico. The wind blew so hard that I wasn't able to enjoy the travel. And Don sent us on a "short cut" which was a 2 lane road and TONS of road construction...so we had to stop going uphill just about everything we got stopped. Don says it saved us 160 miles...but I don't think it saved anytime. Wednesday we were off to Oklahoma City, OK. Again the wind blew so hard that the ride was no fun. We had to stay under the speed limit...which made our days long because I wanted to make it home in the 4 days that I had planned. Thursday we headed to Birmingham, AL. The wind was better for the most part but we still got had to be careful because the wind would start up and knock us around. Once we got into Alabama we had to stop and get gas and there was only a small gas station to go to. (Since we were paying in cash for gas Evie always went in to prepay and I'd gas the truck up.) I was standing there waiting on the pump to beep so I could start pumping gas...and all the sudden I heard "Honey are you traveling alone?". I turn around and a nice, black, older man was standing there talking to me...so I answered him "no, sir, I'm traveling with my sister". He looked at me and asked "who let's 2 women drive such a large truck cross country?" Of course I am not shy I answered him again " my husband. He couldn't get time off to help his sister move so he sent me instead...and we are almost there. We will be in Florida tomorrow and the trip will be over". He just looked at me like I was nuts and says " honey-don't talk to strangers. When you are in your truck...lock your doors. You and your sister stick together---don't leave each other. And don't talk to strangers." I just replied "yes,sir". Now I'm about to laugh...because he made me talk to him, but thinks I shouldn't talk to strangers. What is wrong with people? Really it was nice to think he was really giving me advice that he thinks I have never heard of before. But I'm glad he was worried about us. Friday we were on the final leg to Florida. Wind didn't act up and I was making good time...that is until we hit I-75 South. Just north of Gainsville there was a semi-truck turned over on it's side and it took us 45 minutes to go 10 miles. So that was a major set back in our time table. I was just so wanting to get out of that truck and have the trip over with. Once we got back on the road...we made good time again until it started to rain. People in the south don't know that it's okay to drive on water. So we had a few times that traffic crawled...and then we would get back up to speed...until Tampa...there was a HUGE storm crossing the Tampa Bay. So we crawled across the bridge but I knew that we just had about 20 minutes and we could be home. So I kept moving...I really just wanted to drive over cars that would stop in my path. But we finally made it home late afternoon/early evening.

Saturday we got the boy scouts from the church come and help unload the truck into a storage unit. Once we were done there---they followed us back to our apartment and helped Don bring up the large dressers and bed into the house. It's good to know the leaders...and being on the good end of service. (Most of the boys are in my Sunday school class---so they said they were earning the treats I always bring. So I baked brownies last night for them to eat in class today.)

So we are home and getting Evie unpacked. I'm sure things were put into storage that needed to come here but we will work that out later...right now it's getting her clothes and important things away right now.

Well--That's my update for right now...I hope I didn't bore you. I hope to get my camera working soon so that I can add pictures soon! Stop by again soon and check for pictures!