Our Super Relaxing Vacation, Part 1

When you think of the Christmas holiday, usually you think of pretty lights, homemade cookies, and fun holiday traditions.  You don't usually think of random 20 hour car trips, hospital visits, and burst water pipes.  Unfortunately, this is exactly how our "vacation" has gone.  Here's a little breakdown of the last few weeks for us:

We knew we would be coming back to Rexburg for the Christmas season after we left Utah when David finished his student teaching.  We also knew it would probably be a little crowded at my parents house because of all the family coming to town.  But we didn't really have another option unless by some miracle David got a job.  He had turned in a lot of applications, but hadn't got any calls.  So we resigned ourselves to the fact the we probably would just have to squish into my parents house.   Until my sister saw on Facebook that someone living near my parents was looking for a house sitter for the Christmas break!  It looked like such a good thing!  They lived near my parents and all we would have to do is some minimal work to take care of their chickens.  So I contacted the guy and he said they already had someone lined up, but if that didn't work out they would let me know.  A few days later he called me saying the people he had lined up found out they wouldn't be there the whole break and couldn't do it, so if we still wanted to we could stay there!  Looking back, I really wish I would've gone with my gut feeling and said no.  But I kept thinking about how nice it would be to have some extra space and I said we could meet with them when we got back to Rexburg.

We moved back to Rexburg a few days later (I can't tell you how much I hate moving....) and the next day we met with the people.  They have a modest, double wide trailer that has the potential to be a cozy, cute home.  That's what I thought when we drove up.  But walking up the steps of their porch, I changed my mind.  It looked like some of the wood had rotted and they took those pieces out and just laid (not nailed down or anything) a piece of plywood across the giant hole.  Every time I walk across it I feel like I'm going to fall through.  Then we walk in the house.  It smells funny.  Like stale, old, dirty house.  But I shove that thought aside.  We meet the couple and they are very nice.  They are both about 30, he has a few of his own start-up companies, and they have 5 children under the age of 6.  I feel like the house is very messy, but I chalk that up to the fact that they're preparing for a 3 week vacation with so many kids.  I want to say no to house sitting, but they're about to leave on this big trip and I don't want to dump that stress on them.

Before we move in, David gets a call from a school!  They want to interview him the next day over the phone!  He has the interview and it goes great!  The only problem is David isn't technically certified.  He has done everything, he just doesn't have the paperwork.  So he spends 2 days constantly on the phone trying to fast-track his certification.  He calls BYU-Idaho, the Idaho State Department of Education, his student teaching supervisor, everyone.  Meanwhile, he also has an interview to substitute teach in Rexburg in case he doesn't get this job.  Very, very busy.

He finally gets things moving and calls the potential employer back to tell them he's almost certified, and they offer him the job!  Yay!  But we both wanted to check the place out before we committed.  I wanted David to go because I really didn't want to leave Asher.  I've never left him overnight before.  But I was convinced into it and we decided to drive down to Arizona to take a look.  Meanwhile, we have to go out to the other house morning and night to let their chickens out and put them back in their coop.  We decided to stay at my parents till after the trip because we didn't want to keep moving Asher back and forth because he would be staying with them while we were gone.  Also, the day before we left, I picked up a shift at my old job to help them out for their busy season.  The Sunday before Christmas, we left on the most thrown together trip ever!

It's a 10 hour drive to Kayenta, AZ so we knew it would be a long 2 days.  We would drive there, stay the night, meet with 2 people, and then drive back to Rexburg.  The first 4 hours passed smoothly, but as soon as we started going up the mountain pass just after Spanish Fork, traffic slowed way way down.  There was an accident because of the wind and snow and it stopped traffic.  Just at that moment, our gas light came on.  We had a few minutes of debate about whether we should keep going in stand-still traffic and hope a gas station was at the top of the mountain (which there was...we later found out) or go back down the mountain.  So we went down.  It was the most stressful drive ever because if we ran out of gas, one of us would have to walk down the mountain in a blizzard for who knew how many miles to get us some gas.  But we made it!  And had to drive all the way back up the mountain again.

We finally made it to Kayenta after a long drive and after I got so carsick I almost made David pull over about 30 times so I could puke.  But we found our hotel and got to sleep.  The next morning we met with the principal and went through the school and job expectations.  I'll go over all those later because this post is already getting too long.  Then we went and looked at some housing.  I was blown away!  Kayenta is on an Indian Reservation and they have teacher subsidized housing.  Those 2 things make it so a 3 bedroom townhouse has a monthly rent of $195!  That really the big draw for us.  You can save a lot of money by living there.

We ended up meeting with a lot of other people and finally got on the road again.  There is some beautiful scenery around there so it was a nice drive that we didn't get to see when we pulled in at 11pm.  We made it back to Rexburg with no other big things going wrong.  I asked my mom how Asher was and she said he didn't cry at all!  He was perfectly happy the whole time!  I was glad she didn't have to deal with grumpy baby....but I kind of wished he was a little fussy to show that he missed me...

When we got back to Rexburg, we packed all our stuff up and moved to the house (yay for moving.....)  When we got to the house and I really started looking around, I got a little depressed.  I legitimately believe that they are hoarders.  They have so much crap there.  Almost every corner of the house has piles of boxes and papers and junk.  They have things there that they don't need and aren't used based on the layers of dust.  It makes me sad that they live like that.  And the floors were so disgusting.  The first thing I did when I got there was start to clean.  I swept and mopped the floors, cleaned up their kitchen, and kind of made the beds in their kids room.  And the house gets so cold.  They have almost no insulation so even when I turned the heat up to 74, it felt like the house was only mildly warm.  I borrowed a heater from my mom for Asher's room and put blankets up in his window to keep the cold out and also borrowed a down-filled blanket for us because it got very cold in our room!  And the master bathroom I don't think got above 50 degrees.  For some reason, that is the coldest room in the house.  They also had a lot of random stuff in their tub in the master bath and their shower and other bathroom looked like they hadn't been cleaned in a long time.  And we found out their water didn't get any hotter than lukewarm.  So we never showered there and usually took Asher to my parents house for his nightly bath.  If we didn't, we had to heat water on their stove to make the water warm enough.  I really did not like staying in that house, but I feel even worse that they have to live like that!  David and I both wished we were in a situation to help them.

So that brings us to the week of Christmas!  The next week got even better.  But since this post is already long, I'll stop it here and share those stories tomorrow!