Our Place

When we moved to Iowa, we lived in a hotel for about 75 days. Being homeless is an awful feeling. We felt like we were stuck in Limbo! It's difficult to move on in LIFE when you don't have a permanent address. You can't forward your mail, you can't get a driver's license, you can't register your cars...bleh. When we were finally able to buy another duplex, there was an extreme sense of relief! 

Good-bye hotel room.

Hello house!
(This was taken in March when we moved in)

Before we moved in, we decided that the duplex needed new paint all around and padding placed under the carpet. The week prior to our move we spent a lot of late nights prepping our future home. A couple of ladies from my ward came and helped me paint and Bill sacrificed his knees to re-stretch our carpet.

Our bedroom before...

Our bedroom while painting.

Our bedroom as of today!

Bathroom before...

Bathroom while painting.

Bathroom as of today!

Painting was a messy business.

He was exhausted just thinking about the idea of carpet-kicking.

Kickin' Carpet

We moved into our place on March 26, the Saturday before Easter. A lot of people from our ward were there to lend us a hand. Let me emphasize the mantra many hands make light work! It only took two hours in total to move everything from our storage unit into a U-Haul and from the U-Haul into our place. We are so grateful to those good people! I can't even imagine the amount of time it would have taken if it were just Bill and I doing the work.

I cleaned out Bill's Trailblazer as I moved our stuff
out of our hotel room. Um...is this normal?

My planties are making a comeback!
I made sure they were strapped in tight for the move!

Thank you Wardies for helping us move!

Returning the U-Haul after unloading. Bill loved how big and old it was.
Driving makes this man seriously happy.

While Bill was at work I was able to spend a lot of time unpacking and deep-cleaning every room. It was so nice to feel settled and at-home so quickly! And I actually hung things on my walls! This is the most homey place we've ever lived, although it would still be considered apartment-living. We have two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a washer and dryer (at last! - although it is in our kitchen). But we lack a dishwasher again. Our place is really good for two adults and maybe a small child and a small dog. But whenever we have extra adults over, it begins to feel really cramped. It's a good thing we live far from civilization where we rarely have visitors. Haha. 

The second bedroom...it's home to everything else.

Living room.

The piano in my garage will go right here - as soon as it's refinished.
Hopefully that will happen sooner than later!

The wall separating the kitchen
from the living room

The kitchen.

Where I sit as I write this blog post.

Dishes are the wooorrrrrsssstttt.

And for the first time in forever, we have a two-car garage. We couldn't park in it initially, but after a couple of days of rearranging in the heat while listening to the beautiful sounds of drunk neighbors and loud mariachi music, we were finally able to protect our cars from giant falling walnuts and bird poop. 

This is how it was for months

We finally found the motivation to start cleaning

And now we can park our cars!

I love being able to mow our lawn and weed our flower beds. It's a lot of work, but I feel so fulfilled doing things like that! My goal is to have a really nice green lawn next year - one where I can walk outside in my bare-feet if I really wanted to (I actually hate being barefoot)...which means a lot of prep work for this year and learning how to properly apply fertilizers and weed control and such. And it's been really fun to see what flowers and plants blossom in my yard - lots of neat surprises!

Weeding my yard is fun to do, fun to do, to do, to do!

Cleaning the gutters. A giant black sock was plugging one of the downspouts.
How did it even get up there?

These lilies were amazing when all in bloom.

We have A LOT of spiders and several varieties of ants that torment us daily, but with pest control sprays and powders, we've been able to regain our sanity. And the orb spiders that build their webs in our doorway are the absolute worst!

These yellow-sac spiders haunted us in every ceiling corner
in every room prior to spraying  Home Defense all over our house.

Although I am still bitter about how Iowa goes about their recycling, I have succumbed and try to do my part. I take my recyclables to the self-sort center in town and make a concerted effort to make sure the lid on my garbage can closes all the way (we get in trouble otherwise!).

Taking my recyclables to be recycled

West Liberty Self-Sort Recycle Center

Saturday nights are really happening when the races are underway. We live right next to the West Liberty Raceway and county fairgrounds. The races can be quite loud, but not usually any louder than our refrigerator! Often times we just end up being out of town so we rarely have to deal with the noise. We've been hit with a triple-threat in the past; once the races were going on, the backyard neighbors were having a giant birthday celebration with a live band and bounce house, and the neighbors across the street were celebrating with family. That was exciting. Even better was when the missionaries came over for a visit while a lot of that was going on! 

We are still working to renovate the other side of the duplex, so no one lives there at the moment. But that has been an adventure in and of itself - finding lots of weird old things and wiping who-knows-what off the walls. But we'll have everything in order eventually. 

Everything found in the crawlspace on the other side of the duplex.

That's our place in a nutshell! It keeps us dry from the torrential rain and cool from the intense humidity. We like where we live! It's not our dream home, but every time we move, we're one step closer to being there. But I'm grateful for what I have and the freedoms and joys it ultimately brings to my LIFE right now.

So much rain. You don't need a sprinkler system out here.

Indianapolis in a Weekend

As I mentioned in my last post, we live in a pretty centralized location! There isn't a terrible amount of things to do where we live, but we are 3-5 hours away from some really major cities in any given direction. Living here has opened up many doors for seeing the US that I never considered simply because of distance. And I have a lot of interest in getting around the US! It's a dream come true!

So Bill is working on a personal project that requires some pretty intensive server hardware (nerd alert! Ha!). As this stuff isn't typically very cheap, Bill had been pricing out parts for weeks - looking for something that would work! He finally found a solution on e-bay and noticed the servers would be shipping from Indianapolis. These servers are easily over 100 pounds each...so you can only imagine the cost of shipping when the intent was to buy four of them. Realizing it would be cheaper to drive than pay for shipping, Bill messaged the company and asked if they would hold them for him if he drove out and picked them up. At first, they didn't think he was serious - it came across as a bit "scammy," but Bill was finally able to convince them otherwise.

Just like that Bill and I were making a trip to Indianapolis! 

(Last time I went there was in 2008 - which happens to be the first real thing I posted about on this blog. I never would have thought I'd be going back! Read About it Here)

We were pricing out hotels and found a cheap place to stay next to where we would be picking up the servers. It would be such a waste to travel all that way and not do or see anything in the city, so we started looking up things that were going on that weekend.

Bill and I are fans of "Vlog Brothers" on YouTube and knew through the videos and the podcast, "Dear Hank and John" that John Green (author of The Fault in Our Stars and Papertowns) was selected to drive the pace car for the Angie's List Grand Prix. Putting two and two together, we realized we would be in Indianapolis that same weekend! We pulled up the race website and started pricing out tickets to the event. It was definitely a bit more pricey, but when would we likely do anything like this again? We could be apart of a Formula One race event in the biggest racing stadium in the world, and see John Green all in one! Why wouldn't we do it? So we purchased our tickets. Our weekend trip was planned!

A few days later, Bill realized we had booked our hotel for the wrong weekend. We looked at changing the dates, but the prices went up considerably for the weekend we actually needed! And because we had purchased them through hotels.com our payment was non-refundable for the dates we had selected. I suddenly wasn't all that enthused about spending that much money on a sub-par hotel with less-than-stellar-ratings. Money stresses me out (surprise!) and this trip was adding up really quick. Would hotels.com have mercy on us?

Not really. Not directly.

I tried calling the hotel several times to see if we could transfer the dates, but keep the same rates...but this 2-Star hotel wouldn't answer their phone for anything. So I called hotels.com and told them our situation. The rep was so kind and tried calling the hotel as well, but had no luck reaching them either. She went ahead and switched the dates for me and told me they would just charge the difference on my card. I asked if there was any way to cancel - I really didn't want the hotel if it was going to cost that much money! She said the original amount was non-refundable...seeing that I was stuck, I told her to go ahead and charge the card. Boo.

As the conversation went on, she mentioned the new total and new hotel stay dates and the cancellation policy - the full amount would be returned if cancelled 24 hours prior to the stay. Wait...now it is refundable because we're booked for a different weekend?! Awesome! We hung up. The rep sent out an email confirming the updated info a now I was able to cancel our stay and find something better! What a round about way to get our money back! Argh. 

So...we needed a place to stay again. All the hotel rates were up in the area for that weekend. Was there anyway I could stay somewhere cheap?

YouTube is inspiring...I had just watched a video that morning about a guy who takes professional Airbnb photos to earn income while travelling in his van. Airbnb, huh? It was worth looking at!

I managed to figure out how everything worked through the Airbnb app and found a place to stay that was incredibly close to the city, had over 100 positive reviews over the last five years, and cost us only $50 a night! And it seemed like a much more comfortable stay than the hotel we had originally booked. I sent the request to stay the weekend at this couple's home in an extra room and within an hour I had a response, saying "Sure! Come stay with us!"

This may sound silly, but this made me feel really brave. I wanted to high-five myself! I had just done something totally out of my comfort zone.

Yet again, as soon as Bill got home from work on a Friday, we threw our duffle bag and pillows into the Trailblazer and made our way across Illinois and into Indiana. Of course it was raining and there was construction. And we may have spent too much time at a gas station and getting dinner...We were really behind schedule as to the time I had told our hosts we would arrive at their place. Plus, once entering Indiana, there was a timezone change. I felt bad.

I sent our host this message:

"We keep running into a bunch of unexpected construction in Illinois and it didn't even cross my mind that that might be an issue. Our GPS says we'd be arriving more like 12:15 tonight at this rate...I'm so sorry!"  -- 8:19 PM

And her response totally diffused my anxieties and stress.

"I know it's not easy but don't stress!! We drove to Wisconsin last weekend and had the same issue! Not fun. Hang in there!" -- 8:22 PM

"Hang in there!" was exactly what I needed to hear after all the stress of this hotel madness. It helped me to calm down and breathe a little easier. I had never met our host, but I knew right off the bat that she was a good person. That simple text message was exactly what I needed in that moment. I think it helped set a tone within myself for the rest of our whirlwind trip.

We eventually arrived at our Airbnb and the husband was waiting up for us to give us a key and show us to our upstairs room. It was perfect. It was spacious and had it's own bathroom. It looked exactly like the pictures - causing me to experience a sense of familiarity. We quickly crashed for the night.

In the morning, we took our time getting ready and eventually went to go pick up Bill's servers, which I had almost forgotten was the whole intent of this trip! That portion went smoothly! Everything fit in the Trailblazer just right and we were done with all of that within 15 minutes.

We went to Denny's for brunch and stared through the window and across the parking lot at the "Seafood Buffet" - two words that when combined together made Bill nauseous. Haha.

And then we were off to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway!

That Saturday was so cold. It wasn't raining, but there was definitely a chilly wind blowing with an overcast sky...and we had paid money to willingly sit outside on metal seats in that weather! Fortunately we had prepared for cooler weather and layered up and had hand-warmers (that Judy had sent with us when we moved out here in January!). I had read a Reddit feed to gain tips about attending an IMS event and also made sure we had a cooler of water and food, a blanket to sit on, ear plugs, and our sunglasses. Typically people are dying in the heat of the stands, but that was definitely not the case for that day! Thankfully Bill had a beanie and earmuffs hanging out in the car that made our day that much more bearable as well.

My favorite moment of any new place I go to is taking in the sites and sounds of the first few steps you take when walking through the gates. It's SO exciting! The announcer's voice was roaring over the PA system, and a pre-race was going on beyond the enormous wall of the grandstands. The rumble, pops, and whines of the Formula One cars pumped me up! Those "entrance moments" are usually so stimulating, that they are the most memorable portions of my vacations - and this was no exception!

Entering the stadium!

We walked straight into the Souvenir Tent to buy a magnet, a vinyl sticker, and earplugs (I had forgotten to grab a second pair) before finding our seats. We bundled up and settled in as we still had a couple of hours before the actual race started.

There was a lot of fanfare and things to watch while we waited! We saw the red pace car that John Green was driving - although we weren't sure that he was driving it at the time - and saw Mario Andretti on the jumbo screen because his grandson Marco was one of the drivers. The National Anthem was sung and there was a parade of corvettes. We took lots of pictures. Finally the Grand Prix began and we were swept up in the 200 mile race for the next couple of hours! Although it was cold, causing issues for the drivers because their tires weren't able to grip the pavement as they would have liked, it was a lot more fun than we had anticipated!

IMS Hall of Fame Museum - it's located in the middle of the track

Corvettes, corvettes, corvettes!

The Grand Prix race

Final Lap!

The Grand Prix is different than the Indy 500 in that instead of just going around and around in circles, there are tight 90 degree corners and interesting bends and long straightaways in the the track. The winner of the race was the bright green Menard's car driven by Simon Pagenaud. He's won a couple of times in the past as well! Bill and I each had a couple of cars picked out that we cheered for - making it even more interesting to watch. By the end of the event, we left with no regrets!

That night we drove around downtown Indianapolis and went to the giant mall and munched on soft pretzels and a chocolate shake. I had forgotten about the mall - but lots of memories came back to me from the last time I was there with the FFA!

The War Memorial in the heart of Indianapolis.
There was no place to park, so I made Bill
take a passing picture out the window.

We came back relatively early in the evening and scared our host and her dinner guests when we tried unlocking the front door. We thought no one was home! Awkward! But I was finally able to meet the nice woman who had sent me the reassuring texts. She invited us down for drinks if we were up to it, but we felt like it'd be better to end our evening watching a couple of episodes of Parks and Rec instead. ;)

Our Airbnb stay.

On Sunday we attended a nice ward nearby who plotted to sabotage Bill's car so that we would have to stay. Haha. Truly, good people!

And then we were on our way home! Bill wanted to take a different route than from which we came. It was longer to get back, but it would take us up by Lake Michigan, something neither of us had seen before! We decided we'd find somewhere to stop and see the Lake when we got closer.

We drove through beautiful farmland and saw the most wind turbines I have ever seen in any single stretch! We drove through Lafayette, where Purdue University is (I didn't know that it was so "in the middle of nowhere"). And we eventually ended up close to Lake Michigan when we decided we needed to make a plan. We pulled off in Gary and found directions to the nearby Indiana Dunes state park with some help from Google Maps - seriously, how did people get around before GPS?

Field of wind turbines

I had heard that the Great Lakes are so vast that they often feel like oceans - and that is absolutely true! My "entrance moment" at the state park was walking along the beach in my bare feet. There were ladybugs EVERYWHERE and soft sand to sink in. People were sand sledding off a giant dune to the left of us and people were sprawled out on blankets like you see at any other beach. The water was endless! It was then that Bill pointed out the skyline of Chicago in the distance. It was like a floating city - I had never seen anything like that before! I wanted to lay down and make a sand angel, it was so sunny and delightful! I didn't. It was still cold despite the sun. :)

First glance across Lake Michigan

The Chicago Skyline

Ladybugs were everywhere!

We wandered for a little bit and I convinced Bill to walk up a giant flight of stairs to get to a Bird lookout. It was anticlimactic, but the view was beautiful! When we reached the bottom once more, we drove through beautiful campgrounds and groves of trees that made us miss the mountains of Utah and our ability to pick up and go camping. Someday we'll have that again!

But finally we were really on our way home!

We hit a toll road and found our way back to Iowa and eventually our house where we cooked up some dinner and finally called it a night.

I have loved these mini-vacations. This trip in particular took us far out of our comfort zones as we stayed with strangers and drove around in a big city (thanks Bill for handling that portion). We attended a racing event that we potentially thought could have been boring or miserable, but was quite the opposite because we came prepared! And we saw an "ocean lake" together. I would definitely count this as a winner weekend and excitedly came home to mark it on our travel map.

We're going places! Woot.