Stefanie Ackerson, July, Move to St. George!

My project for July changed dramatically when we discovered we suddenly needed to move from my beloved hometown of Logan to the farthest point on the Utah map, St. George!  The first week of July, my husband, Paul, received a completely unexpected job offer from a company he hadn't even applied for, and after a couple weeks of debating pros and cons, we decided to take it.  He'd been looking for a real full-time civil engineering job for over a year and this would be his big break.  The catch:  They wanted him to start on July 28th...which gave us only two weeks to pack up and move!  

During those two weeks, Paul quit his current job and I quit my job as a school-based speech-language pathologist, we made a weekend trip to St. George to go apartment hunting, then spent three days with my mom's help packing up our entire apartment and my classroom.  

Here is our cute little Logan apartment, the upstairs of an old house, before we started dismantling it:

I loved our little apartment, a great first home for a newlywed couple.  It was small and cute and cozy, but there were a few things I'd been doing without that I decided I had earned a right to if I was going to go along with this crazy adventure:  central air conditioning (our first apartment was miserable in the summer, and I knew St. George would be twice as bad), a laundry room with my own washer and dryer (we'd been sharing a small set in the dirty basement with the downstairs bachelors...icky), a garage (cars left out in the St. George sun get HOT), and lots of storage space (I'm a bit of a pack rat).  

We found the perfect place that met all of my requests and even had a few extra perks, like location right next to the beautiful St. George temple and a little back patio!  It's a cute two bedroom, two bathroom townhouse in a quite little community.  Here are some pictures of our new townhouse before we brought anything in:

Outside view

Front room, with huge beautiful
windows

Front door and dining room area,
open to front room

Kitchen

Living room, with a fireplace and
sliding door out to a back patio!

Master bedroom, with another door
leading out to the patio

Walk-in closet!!

Master bathroom

Main bathroom

On Friday, July 25th, we loaded up the truck with the help of my family and the elders quorum, and on Saturday we made the long 7-hour drive with both sets of parents and my aunt, who volunteered to come help me unpack and show us around St. George.  A couple members of our new St. George elders quorum showed up to help, thank goodness for strong young guys!  But best of all, one of them happened to have an extra like-new washer and dryer just sitting in his garage that he sold to us for only $200!  By Monday, our new townhouse was looking pretty decent.  I don't know what I would have done without my mom and aunt!

Here are pictures of some of the rooms that are coming together:

We still have a ways to go, a few more boxes to unpack, furniture to buy and/or assemble, pictures to hang...but it's coming along and starting to feel more like home.  Oh, and we're finally getting internet hooked up this week so I can start Skyping with my mom back home. :)