X Country

It has been a long time since I have written, and much has happened to the Winn family. We have moved from Provo, Utah to Knoxville, Tennessee, where Jarom will start graduate school this coming week. There was also a two week vacation to Delaware to visit the Winn Hotel and enjoy the amenities that it has to offer (lots of entertainment is included with the daily rate, which is quite reasonable.) Now we are all back in Knoxville, but allow me to digress and recap the past few weeks.

The Move

After procrastinating for as long as humanly possible, Jarom and Lixi finally began the process of putting stuff in boxes and prepping for the move. Alixa is much better at this than Jarom, who had to constantly be reminded to “stop dawdling” and do something. But progress was made, and on Monday, July 29, they were mostly boxed up. They went and picked up a 17 foot UHaul truck and a tow dolly to pull their Camry across the country. A few friends from the ward came over and did an amazing job helping them get the couches and tables into the truck. They did such a good job packing that there was actually quite a bit of space left empty, even with the motorcycle in there. Since Jarom doesn’t mind driving at night they decided to take off as soon as everything was packed, which meant about 8:30pm.

Jarom chose to take I-80 because he loves the scenery of Wyoming and Nebraska. We stopped for a bite to eat at a McDonalds in Evanston, Wyoming. It was decorated like a posh hunting lodge, complete with a fireplace and flat screen TVs on all the walls. This did not match the typical customer, who was wearing cowboy boots with spurs, dirty blue jeans and a hat bigger than a smart car. It made us laugh. We drove until about 3am, at which point we pulled into a rest stop and crashed for a few hours until the sun came up.

Tuesday took us to Kansas City, where Jarom’s mission buddy Devin lives. He has two little girls, ages 3 years old and 3 weeks old. The 3 year old seemed to like me, and I was just happy to have a break from the bouncy truck for a couple of days. We mostly just hung out, catching up and relaxing. On Thursday it was time to get moving again. We again left at night, except this time when we stopped at 3am it was in a southern bayou and not high in the mountains. After about an hour of unsuccessful attempts to fall asleep in the heat and humidity, Jarom ran a few laps around the rest stop to wake himself up and got back behind the wheel. Fortunately, he didn’t fall asleep and we made it to Knoxville by about noon on Friday.

The New Place

A very helpful EQP and some missionaries looking for some service helped unload the truck, in which the stuff had not shifted at all, thanks to the great packing crew. Nate and Kenz arrived to help empty boxes and reassemble stuff. By Saturday afternoon it was starting to look like an apartment, so Lix and Jarom decided to leave me to watch the fort while they took off up north to Delaware. It is a ten hour drive, although Nate lives right on the way, so they made a pit stop for dinner.

Delaware

The Winn family reunion didn’t start until August 10th, so Jarom and Lix had the house mostly to themselves for a week. Kristi seemed more than thrilled to have someone to share it with, especially because Jarom occupied so much of Bruce’s attention. Jarom got his dad’s old golf clubs as a birthday present, so he needed to take them out a few times and play, and he also had to help his dad choose a new set. Since they didn’t want to feel like total bums, they did a few chores to help out. They cleaned a chandelier and did some weeding and pulled up a dead tree and a bush that was in the wrong place. But mostly they enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and enjoyed being with family.

At the end of the first week everyone else arrived, filling up the house and making it easier to find someone to play with. They went down to the beach for a day, played some more golf, went shopping and bowling, visited some friends in Lancaster, played a mean game of whiffleball, and took a trip down to DC to visit the temple and see the zoo.

Back to TN

Alas, real life called and they had to leave, much sooner than they would have liked. They made the 10 hour drive back with another stopover at Nate’s. There have been several trips to Wal-Mart and Bed Bath & Beyond to get appropriate housing decorations, but the place is looking nicer and nicer. I don’t really care too much about how things look, but I do like the humidity. I am a jungle snake, so the dry air in Utah didn’t suit me. Jarom starts school again this week, and Lixi has to try and find a job that she loves. All in all, we are excited about the future here in Tennessee and glad that everything went smoothly with our move.