I never expected to find that we have so much stuff that we don't need. Downsizing from a large home to a 2 bedroom apartment has helped me to realize that I really don't need to hang onto stuffed animals from my childhood. We did however keep all of Kenny's letters and documents that he has from both boot camp and his mission. It's fun to pull those out every once in a while and see how young he looks in the pictures and read some of the letters and remember what was going on back then.
Going through this process has brought back memories from our other times that we have lived in apartments. Our first home was a one bedroom apartment in West Valley City. It looked really nice when we went and looked at the complex and I even lived there alone for just over a week before we were married and Kenny moved in. Pretty soon we found out that it wasn't the ideal place after all. The first problem was that I ran into a couple that I knew from high school that had bugged the ever living s*!$ out of me. Then I had two men follow me to my truck when I was leaving for work one afternoon, yes in broad daylight, and try to get into my truck after me. I started the truck and got my mace ready. I had already locked the doors and started to back up, I was hoping I would run over one of them (no such luck).
One Sunday we were loading up our laundry to take out to Kenny's moms house and noticed that something wasn't quit right, we were walking through the middle of the SWAT team. We had no idea they were there, nobody notified us to stay in our apartment, so we were loading our car with dirty laundry while they were doing hostage negotiations in the building next to us. One of the swat team members finally stopped us and explained that we either needed to get back in our apartment or leave. Information that would have been useful three trips to the car earlier!
While living there we had the unpleasant opportunity of witnessing animal cruelty when a neighbor threw his dog off his 3rd floor balcony. That image has always stayed with us and I have often wondered what happened to the dog and if he was okay. I also got to experience my first attempted break in. I thought there was no way that could happen when we lived on the 3rd floor, but someone decided to climb up the balcony's and try to come in our door from the balcony. I have always been grateful that it wasn't when Kenny was gone, he was gone frequently back then. It still amazes me to think that this all happened in only 6 months.
When we moved into our next apartment we were more careful and found a nice area that we loved. We lived there for a little over a year, until we bought our first home. It was so nice and quiet there. The only drama was our neighbor that we were friends with watched the OJ Simpson trial obsessively and gave me an update everyday when I got home from work. Kenny had to have surgery to have his ACL repaired while we lived there and while he was home healing he was able to see the space shuttle fly almost overhead. It was an amazing site. The only other thing that happened there, until the day we moved, that was kind of traumatic was when I had my wisdom teeth removed. The removal wasn't bad or healing from having them removed, it was that I fell asleep as soon as I got home from the dentist office with my pain pill in my mouth and woke up to it dissolved in my mouth. I still remember that taste and how my mouth felt, yuck!!
The day we moved out of that apartment and after a year of peace and watching people out golfing on the golf course that was our view, we had someone go out there and try to go duck hunting. I am not kidding, we were loading up the truck and we started hearing gun shots and then it was like we were in an episode of Dukes of Hazards because there were cop cars flying through the golf course. It was hilarious to see them racing around trying to find out who was hunting on the golf course and a couple of the cops even caught some air as the drove over some of the hills that were out there.
I am so excited to be downsizing and to have a lease (our past 2 landlord wouldn't sign a lease with us) that will protect both parties. I can't wait to have everything on one level so I can take care of our home easier and have more time to spend with the family instead of working and trying to care for the home and then being to tired to do anything. All 4 of us are excited to have no yard work, no shoveling, to have a maintenance man to call and the best of all (at least for me) I will have central air next summer and a working furnace this winter that I won't have to worry about.
I'll take pictures when I do the walk through so I can show you our new ity bity apartment :)
We will miss you in the ward! I wish you the very best in your next chapter of life!
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