Well I will try and make this as brief as I can but I have so much I want to blog about that I’ve decided to just put it all into one post. So here it goes… and... it’s not brief. Enjoy!
First off my family had a party for Jeff’s birthday since we weren’t going to be around on his actual birthday. So here are a few pics from the party… we ate at Firehouse for dinner… of course, and then had cake and ice cream afterwards at my parents house.
Goodbye Idaho!! We packed up our house and loaded up our Uhaul and said our goodbyes…. Thanks to all who helped us in our moving process. It was a lot of work and there is no way we could have done it alone! So thanks a ton everyone, we really appreciate all the help! Here is a picture of our little town home in Idaho Falls. Our first little apartment for our first year of marriage. (tear)
Farewell apartment....
Farewell Zions... (pretty nice bank huh?)
Goodbye car... such a sad day when I had to say goodbye to my car. It has been such a good little car for so many years, I had a hard time parting with it.We didn’t finish loading up the last few things in our U-haul and cleaning up the apartment until a little after midnight (Wed. night). It had been a very long day and I was exhausted. I scrubbed that apartment from top to bottom and I’ve still yet to see any signs of our deposit. Lame!! With Jeff in the U-haul and me in the car, we made our final trek from Idaho Falls to Utah. Jeff’s family was going up to Bear Lake the following day for their annual family reunion, and we planned to attend as much time as we could up there. With my brothers wedding that Saturday it made things a little hectic but it turned out to be a pretty good weekend… (minus a couple of little breakdowns that I had) Jeff ended up going to his reunion without me for the first day (he was understanding and told me I better just stay home and spend that time with my family) So he went to his reunion and I hung with my fam. I feel bad that I missed out so much on the reunion, but it happened to be crappy timing. Anyway, Cortney’s wedding dinner/barbecue (not sure what to call it) was on Friday night at Mack park in Smithfield. He invited all his friends and relatives and a bunch of people from our ward. It was a fun night and I was able to see people I hadn’t seen in a long time… not to mention all the yummy food. Saturday at noon was the big hoorah, Cort and Stephanie were sealed in the Logan Temple. Such an exciting day for them! We are all so excited to have Stephanie be a part of our family now.
I think I have the cutest neice and nephew ever!Afterwards they had a luncheon in some building on Federal Avenue, catered by Hamilton’s. They decorated it very pretty and the food was delicious. Then they were off… to there hotel... and you can imagine what happened after that. Haha, I’ll stop there. Jeff and I went back to my house and said our goodbyes, it was tough, especially when my little nephew keeps asking in his innocent little voice… “Why are you crying Timi? It’s otay, don’t be sad, you can come visit.” Man, he always has a way of making me cry worse. When we were saying goodbye to some people at the luncheon I started getting all choked up and people were coming up to me saying, it’s okay you’ll see him soon enough. Hahaha! As if I was crying over Cortney getting married!!! Funny. But I made it through the goodbyes with only a few tears (spread out over three days) …and then we were off to Bear Lake again to catch the end of Jeff’s family reunion. We spent Saturday night in Bear Lake and then started our adventure around 2 on Sunday afternoon. Jeff’s parents, Tony and Kathie followed us in our car while we drove the U-haul. It really wasn’t too bad of a drive. We split it up enough between three days that it turned out to be okay. Tony and Kathie were good to keep on our tail. We spent the first night in Laramie, Wyoming, the second night in Des Moines, Iowa, and the third night in Youngstown, Ohio. I was amazed at the miles and miles of corn fields we passed throughout the midwestern states. Other than that and some wind mills, there really wasn’t much to see (in my opinion). Jeff was a good sport. He drove the U-haul the entire time. Except for maybe a few hours while Tony took over to give Jeff a break. I didn’t trust myself to drive that thing!
According to Jeff, driving the truck wasn’t all that bad until we arrived in Pittsburgh. It was a nightmare driving in the city! When we first got here I had set our GPS to take us to Main Street in Pittsburgh… unaware of the fact that it was supposed to be Main Street in Munhall. So we followed that GPS until Jeff finally said, are you sure you put in the right address?? The streets we were on were so incredibly narrow I wasn’t sure we were going to make it through all the cars parked on both sides of the road. We didn’t have more than an inch on either side of us. I’m sure Tony and Kathie were holding there breath behind us just waiting for us to hit something…. Which apparently we had a very near miss. According to Tony and Kathie while Jeff was trying to back up to make a turn we backed right in between two parking meters. Ha, Jeff would like to say there was some skill involved but really he had no idea they were even there! Lucky us… The next adventure we had was when we were trying to return the stupid truck. We spent over an hour driving around the city looking for diesel fuel. What a joke!! You’d think people didn’t know what diesel was around here! After stopping at about three gas stations and hearing the same response… “umm.. diesel? Yeah, I don’t know where to tell you to go, you’ll have to go into the city to find diesel.” Or… this was the best. We stopped at a Foodland to grab some milk and we asked the cashier where to get diesel fuel. His response was, “At a gas station.” Ya think??? Wow… Driving a 24 foot moving truck in Pittsburgh on a million one way streets, up and down hills, and extremely narrow roads… not having a clue where you’re at or where you’re going… and wasting gas just to fill it up was not how we wanted to spend our evening. At one point we had traffic backed up while Jeff was trying to maneuver the truck with me outside directing him around a parked car. I had a guy yelling at me not to hit his car and a line of cars honking at us to get out of the way. I was sweating so bad… probably not as bad as Jeff. When we finally found a gas station with diesel it was on the other side of a median… just our luck. Luckily we found an opening and we didn’t realize until after we tried making a u-turn that it’s not as easy to do as in our car. We got stuck perpendicular to on-coming traffic… so there we were… blocking off traffic… again.
It got so ridiculous that I got to the point where I would just start laughing so hard I couldn’t stop. That didn’t help Jeff and his frustration… he was relying on me to direct and tell him how much room he had and if he was going to hit anything... etc. 
Now for the highlight of our evening…. By the time we finally found a gas station Kathie really had to use the restroom. The bathroom was a unisex bathroom and was outside the gas station. The door was locked so she knocked and a lady replied, “just a minute.” So she waited… and waited. By this time I had joined her, hoping to get some paper towels out of the restroom. It had been close to 10 minutes by this point. There was a guy parked right outside the restroom so Kathie went and asked him if he was waiting for someone in there. He said yes. So we waited a minute longer and finally a guy came out with his head ducked down and says… “she will be out in a minute.” WHAT?? The expression on Kathie’s face was priceless. She turned to me and said, “They were in there having a quicky!” …. Followed by the girl casually walking out with a cigarette in her mouth. They both got into separate cars and drove away. Wow, welcome to life in the city. That’s something you don’t see every day in little ol’ Cache Valley. I will never understand why ANYONE… white trash or not… would ever pick a public restroom.. of all places to have a “quicky.” DISGUSTING!!! The best part of the story is that Kathie still went in there!!!
Tony and Kathie were so nice to help us drive out here and stay for a while to help us get settled. I can’t tell them enough how much I appreciated them coming out here with us. It made it an easier adjustment for me, especially since we got here Wednesday afternoon and Jeff started school Thursday morning. I wasn’t prepared quite yet for driving in the big city let alone finding my way around in the city! Even with a GPS… I get very apprehensive when I don’t know where I’m going. Just ask Jeff. Although, he’d tell you a better word for that would be ornery. So I can’t thank you enough Tony and Kathie, it really meant a lot to us. While Tony and Kathie were here Jeff had his “White Coat Ceremony,” symbolizing Jeff’s introduction to patient care. It was fun to see all the kids he will be going to school with for the next 4 years. 
Aside from our difficulties with the U-haul we also had a few minor difficulties with our house… starting with the box springs. Basically it goes like this… our box springs to our two queen size beds would not fit up the stairs, pull and tug as we might… those box springs weren’t about to budge. So, we slept on our mattress on the floor for about the first week. Poor Tony and Kathie… Apparently mattress stores in Pittsburgh sell split box springs for a queen size bed due to the substantial amount of old homes and small stairways in Pittsburgh... I called everyone to find the cheapest ones we could find. $380 dollars later… we found some box springs. Not my idea of an ideal purchase, especially when you have two brand new box springs sitting right in front of you. I won’t go into detail about the part where we had to rent another u-haul trailer to get them here… only to find out AFTER we had paid for the trailer and had it all hooked on to the back of our friends Jeep that we had borrowed, that the furniture store we were getting the mattresses from carries all their stock in their warehouse… which was CLOSED!!! Who closes their warehouse store on Labor Day? I mean seriously… So we had to pay for another day and borrow our friends Jeep yet again. Thanks again Carlee and Brett! One more little side note… so we figured since we already had the trailer that we might as well go pick up the grill we had been wanting to get from Lowe’s. Oh don’t worry… they were all out of the grill we wanted when we got there. I think Jeff and I have the best luck, what do you think?? Dilemma #2
Small Stairway + Large Headboard = Headboard cut in half.
I almost couldn’t watch…. :(
Dilemma #3
Never lock the doors to your house unless you have a key to get back in with! Jeff’s parents and Jeff and I were headed out for a night on the town… more like dinner on the town… when we realized shortly after Kathie had shut the door behind us that we didn’t have a key to the house. Crap! So we checked every window and door in the house only to find them all locked! Of course… what else would you expect? Oh but wait… I think the kitchen window might be open. We borrowed our neighbors step ladder and this is what followed…
Yes… I saved the day. From the size of that window I was pretty confident I wasn’t going to fit. It gave me a little boost of confidence to find that I squeezed through with only a little push from behind. From all of that I can now say that I have sat in my kitchen sink. That’s more than most of you can say!
We also had the opportunity to go visit Kirtland while Tony and Kathie were here. It was such an awesome experience. I really haven’t been to any church history sites back East and I can’t wait to go see more! We were able to go through the Newell K. Whitney store, which was really quite amazing. Jeff thought that was the highlight of our Kirtland experience… he felt the spirit very strong in there. We were able to see a few of the places where Joseph Smith lived with his family. We also visited the Kirtland Temple. It’s hard to believe that the Saints had so much faith and trust in the Lord. I would like to think that I would have been just as courageous and as faithful as the early Saints were. It really is incredible. 
The Newell K. Whitney Store
This is where Joseph Smith translated the gold plates giving us the Book of Mormon.
Oh and it was also Jeff’s actual birthday this day. August 23rd. Happy Birthday Jeff! He is now the big 2-6. Man, he’s getting old! Just kidding Jeff… I love you and hope you had a great day! Tony and Kathie took us to eat at Ichiban’s (hibachi grill style, like Benihanas) Friday night for Jeff’s birthday dinner. The food was sooo good and it was so fun to watch them cook it. It really must take some serious training to cook like they do.
Jeff and I and two other couples went to the University of Pitt game last Saturday. I have to say, it was quite a contrast to the USU football games... although we did lose, the crowd and the atmosphere was crazy. There are some die hard fans out there. It was so blasted hot I thought I was going to die, but we still had fun.
I didn't get a picture of all of us... mostly because it would have looked pretty nasty with our glistening sweaty faces...
Now that we’re just about settled and I kind of know my way around… life is good. I really am enjoying Pittsburgh more than I thought I would. There seems to be so much to see and do here and I love it. The people here are great. Our neighbors are all so friendly, anytime I see them outside they are always quick to say hello and ask how I’m doing. We’ve found some really good hole in the wall resturaunts here that I am excited about... as well as many others like PF Changs. I’ve still yet to find anything that compares to Firehouse, I guess it will just give me something to look forward to when we go home. Jeff asked me the other night if we were going to have to eat at Firehouse every night when we go back home to visit?? I laughed and said, “is that a problem??” But really, our ward is great so far and we’ve already gotten to know so many fun people. Jeff and I actually just got called today to be Sunbeam teachers. Everyone says it is such a hard job, but I'm excited about it. I think there will be about 8 kids in our class, quite a handful. Jeff says it will be a good form of birth control. We will see... We’ve gotten together quite a bit with a lot of the couples in Jeff’s year of dental school and they are all great. The school just had a barbecue the other night with all the dental school students and their families. It was a fun little get together. Afterwards a bunch of us went out for ice cream...
Hanging out at the barbecue...
Just finishing up our ice cream...
So I failed to mention that Jeff has gotten a job. He works one night a week at his school in one of the labs. Basically he just has to be there while people are coming in and out and he has to lock up when they leave. It probably won't put a dent in our student loans but it will give us a little extra spending money at the end of the month. Kind of embarassing that he is going to school and has a job... while I continue to sit at home on my butt every day. I guess you can call me a stay at home wife. I take Jeff to school quite a bit, I pack his lunch, and I cook him dinner every night. What more could a guy ask for? Haha, I really am looking for a job and am really hoping that I can get a job working at Jeff's school. That way we could maybe ride together and we would qualify for "in-state tuition" which would be awesome. Plus the benefits are great. But... all the wives of the dental school students want to work there and so far we are all still jobless. So... we'll see how it goes. Cross your fingers for me!!
I will give you all some time to read this... it might take a few days or you may never get to the end but I will post some pictures of our house as soon as I get around to taking some. Thanks again everyone for all of your support and love! I will continue to keep you all posted!
The guys at Heinz field.
The girls...
At the Redskins game.
Jeff is proud of his action shots. (That's Chris Cooley)
FedEx Field
Chris's great dane George.
WWI Memorial.. they made quite an upgrade with the WWII memorial.
