Getting Settled In

A lot has gone on for us this week. We arrived in Salt Lake on Tuesday, and on Thursday Mel and Christian came to help us unpack the furniture and heaviest boxes from the pod. That didn’t take too long, and then we got to enjoy playing some games with them while the boys ran around together and had lots of fun. We worked hard and got everything organized and unpacked, which feels nice. Now our biggest thing we have to get done is to find a car for Michael, since we ended up getting rid of his old one in Milwaukee.

This week we’ve had lots of fun getting settled in here. The boys have been great – they love having all the extra space to roam around, and they have actually been very good at playing or reading downstairs and entertaining themselves without getting into trouble while we’ve spent a lot of time unpacking. Hopefully that continues.

The day after we moved in a nice girl from church, Emily Harker, who lives just a couple houses away invited us over and we had fun getting to know her and letting our kids play together. The boys were especially excited that their new friends have a tree house and several kittens. We’ve also had a chance to get together with Faith and Tyce a couple times this week, since Faith’s sister lives not far from here. And yesterday afternoon I went down to Lehi to pick up Mel, then to Provo to pick up Annette, and we drove to Spanish Fork for Jenn’s baby shower. Although I made us quite late by getting lost on the way to Mel’s house, we had fun at the shower, and enjoyed seeing Jenn and Alan’s apartment afterwards too.

Church today was a little hard for me. We are so excited and grateful to be here staying with my grandma, but I have been thinking that I would have to try hard to make friends and not just be ‘that family who’s visiting for a while.’ So, in this ward they have the classes first and sacrament meeting last, and after I dropped Kolby off at his primary class I went into Relief Society. A nice lady who had a three-year-old girl in Eli and Camden’s nursery class had introduced herself to me, and when I walked in I sat near her. Since I came in just after class started because Kolby took a little longer to drop off since he was in a new class, she pointed out that I was new and they asked me to introduce myself. I stood up and said that I was Stephanie Bradshaw and that we had just moved from Milwaukee. And then I was so disappointed when they said, ‘Oh, you’re Faun’s granddaughter, the one with all the little boys, you’re just staying for the summer, right?’ I told them that we were here for a year. And I know that it doesn’t really matter, but I felt pretty bad -- just don’t want to be a temporary visitor that no one will take the time to really get to know because it’s not worth it to invest that much effort in building a friendship with someone who is just going to leave. I felt like there were a few younger women in the ward around my age, but other than the lady I sat next to and Emily (who is Camden and Eli’s nursery teacher, so she wasn’t in the class anyways), no one really talked to me at all except a couple people saying “Hi, we’re glad to have you here,’ as they walked by. And there was a nice lady named Diane who came and talked to Michael and I out in the hallway during sacrament meeting while we each had our kids out there (Who ever came up with the idea to have sacrament meeting last? They must not have had babies or toddlers!) I said a prayer that I would feel comforted, and I did feel better. I guess I’ll just have to really go out of my way to try to make friends. I suppose that friends are so important to me because since we got married we haven’t really lived close to family, especially for the last four years in Milwaukee, so we depended on our friends so much for all the things we would normally have depended on family for, and they really meant a lot to us, so I can’t stand the idea of putting my life on hold for a year until we get into our own place again to make good friends again. I guess I’ll just have to do something about that then, huh?

Hope you’re all doing well. We are really liking it here so far – it’s been great to be with Grandma and see some of Michael’s siblings again. And the rain of last week has let up for some nice, sunny days lately. The boys and I walked over to the school – about 2 houses down the street from us, and they played on the playgrounds and got excited that they would go there for preschool in the fall. This week we are looking forward to a fun trip with Tyce and Faith to Tyce’s grandmother’s cabin at Bear Lake. And Michael will be starting his orientation on the 16th, and that week there will be a few fun activities that our family can go too, so I am looking forward to going there and meeting the other residents and their families too.