Michael is finally back to contribute to our blog

So Steph had me look back on the blog to see how long it had been since my last post – March 1, 2009. Who ever knew time could fly by so fast. Steph has been doing so good at keeping the blog up to date, and then we were busy with Courtland in the hospital, flying to Rochester to find a house, and getting everything ready for our move to New York, that I just figured there was no reason for me to write. Well, I guess that excuse is no more, so now you get to hear from me.

There are so many thoughts and feelings flying through my mind these days. Things are hectic and crazy to say the least at the Bradshaw home lately. I am busy on my last rotation of my intern year doing general surgery, which means I average about 70-80 hours per week at the hospital, having to stay overnight on a 30-hour shift about every 4th night. That means that Steph has had to do the majority of the work when it comes to packing and preparing for our move, on top of her normal busy schedule with 5 little boys. She is amazing!!

Steph and Courtland were in a car accident a few weeks ago. They are both doing fine, but the airbags on the van deployed and so the insurance decided to total it. So we have been frantically looking for a replacement van. It never ceases to amaze me how Heavenly Father is always watching out for us and has made the process of finding a van almost miraculous. We were able to find one that is the same year, make and model of our last one, which we loved, just white instead of gold. And the price on it makes it so we won’t have to pay extra for the new van, which would have been very hard to do right now as we get ready to pay closing costs and to pay for a move cross country. God is so good to us.

We are also getting closer to closing on our house. It is set for July 2nd, about a week after we get out to Rochester. We will be renting from the sellers for that first week so we can at least start to unpack and move in. Along with getting things ready for closing, we have found homeowners insurance, a new temporary bank (since Wells Fargo is not in Rochester), and preparing the utilities. My last day in Utah is Tuesday June 23, and we have to be out to Rochester by the afternoon of that Friday, June 26, in order to meet up with the moving truck. We are using ABF. They are dropping off the truck this Tuesday and we will have 3 days to pack it. Then they pick it up, drive it cross-country, and drop it off at our new house, where we will unload it. That way we will have both of us in the van to help with the 5 young kids as we drive across the US in tight quarters.

I think we are doing really well with packing. We’ve been using the garage as the place to put all the furniture and boxes, in order to help us see what we have left to pack. And it is nice that a good portion of our stuff is already in Rochester to be unpacked when we get there.
Last Sunday night we had Joe and Heidi (my cousins) and their kids come over for a bbq. They have 3 little kids and our boys had so much fun with them. Joe is about 3 months older than me and just finished law school. They also just bought a house. It is fun to see us at a similar stage in life and to compare stories. We will definitely miss being able to hang out at family events after we move out to Rochester.

Monday night was a bbq at the park with all the interns from my program. It was raining pretty heavily for most of the day and so we thought it was going to be a quick eat your food, say hello, and then leave before getting soaked, but it cleared up and was a wonderful night. About half of us showed up and had a great time together.

Steph was able to go to Relief Society Enrichment and then visiting teaching Tuesday night as I played babysitter. I don’t know how she is able to do it with all 5 kids all the time. They are so much fun, but man they wear me out. I was exhausted by the end of the night.
Thursday night Jared and Jill Owens invited us over for dinner and games. They made homemade pizza with wheat dough for the crust that was so good. We are glad we were able to make time for them. They have been such good friends to us and we are so happy to know them. We are not looking forward to moving away, but at least we will be able to stay in touch and have the memories.

It was the stake fathers and sons campout Friday night, but I was on call at the hospital, so we didn’t make it this year. This might be the first year since we had Kolby that I’ve missed. That’s so sad. Since I was overnight at the hospital and Jared was at the campout with his sons, Steph and Jill got together Friday night to make a blog for their family. Now we will have an easy way to stay in contact.

Last night we were invited to dinner with Lamar and Emily. Emily was one of Steph’s bridesmaids in our wedding. They live out in Tooele and so according to google maps it should have been about a 45 minute drive to their house. I guess that would have been the case if there hadn’t been a huge accident on I-80 earlier in the day around 11am. A fed-ex semi that was carrying 3 trailers crossed traffic and hit head-on with an SUV. The fed-ex truck was carrying some ammunition in one of its trailers, and some of that discharged, causing traffic to be stopped in both directions for some time. We were on I-80 around 5:30pm, but traffic was still backed up a lot. Long story short, it took us just over 3 hours to make the 45 minute drive out to their house. Ughhh!! But it was so much fun to see them and spend the night talking and catching up on each others’ lives.

I had the day off today so I got to go to church with the family again. That first hour is just so hard for the little ones to stay quiet and/or sit still, but they did quite well during the sacrament meeting. And then they get to go off to primary or nursery classes, which they love. Next Sunday is our stake conference, so they had the primary children get up today and sing several songs to the dads for fathers day – so cute. In Sunday school we had an awesome lesson about the Word of Wisdom, a principle with a promise. And then in priesthood we were taught about the principle of forgiveness of others and our self. This evening we have been invited to a dinner with the Mills, Eccles, Barkers, and Harkers, some more wonderful families in the ward that we will miss after moving. They have all been such good friends to us.