Grandma Bev

Also on our move, after stopping in Nauvoo we drove down to Kansas City, Missouri to visit my Grandma Bev. It was good to see her again, and to talk about genealogy together. We had a lot of fun, and the boys especially enjoyed hearing her stories that she used to tell us about “Freckles” the squirrel. Thanks, Grandma!

Nauvoo

On our move from Milwaukee to Salt Lake we stopped in Nauvoo, Illinois, a little town that is important to the history of our church. It is a fun place where they have many old homes and buildings set up like they would have been originally and they give tours and teach about how life was back then. There is also the beautiful Nauvoo temple. And we got to stop and see my friend who I grew up with, Andrea Cartwright, who is serving her mission in Nauvoo right now. After catching up she gave us a tour of the Wilford Woodruff home. It was really nice to see her. We had a fun day in Nauvoo, I’m glad we were able to go again before heading back out west.

We are moving!!

This has been a week of packing and moving. Monday, Memorial Day, was a day filled with packing. Luckily we were invited to a BBQ that night at Ken and Monica Theriot’s, so we had something to look forward to. The weather was perfect and the Theriots have a very nice fenced-in backyard that was perfect for kids to play in.

I was getting so tired of packing as the time got closer to move – it is what we were doing from the time we got up in the morning until the evening. This move was more difficult than previous ones because we had to split everything into two groups, one for Utah and the other for New York. Our goal was to get all of it to fit into 2 pods. That is why we have been selling most of our bigger furniture. We finally got the last sofa sold on Monday, and the guy came to pick it up Thursday morning. We made about $800 selling the furniture, which we can put into savings for furniture in Rochester, and we figure that we will be saving about $1000 by not storing that furniture for one year, so we have been pretty blessed in trying to make things work.

Packing continued all day Tuesday. Thanks to Amanda Hansen and Jill Hunter for watching the kids for a few hours so we could get more packing accomplished. The pods arrived Tuesday morning. They were not very big – only 6 x 7 x 8 feet, and we had to get everything to fit into just 2 of them. I was a little worried. We had some people come from church to help us pack the pods Tuesday night, and as boxes were placed out on the lawn, I started to panic, thinking that we were not going to make it fit, and we would have to use the 3^rd pod. But miraculously, at least in my mind, we were able to make it all fit how we had planned. That felt so good. We were both exhausted after that long day.

Originally we had planned to leave Milwaukee Friday around noon, after the pods were picked up. When the pods were dropped off on Tuesday, we learned that we didn’t have to be there for them to pick up the pods. And after getting so much done by Tuesday, we decided that maybe we could try leaving late Thursday afternoon. Wednesday ended up being a little more of a lazy day as far as packing. We took our time getting up and ready for the day and then had several errands to run with all the kids. We dropped off a van load of things at the salvation army. Then we sold my old nintendos and games and were able to get enough money for 2 new games for our Nintendo Wii – Super Mario Galaxy and Zelda: Twilight Princess.

We met up with Jason and Amy Hymas and Jason and Marcela Maas at Hoyt park that night in order for the kids to play together and say goodbyes. It is still so weird to me that we may not see some of our friends from Milwaukee again after this week. I’m just glad that there are blogs for us to continue to stay in contact with our friends. After the park we took the kids to Peter and Cynthia Hedgecocks to play with Jordan and Carter again before leaving. We are really going to miss our family from Milwaukee. Please stay in touch and let us know if you will be near Salt Lake City over the next year.

Thursday we were able to finish getting everything packed and into the pods. Amy Hymas, Jill Hunter, and Amanda Hansen all volunteered to help Steph with cleaning the apartment, so I took all the kids (7 total) to the park to play on the playground and in the sand while the moms cleaned – thanks to all of you for your help. We were so blessed to be friends with all of you.

Then we got back, finished packing up the car, and left. We decided at the last minute to get a power inverter for my laptop so we could plug it into the cigarette lighter in the car and not run down the laptops battery. We also got a tape to hook into the car’s stereo system so the kids could listen to the movies. Then we got Mulan and Milo and Otis, since all of our other movies were already packed before we came up with this idea. We finally got out of Milwaukee around 8:30 and drove for a few hours. We had decided to try and sleep in the car to save money by not paying for a hotel, so we found a side street and set up camp for the night. The kids actually did really well and the weather was really warm for us. I probably had the hardest time just because I didn’t fit well into one seat to sleep. But at least I tried. :)

We got up Friday morning and finished driving to Nauvoo, Illinois. Our plan was to stay for 2 days and then head to grandma Bev’s Saturday night. We ended up doing just one day in Nauvoo. We took the kids to see the brass band; on a carriage ride with horses around north Nauvoo; to Wilford Woodruf’s house where we got to say hi to Sister Andrea Cartwright, one of Steph’s friends from high school who is serving a mission in Nauvoo; and to the family living center and outdoor pioneer games center. The kids really liked the outdoor play area. But they just had very short attention spans in the places where we would sit and listen to someone talk, and those were the things we had left to do. So we decided to leave after dinner and start on our journey to Grandma Bev’s house.

This time we were able to stay at a hotel where we were able to shower and bathe the kids, which was wonderful. Yesterday we drove the rest of the way to Grandma Bev’s and got here in the late afternoon. She had dinner ready for us, and then she took us to Culver’s, where Aunt Amanda works, and the kids were able to say hi. We also stopped at the store to pick up some Benadryl for me. I am already taking Zertec for my allergies, but Grandma Bev has a cat, and my allergies have been so bad since we got here. I took the Benadryl and after a while it put me to sleep on the couch until we went to bed. Steph was able to video tape a genealogy interview with her grandma, and then she found some old German documents that her grandma had misplaced, which she is going over today to hopefully find out more information about her ancestors.

This morning my allergies were really acting up. I didn’t want to take any Benadryl because I didn’t want to fall asleep at church, but I finally took some, which helped so much. I was tired at church but didn’t fall asleep. In the Sunday school class we talked about Alma’s discussion of things that we should do to become members of Christ’s church, focusing on being a witness of Christ at all times and in all places, and what that means, and how we can try to be better at being a witness for Him. We are having fun being here with grandma Bev. Our plan is to leave sometime after lunch tomorrow and take 2 days to drive the rest of the way to Utah. Our pod is supposed to arrive on Tuesday and then I start my internship 2 weeks from tomorrow.

We have been so blessed as we have been able to reflect on all the people that have touched our lives over the past 4 years in Milwaukee. Thanks to everyone who has been our family away from family, and we hope to continue to stay in contact. Here is our new address and contact information (I am changing my email address so take note):

Michael and Stephanie Bradshaw

4027 Market Street

West Valley, UT 84119

(801) 967-9974

michaelbbradshaw@gmail.com

stephanielbradshaw@gmail.com

Getting Ready to Move

This week has been a whirlwind of packing and getting last-minute things done before our move, with some fun thrown in here and there. On Sunday afternoon Michael’s parents and my parents each left, and on Monday Grandma Faun left too. We were so glad that they could all come for Michael’s graduation!

On Monday Michael got his graduation gift from me (and we used the graduation money from Grandma Faun and the money Michael had earned by helping give a test to the 2nd-years a couple weeks ago, and it was still a pretty big splurge – but Michael really, really wanted it and has worked so hard through school these last few years that I figure he deserves to spend some time just relaxing and having fun). So, I got him a Wii. I was always one of those people who swore our children would never play video games (although I do have a secret love of Tetris). But I do like that the Wii has fun sports games that get you up and moving, and that since it is wireless the kids can play too without accidentally stepping on the chords and turning everything off – Kolby is an expert at bowling already! So we have the sports games and Mario Kart, which is a fun racing game – as long as we steer clear of the killing games, I don’t think it’s bad to sit down as a family or with friends and play some games. Plus, Michael was excited to find out that he could play the games online through our wireless connection with his family and friends who don’t live nearby – he has already played the racing game with his dad in Boise, and with the Hymases. So, needless to say, Michael was pretty excited about that gift.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to the family history center and had the sisters there help me translate some of the German records that my parents brought back from their trip to the Czech Republic. I am so excited to sit down and figure out how all these ancestors connect, and my mom said she might even be able to come up to Utah once my brothers’ school gets out, and we can both spend some time at the family history center working on it together – it’s so fun that my parents are both getting interested in family history too now.

I have been quite busy this week also selling lots of our furniture and some other smaller things. This week we sold the entertainment center, the kitchen table, another table that we had in the basement, an end table, the breadmaker, and the car. Now we just need to sell the couch, and we will be set as far as the big things go. We’ve also been doing all the last minute things that come with moving – canceling our YMCA membership, getting transfer papers for WIC, getting the tow hitch installed on the van so we could tow the car on our move, making last-minute doctor’s appointments before we move and have to switch doctors, making big batches of soup to try to use up the meat in our freezer before we move, getting oil changes and check-ups on the cars before moving, finding out that the car had some major problems that we didn’t know about that made it un-drivable and would cost more than the cost of the car to fix, posting the car on sale for craigslist for $350 (hoping that we could get more than just $100 for it), having 30 or 40 people e-mail us about the car the night we posted it online, taking one last trip to the Chicago temple before we move, canceling our reservation to get the tow dolly from U-haul to tow our car to Utah, and having someone come to our house as soon as we returned from our temple trip and offer us $500 for the car and then paying us and taking it off our hands right away. Although we were not planning on having to get another car for Michael once we move to Utah, I guess if you look at the bright side of things, we will no longer have to tow the car on our drive to Utah, so that will not only save us a little gas money, but we will also not be limited to the 6 days that we would have had to get to Utah to drop off the U-haul tow dolly, so now we can choose to stay an extra afternoon or an extra day in Nauvoo or at Grandma Bev’s house on our drive out if we feel like it. Also, it was a little annoying that we had just paid to install the tow hitch on the van and we won’t be using it now, but I guess we will tow whatever car we get on our move to Rochester in a year, so the hitch won’t go totally unused.

We have also had some fun this week. Tyce came over and played a bit on Monday night after we put the kids to bed, and the Hedgecocks came over on Tuesday night after Kolby called and asked if Jordan could come play (Kolby and Eli get really excited lately when we let them call their friends on the phone). On Wednesday we got to go to a playgroup at Enderis Park, where we saw Marcela Maas and some other friends. Michael also took the three older boys swimming on Wednesday night while I repaired furniture to get it in good enough shape to sell it. At the playgroup that morning Marcela decided to organize a BBQ for the next night as a little going away party with some friends. She called everyone and got it all organized, and we were surprised at how many showed up since it was planned at the last minute. It was nice to be able to see lots of our friends and enjoy some time together, although people didn’t linger for long after dinner since it turned out to be a very cold evening. After the BBQ, the Hedgecocks stayed to play and Jana and Marie Wells came back over after dropping Keith off at the school to study. Michael figured out how to play the Wii with the Hymases on the internet too that night, so that was fun also.

And today will be our last day at church in this ward. I’m sad to be going, although I’ve kind of been getting used to the idea since Michael matched, so I’ve not been feeling quite as sad lately as I was at first. And this week will continue to be busy too. The pods arrive on Tuesday and we will have Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to pack everything and clean the apartment. The pods will be picked up on Friday before noon, and we will head out then. We are planning on stopping in Nauvoo, Illinois for a day and then stopping and visiting with my Grandma Bev in Missouri before driving the rest of the way to Salt Lake.

Oh, speaking of Salt Lake, I sat Kolby and Eli down the other day and explained all of our moving plans and answered their questions, and they seemed to understand and accept everything, except there was some confusion about moving to Salt Lake. Apparently Kolby thought we were moving to a place with water, since it is called ‘Salt Lake.’ I explained to him that there is a lake, but that it’s not right next to Grandma’s house, and the rest of the conversation seemed to go pretty smoothly. I think that the boys are starting to understand the idea of moving, although they keep asking me every once in a while if we are moving back home after we live at Grandma Faun’s house – I think Kolby thought we were going on another extended vacation until I recently told him we would have a new house in New York after we live in Utah. I haven’t mentioned to them that they won’t be seeing their friends again, though. I don’t know if I should say anything about that before we go or not – I’ll probably just tell them today that they need to say goodbye to their friends before we move. Hopefully that goes pretty smoothly too.

Thoughts on September Eleventh

So far, I haven’t gotten this personal with the things that I have posted on our blog – usually it is just news and cute stories about the kids or our weekly post keeping everyone up to date with the goings-on of our family. But I figured that since we print out and save the posts from this site as our family journal, I should write down the feelings I have been having about this day.

It has been six years to the day since September 11, 2001. I remember that day – I was doing my semester in Nauvoo, Illinois. That morning I briefly checked my e-mail before going to class, and I remember glancing at a picture on the internet page before my e-mail inbox opened that showed an explosion, and assuming that it was an ad for a movie or something. Then, when we went to class, they announced what had happened with the planes being hijacked and crashing into the Twin Towers in New York and other places. I spent days in the student lobby watching news reports on the television. I remember crying for those people, and especially when they showed video of people jumping from the towers – thinking how terrible that was for those people, but especially for their families to see that too. I remember after several days when there was no longer a large group of students watching the news reports every day, and thinking that I should stop spending all my time watching the reports, but at the same time feeling guilty – like getting back to my own life was somehow making the lost lives of all those people less important.

And now it has already been six years since then. On the Oprah show this afternoon there was a story about September 11th, which focused on the children of those who died that day. It had several teenagers on the show who were children when their father or mother died six years ago. The part that got to me the most was when they showed an interview from 2001 of a father who had lost his wife, and he was describing how he had to explain to his 3 year old son that his mother was dead and wasn’t going to come home. And I thought of Kolby, who is also 3 years old, and how that would be to have to explain such a thing to him. I usually don’t get emotional while watching tv shows or movies, but I cried a lot while I watched that today, thinking of all those children. It said that over 3,000 children were left without a parent after September 11th. Wow.

Seeing something like that sure makes you grateful for all the good things in your life. I find myself thinking that life is hard with Michael gone on overnight call every few days and watching the kids by myself. Or sometimes I wish that we could just not worry about money and go out and get something really nice – even though I don’t usually complain about not having much, I think about how nice it will be someday when we have a real job to have enough money to save up. Or I think that I have it hard because I have so many young kids – even though I know we chose to have them all so close together – but still I feel some self-pity sometimes when I am having a hard day with the boys and thinking that other people don’t really understand because they’re not in the same situation as I am.

But this afternoon I was remembering about a local news story a few months ago about a medical team that was carrying a transplant organ over Lake Michigan when their plane went down in the lake and all of the people on the plane died. Several days after the plane crash, I saw a news story with an interview of the wife of one of the men who had died in that plane crash, and what she said really struck me. She had three young children and her husband was in the medical field, so her situation felt familiar to mine. And she was crying as she said that there was still a pile of dirty laundry in their bedroom. She said that she used to get so mad when her husband just left the laundry out and never put it in the hamper. And then she said that if her husband would just come back, she’d pick up every piece of dirty laundry and never say a word about it. I listened to that and cried that day too.

I think that one positive thing I can get from these stories of families that will never be together again in this life, is that we need to be thankful for what we have while we have it.

Even if Michael is on call overnight at the hospital every few days, he will have a lighter schedule with his next rotation next month, and he will hopefully have a nice family-friendly schedule when he finished his residency in several years, and even if his schedule is awful, I still have a husband who I know would rather be home with me and the boys more than anyplace else, ever. I know some people who seem like they would rather be at school studying to make a better score on the next test, or at the hospital impressing their attending so they will have a better grade, or at work so they can make more money, and I am blessed to have a husband who enjoys learning and working hard, but would rather be with us anytime.

And we may not have much money, but we really are blessed in our financial situation. If it weren’t for the student loans and government aid that we live off of, we would be in a lot of trouble financially. I hear stories of how “poor students” lived in my parents’ generation, and we are pretty well off compared to them. Even though we are considered to be below “poverty level” now as we try to get through school, we have an apartment that is a little crowded as our family continues to grow, but it is comfortable, clean, in a safe neighborhood, and we have good neighbors. With our fourth child on the way, it is not always easy to “live within our means,” but if we are willing to try hard to give up lots of little things that some people might consider necessities, we can make it work. We have been blessed that we have been able to get by without ever having to reconsider our original priority that we made for me to be home with the kids instead of out working and having them be raised by daycare providers.

And on those all-to-frequent days when I get frustrated with the boys and loose my patience and yell at them, I just need to take a minute and think of how lucky I am to have them. So many people have trouble getting pregnant, and we have been so blessed to have children when we decide to. I think of families with children who have mental disabilities, and I wonder how I would be able to handle that – we have been so blessed to have healthy, active children. Our kids eat like crazy, often consuming as much or more at meal time as my husband and I do, and then crying for more food when the meal is over – but we have never had any problems with children who are unhealthily underweight or have food allergies. And our boys are very active, they have creative imaginations, they can be mischievous, and are sometimes destructive, but they are generally good kids – they often play well together, they sleep well, they love learning and doing family activities, and they love each other and Michael and I. So I think that maybe next time Eli rips up one of his storybooks, or the next time Camden spits up all over my dress, or the next time Kolby waits until I have packed all the kids and diaper bags and strollers into the car and am driving away before he lets me know that he needs to go potty, maybe the next time I will try to remember to be thankful for my kids rather than frustrated with them. I am pretty lucky for all the good things I have.