On Our Way

After five months of sorting, discarding, and finding places to store 41 years of "treasures," we packed our car with what we thought we needed for the next 18 months and bid good-bye to our home in East Millcreek, Utah.

Notice the carrier on top of the car and the full back end. In addition, we mailed 5 boxes.

Getting our house ready for our youngest daughter and her family to move in was a challenging and labor intensive task.  We needed to consolidate whatever we were keeping to fit into the attic, part of a storage room and the garage.  Our oldest daughter offered a room in her basement to store some of the big pieces of furniture which saved us the necessity of renting a storage unit.  I always knew children would come in handy one day!

Lessons learned:  You can't organize clutter.  Excessive amounts of even good things is still clutter.  Some choices are between good, better and best.  In the end, we realized we had accumulated far more than we truly needed.  We now had the opportunity of blessing others by sharing our surplus.  In exchange, we experienced the joy of a simpler, more focused life.

Following our second week at the MTC, we headed across country to our mission assignment at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.  Along the way we were able to visit with our son, Mike, and his family in Fort Collins, Colorado and with my sister, Joyce, and family friend, Charlotte, in Kansas City.

Breakfast with Charlotte and Joyce at Village Inn

We even managed to have lunch with my niece, Sharon, and her husband, Denny, as we passed through Columbia, Missouri.  From Kansas on we seemed to be following a storm front across the country, driving in rain most of our trip.  There was a break as we drove through the Great Smokey Mountains and we were able to see some of the beautiful fall colors.