10 Years In the Midwest

It is so hard for me to believe that it has been ten years since we loaded up the Budget truck and left the Salt Lake Valley for Chicagoland!
But it has! Ten years this weekend!

Our life looked a bit different ten years ago. Understatement.

We had a two and a half month old baby.
I had just quit my job, and I was still in the adjustment phase of being a new mom, who had just quit working full time.
I remember alternating between feelings of being so completely overwhelmed with my newborn, who was very difficult, and had been kept in the hospital, and feelings of guilt that I was not at work.

I always felt guilty growing up when I was sick and had to miss school. Being home in the middle of the day was so foreign, and that is how I felt after I quit work.

As it turned out Wally had a few good reasons to cry. We would learn all of that on our journey in the Midwest!

Del had just graduated from Weber State, and had been on a post degree job hunt while he finished up the last few weeks of school. The economy was tough back in 2003. Although, nothing like it is now. Who knew it could get worse than what we were told, was the worst graduate hiring outlook in decades!?

Del was working for a water softener company doing free trial sign ups in new neighborhoods while he took full course loads non stop to graduate in eight semesters. Not glamorous work by any stretch of the imagination. He knocked on a door one evening that led to the job that would bring us to the Midwest!

I remember we left Wally with my mom one evening, and I went up to Weber with Del to attend a recruiting presentation put on by SAIA, a trucking company. It was pretty much a situation where Del could have had the job if he wanted it. We would have moved to the Northwest, and he would have been on salary and done of lot of logistical work for them.

Del was not excited about it. We were also so frustrated by the really stupid questions being asked by the other potential employees in the room.
Del and I had a bit of a giggle fit in the back of the room as we dared each other to ask dumb questions on par with the ones already thrown out.
"So, what are the names of all your truckers? A to Z?"

We left knowing we would not be moving to the Northwest.  Much to the dismay of the lady who  co-orindates jobs for graduates of the collage. I remember that night she told us not to go down the path we eventually took.
We were used to that because getting married at ages 19 and 21 a few years before that taught us that there are plenty of critics out there.

Del took a job with a medical supplies company. They had one guy in the Chicago area at the time. He was a local, and from what I remember, his forte was more repairs. Not sales.
Del would open the area.
We would be on a salary so small it would barley cover our rent, groceries and maybe a bill or two. I was terrified. So, so terrified. But, even through all that fear, we felt at peace with this mostly commission based pay job.

Before the move to the Midwest, we lived in this little white house.
We rented it from some friends of the family.  We found it when we moved from St. George to Salt Lake for Del to start at Weber.
When we first went to look at it, you could not see the outside of it because it was so covered in junk trees. It was being used as a storage unit. It had no A.C.  It had radiator heating, no door on the second bedroom, floors so slanted you couldn't drop anything without it rolling to a corner. It had been moved to the location it was back in I believe the 30's or 40's, and who knows when it was built before that.
I left knowing we could make it into something!

Our families, most especially, my Dad, helped us get it whipped into shape. We repainted it, inside and out, replaced windows, framed out the lean to laundry room, replaced the doors, switched out light fixtures, cleaned the appliances, several times, cut down the trees, and planted flowers.  We loved the independence of not living in an apartment complex with people surrounding us.
The best photo I have of the little house is pretty blurry. I think we took it right after I spent the day planting flowers.

Del did grounds maintenance at the Salt Lake Community Collage back then. One day he was told to dig up a bunch of dead grass and replace it with new sod.

We had a stretch of weeds and rocks on the side of our little house. So Del asked if he could have the dead grass. He loaded it up, brought it home, and we pieced it together, one dead hunk at a time (it was not even in strips or large pieces of any kind) on the side of our house. We watered it religiously, and it grew. Green and soft.

We found a free scrap of new carpet, ripped out the old carpet in the only room that had it in the house, and paid a guy in our ward to help us lay the new remnant. We made it fresh, clean and cute for our new baby girl, who it tuns out was really a boy!

In my opinion, we turned that little white house into the most precious thing! I painted the front door  red, and the tulips I planted still bloom in front of it every year to this day.

I talked my good friend Amanda, and her husband Matt into moving into another little white house, that happened to be for rent across the street, and it was so fun to have them there while we all ran around like crazy to do the work to put together a future for our families. Such good memories. I remember Amanda helped me pack up my closet when we moved. I took having her across the street for granted. I loved it!

The best part about this little shack? We paid $350 a month in rent! Del  mowed our tiny lawn, and the adjoining yard of our landlord each week. I am very sentimental about that little house. It hold good memories of making things work.

Sorry, this post is turning into quit the walk down memory lane! Hopefully this ten year history won't take that many years to read!

As you can imagine, we would be moving into something more than triple what our rent had been in Utah!
We flew out to Chicago with our crying baby, and went on an apartment hunt. One of the reasons Del was selected to open this area was that he had served his mission for our church here. He was sure he would know his way around in those days before GPS in every car.

Nope.

We drove around lost for two days straight. Our maps were marginally helpful. I think it is probably a miracle we found our apartment. We saw many scary ones, and talked to many scary landlords, and I went to bed the first night we spent in the Chicago area, feeling pretty low.

We ended up finding a newly updated second floor apartment in Palatine, Il. We quickly signed the lease and felt grateful to have found it! The apartment was a great blessing to us, because it would be where another young couple from our ward at church would end up moving with their new baby too. A girl named Tanja asked me at church one day where I lived, they were in temporary cooperate housing. I told her there was an apartment across the walkway for rent, and she should live there!

I had to go down to our old neighborhood a few weeks ago, and I drove by and took this picture of our old place. That is our old front door and balcony, but not our wreath! Ha!

We stayed with my parents the night before our move, and early the next morning, we buckled Wally's car seat in between us on the bench seat of the moving truck, with our car on a trailer behind it, and with heavy hearts and a promise of only five years, at most, in Chicago, we drove off. Just about two weeks after Del walked in graduation.

Once we were settled, my good friend, Tanja and I spent hours walking with our babes around the lake while our husbands tried to make a mark in their new careers.  We all moved out of the apartments, and into homes at the same time, and we were in the same ward again, although a forty minute drive from each other! I still get to work with Tanja at church, and see her every week!

Tanja was pregnant with her twins while we lived here, and I had my first miscarriage. It was home while I made countless trips to doctors and hospitals to address all of the health needs I didn't know my baby had, until I moved to the Chicago area. How I found all those different doctors without GPS is still a mystery to me!
I remember my grandma died while we lived here. I still wish I had gone home for her funeral. I had just returned from a trip to Utah the week before. I listened to a recording of her funeral service my Dad sent me in our bedroom, in this apartment.

It turned out Del was really good at his job! Certainly good enough that we knew we weren't going anywhere for a while. He went straight commission for the higher pay scale.
We built a new home about forty minutes from our apartment, and moved in in July of 2004. We were nervous about it to say the least. Building a home in a place so far from home, after only a few months of living here! We were scared, but we felt good about it for some reason.
The only picture I could find handy was this one that I must have taken in the middle of the day. Some pretty heavy shadows going on.

The home was the sight of many new people and ideas!
Will came home to this house.
Georgia came home to this house.
Del's company was organized in this house.
Walker came home to this house.
We had faith testing, and building experiences in this house.
We had marriage building experiences in this house.
We had family members pass away, and survive disease while we lived in this house.
New friends became old, good, forever friends at dinners and parties in this house.
We set and achieved goals in this house.

We lived here for eight years. It was the fastest eight years of my life so far! I documented more than five years of it here on this blog! The company grew, and gained footing, and our family certainly grew. We started to feel a little pinched in the living space with our four kids.

I have told the story before here, here, and here, about how we wound up moving into the home we live in now.
We have schemed and dreamed over these past ten years about moving back to Utah to be near our families. We have come to the realization, and come to peace with the realization, that in some instances, we can't push things. The blessings that have come into our lives over the past ten years have been so many, and so abundant, that I know we have to be willing to go, and be, where we are needed.

I do hope that one day, we will be able to build a home in Utah somewhere. But I have found peace where I am now. We do better when we let things work with the timing the Lord has for our lives. We just have to do the hard work, and be ready to act.
I have learned a lot living here, and I only have more to learn. I am also so grateful for the footing we have been able to establish for our future from our time spent in Illinois. We have made a home for our family here.

I know that we will be lead to the places we are supposed to be. I have a lot of love/hate going on with the weather here in Illinois. But I absolutely love the people and experiences I have in my life because of the decade I have put up with that weather! It makes my head spin to think back to the way things were ten years ago. It feels so far away. We never guessed we would have lived here this long as we drove that moving truck with every Earthly thing we owned in it, across the country.  I can only guess what ten more years will bring!

If you are wondering if I ever have less sentimental feelings, just ask me how I feel about living here on a black, snowy day in March! He, he!