What I've been doing instead of blogging

Mike and I went to Utah for MIL Sue's 80th birthday party. Got to meet Sue's sister & brother, longtime family friends and a couple of her grandkids/great grandkids we hadn't met before.

Mike got a job offer from Weber State University which he accepted. Hence, we are moving to Ogden, Utah this summer. Only took 2 years in South Texas to make a Utah move appealing.

After Sue's party Mike and I did a house shopping marathon over 3.5 days. Made an offer on a house we saw on day 3 and had the offer accepted by the time we arrived at the airport to go home.

That was Tuesday, the first day of major flight cancellations by American Airlines. We didn't know ours was cancelled, so we sat at the gate, bewildered by the lack of passengers for a flight that was supposed to be boarding.

We ended up staying in SLC overnight and put up at a hotel on American's dime, plus a $20 meal voucher.

A shuttle trip that should have taken 10 minutes from airport to hotel took over an hour and included 4 detours to pick up truckers in west SLC and people at the VA hospital by the U of U (but by then there were not enough seats for them).

Called friend Mel and she picked us up for dinner: Thai Vietnamese at Cafe Trang--yum!

After dinner, we checked online and found our rebooked American flights for Wednesday morning were cancelled, too.

Thanks to Mike's Gold frequent flyer VIP demi-god status, we were rebooked on Continental to fly out Wednesday morning at 5:30 am. Spent our $20 meal voucher at Starbuck's for breakfast.

I told my supervisor about our plans to move and she was GREAT about it. Loved my suggestion that the admin assistant move into my job; now trying to figure out how have us overlap.

Our cat sitter saw the For Sale sign on the lawn and we're starting to tell people about our impending departure (likely during the last week of May/first week in June).

I know I've bitched a lot about South Texas, but I find part of me is sad about going. It's grown on me and the people here are hospitable and good-hearted most of the time. I never got fluent in Spanish, but I did get radicalized on immigration and opposing the border wall after seeing the beautiful, wild country the wall would decimate and experiencing life on the border.

I'll miss teaching gospel doctrine, but I'm also kinda looking forward to being anonymous in a Utah-sized ward and not having 3 callings simultaneously. We'll also miss the lovely people we met at the local Community of Christ congregation.

Mike's going to miss his orange trees and fresh squeezed juice and sunny 70 degree winter days. Moving to Ice Scraperville puts us much closer to family, friends and has professional opportunities for us both, so we're willing to deal with some snow and ice. Who knows, we might become Winter Texans someday.

We'll look forward to having folks visit us in our new locale. Cross your fingers and say prayers that our house in McAllen sells quickly!