The Move

Life has been so crazy with yet another cross-country move! I'm starting to realize that life is just always crazy for us. Always.  When we got to Rochester in 2012 we were a family of 2.5 and life was crazy then because Kaden was born 2 weeks after we arrived! Curtis had already started school, it was a crazy transition time for us being in a new place, trying to figure out what we were doing with a baby, and having no one around that we knew.  It was a big adjustment.

Over our time in Rochester, our friends became like our family since we were all in Rochester in the same boat.  We did birthdays, Thanksgiving, holidays, babysitting swaps, you name it, we did it with our friends.  It's also crazy to think how quickly the time has gone and how fast Kaden seems to be growing up!   A little walk down memory lane with how fast this time has gone:

We moved out of Rochester on June 11th. It was a bitter-sweet move for our family. We have made so many great friends and memories while we were in NY.  It's crazy to think how fast the time has gone! We are leaving with an almost- two year old and a group of friends that have become like family.  We have grown a lot in our time here in Rochester.  There's been a lot of personal ups and downs, but mostly it's been a very good experience for our family to learn and grow, one that I will always cherish. 

The actual moving day was really, really stressful! We didn't think it would be since the movers were doing all the work, but moves are always stressful, no matter what. We had talked to the moving coordinator and she reassured us that it would be totally fine to book ourselves on a flight out of Rochester at 5:45 pm that day.  The movers were supposed to be done loading the truck between 2-3 and they were still loading it at 4 pm.  We weren't allowed to leave until all of our belongings were safely in the truck.

The guy that was picking up our car to ship it was supposed to come between 2 and 4.  When it was getting close to 4 and he still hadn't shown up, we were panicking, since we were supposed to leave at 4 to go to the airport.  We called him and he thought he was supposed to come at 4:30.  What? What he failed to realize was that he was an hour away. By the time he showed up, it was 4:45.  We were super stressed and positive we were going to miss our flight.  Rochester's airport is small, but not THAT small. Kristi Hart drove us to the airport at 5 pm.  We got there at 5:15 and our flight was scheduled to leave at 5:45.  Not happening, right?   We were also on Southwest, which means you have to physically stand in line to get a boarding pass, even though we'd already "checked in."  The line was huge. We stood in line until 5:40 pm, at which point we figured the flight was a lost cause, but we decided to check on the status, just in case. As luck would have it, the flight was delayed until 6:15, then it got delayed again until 6:45!  We went through security as fast as we could, ran to our gate and made it on the plane. Hallelujah!

We had a layover in Chicago, and at this point we were realizing that we'd probably miss our connection and get stuck there overnight.  Well, as luck would have it again, there was yet another delay in Chicago by 30 minutes so we were able to board just in time.  (Thank you Midwest storms!)  We ended up sitting on the tarmac in the airplane for almost an hour once we'd boarded and left the gate.  We were originally scheduled to be in Salt Lake around 10 pm.  I think we actually got in closer to 12:30 after all the delays (which to our bodies on East Coast time it was 2:30 am) but we didn't care. Never in my life have I been so grateful to hear that both of our flights were delayed! It was honestly a series of miracles that we even made it.  Whew!!!

We went the next day to look at the condo we were supposed to be renting and pick up the key.  It was awful! It was supposed to be all updated and what not, and it was just yucky.  Nothing but the carpet had been updated. It was super ghetto/80's looking and worse yet, there were no other families or kids in the complex.  Just old people, and I'm talking like 70-80 years old.   The lady had totally misrepresented it in the pictures and descriptions of it.  We were so disappointed, but decided that maybe it was for the best. We set about on a search for housing (again.)  I'll admit, it was nice to go to places in person and see the area, as well as the actual place. We were supposed to be at my parent's house for a week until our stuff arrived from NY, but ended up being there for a month because the new place we found wasn't available until then. Ha ha. Luckily, we were so grateful for my parent's kindness and willingness to let us stay so much longer than intended.

Feed the Birds. Tuppens a Bag...

Since part of Curtis' job offer included a full-service move from Zions Bancorporation, Marv and Dana came out for graduation and were originally going to help us pack/move, but since we didn't need their help with that, we got to go do some fun stuff together instead.   One of our favorite places in Rochester is Mendon Pond's Park.  You can put birdseed in your hand and the birds will come and land right on your hands and eat out of your hands. It's so beautiful and we wanted to go there one more time before we moved, so we took Marv and Dana with us to visit.

I love Mendon Pond's Park! I will really miss it when we leave. I love the green, the trees and everything about it. 

Curtis' MBA Graduation!!! Woot woot!!!

We've been looking forward to Curtis' graduation for a long time now.  It was held on Sunday June 8, 2014 at Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theatre. It was a really stunning and beautiful building where they hold all of the prestigious music concerts in Rochester. Curtis' parents were able to come out and Heather Howell (a very sweet lady in our ward), offered to watch Kaden all morning so we could attend without him distracting us, and actually enjoy it.

 Curtis walking to get his diploma

 Curtis is getting his master's hood on the right

 This was such a tender moment between Curtis and his mom. She was just so overwhelmingly proud of him.

It was so fun to have Marv and Dana join us for Curtis' graduation to celebrate together

 Shubham Sharma was one of our dear friends here in Rochester. We cherished the times he came to dinner at our house, taught us how to cook really good Indian food, hung out with us and played with Kaden. We were invited to his wedding in May in India and were so sad we couldn't afford to go.  (Thus is the life of living on student loans as a family…) He is a friend that will certainly be missed.

The Bertassos.  The only LDS family in the MBA program besides us. Our neighbors 4 doors down. The people we borrowed sugar,  and eggs from. The people that watched Kaden at the last minute, drop of a hat. Jessica cut our hair, listened to my problems, had Bachelor nights with me and the other Elmwood Terrace Girls. I took their kids' pictures. Decker was in my Sunbeam class.  Kaden loved to play with Decker and Tueller and loved Jess. (He was always saying, "Jess. Pretty.")  They were our friends, at times our sanity, and the kind of friends that became like family. Saying goodbye to them was by far the hardest of all of the MBA friends. They made our experience in Rochester one that I will cherish.  They are off to Tennesee. We will really miss them!

The Simon Fellows: Dominic Rasini, Matt Peckham, Obiamaka Eke, Nicole Camarre, Curtis, Charles Johnson, and Jeremy Ho (not pictured, Bernard Mascarenas).  (I couldn't fit the whole shot in one picture, so you get Curtis and Nicole twice. Ha!)

An MS student Curtis had never met, Obiamaka Eke, Benson Waweru, Curtis

Mauricio Leyva was one of the first people we met here at Simon before Curtis even enrolled. He was at Scholarship Weekend and he was a really fun and a good friend to Curtis.

Yang Chen was in one of Curtis' groups and he helped her a lot with learning how to use Excel and her job search.

Ana Gonzales, Curtis, Ankit Agrawal, Roma Sawhney, and Gagandeep Khangura. Curtis was on a few teams with Ana, Roma and Gagan.  There were three Indians and Curtis in one of the groups and Curtis called the team, "Quarter White."  It's safe to say that Curtis was one of the few white, Americans in his class. It was a very diverse business class, which was really fun because we learned a lot about different cultures and met a lot of people from all over the globe.

 Kaden joined us for the after-graduation reception and ate probably 20 cookies in a row. They were right at his level and he just kept grabbing them when we were talking to people. That was literally his lunch that day since he fell asleep on the way home and then went right down for a nap. Ha ha. Blue ribbon for awesome parenting!

I was literally pulling the cookie out of Kaden's mouth to get one picture where he wasn't eating a cookie, ha ha!

It was such an emotional/bittersweet day for us as we enjoyed celebrating Curtis' accomplishments of receiving his MBA (and graduated in the top 20% of his class), but also realized that this was really it, we were done in Rochester and an important chapter of our lives was about to close. We have made some really wonderful friends in Rochester that have been like family to us.  I have learned more in the time in Rochester about myself, about each other, our goals for our family, as a couple, etc… than I felt like we had previously learned in the other years of our marriage.  Rochester has been a challenging place for us to be, but a blessing nonetheless. I will miss it so much!