Moving - And A Trip to Philly!

 I interrupt the posts of our trip to Utah to bring you pictures of our MOVE to Utah. I know! We didn't see it coming either. I have felt like NY was the place we were supposed to be, and we were very happy there. But while we were with John's family in Vernal, UT this summer, our nephew Tory wanted to take John to meet some people in the area in the civil engineering/gas industry. One of the firms seemed quite interested, and a few weeks after getting back, John got an offer from them. It felt like it was what we were supposed to do. 

We discovered that school in Vernal was starting 1 1/2 weeks after that, so we wanted to get out here quickly. We accomplished the move in a little less than 4 weeks, including travel time. We NEVER could have done it that fast without an incredible amount of help from our ward (church) friends! I was worried because we had no family to help us, and our ward was small and very spread out. But, as our neighbor observed incredulously, we had near constant help. (He'd been keeping track of all the cars in the driveway, I guess. I should have put up a "Mormon Helping Hands" sign out front.) My sweet ward family cleaned, packed, loaded, did handyman jobs, watched our kids, and provided food for days and days. We were so relieved and grateful!

We didn't get done cleaning on the last day in NY until 10:00 pm., and we were supposed to be in Philadelphia that night. As we left, I just cried. I really loved our place, our friends, and our beautiful scenery. Anyway, we went ahead and drove to our hotel that night. 

I had always wanted to go to Philadelphia, and we thought that maybe we could squeeze it in before leaving the area. So, we did a whirlwind tour of Philly - mostly on a double-decker bus. One of our favorite things was the Philadelphia cheesesteak. I wish we had had more time to see everything.

The tour guide was pretty funny. Although Eli doesn't look too sure.

That's William Penn up there. That's the reason they didn't start building skyscrapers until fairly recently: he had to be higher than other buildings.

The "Rocky stairs" to the left and his statue to the right.

 And a few sad goodbye pictures of some of our sweet Primary friends.