Alive and Well in Baltimore

Well, since Bryce is at school and I'm sitting in a hotel watching the Olympics, I decided I didn't have a really good excuse to not at least post something as a "we're still alive" note.

Despite all the warnings and horror stories we heard about cross-country travel, we cruised across the U.S. without too many problems. After all the hectic moving stuff in Utah, we really enjoyed a few days to relax in Colorado Springs, spend time with my dad, Susan, Grace, and also see some friends, Heather and Tyson and Dan and Julie. The three days went all too quickly and before we knew it we were picking up Marilyn (Bryce's mom) from the airport on Saturday night. Since I'm 11 weeks or so along now, I get pretty tired and I didn't want to use a lot of caffeine pills to help me stay awake so Marilyn offered to come out and help me drive. My mom is taking care of her father whose health is quite poor right now. (I guess I haven't officially announced my pregnancy so we'll see how many people read our blog that I haven't told I'm pregnant yet...this should be interesting).

We headed out with out two cars on Sunday morning towards Kansas City, MO. Marilyn and I took turns driving my car and Bryce, the stubborn, drove his car by himself. We gave up on all attempts to convince him to let someone at least ride with him for a while and instead enjoyed listening to Harry Potter 7 during the drive. We got halfway through the last chapter when we pulled into Baltimore. Pretty good. And it made the drive go faster. To whomever created the audio book, thank you.

Props go to Hotwire.com as well. It's a bit of a risk to pay for a hotel without knowing where you are going to stay, but considering we got four rooms (two in Kansas City and two in Columbus) for $240 and ended up at a newly renovated Sheraton, and a decent Best Western, it was completely worth it. We did it again out here and are in a very nice Hyatt Place for $70 a night (including breakfast and internet). I'm a fan.

So, now we're out in Baltimore, having arrived last Tuesday. We stayed with some friends of my sister, Josh and Nikki, for two days, then have been using some free hotel points we had, and Hotwire. Since our stuff arrived last week, we rented a truck and loaded it up to put in storage on Wednesday. Our awesome friends that told us about our complex, Amy and James, are letting us use their garage so we didn't have to put our stuff in storage and then reload it and unload it in a truck. Thank you guys! So, that saved us some more money and now we just have to drag everything from their garage, across the parking lot, and up the stairs to our apartment on Thursday. I'm anxious to get moved in.

We bought dinner for Amy and James for their help with the moving as well as another couple they recruited, Clark and Liesel. They informed us that another first year med student had moved into the ward. I thought that was great. All of the others out here are dental, law, or pharmacy. They told us his name was Andrew and that he was married, but other than that, we didn't know anything. Bryce found him during orientation and as they were talking they discovered that both of their wives had served their missions in Rome at roughly the same time. Yep. Of all chances, I already know Andrew's wife. Tara entered the MTC only six weeks before me and although we never served together, we did have quite the adventure on what I lovingly call "the boat ride from hell". So, another friend found. And, she lives about 5 minutes away from our apartment. They had us over for dinner last night and then we all went over to a 4th year med student in his 8th year (he did a PhD after his second year for four years, so he's finally in his last year of the medical school portion) for dessert. Bryce and Andrew were able to get some good insights in what to expect at UMB and I got some good information from his wife about local stuff.

Well, this is longer than I had expected so I'll let Bryce do a post sometime here to let you know how school is going in more detail than "fine". We're always up for visitors (well, maybe after we move in on Thursday), so feel free to come out sometime!