Stress, Snow, and Kidney Stone

I'm sure the word has leaked out now that we are moving. Stephen hasn't had work for 3 weeks; a serious lack of snow has put all technicians on hold. Stephen did take one of those weeks for vacation so we could go down to Arizona. He had been planning on installing some heat pumps at my parents home. However, we took a detour to Thatcher, and began a house search.

Stephen had been offered a job with Altech Heating and Cooling of Thatcher, Arizona the same time he was offered a job up in Utah to work for One Hour Air. Arizona requires 2 years of training before you can be paid to do what Stephen has been doing for the past 2 1/2 years. Utah doesn't have that same requirement, so we obviously took the smarter option at the time. Now that Stephen has had his training, and years of work behind him, that job in Thatcher made him a new offer. This offer was stated more than a month ago, but we weren't sure if that was the direction we wanted to take. We love Utah, but Stephen has hardly been working at all, and then all the snow melted with none to take its place.

We took an earlier-than-planned vacation when we got our tax refund, and decided to search out all our options. This job in Thatcher was an amazing offer, but we still were undecided. When we made the choice to go to Arizona things fell into place too beautifully. We decided to house hunt, and after 2 1/2 days we made our decision. We feel extremely good about our move. If you know Thatcher, our place will be off of Reay Lane, before you get to the river.

We will be packing for the next 4 days, and on the 5th (Thursday) we load up the rental truck, drive away from Lehi, and arrive at our home in Thatcher on the 6th day (Friday). With 2 kids, and 2 cats we will definitely be making a half-way stop and split the trip in 2 days.

Our trip has been long, and insane. High levels of stress were our constant companions. The kids got colds while we were still there, and my cold has appeared now that we're home. We're going to keep our fingers crossed tightly that Stephen doesn't get it too. On our return trip home we hoped to make the trip in one day. It could have worked, but driving through the canyon between Panguitch and Beaver, we hit a huge snow storm.

My dad researched the weather report on the internet for us, but by the time we could see Beaver (and we almost couldn't see it due to extreme fog on top of the snow storm) we decided to stay the night. The kids needed it more than we did. Not long after we got our room Stephen heard a trucker who had been coming down from the north said that just before the exit we took there were already 6 accidents.

So we woke up to a winter wonder land. At least 4 inches fell during then night, and was still falling in the morning, but more gently. You'd assume with all that snow we drove through that we would return home to the same scenery. Nope, still no snow!!

Lisette didn't have a good night, and neither did we. Tonight is already following the same pattern; poor girl is so sick. We are happy to be home, even if its for a few days, and filled with cleaning and packing. Our cats were happy to see us, and our wonderful neighbor, Arnie, has been taking such very good care of them.

So about the kidney stone part, yes, I had another stone, just over 6 years since my last. If you knew me during that time, I was in pain for 2 weeks, then it went dormant for 4 1/2 months, then it hurt for 3 days till it passed. I don't know when I got this one because VERY fortunately it didn't hurt during the first stage. However I did get a gosh awful bladder infection, only find out (my own diagnosis, but since I didn't see a doctor about it I didn't tell anyone, except Stephen, I had it) I had a kidney stone, and it makes perfect sense that my infection was so horrible.

I didn't hurt me all the time, but riding in the car, between stops, it would remind me it was there. Our first stop on our return trip the nasty little booger came out and I then knew I was right all along. It made our return trip more pleasant than our trip going down, for me at least. So that's the past few weeks in a nut shell.