It's been a while, but as you will see we've been busy and on the road, and travelling is typically when I take a break from the blog.
Let me briefly catch up on the past month. The end of June brought graduation (!!!), birthday, goodbyes, and moving.
Graduation was June 23rd. There was technically one more week of fellowship after graduation, but Tim saved some vacation that he used for the last week so his last day of clinic was on the day of graduation. We were nervous about graduation because it started 30 min before the kids normally go to bed, but our prayers were answered, and the kids did better than we could've hoped. They enjoyed some "fancy" food at a nice convention center, and then they sat through brief remarks from several of the supervising physicians followed by a slide show of fellowship pictures and then additional picture taking afterwards. We did stay after to mingle for an extra hour, but the kids lasted about 2.5 hours which was awesome. Honestly, we brought two vehicles because we were sure I would have to leave after 45-60 minutes so again we thought it was a great blessing.
Whitney at graduation excited for training to be over!!!
Kids doing great during their "fancy" dinner at graduation
Family pic at graduation. We survived training!Tim's birthday was the day after graduation. He had a pool party with all of Hyrum's friends... Well, I should probably say that Callum, one of our neighbors and friends from church, decided to celebrate his birthday early because so many of his friends were moving, and they happened to choose Tim's birthday as their day to celebrate. The kids loved it. Swimming, pizza, and cupcakes sums up the party pretty well. Later in the day we got some ice cream which is pretty standard for all of Tim's birthdays (per his request). He went to the Maple View Farm dairy which is local and has some great ice cream right next to their farm. There was even a rooster sitting outside in one of the waiting areas.
We wrapped up a lot of packing during that last week of fellowship and moved most everything into the living room to try to expedite things when the crew came to load our truck. Monday, June 26th, was moving day. It was a hectic day (and week), but we moved right along. We got the truck loaded and picked up my dad from the airport who graciously drove the very large Penske truck and autotransport to Arkansas for us. He made much better time than we did. We said our goodbyes to friends and neighbors (we'll miss our little cohort of friends in our complex and ward) and managed to travel a couple of hours on Monday. The kids kind of struggled (understatement) both in the van and the hotel so we decided to take the rip-the-Band-Aid-off approach and drove as much as we could on Tuesday. This worked well, and we ultimately arrived to Fort Smith on Wednesday instead of Thursday and moved up our move-in time to Thursday instead of Friday. Poor Owen. Up to this point he has struggled more with being in vehicles than any of our kids, and he had probably spent 90% of all of his time in his car seat crying. After many rough hours, I think this long trip kind of broke him. He now does a lot better on car rides and will even fall asleep in the car now, though like all of his naps his snooze time is short-lived (about 30 minutes).
Who's ready to move?
Kids wearing their new shirts gifted from their NC friends as a going away present.
Penske truck. Grandpa Kluber took over the driving from here.
A brief but intense round of "body slammers" prior to hitting the road for Arkansas.When we arrived June 29th, there was a heat advisory. It was >100 F and the humidity was awful--a warm welcome from Arkansas! We powered through and unpacked everything we needed over a couple of days. We left some things packed in anticipation of potentially buying a home in the next year or so. There is a park just down the street from us, and we have taken daily trips to the park. Our rental is a little 4-bed/2-bath house with a small backyard with a FENCE...hallelujah. It's nice, but we produced quite the list of repairs for maintenance to address on day one. They were responsive so we were pleased with that.
First time playing in their new backyard! You should've seen Liam before we wiped his face off a little.July 2nd was our first Sunday in Fort Smith. The ward was very welcoming, and we were happy to see lots of families with kids in the same age range as our own. By the end of the day we had been invited to multiple Fourth of July activities and couldn't actually attend them all. Hyrum had a hard time at church and missed his friends from North Carolina and was fairly vocal about it, but he's settling in. There is a medical school here so lots of people at church asked if we were here for medical school. We were not offended at all but secretly took a lot of pleasure in saying no and being done with that phase of life.
Some people from church go running together and invited Tim to join them the next day. Tim has never run a lot and certainly hasn't run in many months, but he went the next day, and they ran over 3 1/2 miles. We'll see if he joins them in the future. He mainly went for the social aspect. We then took the kids to a new park in town because a family from church invited us to join them. It was a nice park, and it was great to see the kids make their first friends. Up to this point Hyrum was a little concerned about making friends and once when a little upset he even asked, "Are there even kids in Arkansas?" Our neighborhood doesn't seem to have many kids, and he was used to seeing neighbors who were also friends from church on a daily basis in North Carolina. After the park Tim helped another physician family move into the ward who will also be working at Mercy. There are several health care providers from various groups in the ward, though Mercy seems to be the largest.
The Fourth of July was nice. Our ward had a pancake breakfast, and we really enjoyed breakfast and being able to meet so many people while the kids were entertained. Hyrum, Lila, and Liam--with their newfound knowledge that kids do exist in Arkansas--enjoyed running around for an hour with all of the other kids from church.
The family we played at the park with had invited us over for a late lunch so that occupied most of our afternoon on the Fourth. It really was nice to see the kids have so many good opportunities to play after a couple of rough days adjusting to a new home, and it has been nice for us to jump in socially as well as we struggled to carve out a lot of time for being social during training. After putting the kids to bed, we started packing for Tim's family reunion, and then around 9-9:30 PM we actually woke Hyrum and Lila up and let them watch neighborhood fireworks for a while. They loved it, and maybe next year we'll take them to a legit firework show. We bought a few fireworks, but our day had been hectic enough so we saved the for the next morning.
Late night firework show (Hyrum and Lila)July 5th we headed off to Paola, KS. We spent some time at Great Grandma Kluber's house and then went out to dinner at Applebee's. Grandma said the kids could have whatever they wanted for dinner, and the kids loved it! Most of them had stomach aches at the end, but they were happy and will always remember drinking lots of extra juice and Oreo ice cream milkshakes. We spent the night in Paola and the next day transitioned to an Air BnB in Stilwell, KS for Tim's family's reunion.
(Dinner with Great Grandma!)The family reunion was great and crazy, but the two often go together. We went to Smithville lake on day one and enjoyed paddle boarding, kayaking, boating, tubing, and just playing in the sand. Hyrum was excited about the boat because he didn't get on the boat 4 years ago during their last reunion and wanted to make sure he did it this time. Liam and Lila went tubing as well. They all enjoyed it with the mixed moments of exhilaration, laughing, and fear that tubing brings. Day 2 was Worlds of Fun & Oceans of Fun. We spent most of our time at Oceans of Fun, but Tim did take Hyrum on his first real rollercoaster (he had been on some kiddy ones at the NC State Fair). Hyrum didn't show any fear, but he also decided one roller coaster was enough for this trip. Day 3 was just hanging out at the rental. It was a good trip. It's always fun to see the kids run around and play with their cousins, which is always the highlight of any trip for them. The family reunion started on Thursday, and we check out from the Air BnB on Sunday. From there, we headed back to Paola and went to church with Grandma and then headed back to Arkansas. I'm glad the family reunion wasn't too far away because we are kind of done with car trips for a while.
Liam dreaming of kayaking
Tim with Lila and Liam on a kayak
Hyrum using the paddleboard as an oversized kickboard and taking Lila for a cruise
Hyrum and Lila tubing with their cousin
Hyrum and Liam with cousins in the boat
Liam with his cousin at Oceans of Fun
Whitney and Owen at the lake with a sister-in-law
Lila and Liam. This is how we all felt after moving and vacation...At this point, we were in need of a vacation from our vacations, but there was none to be found. Tim had his sports medicine boards 5 days after we got back to Fort Smith. We did go to the library and Tim, Hyrum, and I got library cards. Lila is excited to get hers when she turns 5 in September. The routine of the next several days consisted of late starts in the morning followed by Tim spending the day at the library studying and then coming home and taking the kids to the park in the sweltering heat to try to burn of an abundance of excess energy. Nighttime has been rough because Owen has been waking up every 2-3 hours. We weren't sure why, but we noticed today that he is cutting his first tooth so that is our suspicion. I'm up more at night so this week Tim would try to let me sleep in a little and get all of the kids going in the morning. That will be missed when he starts work next week. Tim took Hyrum with him to the library a couple of times when he was studying for boards. The first time Hyrum was only their for 1-2 hours because I dropped him off with Tim and then picked him up after grocery shopping. He did well so Tim took him again the next day, and Hyrum spent 5 hours with him. Tim said he did great, and Hyrum wanted to stay longer. They did a craft with packing peanuts for about an hour, and then Hyrum spent the rest of the time reading books without any issue, and Tim was able to study in peace.
Hyrum doing crafts at the library.We had a crazy loud thunderstorm Thursday night so Owen woke up more than usual. The storm combined with sore throats going around our family meant less sleep than usual going into Tim's board exam. He took it Friday morning and didn't think it was too bad, but there are always so many random questions covering topics that he's not actually involved in (e.g. dive medicine, managing marathons, para-athletes, etc.) that it comes down to just studying the books, and we'll see how he did in a couple of months.
Today was our second Sunday in Fort Smith. I got a text last night requesting I meet with the bishop this morning, and I was asked to serve as the 2nd counselor in the Relief Society presidency. Tim thought it was funny because we still haven't met the vast majority of people in the ward, and they first called my name during ward business to sustain me in my new calling and then 1 minute later they read in the records our family and several other to welcome us as new members to the ward so Tim commented that I was given a calling before I was even welcomed to the ward. I met with the Relief Society president this afternoon to get caught up on everything.
I know that was a long post, but that brings us up to speed on most things. This week we are hopefully going to find a balance of relaxation and fun prior to Tim starting work the following week, but we still haven't planned out what we are going to do so we'll see how the week goes and send an update next week.
Take care!
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