Ten

I am the world's best and most catastrophic rounder, according to Andrew. He told me this after he suggested we take a packing break and I said, "We only have ten more days!!"*

"Eleven," he calmly corrected.

"Today is almost over," I said.

"But today is not over yet so we still have eleven days. You are the world's best and most catastrophic rounder. You make everything sound like impending doom!"

So, there are eleven days until our truck arrives. But by the time we wake up tomorrow there will only be ten days until our truck arrives (and two weeks until we really take off) so in honour of eleven (almost ten) days until we once again cram all of our belongings into the back of a truck, I give you our ten highs and lows from life in Spanish Fork.*

* Now there really are only ten days until our truck arrives, which honestly feels more like nine...

I feel like we did something like this before leaving a few other homes (though I'm not sure we did one for Durham, but I could probably do one retrospectively). So without further ado, I give you a few lists of things that "we" think we'll miss/look forward to, and by "we" I mean "I":

Ten highs we experienced in Spanish Fork:

1. Alexander's birth
2. Miriam's baptism 
3. Benjamin started kindergarten
4. Rachel's spectacular last year of elementary school
5. Andrew graduated from Duke
6. Nancy got to play with gamelan and take a writing class
7. Zoë went from baby to big kid—from potty training to preschool
8. We got to go to Grover again (and visit Alberta, for that matter)
9. Rachel got to go to the temple for the first time at the Payson temple
10. We always had family to invite to everything

Ten lows we experienced in Spanish Fork:

1. Karen's death
2. Alexander's broken arm
3. We frequently felt smothered by family drama
4. Some of us have struggled to find friends here
5. Sometimes the train wakes up the baby at 2 AM
6. There are no bo-berry biscuits here
7. It's so far from the ocean
8. This last winter was so long and we were sick the entire time
9. The library was just so small, guys
10. We were perpetually stressed out over our impending unemployment

Ten things we'll miss about living here:

1. the mountains
2. wide, straight roads
3. walking to school
4. live-in grandparent(s)
5. spending time with family
6. the certainty of building snowmen (and sledding)
7. organ at BYU and piano with Aunt Linda
8. living across the street from the church building
9. the good friends we've made
10. the park just down the street

Ten things we're looking forward to in Atlanta:

1. mild winters
2. our own home
3. feeling settled
4. being in one place for a while
5. Andrew having an office
6. fireflies
7. a quiet street
8. making new friends
9. living in an American mosaic—"brightly colored bits of ethnicity, culture, racial identity and language embedded side by side"
10. a little more humidity

Ten things we're dreading about Atlanta:

1. ticks
2. snakes
3. poison ivy
4. being far away from family
5. traffic (driving anywhere, really)
6. juggling multiple school schedules
7. our steep driveway
8. commute times
9. being responsible for keeping up a house
10. a little too much humidity

The past few years have been an exhausting, overwhelming mix of really wonderful and really hard things. The future has some great things in store, I'm sure. T minus 14 days until we're out of here!