Moving to Conneticut

Our move to Connecticut felt a bit like a long, drawn out saga that ended as a quick surprise.  As I was reviewing the year 2018 I wrote every few months, including January, that we had decided that Andrew would do a post-doc at Yale. The position had been mentioned sometime early 2017 when I was in the midst of severe morning sickness.  When he came home with the news that Yale was an option we both laughed (really – Ivy League!?)  and wondered where it was located.

He had applied for a full professor job last year that didn’t pan out in early 2018 (or really didn’t get started, it never was an option) so we figured once he graduated we would head to Yale.  At some point along the line we gave our official start date as August 2018, but flexible based on when Andrew finished his dissertation.

One of our big lessons learned in 2018 is that qualitative research takes a lot of time.  Andrew flew to Georgia in March and spent an entire week recording four different student pairs working through his soft robotics curriculum (8 mics).  He then spent the next few months editing all the audio content (as you can imagine there was a lot of non-relevant conversations in a high school classroom) as well as doing noise-reduction and lining up the different tracks.   Once those audio files were good enough to listen to, he then spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours transcribing. When all was done he had transcribed 80 pages per group, roughly 320 pages total.  Then he had to analyze all those pages a few different ways, including Linkography which entailed marking every design move (well over a thousand per group) and coding a model to take all those moves and turn them into a visual representation.

The point it, there was a lot of work and it took a lot of time.  So in August we said we’d be done in September.  Then in September we said we’d be done in Oct.  The start date was now Oct 15.

We had decided all along that we’d be all-in in Indiana until we were gone.  I was in no hurry to leave since we absolutely loved life there and had friends that were family.  Andrew also had an option to do a post-doc at Purdue so there was no stress about a job.  I also wanted to be proactive and do as much of the moving by ourselves as we could, so I started gathering boxes and packing methodically back in August.  I had planned life up to October and figured we’d land in Connecticut and I’d figure out birthdays and holidays once we arrived.

When we got to October we actually hadn’t heard anything from Yale for a few weeks and Andrew was still a ways away from being done, so we figured that the opportunity had passed by. I realized that birthday month had arrived and started figuring things out for the kids birthdays.  My parents and sister came out for their annual birthday celebration trip. We planned to do Thanksgiving in Iowa with them.

Now I’m not exactly sure how we got to the end of October this way, but the way the communication happened we found out at the end of October that the opportunity hadn’t passed, and the new start date at Yale was November 12 – just over three weeks away.  As we were praying about whether or not to make it happen I had the very clear impression that we had already made our decision and we just had to do the work.  This was another good moment to learn that hard doesn’t mean wrong.

Here is where things got a bit intense.  Andrew started working long hours (often nearly around the clock) to finish his dissertation.  I started working long hours (often nearly around the clock) with all of the moving logistics as well as our regular life responsibilities.  I did my absolute best to do-it-all, but when it came down to the last week and a half I was soooooooo grateful for all the people that stopped by to help pack a bit or play with the kids or take the kids to their house.  Two days before we moved (Tuesday morning November 5) we had an army of women show up to pack the majority of the kitchen and the upstairs.  I had done so much work by this point and was completely exhausted, having done a lot in the middle of the night while the kids slept as well as throughout the day.  I was grateful for a house full of cheerleaders and workers and I mostly cried exhausted tears and wandered around watching everything get done and answering questions like a deer in the headlights.

In the middle of the night Tuesday-Wednesday, Andrew’s dad and cousin – Mike and Mikey – arrived at our house to help with loading and driving the truck.  Wednesday morning Andrew took Nathan to Indy for his follow-up appointment from surgery while the two Mikes and a friend came and spent a few hours loading the piano and furniture onto the moving truck.  We worked all day long loading the truck and cleaning.  Phoebe spent nearly the entire day in our kitchen using up our food and feeding us all with us, cleaning out the kitchen, and taking all the extra food out of our house.  She also took kids during nap time and went and bought pizza in the evening to feed us and all the people that were helping.  The kids spent the late afternoon/evening at our neighbors with another friend who came to help with Laura and manage the large group of children while their mothers helped.

Also needing to be mentioned was a little farewell gathering Sunday night at the church. So many friends and people that had a significant influence in our lives came and it was great to sit and chat for a few hours with everyone.  It really lifted my spirits and filled us up with gratitude and love.

It was a long and intense day on Wednesday but we were done before 7pm.  We all spent the night on the floor in our empty bedrooms.  The kids cozied up in their closet, one of their favorite places to sleep.  Before we went to bed I blended up the last of our frozen bananas and passed out cups of banana ice cream to the Mikes and Andrew and went down to our neighbor’s for one last chat there.

The next morning we got up and squeezed the last remaining things from the house into our honda civic and the nooks and crannies of our 16 foot moving truck.  We had a very smooth drive to Pennsylvania with a stop at Chipotle for dinner.  When Andrew drove I made phone calls to cancel and start our utilities since I hadn’t had a moment to do that before. When I drove Andrew worked on his dissertation.  Andrew’s dad drove the moving truck the entire way with Mike in the cab.  They were both insanely good sports because they had all of our plants – including the lemon and avocado tree – sitting between them.

It was a nine hour day and everyone did great in the car, but we were also super grateful that we weren’t trying to go any further.  We slept in a super budget motel for $45 a room and got on our way first thing in the morning for the remaining five hour drive.

It was snowing/sleeting in the morning so we took it a bit slower.  As we drove into the east coast I remembered I grew up here and it felt like coming home.  We caught the last glimpses of fall and it was beautiful.

We arrived around 2pm and met the realtor who gave us keys and a quick tour.  We had the elders quorum planning to meet us around 5:30pm to help us unload, but it was starting to drizzle and we wanted to get things unloaded before the full blown downpour started.  We got started and shortly after my childhood friend Crystal, who just moved here for school, arrived and after a hug and quick introduction to my family, she jumped in and made it possible for us to get the truck unloaded quickly.  The missionaries arrived close to 5 and they carried the piano into our home.  Another friend who moved from Indiana a year before us brought dinner.  Crystal stayed with me and helped get the kids tucked into bed while Andrew and his dad and cousin got the moving truck returned and some more food for them.

On Saturday morning Grandpa Jackson and cousin Mike watched the kids so Andrew and I could go grocery shopping together and get the house stocked up.  Andrew then took them to the airport to fly home and jumped back into writing his dissertation.

Two ladies from church stopped by that afternoon with another dinner for us, for which I was so grateful.  That moment I just felt a huge relief because we had actually made it. I couldn’t believe we had actually arrived.  So many miracles occurred during this time.  I absolutely credit reading the Book of Mormon for helping me have peace and a greater capacity during this time, as well as the tools I needed to help the kids.  I also had some sweet moments where I felt Heavenly Father recognize just how hard this was and how big of a thing it was.  I’m also grateful for the army of angels that helped us.  That saying “Behind every great man is a great women” got changed to “Behind every great man is a great women and behind her is an army”.  We seriously had so many friends drop in to help us make this move happen.

Our first Sunday in Connecticut.