Counting Blessings: Around town

I love this picture. When we were preparing our move, Garrett was very concerned about our small, dead end road and getting an ABF truck down there. So much so that he wanted to rent a U-Haul and drive it himself. I was not willing to compromise on that - especially for a stupid low-hanging wire (I wanted to drive together in our van), so we had quite a few "discussions" about it. I figured that it was ABF's job to figure out how to get to our house, and he was worried that they would tell us it was our problem. He even called the city of Madison and asked them to go measure how low the wires were (they did, and yes they said that the AT&T wires were too low). Garrett called AT&T and told them they had 3 weeks to fix their low wires (haha)... but of course it didn't happen. In the end, it wasn't a big deal. The picture above is Garrett using a broom to push the wires up, while our landlord holds the ladder, while the ABF guy drives the semi towards our house.

On a related note, we had a fantastic experience with ABF. Everyone we came across - both in Florida and in Wisconsin - was great. Excellent customer service and everyone was so nice. We also had a good experience with the company who shipped Garrett's car. In fact, our whole move went very smoothly up until we got to Wisconsin and our truck was delivered. After that, we ran into a bit of trouble.... every moving company we called to hire to unload our truck was booked for several days, sometimes weeks! It was a huge oversight that we didn't call ahead of time, but we really didn't have any idea when our truck would arrive until the day before it arrived, so we really couldn't have known anyway. So, that was tough. We ended up hiring our landlords' 18-year-old grandson (who looked 12) to help us (well, me -- Garrett can't lift anything with his back). It was a loooong and tiresome day, but we did it. And we only dropped one piece of furniture off the ramp (whoops). Every time we move, we tell ourselves "never again -- we will hire help next time!" To be fair, we did TRY to hire help, haha. But for real... next time we will. It's only 10 months away so I'm pretty sure we will remember how painful it was. And we DID use ABF and shipped Garrett's car this time, so we did hire out a lot more help than we have in the past. And yes, it was worth it!

Ellie turned 6 the week we got to Wisconsin. We celebrated by having dinner & custard at Culver's.

We are having a great time exploring Madison so far. This park is about a half mile from our house, and we have eaten several picnic dinners there! We are trying to enjoy the great weather while we can!

Another shot of us at the park by our house

We drove out to a small town on for some July 4th festivities. Unfortunately we missed the Madison fireworks (they were on June 27 (??), but we didn't arrive until the 30th). We were pleasantly surprised by the ones we saw here, though.

We checked out the Madison Farmer's Market, which was fun. My friend Stef told me that we HAD to get the cheesy bread from Stella's.

The city has these cute little "book houses" around the city, where you can leave books and take books for free. There is one pretty close to our house, so we've gone a couple of times.

Another picnic dinner by the lake

Catching fireflies before bedtime

Cinderella hanging out in the backyard

Checking out a new trail

Walking around at the UW Arboretum with friends. It's so nice that we had some friends move here from FL!

Abbie on a fun zipline at our ward playgroup in Waunakee. Many families in our ward (church congregation) live up there, so sometimes we meet at a park up there.

Making s'mores in the backyard. I love having a fire pit, hopefully we can use it a lot through the Fall!

Ice cream out on the terrace at the Union building on UW campus.

Abbie as Bucky Badger

Walking around campus with Mom (she came out to drive back to the farm with me)

Off to check out some more trails!

Watching the sun set on Lake Mendota

500,000 sunflowers in bloom at Pope Farms

Abbie's BFF from Florida was in Madison visiting her grandma, so she and her mom spent a day with us after we got back from PA. We had lunch at Ella's Deli, which was a fun experience.

Riding the carousel after lunch at Ella's Deli

There are lots of fun parks in Madison. This one is also super close to our house. There's also a splash pad there, but we haven't been to it yet.

Some of our good friends from BYU live about an hour away, and we have gotten together with them a couple of times. They came over a few Saturdays ago so of course we had to make s'mores again! It's really nice to have some familiar friends here, even if we only get to see them once in a while. It makes me really miss having good friends nearby!

Doughnuts at Greenbush Bakery. I've had a couple people recommend the place to me, and it did not disappoint! We've been twice already. Check out the size of their apple fritters!

Last Friday we went to UW campus in search of their meat store. I always got my beef & pork from the vet school at UF (they have a butchery class), and the meat was always great. So, I've been looking forward to checking out UW's version. It was almost impossible to find, it's pretty set back in a random building and there was also construction, but after about 15 minutes of driving around we finally found it. Sadly, it was nowhere near as impressive as UF's store, so I'm not sure if we will be going back, but at least now we know.