The move from Minnesota to Texas AND back to Minnesota

The family room of our new apartment

We flew back to Minneapolis, MN after the honeymoon and stayed for 2 days, then headed South to Lago Vista, Texas (which is right outside of the Austin area).We couldn’t quite fit all of our stuff, plus both of us in Ben’s focus, so my parents rented a uhaul trailer and helped us move out. After about a 19 hour car trip we arrived at our new home. The apartment we are renting is in a quiet town and it is right on the lake! We were PLEASANTLY surprised that it was larger than we were expecting. The apartment has 2 outdoor pools, an indoor pool and a nice workout room. Another bonus was the fact that it used to be a retirement home! So they made many things easy and accessible. It has a trash chute that you literally just throw your trash down the chute and it’s taken care of.

Ben in the kitchen of our apartment

We got a dehydrator and were experimenting making dried fruit!

My parents stayed out there for the week to help us unload and get everything unpacked. We visited pretty much every garage sale possible around the area to furnish our new apartment and got basically everything that we needed! Luckily we didn’t ONLY put my parents to work. We also had some time to lounge around, lay out by the pool and enjoy the bright and hot Texas sunshineJ

Once my parents left, Josh and Kimmie Logan (Ben’s younger siblings) came out and stayed with Gene and Annie Kounse (Ben’s great aunt and uncle who live about 5 minutes away from our apartment). So we spent the next week and a half staying busy with family. We went boating, tubing, wakeboarding, skiing, visited museums, played late night games with Todd and Shana Kounse, (Ben’s cousins that live in San Antonio) their kids, Linda Kounse and her boys. (Linda is another one of Ben’s cousins and she has two sons named Nathan and Dillon). It was a busy two weeks but a lot of fun!


"We're heading back to Minnesota??"

On July 7, 2011 we woke up to go hiking with Josh and Kimmie. We were all packed and driving over to pick them up, when Ben got a phone call. I was sitting in the passenger's seat and I heard Ben say we will head up North as soon as we can. He got off the phone and said, "Well, do you want to go back to Minnesota?" Apparently there had just been a tornado in Minneapolis and they needed Ben to go there for work.

**If you don’t already know, Ben is an independent insurance adjuster. This is the reason we are doing so much traveling. He is a part of the catastrophe team and gets sent to the places where there are storms and natural disasters.

Ben and I are both pretty adventurous and enjoy spontaneity so when we found that out we were leaving there was both a sense of excitement that we get to go on a road trip and start something new, but also sadness that we had to leave family so quickly without much of a warning.

…So we drove to the Kounse house and told them the news that we were leaving that day for Minnesota and sadly would not be able to go hiking. We went home, packed a couple of suitcases, tried to get things in order for leaving all our stuff in Texas, and we left not knowing when we would return. We ended up leaving around 3:00 that afternoon.