Moving and Settling In

Well, it's been a crazy month. For a while there we weren't sure if we would ever make it out of Rexburg what with all the packing and cleaning we had to take care of. Rather than bore everyone with details, I'll share a couple of my favorite stories/memories from moving out.
In order to make our day more fun, Murphy's law kicked in as we went to pick up our truck rental, and the rental company's computer system was down and they were unable to rent the truck to us until it was up again. I'm not quite sure why a company like that wouldn't have a backup plan allowing for manual paperwork, but they didn't. Our site contact tried to be as helpful as possible and made phone calls to everyone she could from tech support to other employees, but wasn't able to really do much for us. We left early to get to our appointment by 9 am, and didn't end up getting home with our truck until 12. We'd asked for help in moving our furniture from ward members, and had told them we intended to start moving at 10 am. Obviously, this was now a problem, and no one was home who'd said they'd help. I have a tendency to be a worrier, so I was getting stressed despite my best efforts not to, as I was really worried about David having to lift everything by himself (I'm supposed to avoid heavy lifting right now, and David wasn't about to let me 'conveniently forget' that little pregnancy detail). To top it off, one of our neighbors who'd said he'd help us move called and asked for transportation to and from a doctor's appointment as his wife had been bitten by a spider the night before. I decided that being ornery to someone in need was not a way for us to get the help we needed, so I gave them the ride they needed. As I was driving, I said a prayer asking for someone to remember they'd offered to help, or maybe someone would see us moving and be willing to help for a little while.
By the time I got home, one of the ward members had shown up and a significant portion of our boxes and basic furniture had already been carried down by this wonderful neighbor. The irony of this was that as I was out driving, I'd seen this person out in his awesome 70's van, apparently on his way to our apartment to help out. Throughout the remainder of the afternoon, various neighbors dropped in to help us for as long as they could; I even had sisters in the ward come in and help me with the cleaning! It was amazing that not only was my prayer answered within a matter of minutes, but that it was also answered so closely based on the prayer I'd said.
For the next story to be climactic, I need to give a little bit of background. When we moved into our Rexburg apartment, there was a thin crack in the ceiling showing it had sagged a bit. Over the next year plus we lived there, the crack continued to get bigger, until it spanned a good half of the front room, and even extended partway into the next room. We reported it on our apartment check-in list, and updated the apartment as it got progressively worsebut as we couldn't be sure if it was just a drywall problem or a cracked beam, nothing was really done about it. Anyway, one of the cleaning checklist items was to remove all the light fixtures and clean them. When I removed the living room fixture, I was amazed to see that the problem was much worse than we'd thought. The entire ceiling had caved in to the point that the light bulb socket was completley surrounded by cracked drywall. I don't remember if we got a picture or not, but if we did I'll try to load it sometime, because it's a pretty funny sight. I was never able to get the carpet completely vacuumed, because clumps of drywall kept falling down throughout the remainder of the day (we left the light fixture off per the owner's request so she could take a look at it when we checked out).
The trip down was fairly uneventful other than being extremely long. It's roughly a 16 hour trip, but obviously it took a lot longer with a weighted rental truck. There were times I honestly didn't know if the truck would make it up the hills between Utah and Arizona as I couldn't safely coax any more than 30 mph out of the truck to crest the hill. I had a few fun 'racing' experiences, where I'd get passed by big semi-trucks (quite embarrassing, I know), only to catch them up and pass them on the way back down as the weight from our belongings allowed me to actually get back up to speed going downhill. In really hilly areas, this would happen multiple times with the same vehicles, which was pretty entertaining.
So far we've gotten settled in pretty well, considering we moved from a 2-bedroom, 5 closet apartment into a 1-bedroom, 1 closet apartment. I got rid of a lot of stuff as I knew we were downsizing, but our new apartment complex is pretty strict about what you're allowed to keep on your patio, so our storage space ended up being even more limited than I thought. In any case, we've managed it pretty well, and we're very satisfied with our new apartment. As soon as we have everything finalized, we want to use our camera to record a walk-through tour as a long-distance housewarming party for our friends and family.
It's funny how I felt I didn't have much to communicate, but now that I'm writing I feel like I need a book rather than just a blog. Oh well.
Our biggest concern right now is on the employment front. We've felt very guided throughout this entire move, and have prayerfully followed every prompting we've recieved. We know we're supposed to be in this area, in this apartment, at this time, so we know things will work out one way or another. We knew Arizona would be much more expensive than Idaho, so we did our best to save everything we could for the move. We evaluated our finances and felt that after paying for the truck, we'd have enough in savings to maintain us without work for at least one month's worth of bills, if not two. However, we're now at 1 1/2 months and we're getting more creative at managing everything. We've been submitting applications and resumes since July, but apparently the job market is really bad in AZ right now, so nothing has really come of it. Fortunately, we've been guided to some great resources such as food stamps and cash assistance that are helping us to hold our own as we continue to search. As of this morning, I completed an interview for a position I was recruited to apply for, so I'm hoping something good will come of this. My first goal is to be a mother, so I don't want to work outside the home if I can help it, but at this point it pretty much is necessary for us to accept whatever positions come our way.
We miss everyone, and would love to hear back from you all as to what's going on!