The Big Move to Georgia

Considering the fact that the move happened a week and a half sooner than we anticipated (finding out 2 weeks before) I think all went pretty well. I had a lot less packing time than I thought but was able to get everything done. I was sad to leave friends in Wisconsin and my wonderful neighbors, but other than that I didn't have a second thought about leaving. We made the long, 12 hour drive from Sparta to Louisville, KY to stop and visit Jared and Jenny. Thank goodness we decided to stay a day before continuing our trip! We needed the break! It was really nice to see them again! Thanks for the french toast Jared! :)

Our second big day of traveling turned out to be a very long one even though the distance was a lot shorter than our first day. About an hour into our drive we come across a HUGE traffic jam. It was already getting hot at 10:00 am and as I discovered on the first day, the air conditioning was going out on our Tacoma. Jaren was driving the moving truck so he still had a nice cool cab. Anyway, the freeway had been closed down completely because of a huge accident. The police were having everyone exit the freeway and re-routing them down a country road for about 3 miles before getting back on. It added about 2 1/2 hours to our trip by the time we both got through. We came across 2 other accidents that we were close enough to when they happened that we were able to get through pretty quickly. I was trying not to melt in the car but we finally arrived at our apartment around 8:30 pm. I'm very grateful that our trip from Sparta to Augusta (driving through 8 states) was made in safety.

The next morning we had to unload the truck and return it. We headed over to the storage unit and proceeded to spend the next 4 hours unloading the truck and loading the storage shed. We were sweating from the time we got there at 9:00 am. I underestimated the humid Georgia heat! Wow! We had cloud cover a lot of the time so the sun wasn't beating on us directly which was a blessing but by the time we were done we were drenched in sweat. I mean DRENCHED! I had to get towels out for us to sit on in the car because it was like we had jumped in a pool with our clothes on. GROSS! You know it's bad when you sneeze and sweat goes flying off your face...or you sit on something and leave a wet spot where you were sitting. But we stayed hydrated and made it through without either of us becoming a heat casualty. When we move all of out stuff into our house in a month, I will definitely be calling on ward members to help us! It was almost too much for me. Thank goodness our apartment complex has a pool! Although, it's so hot here that the pool feels like it's filled with bath water...and it's not heated (except by the sun). It wasn't as refreshing as I had hoped but the weightless feeling was sure nice on our sore bodies. We then treated ourselves to our favorite Italian restaurant (Carrabba's) then came home and crashed. We went to our ward on Sunday where it just so happened that they were changing the Bishopric. There are lots of nice people and were are excited to be in a WARD again!

For the last of our update, Jaren has started work now and says he works with a bunch of nice old ladies. Even though our apartment is furnished, we still have several boxes of various things I am trying to get organized. Our truck is in the shop now getting fixed so I don't have a car. I need to go to the grocery store but that will have to wait until Jaren gets home and I can use the car. I am looking for jobs (boo). We finally got all of our money back from our bank account fraud (yeah!). We walked through the house again and realized we have a LOT more work than we thought. I'm really glad we have time to clean before we move in. We are both happy that we're here and excited for all of the things to do. We have lots of places to explore and those will be posted on our blog in the future. We hope you are all doing well and had a good Father's Day weekend. We'll continue to keep you updated and hopefully we'll get some pictures up of the area soon.

With love,
Jaren and Emily

Another update: Jaren came home and told me our total bill to fix our truck will be $2500. So much for fixing the house up to be livable in the next few months. I guess we'll have to suffer with cement floors a little longer than anticipated. That's just how it goes! When it rains, it pores!

What a mess!

Jaren and I start our move in a few days. We will try to make it to Georgia (18+ hrs drive without stops) by Friday night or Saturday. I'm hoping to have enough time to get everything unloaded into the storage unit, truck returned, settled into our furnished apartment, and make a grocery shopping trip before Sunday. We won't be able to close on our house until the beginning of August so we'll be staying in a "Corporate Apartment" where it's fully furnished including linens and housewares. Rent is pricey but it does include all utilities, even cable. It should only be for a month and a half if all goes well. Anyway, the whole packing process hasn't been too terrible or overwhelming, thank goodness. However, our place is a mess! I need to finish packing today and get the boxes organized so we can move around without tripping on things.

I thought I would include a few pictures. I know I never did post pictures once we got everything all decorated. This is my living room looking all pretty.





And this is a view near the entryway showing the dining room and living room.



This is what my living room looks like now.



Here's the dining room.



And all of the boxes between the two.



This certainly isn't all of the packing. It's scattered around the house right now. My goal is to finish all of the box packing today. Suitcase packing will be tomorrow along with the laundry and cleaning the entire house. So much fun.

I decided to throw this picture in as well. This was the brightest rainbow I have ever seen! It was even cooler when I first saw it because it was a FULL rainbow. I went for my good camera but found the battery was dead so I searched for our little one. By the time I found it and got the picture, half the rainbow was gone. This side was still pretty bright. Oh well.



Time to get back to work. I have a lot to do. I'll update our blog once we get to Georgia!

Farewell Wisconsin! I hope to never endure one of your winters again!

Offended

For anyone who has read the book "The Five Love Languages" you will understand when I say that Jaren and I share the primary/secondary love language of physical touch. We can't help but hold hands or hug or even give quick kisses when in public. Even at home I can't stand going 10 minutes without finding Jaren to give him a hug or to rub his back or touch him in some way (non-sexual). We don't do anything inappropriate in front of others. Granted, when we are with Jaren's family we aren't as careful as to how much hugging or kissing goes on. I think his family has just come to accept it (correct me if I'm wrong) and teases us about it. Nobody really seems to complain about it except in joking.

In regards to a public display of affection, we have had several people come up to us after a church meeting and tell us how sweet they think it is when they see us all cuddly, holding hands, me scratching Jaren's back, etc. I promise, I'm not all over him in church. They even say more married couples should show (tasteful) affection in front of others. Again, all of this in a non-sexual or suggestive way. I guess not everyone feels that way though.

Today, after church was over, a single sister approximately in her 50's came up to me and said she wanted to speak to me for a minute about something Jaren and I did. I had no idea what she could possibly want to say to me. She has never spoken to me before. She proceeded to tell me how upset and offended she was by what my husband and I did and wanted to give me an opportunity to explain myself and help her understand so she wouldn't be so offended........I was baffled to say the least. What was she even talking about? I had to ask her what she was referring to because for the life of me I couldn't think of what I would have done to offend this woman. She then explained that the public display of affection in church offended her.

What??? We were good today. I only gave Jaren one short back rub/head scratch in Sacrament and I don't think she was close enough to see that. She did sit right behind us in Sunday School and I was FREEZING by that point. I forgot to bring my jacket so Jaren did sit with arms wrapped around me for the majority of the class to keep me warm. Aside from that sharing scriptures was all there was. What was to be offended about? The only thing I can think of is that at the end of the class as we prepared to part ways for the third hour, we gave each other a hug and quick kiss which we always do! Has she never seen it before? We've been doing that our whole married life and certainly for time in this branch. I didn't even know what to say when she asked me why we did what we did (being that we showed any affection in public). That's when I understood her comment in our Relief Society lesson earlier. Our lesson was on communication and at some point she mentioned how (in general) she hated it when people showed P.D.A. We even had to explain what P.D.A. meant to one of the older sisters. The lesson was random enough but with that comment I sat there thinking..."okay?"

Maybe because she's been single for so long she doesn't understand or know what it's like to be married. I don't know. My friend that was behind me, listening as this lady told me how inappropriate she thinks our behavior was, told me afterward that this lady was crazy. She said not to take it to heart and that she gives her husband (2nd counselor in the branch presidency) hugs and kisses in church too. Of course the damage had already been done. I was hurt that I would be approached like that with this woman being so offended and upset with me. She acted like we were making out in the middle of church! Jaren thinks she must be an ornery old lady who's jealous she doesn't get the same kind of affection. I don't know about that but he certainly won't let what this lady said change the fact that we give each other hugs and (tasteful) kisses in church or public. I don't want it to change either but is there truth to her words? I know I won't change the back scratches or holding hands in church but are we wrong to give any hugs or kisses at church between classes (between 2nd and 3rd hour to be precise)?

I don't know that I really want to know the truth of how others feel but I'm going to ask my friends and family who read this blog. Aside from at Jaren's parents house in front of only his family, has anyone ever thought that we are inappropriate with our affection in public? I do ask that if it's not something I want to hear that you sugar-coat it. It was bad enough with this lady hurting my feelings and I don't think I can handle it from loved ones too. Between this and my identity being stolen (see below), this just hasn't been my greatest week ever.

Do You Trust Your Bank?

Jaren and I have had one of those really, REALLY, REALLY crappy things happen to you that you never want to experience. Our bank account had some serious fraudulent activity that I caught a couple of nights ago. By that point the offenders had 2 full days to drain our account without our knowledge. I won't give specifics on how much was taken but I will say that it included all of the money we had been saving up for our house over the last 7 months and was quite a lot.

This is a bizarre situation because I found out that they used MY information (including my maiden name) to create a profile for our online banking. They even listed an e-mail address with my married name! Apparently you can have more than one profile (we already had one under Jaren's SSN). Chase Bank informed us that the profile in question was created on May 4th only one short week after our return from our Georgia trip. When we were heading back to the airport we had stopped at one Chase branch in Atlanta to get a cashier's check for the Escrow account. Coincidentally enough, these people live in Atlanta and even used the ATM twice at another Chase location just a short distance from the one I went to.

They waited and watched our account until they finally added an address onto the account (online) and requested a new debit card to be mailed there on the 21st of May. The new card was activated on the 29th. They waited until we got paid on the 1st to start draining the account. I only realized when I saw the transactions online. These people had access in all forms to our account including online transactions, phone banking transactions, ATM withdrawals (which require a PIN), a debit card transaction and two transactions processed in person with a teller that require ID. They were even able to forge my signature pretty well. How they managed all this is beyond me. It only makes sense to me and Jaren that only someone who works at the bank and can pull up all of my information would be able to accomplish this and know the procedures well. I don't think they are professionals because they did not remove the address or phone numbers they listed from the account and they used ATMs which would have video footage of them.

Now we are going through the steps to recover the funds and protect our other accounts. We have filed a police report and have put alerts on our credit reports. Maybe it's not necessarily the fault of Chase Bank, but I think it's about time we transferred all of our accounts some place else...that I trust more.

Hopefully this doesn't happen to any of you. I have NO idea how they got my information when we didn't spend any time in Atlanta except going to and from the airport and going to the Chase branch. The police officer I talked to today gave me a couple of generic pointers for future reference in protecting ourselves from identity theft and I added one I know of from my time working at a bank/credit union.

- Be careful when making hotel reservations. They will ask for a credit/debit card number to make the reservation and will sometimes assign the reservation a name or password being your maiden name. An employee could take this information (not that you can really prevent that).
- The most common cause of bank fraud the police come across here is when you throw away an old checkbook with account information in it (even with no checks there are still the deposit slips in the back with the routing # and account#). These should be shredded.
-You can request specific things on your account such as verbal passwords for completing transactions over the phone, at the drive-through or in person (as well as identification for the last two)

Just some food for thought. I'll keep you posted on if and when these suckers get caught. Let's hope the bank is good about reimbursing the funds during the claim so I can pay this month's rent, tithing, utilities, buy groceries, etc.

Whitney and Shawn's Wedding

The baby of the Glover family is now married. Whitney and Shawn were sealed in the Salt Lake temple on Saturday, May 29th. It was a lot of fun to be out there with all of the family. For a wedding, it was surprisingly mellow. Jaren and I got to Utah on Wednesday and spent the next couple of days helping out with decorating, food prep, etc. but it wasn't too stressful and we were able to enjoy playing with the nieces and nephews and catching up with siblings. We did bring our camera but when it came to taking pictures, we didn't get more than a couple. I figured everyone else was taking pictures. Oh well. Here are the couple I got.



This is me and Mickell outside of the temple. Mickell is Whitney's best friend and the whole family just loves her. If we had our way, she and Tyson would be getting married when he gets home from his mission. I guess we can only hope for that.



My studly man waiting with the rest of us for the bride and groom to come out of the temple. Hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures of the bride and groom and the family posted on here soon. We'll see.

We flew home bright and early Monday morning so Jaren could be back to work Tuesday. It was a VERY long and tiring day. I was up at 3:45 am to finish packing and we were on the road by 4:30 heading to the SLC airport. We were flying to Madison with a layover in Chicago but because of some bad weather when we arrived in Chicago, our flight to Madison was delayed for about 3 hours. About 15 minutes before the flight started boarding, they changed the gate but didn't announce it. We only figured it out because some people next to us waiting for the same flight noticed our flight was no longer on the reader board at the gate we were currently sitting in. When we went over to the new gate, I recognized a former American Idol winner waiting to get on the same flight.

I just had to get a picture with Kris Allen so I could have proof that I actually saw him! Jaren didn't want to but I talked him into it. I first noticed him in a line at Starbucks I was passing earlier in the day. I thought it was him but figured it might just be the ultimate look-alike. I saw him a couple other times and every time I stared at him he looked at me with this look like he knew I recognized him. Finally I took an unwilling Jaren over and asked if it was him and if I could get a picture. He was nice enough to oblige. He and his band are in Madison for a concert and in the Wisconsin/Minnesota area for a few other concerts. What a cute guy!

After our flight arrived in Madison and a two hour drive to Sparta, we finally made it home 4 hours later than expected. Oh well. That's just how it goes sometimes. We had a great time on our trip though and were so glad we were able to go. Hopefully it won't be too long before we make it out to visit family again!