The Mellors Blog

Hey Everyone!

We hope that your 4th of July weekend was fantastic!  Being new to the area we took this weekend as our first opportunity to head to Kansas City to visit the Caresia clan there.  We woke up on Thursday and since we had nothing to do in Lincoln, we headed right down.  It is about a 3 hour drive from our place to theirs.  We got to their house a bit before noon and Justin was surprisingly awake when we arrived.  We spent the first day getting to see a bit of the area and helping prepare for the BBQ on Friday.  It was fun to be around family and to see another new area of the mid-west.  On Friday the 4th we went down to The Plaza which is the first out door mall in America.  It was huge and the Gateway couldn’t compare.  After walking around for a while, Uncle Gene took us on a tour of Kansas City, showing us downtown and other landmarks.  That evening we had a BBQ which was AMAZING!!  Gene and Marjean know how to cook!  Justin and his girlfriend Becca took us to see fireworks big city style.  It was a lot of fun to lay out and watch the fireworks.  The next day, Uncle Gene drove us around to show us a couple of church history sites; Liberty Jail and the Independence, MO Visitors Center.  I have never been to any of the church history sites so it was fun to start at these and get a bearing for where they all are.  That night the entire family went to a Kansas City T-Bones game, a minor league team.  The hot dogs at the game were some of the best I have had and it was sweet because there were fireworks after the game as well.  On Sunday we went to church and Marjean cooked another fabulous meal to send us on the road.  The weekend was a ton of fun and it was hard to come back to Lincoln.  Traci starts working now and I am trying to keep myself busy.  We hope all is well and can’t wait to hear from you all!

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Today was my 23rd birthday! Funny how birthdays aren’t as good as they were when you were five, wish we could go back to those days! But I had a great birthday. I woke up and Matthew had made me breakfast which was quite a feat for him and I was very impressed! We had pancakes, sausage and juice. Then we took our time getting ready for the day and then we headed downtown Lincoln. We decided to stop and see the capital building and go for a tour. It was free which is always a good thing and we had a great and very funny tour guide. We were able to go up to the 14th floor outside observatory deck which gave a great view but Matthew and I felt like we took our lives in our hands getting up to it!! The elevator was VERY old, probably the first elevator ever made. It only held four people and it took FOREVER to get to the 14th floor and we just prayed that the door would open!! It is a beautiful building and we will have to take anyone who wants to go when you all come visit. Matthew took me to dinner at a place called MIsty’s for dinner. It is a local steakhouse, been around for over sixty years and the best prime rib I have ever had. Then we came home and had cake and opened presents. It was a wonderful birthday! Love you all and wish you could have been here!

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Everyone,

We made it to Lincoln.  The trip was long and hard on everyone, but we still made it with no major problems.  The loading and unloading went really slick and smooth, but now we are undertaking the daunting task of unpacking.  The downstairs is almost complete, but the office is the big task ahead of us.  We went to church for the first time in the Trendwood Ward and enjoyed it.  It seems like it mostly consists of graduate students and elderly citizens.  Derek and Nichole and Jim and Patty made it home alright and we sure do appreciate their help in moving (more than they will ever know!).  My parents are heading home in the morning and going as far as Cheyenne to visit Norman and Jaime.  We are so grateful for the help that they provided in getting us established a bit more in Lincoln.  We don’t have any new pictures to post just yet, but as soon as the townhouse is in order we will take a lot of pictures.  We have two weeks before Traci starts work, but we will have all of the unpacking done in the next couple of days.  We love you all!  We hope to hear from you all soon.

Matthew and Traci

We spent Memorial Day weekend and the following week up in Jackson. It was our last chance to be there before we move to Nebraska in a couple of weeks. The trip started by hauling a trailer for Pa that he bought here in Utah. It was my first time hauling a trailer, so I was a little nervous and probably more cautious than I needed to be. Hopefully this was just my first hauling experience and not necessarily my last. I didn’t ever have to back the trailer up, so one day I will have to practice doing that. We had a bbq with my family on Saturday to celebrate the holiday. Most of my cousins of the Roberston clan were there and Christie brought my grandma and grandpa over. After we ate we did the usual tradition and visited the local grave sites of my relatives. It was a bit of a rainy day so we weren’t at each site for too long. Traci’s grandparents came into town on Monday and stayed through Thursday. I didn’t get to spend much time with them because I was working graveyards for security on three of those nights. Traci was able to spend time with them, which was nice. They went up to the park and saw the new visitor center at Moose. That was a great experience for her grandfather who worked for the Park Service throughout his life. On Tuesday, I spent half the day with the Jackson Hole SWAT Team playing one of their bad guys in scenarios. Of course it was a blast for me and I walked away with some bruises and scrapes to prove I was some sort of help. We were able to destroy a house scheduled to be torn down (the blue house in the pictures), so that helped make the experience that much more enjoyable. Traci spent a lot of the week studying for her NECLEX which she will be taking on June 17th (two days before we leave for Nebraska). She is nervous, but she will do great. On Saturday night we ate dinner and had a little celebration for Grandma T. Her birthday wasn’t for a couple of days, but it was a chance for us to see them before we left town the next day. Seeing all our granparents in one trip was a lot of fun. On our way back to Ogden, we stopped in on my grandparents to see them one more time before we leave. It was nice to spend some time with them and to see Christie (who cooked us a fantastic meal…yummy!). It was great to see everyone and spend time with our families. Besides all the rain, it was a great weekend in Jackson!

Love you all and hope to hear from you soon!

We will be leaving on Jue 19th with all our belongings to Lincoln, NE!

Well we left Lincoln on Thursday morning and drove to our half way point and stopped in Cheyenne, WY.  We visited with Norman and Jaime and the kids.  We ate some dinner with them and then my brother had to go to work.  Traci and I were so tired that we went to the hotel and just crashed.  It was nice to spit the trip in half though.  We got up early this morning and just started on our way home.  Everything was going great until we got to about ten miles from Evanston. Traci was driving and I was trying to catch some shut-eye when we both started to hear moving metal.  We look over at the semi hauling gravel in time to see the bottom load doors open part way and start dumping golf ball sized rocks.  We all pulled over and checked the damages.  I was expecting to see a lot of dents on the car, but we didn’t see a lot of damage.  Since our car was covered in bugs, we couldn’t tell the full extent of the damage.  The car that was behind us took the brunt of the damage and their windshield was damaged pretty good along with a lot more body damage as well.  After spending some extra time in Evanston, WY and getting some things sorted out, we were finally on our way home again.  We immediately washed our car to see what the real damage was.  We actually made it out pretty good, but we still have to go and get some estimates on Monday.  The whole situation could have been a lot worse with injuries, etc., so we were all glad that nothing worse happened. After inspecting the equipment, the truck driver didn’t know why the load opened up.  Anyway, between getting a ticket and having this happen, I am ready to steer clear of I-80.  We will soon be combining all the photos from our Lincoln trip into one album, so if you are ever wondering.  We hope all is well with you and hope to hear from you all soon!!

Matthew and Traci

Gas in Lincoln: $3.69/gallon

Hotel room at Best Western: $65/night

A visit with the Wyoming Highway Patrol: $90/ten minutes

Seeing the same 870 miles of I-80 twice in the same week: PRICELESS

Some things in life take money, for everything else, there is a long car ride…We can’t wait for you all to visit Lincoln!!

Our third day in Lincoln was busy, but very productive.  First, we had some appointments for looking at apartments, but didn’t realize that the viewings would only take about half an hour. So we took all the appointments we had planned on Thursday and got them all accomplished before the morning was over.  We had a choice between two places that stood out to us. One was a nice two bedroom apartment that was north of campus.  The other was a two bedroom townhouse that is just near campus.  We settled on the town house. It is a nice place with a garage that is really close to campus and the hospital. It is available for us to move in on the weekend of June 20th.

In the early afternoon Traci was going to meet with the nurse manager who interviewed her at the hostpital, BryanLGH. To her surprise, after a tour of the floor she had interviewed for, she found out some bad news.  The same floor at the downtown campus of this hospital was being closed, so all the nurses from there were being transferred to the campus where Traci was suppose to be hired. But they offered her a position on the Medical/Renal floor (not to be confused with Anal floor .  She will be starting on July 7th at the hospital. It will be a huge learning experience for her and she is excited and nervous!

Because things went faster and easier than we anticipated, we will be meeting with the law student I have been in contact with in the morning and heading part way back on Thursday morning. That way we won’t have to pull a full 12 hour day of driving again.  Traci has an aching tail bone .

We will talk with you all soon and can’t wait to share more of our experience!

Hey, Lincoln has been an adventure today.  Tuesday was pretty much designated our college campus day.  We started on the East Campus where the actual law college is.  I received a tour of the college and then Professor Gardner, one of the law teachers who is LDS, met with us.  He told us a little about the area and just visited with us.  He informed us that there are 7 wards in the Lincoln area which makes up the one stake in this area.  It was a fun visit with him.  We had a lot of extra time, so we decided to just drive around and explore a bit of Lincoln.  We looked around and then found ourselves right in downtown and at the City Campus.  We walked around that campus for a while and found Memorial Stadium.  We have never been around a football stadium of that size.  We finished up at the Financial Aid office and then went to look into getting a parking pass for this coming school year.  I guess we were spoiled in a Utah school, but parking will require my first born and my left leg.  Later tonight we had a meeting with Bishop Christensen, one of the 7 bishops in the area.  He showed us on a map where to avoid living and some of the better places to live.  Especially refering to apartments in his ward boundaries.  It was a shorter visit than we first anticipated, but it was helpful.

Here are a few fun Lincoln/Nebraska facts: The stop lights are not set vertical, but they are placed horizontally as you will see in one of our pictures.  Next, there are signs all over town that say “Emergency Snow Route”.  Which just means that if it snows a lot, you can’t park on that street any more.  Which is what we are just naturally accustomed to in Utah and Wyoming.  Everyone is really friendly out here and a lot of things remind me of Michigan!

Tomorrow is Traci’s day at the hospital and doing a lot of appointments with housing!  Talk with you all soon!

So we made it to Lincoln just around the estamated 12 hours.  It took a tad longer based on our stops for lunch and the unexpected conversation with the Wyoming Highway Patrol officer.  If you would like a full story of why I was pulled over, feel free to ask, but I won’t post it all here today.

The drive didn’t seem as long as we thought.  We toughed it out well with just a little soreness by the end of the day.  It also didn’t help we lost an hour.  So far the city looks really nice to us.  We were so tired we didn’t go doing any other exploring today, but we will keep you all posted.

While driving across I-80 Traci and I played the license plate game.  We saw plates from 31 states and 4 Canadian providences.  We also saw and learned a little bit about Nebraska.  First, there is a giant archway over the interstate that is the Archway Monument.  You can see pictures in our galleries.  Also, we learned that Nebraska is the birth place of Kool Aid…”Oh Ya!”  There is a fun little fact for everyone.

So our plan is to have a few pictures and posts about each day.We will all talk with you soon!