The Clark Family: Minot, North Dakota

Like I said in my last post, we decided Minot had more to offer us and so we are going to stay here for Hayden's work. Minot is surprisingly beautiful. It is hilly, green, and has lots of trees. It is surprisingly humid here as well. We really like it here. Right now we are living in a hotel. BNSF pays for the hotel, which allows us to save up to buy a home. We are planning on staying in the hotel for a few months because rent here is ABSURD. Minot is close to where the oil boom is happening so the price of rent went up because the demand for it went up.($1500 for an apartment) Im surprisingly not bothered by living in a hotel. We don't have a kitchen, it is just an average hotel room. That has made things a bit interesting, but we have adapted. I cook most of our meals with the Crockpot. But we also use the microwave, griddle, and rice cooker. With all of those things, I have managed to make some GREAT meals. Doing dishes in the bathroom sink hasn't been an easy task, but it really hasn't been bad. Having such a small place has really cut down on my chores, so no complaints here :) Maybe someday I'll do a whole post about cooking in a hotel room. That sounds exciting right??

I spent a month in Minot while our friend Jessica stayed at our place in St. Marie. They were in the process of buying a house in Glasgow and needed a place to stay until they closed on their house. She watched our dog for the month and took care of our place. Sadly we had to give the dog away but luckily she went to a good family. We did not want to leave her in a kennel while we stayed in the hotel. Had we known that we would be living in a hotel for so long, we wouldn't have gotten a dog just yet. But we are glad for the time we did have with her. She taught me a lot about myself. (Good and bad)

After a month in Minot, I went back to St. Marie and packed up all of our stuff again and put it in storage there. Hayden wasn't able to get work off, so I had to do it alone. I stressed about the move for weeks. I lost a lot of sleep over it. But it ended up not being bad at all, and I was blessed again with help from the ward.