Arizona

Wow, I have so much to do to get caught up on here. I'll do that all soon, just wanted to let everyone know that we have moved.....again. It's been a crazy couple months since I found out we'd be moving, I guess I've been in denial. It was really hard moving out of Logan, and I finally felt at home in Farmington, and like we had friends there, and then we had to move again! There were lots of nights spent crying, and I didn't pack anything until the last min. David's job has brought us to Arizona. We're living in Surprise, a suburb of Phoenix. We've been here almost a week, and I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. It's looking like this will be more long term here, so less moving for us, hopefully. It's really hard moving away from home and friends and family with kids. The move down was not easy, and really an awful experience, details to come. But we're here and we've found a place and moved in. Luckily it's in a good neighborhood and a nice part of town. Homes are very affordable here, and that helps a ton.

Some differences I've noticed between Utah and Arizona:

1. The weather, I do like the weather right now, but I'm told I'll hate it pretty soon when it gets super hot.

2. It's super FLAT here! It's kind of bugging me how flat it is. All the roads are flat, you never go up or down, just the same level all the time. I'm not used to that at all.

3. It's considered good if you have yellow grass.

4. At the grocery store, someone called over the intercom "customer service to the booze isle please"! Never heard that before!

5. People get WAY into New Years here! I've never heard so much noise on New Years Eve in my life.

6. The homes are laid out kinda funny, most homes we looked at had a livingroom and family room, but the family room's are upstairs by the bedrooms and called "lofts", the layouts of homes are just odd here.

7. A lot of houses have their own driveway and then share a common driveway with other homes on their street, they call it a "pod", I don't really know the point of this, we have about the same amount of space as in Ut, just are further away from the street.

8. There are orange trees everywhere, definitely a plus.

9. People that work at stores are overly friendly and helpful, but it takes 4 times as long to get shopping done here because there are so many more people at the store.

10. Leaving Wal-Mart, I got rewarded by a police officer for returning my shopping cart to the stall. He gave me stickers and candy, lol.

It's not bad here, just not home. I know it's only been a week, so it kind of feels like we're on some sort of weird vacation, but I do miss my ward and family and friends. Hopefully we can adjust soon, we're getting the house organized and have met a couple of neighbors, I think it'll be better when we meet people in our ward. I'm trying to stay positive and look for the good in this, it's a major adjustment for sure though! Pics coming soon!