The miscellany of settling in

All our things arrived the day after we closed. This is our fifth move and we did something different this time. We had the movers unpack our boxes. This was something I had happily avoided before- my control issues sent me into complete panic at the thought of someone else unloading all our goods. But our anxiety to get the boxes out of the house on the double overshadowed my need to micro manage. And, I'm happy to say, it was great. The house was complete chaos for a couple of days - they literally just emptied boxes out onto floors and countertops. But the whole process went so much faster.

Those first weeks were busy for me. We bought new furniture and window treatments. I spent a chunk of each day organizing and organizing. Eden was always at my side. She is a good little helper.

Grace is still pretty crazy for her rainbow loom. She loves finding new patterns on the youtube channel.

We had a solid month of daily blowouts from this little guy. Everyday. Blowout city. The likes of which I have never before seen. He is a squirmer too and has the uncanny ability of getting his mess EVERYWHERE when being changed. Also, notice my nice shiny face? Yep. Houston humidity isn't doing much for me there! The blowouts have died down, thank heavens. My shiny face, not so much.

Jeffers started crawling right as we were leaving Phoenix. He is a busy baby. He loves cruising around in his walker too, when Eden isn't sitting in it.

The community where we live boasts a 'country setting'. It has lamp posts, no sidewalks, and nine lakes that are stocked for catch and release fishing. We took lots of evening walks before the summer heat set in.

This poor girl falls and skins her knees just about every time we leave the house. And if I don't have bandaids... the tears!

Eden wore this headlamp for days on end. It is her thinking cap, and she needed it for all the big ideas she would come up with throughout the day. It is very handy.

This is Grace and Grant on their first day at their new school. Grace was thrilled. Poor Grant had a rough time at first. But they both got great teachers and had a very positive experience transitioning. They love riding the bus. ( I LOVE IT TOO!) And we are grateful to be zoned to such a fabulous school.

Eden was a little happy for them to go back to school as well... This is her favorite shirt, by the way. Even now when it is hotter than hot and 60%+ humidity she still tries to wear it.

A little snap of me and my number 1 girl. This was taken the night of the LDS women's meeting. We went to Hobby Lobby, then to get burgers, and then on to the Stake Center. I loved sharing that evening with her. She is a great date!

Oh, this baby. I am in so much trouble.

Speaking of trouble... Our neighborhood is still being built out. We had a construction site across the street for the first several weeks. This taco truck would show up outside our front door between 10:30 and 11:00 every morning. EVERY MORNING. No person should have to endure that kind of temptation. This house is now completed and the workers have moved down the street. I still hear the siren call of the taco truck's horn every morning...

My children and husband do not feel the need to wear shoes outside. We have an especially long driveway now. I throw away socks every time I do laundry. It is very annoying.

A witch and her cat.

This was a common scene everyday after school.

I got serious about getting my running milage back up. Every Saturday has been spent running through our new community. It sure is lovely here. The humidity ended up being good conditioning. Humidity really is not my favorite thing, I tell ya.

This girl is all Texas!

One of the favorite spots in our house for everyone!

A few days in San Antonio

We spent a few days in San Antonio for the last leg of our trip. It is such a beautiful city. Our hotel was in walking distance of the Alamo. It was a chilly, windy day. But we enjoyed our tour of this historic place.

We also took a boat tour of the river walk. Gracie took most of these pictures.

And finally, we spent some time at Sea World. We let the children sit in the splash zones and took them on all the roller coasters they were big enough for.

We also spent an hour cooling our heels in an IMAX theater. Not a bad spring break! We went straight from our San Antonio hotel to the closing of our new home. The kiddos were sufficiently worn out by the time we made it to Cypress.

In our NP Passports: Carlsbad Caverns

Papa Ray told us, and we are glad we listened, that we simply had to make the detour necessary to visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park. When the house got packed, I was sure to keep out pants and light jackets for everyone. Topside, the terrain around the park is extremely unassuming. There are rolling hills splotchily covered in desert scrub brush. At the top of one of these hills sits a building and a sprawling parking lot. It is difficult to imagine the contrasting terrain that lies beneath. 

The kids loved the elevator ride that took us down, down, down, 30 floors to the entrance of the cavern trails. We wandered around the trail loops and enjoyed the cool, damp dimness. Jeffers took a nap in his carrier. Planet Earth is so amazing. 

Bioshpere 2

Our second stop was a little jaunt out of Tucson to take a tour of Biosphere 2. It was built in the 80's as a completely self contained environment with 5 different ecosystems. Half a dozen scientist locked themselves in and lived off the food they could grow etc. for 2 years. The project had been privately bank rolled and part way through its second mission, the owners decided to turn it into a different kind of research facility. It is now used by a university and they give guided tours.

For some reason, these are the only pictures I can find. I know we took a lot. They may have fallen victim to our computer difficulties earlier. If they are the only casualties, I will count my blessings. The tour is about 2 hours of walking (no stroller access) and the kids all did super great. The sic-fi lover in me was positively giddy. It was fascinating to walk through the different ecosystems and to hear about how the scientists innovated their way through anticipated and unforeseen problems.

In Our NP Passports: Saguaro National Park

We shipped Cori's car and chose to make the drive to Texas. We moved over the kids' spring break and tried to make it up to them by planning a few stops along the way. The first two were not very far from Phoenix. They are places we had been curious to visit and just never got around to. First stop was Saguaro National Park. We purchased a NP Passport for Jeffers and he got his first stamp.

(I'm on instagram again - hence the filters and borders. Because, for some reason my unfiltered pictures just don't seem to belong on Instagram...)

Late February and early March are the lovely spring months in the Arizona dessert. All the lady slippers were in bloom. For probably about 3/4 of the year, these plants just look like dead, thorny branches sticking out of the earth. But when they are blooming they are so pretty!

We spent a little time in the visitor center and then drove a dirt trail loop to see all the cacti. The video we watched in the center talked about the saguaro cactus' place in the dessert ecosystem and then focussed primarily on how Native American's regard the saguaro. The Hohokam called them the 'people of the mountain'. After driving amongst them for a while, Cori and I commented on how it felt like driving through a crowd. Old people, young people, families of people all doing different things. Ancient plants that have been thriving in the dessert for centuries. It was quiet and beautiful.

Leaving Phoenix

So, it would seem I have my computer issues sorted out. At least for now. As the Apple people worked on it and discussed it, the word 'vintage' kept flying around. I asked, and indeed, they were not beating around the bush. Our old desk top is just that. OLD. But after some professional care, it is going to keep getting the job done, so I'm not replacing quite yet.

TIME TO CATCH UP

Leaving Phoenix was heartbreaking for us. Moving is always hard. But this was the hardest we have faced. I cried. A lot. We packed a bunch into our final weeks.

 This was taken the evening of our final fast sunday dinner. For nearly 4 years we spent almost every fast sunday dinner with these two families. They lived around the corner from us, and we all had 4 kids each who were roughly the same ages. The food was always good. The kids always looked forward to running wild with one another. And the grownups were always great company. We are missing a dad and child in this photo, but even with a couple absent, we made a formidable crowd!

We had a few final campfires in the yard. 

Grant spent as much time as he could with his friend Oliver. Oli and Grant were best buddies in their kindergarten class. We found out half way through the school year that Oli lived down the street from us (like, six houses...). 

The Gs enjoyed one last piano lesson with Miss Jannet. She was such a wonderful piano teacher for them. She held high expectations and was always so encouraging. Her patience is mind boggling. And I don't know that I will ever again enjoy the luxury of having a piano teacher who comes to our house. We miss her!

Mindy and Becky organized an open house for the ward to say goodbye. We appreciated this SO MUCH. It is overwhelming to try and get around to everyone. I was a mess during church those last few Sundays. The open house was a perfect way to bid a fond and happy farewell to our ward family. In this photo, the kids are getting a final squeeze from their favorite babysitter, Kyra. Kyra would beat Grant at any game on the Wii, bring the best movies to watch, get everyone in bed on time, and clean the kitchen up. She even kept babysitting for us after she had to deal with a puky Grant on one occasion. She was EVERYBODY's favorite!

Grant got to play a couple of weeks worth of flag football. As usual, he was incandescently happy. That smile is always on his face if he can run and hold/kick/throw/bounce a ball. His first game was on our very last night. Football has such a fun atmosphere to it. Maybe he will try it again. In all honesty though, we will probably try and steer him towards soccer and basketball. (If I had my way he would just play something safe like golf!)

On their last day at Adams, I was at the school for a while getting their withdrawal paperwork sorted. We snapped a picture with Mr. Tude (the tortoise) on our way out to the car. In the weeks that followed, they got texts and pictures from their friends. They got to face time with Makayla and Will. And they got their yearbooks mailed to them. When we looked through their yearbooks, they had been signed by their old classmates. Our Phoenix family is still being good to us!

breath of fresh air

We have been in our new home for a month now. The boxes are gone and we are settling in quickly, I am grateful and happy to say. There is still a sizable list of things to get done around here. But life is starting to feel almost normal for the first time in a few months. There are many pictures to share and developments to report. Alas, I am having computer difficulty which is making it challenging to get things posted. My troubles stem from the fact that every digital picture we have ever taken is currently stored on my hard drive- a number stretching close to 30,000. It is a taxing amount of information to keep organized and our lovely desktop, now 5 years old, struggles with the load of it all. Loading, processing, and sharing photos is at times impossible and at best takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to accomplish. I know I need to move the photos to an external drive, but do not wish to merely back them up. And apparently it takes 15 complicated steps and a degree in computer engineering to export photos from iPhoto to an external hard drive in a universal JPEG format that could then be read by any other computer. (Or maybe there is something I am missing? Suggestions welcomed.) We are getting it worked out and Cori managed to get some pictures from this last weekend loaded. Behold, Jeffery in the blue bonnets. This boy! I am not kidding around. I could bury my face in his baby body all day long. Oh, and the flowers around here are amazing too.