Moving to Arizona

Daniel, Connor and I have moved to Arizona!!

We started driving at 1 am, Tuesday January 7th. We wanted to do as much of the drive as we could while Connor was sleeping. Daniel and I switched off driving about every 2 hours. By 8 am, Connor was ready to wake up, and was sick of being in his car seat, so we stopped, fed him, and changed his diaper. Before that, when he woke up I bottle fed him milk that I had pumped the day before.

We got to our apartments at 10 am and signed our contract. Our apartment is beautiful! We are so happy with it! 9 foot ceilings, new carpet, washer and dryer, huge rooms, 2 bedrooms 2 bathrooms, both bedrooms have walk in closets, it's a grown up apartment :)

Frodo had also been in our car for 9 hours without food or going to the bathroom (Frodo hates nature, so he wont go to the bathroom if we just let him out of the car into the bushes). So after getting into our apartment we got Frodo some kitty litter. Then we went out to eat and drove around, exploring what's around us. We live right off a main road, which is perfect because we don't hear any of the noise, but we're really close to everything, like Costco, Target, Ross, Walmart and lots of other places. Then we were really tired, so we took a nap. Around 4 or 5 Jim and Marilyn (Daniel's parents) arrived in Peoria in the truck and trailer and all of our stuff. We all went over to Bill and Mindy's house (Bill is Daniel's brother) for dinner. After dinner we spent two hours with 9 people unloading the truck and trailer, and carrying it up to our third floor apartment. Connor slept the whole time, which was really nice. By the end of the two hours, we were exhausted, our apartment was a mess, but all of our stuff was moved in. We made sure that our bed was set up so that we had a place to sleep that night.

Because Connor was asleep during the move in, we didn't put anything in his room but his crib, so the next morning when Connor woke up, I started moving stuff into his room, which helped de- clutter our living room. In the early afternoon, Jim, Marilyn, Bill and Mindy came over to help us unpack and to take care of Connor. We had spent the morning trying to do it on our own, but wow it's hard to up pack while holding a baby. When everyone came over, they also brought a day bed, trundle bed two mattresses and bedding which Mindy's mom had given us. We are so grateful to Mindy's mom, and so excited to have those beds in Connor's room for guests to use instead of having to sleep on the couch or on an air mattress. We all spent about 4 hours unpacking and kind of organizing the apartment. At 5 Bill and Mindy invited us over for dinner. After dinner we spent a few more hours cleaning and organizing.

Thursday was Marilyn's 70th birthday! Jim and Marilyn came over in the morning to give Daniel a father's blessing. It was such a sweet and powerful blessing and it brought so much comfort to both of us. After the blessing, we all went out together to run some errands and to eat some lunch. We had to go buy the supplies for our kitty litter window door. We have decided to put Frodo's kitty litter on the porch so that our apartment doesn't smell like kitty litter all the time, but because of that we have to have a way for him to get out there when ever he wants to. We have a door that swings open and closed, so we can't put a kitty door their, so we decided to put a kitty door in the sliding glass window. We opened the window enough to fit the kitty door in, and fitted a big piece of foam above the door to keep out the heat and in the air conditioning. That evening, Bill and Mindy invited us to their house for dinner again, and we brought a cake to celebrate Marilyn's birthday.

Friday morning, Connor woke us up at 630 in the morning. We decided to watch a movie because we didn't really want to keep unpacking. At 730 Bill called us, and told us that someone was getting rid of everything in their house, and that we could come and pick up what ever we wanted. We ended up getting a tv stand, night stands for our bed, decorations, patio furniture, kitchen chairs, a comfy chair for Daniel, and a new tv! We feel so blessed to have received so much stuff! We spent the evening organizing our apartment.

Now we just have a few things to clean up, and our apartment will be ready for guests and pictures :)

The weather is so nice here that I forget that it's still winter up in Utah. We still have to wear a light jacket and have blankets on our bed, but I think it will warm up just in time for Connor to stop being swaddled at night, which will be great because I won't have to worry about him getting too cold at night. The next worry will be him getting too warm.

We are so happy here, and are glad that we get one more week of vacation before work starts.

Jessica