Getting Settled

It's been a little over a month since we arrived here in Arizona. The first two weeks were pretty crazy, but with a lot of hard work, we managed to unpack all the boxes, and got all the basics put away. After that, I decided to reward myself by making the decision NOT to decorate, or put anything up on the walls for a few weeks. I wanted to have some time to explore our new city, spend some real quality time with my kids and husband, and just enjoy NOT thinking about anything moving-related. (Side-note..it's probably a good thing that I'm sitting down to write this post a couple weeks AFTER we finished unpacking..I did not sound this upbeat and chipper in the middle of it. And I don't want to send toooo much whining out into the void)

During our month of separation, Wesley spent a lot of time touring apartments and homes that were within 10 miles of his office in Scottsdale. The office is in a very nice part of town, and by some sort of miracle/divine intervention, Wes was able to find an awesome deal for a really great little place less than 2 miles from work! I LOVE it. The apartment layout is so clever--I found that I had enough space for all our junk, decent room shapes to arrange the furniture, and excess space in the closets. Best of all, it's on the ground floor--no more hiking up 3 flights of stairs with kids and groceries!!! It's close to lot's of great shopping (H&M 2 minutes away!!!) and the apartment complex has an amazing pool. And thank goodness for that...because holy moly is it HOT here.

We learned pretty fast that its WAY too hot to run the oven in the afternoon, so we grill outdoors several times a week. Nowadays it's too hot to go out and grill as a family, but the first week or 2 we were here, it was still below 100 degrees outside, and we spent some fun evenings winding down at this little cabana by our house :)

She is my ever happy and smiley girl!!!!

There are splash pads in almost every shopping center around here! We never leave the house without Jake's swimsuit.

This little sweet shop is very strategically located right next to the splash pad at Scottsdale Quarter. (which is about 30 seconds from our apartment)...basically we can't avoid it if we wanna let Jake play there. He loves going in and picking a couple tasty treats whenever he gets the chance :)

ohhh, the pool.

This pool will be the focal point of most of my pictures this summer..because we spend most of our spare time here, trying to beat the heat.

Also, Jake LOVES playing with Sawyer!!!! I am so sad that he can't play with his Utah friends all the time anymore, but it makes me happy to see him developing such a fun new relationship. These boys LOVE each other.

Mia (luckily) loves the water!!! She is so daring, and constantly tries to dive out of my arms and into the water when we are swimming.

Intense heat+swimming=very worn out little boy.

This is fairly typical nowadays.

Wesley has a few very good friends from back in his Mission days that live in Phoenix. He has loved being able to hang out with them, and I've had fun getting to know them better. Jake also loves all the attention he gets :)

Jess and I tried to take some"grandkids" pictures for my dad for Father's Day...it didn't go very well..but I thought they were funny. Here are a few.

After about 5 minutes, Jess and I were sweating, the boys had run away, and Violet was crying. As usual, Mia was left in the dust, still ready to pose. (6 months is such an easy picture taking age)

So those pictures are all from the first couple weeks.. Sydney graduated from BYU in mid-June and flew down for a celebratory week with Jess and I. But I will save that for the next post because we took a ton of blog worthy photos, and I need to wrap this up for tonight :)

Also--as of this past week, Jake may or may not be officially potty trained...

stay tuned!!! ;)