Holiday, Anniversary, and Weather

The last few weeks I've remained busy with the day to day tasks of being a wife and a mother, and all the additional things required to get settled into a new home. Things are coming together and I am hoping to get a good number of our pictures hung this weekend. Then it should really feel like home...

(for those of you who don't know - this is the Oryx David shot 2 years ago)

To update on the fun things that have happened since my last entry:

We celebrated the 4th at Veteran's Memorial Park in Sierra Vista. It is a beautiful park with lots of things for the kids to play on (the good ol' stuff like METAL slides, merry go rounds, monkey bars...). I imagine that at least half of the town was there, but the park is big enough that you didn't feel it was that crowded. The kids had a great time playing, and loved the fireworks display (David and I were impressed too).

David and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary last Saturday. We had a wonderful dinner (the kids were angels), but had to forego the candlelight because Tristan kept wanting to see the "fire". We then went shopping at Lowes, Wal Mart, and Target - how's that for romance???

Here are some pictures of our new home, and the views we have from it. It is gorgeous! The weather here is just amazing - of course in other areas of the country you'd look at some of the clouds and say "get to shelter NOW!"

Views from: our backyard (left and center) and our front yard

Pictures of one of the storms that rolled through... it's monsoon season.

The "dry" creek bed that runs behind our house

Tristan standing out in the rain and saying "Mommy, rain!"

Grace has been all about helping these days...


Our little golfer

Helping Mommy in the kitchen Helping Daddy paint her bookshelf

Now that things are getting settled, I will make a more vigilant effort to get back to my weekly posts so I don't get so long winded...

Arizona

We arrived in our new home state on Thursday and finally got our things delivered on Monday. It's a good thing that David had brought some essentials (like cookware and and air mattress) when he came out earlier!

Prior to leaving El Paso, we celebrated Tristan's 2nd birthday at the Incredible Pizza Company. The kids loved it - all the pizza and pasta you can eat, games, and just a kid friendly atmosphere where they could do as they pleased and not get in trouble for it.

The next day the movers came and packed up all our things and loaded them onto the truck. The kids had gone to daycare that day and had a little party with their friends to say goodbye. They did surprisingly well when they came home to a nearly empty house. David and I had set some things aside to take with us, and explained to them that the movers would bring the rest of their things on the truck.

We then spent 2 nights with friends while we packed up the rest of our things and got the house cleaned.

The kids did well on the trip here and David and I got to unload their mattresses in a major downpour when we arrived (it's monsoon season). We are busy unpacking boxes and trying to find a place for everything. We all really like our new home and are anxious to get all of our personal touches into it. I'll post pictures as soon as everything comes together (as together as it can get...).