Utah

We've been here almost a month now....which is really hard to believe.....and I've yet to feel like I've had anything worthy of posting to a blog.

We're living in a tiny furnished downtown apartment......meaning we are still living out of our suitcases and eating with plastic forks. BUT.....we bought a really cute house and should be moving in by the end of the month. Which is super exciting, scary, new, stifling, freeing, all at the same time!

Our current tiny little kitchen.

We've been taking advantage of the downtown life. Spending lots of time at the big City Library. Visiting some aspect of Liberty Park almost daily. Riding the trax in the free zone on occasion. And best of all exploring everything by foot. And while the kids love walking to the grocery store, they're not super stoked on the walking home and having to carry something side of the trip.

The zoo is great. It feels significantly smaller than the Oregon Zoo, but there are a lot of cool animals that the kids had never seen before like red pandas, camels, ostriches, and piranha to name a few. They have a baby African elephant named Zuri, which helped ease the blow of leaving Baby Sam. And while the train ride could never compare to the Oregon Zoo train, it does go into some of the animals cages......which is pretty cool with a serious danger/thrill factor if you're under 6.

We haven't done much exploring of the canyons, mostly because I fear the inevitable whining of exhaustion and desperation to be carried that we will surely get from 2 little girls. And the fact that the one time Jeremy drove us up into the canyons......

1. I got super nauseous.

2. We started talking about how pretty it would be at some of the gorgeous lodges at Christmas and I started sobbing and missing Oregon.

3. When you reach the top the cliffs near the road are rather significant, which freaked me out and in turn freaked out the eldest child, causing mass hysteria in the backseat.

So you see, we have a few reasons to keep us from exploring the beauty of the wilderness here. But I suppose we need to just suck it up and get out there, because I'm sure it's amazing.

And just to say..... these mountains don't really look like mountains without the snow. That and they obviously found just the perfect angle to take all the common SLC pictures to make the mountains look really big. I was completely underwhelmed by them upon my arrival here. I guess my definition of a mountain is different than theirs. I've noticed they're pretty loose with the term "river" around here as well. I've yet to see an actual river, only small creeks with fancy river names. All that to say, if you want to be impressed by the beauty of this place then you should come visit in the winter....I think.....I've not actually seen it for myself.

They sunny weather, walkability, and abundance of fun things to do has been wonderful. We've been to the fair, the rodeo, the Greek Festival, the Farmer's market, the cutest little quilt store in the world, a pioneer museum and more...... We are starting to feel more comfortable, more like we are at home rather than on an extended vacation. I found a homeschool group to start connecting with and I'm hoping that will be an encouragement in the weeks to come.

I guess I haven't posted in a while because I knew it would just come out a rambling mass of boring details on the passing of our days here thus far. But I guess I needed to get all that rambling off my chest too.