Andy's White Coat Ceremony

Andy had his white coat ceremony on Monday, so this last weekend, we had some more visitors come! My mom came Wednesday, and on Saturday morning, Linn and Evan came! We decided to get out of the heat, so we went to the dollar theatres and saw How to Train Your Dragon. After that, we went and checked out the temple, and then we went to Bahama Buck's for some shaved ice! Yummy. We introduced them to a game that the Murph's showed us called Tripoly (thank you Murph's for the game, by the way! Love it!) and spent the rest of the night playing it. Linn and Evan won. Beginner's luck :) We started another game of Tripoly on Sunday morning and kept playing all day! Mom won that time. Dad flew into town on Sunday night. On Monday, Andy had to go to school for half a day, so we hung out until he was done, and then we went to the white coat ceremony.

After his ceremony, we went for a yummy dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, and played games back at the apartment! What a great weekend! We were so excited to see our parents and we're grateful that they came down! Thank you!

A Visitor!

Andy started school last Monday, and after two days of orientation, they had an outing to Flagstaff for a couple of days. I wasn't thrilled about the idea of being completely alone for three days, so Mom came to the rescue and came to visit me! She came in on Wednesday night, and Thursday we celebrated her birthday! We went to the temple, and then we went to the Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall. It took us most of the day to check out the mall, and then we went to the Cheesecake Factory for her birthday dinner. When we got home, we did pedicures, played games, and watched a movie. A perfect girl's day! We did a lot of driving around to check out Mesa, which was nice. Mom said that she wanted to get lost while she was here. We got turned around a few times, but she said that it didn't count as getting lost. We tried, though! She also said that she wanted to see if we really could fry an egg on the asphault. We didn't get the chance to do it on the hottest day she was here (116 degrees) but we tried when it was about 110 and it didn't work. It sounds like it needs to be 120 to have that work...I don't know that I care to have that day come. If it does, though, I will try again! Thanks for a great girl's trip, Mom! And Happy Birthday! Love you!

Our First Week in Arizona

The last half of our move-in crew left bright and early Monday morning, and Andy and I were left on our own! We began trying to tackle our inordinate amount of boxes to try and get organized. We have made some great progress this week! We have made a couple of trips to Ikea and Target to try and make our apartment feel more like home, and I think that we have done a pretty good job! We have also been around town to check things out. We have a pretty good fitness center and some pools (we just got working keys to the pools yesterday, so that will be fun!) and some good restaurants around. We made a goal of doing one date night per week, even if it's at home, to spend some time together, and for our first date we went and checked out a movie theater that is close and saw Toy Story 3, then went to a new restaurant for dinner. We'll have to look around for some different restaurants--I don't think we'll be frequenting the one we went to. We also tried playing some games with just the two of us--we have tried Nertz and Canasta so far. I think that Canasta was made for more than two people, because it was the greatest whooping that I have ever received at the hands of Andy with a score of 5945 to 1260. Wow. Nertz was pretty good, though, but a lot slower than with more people. We'll have to keep trying things out. Suggestions are welcome :) Arizona is good-I think that we are adjusting to the heat ok, we just don't go outside super often. It's crazy how warm it has been. It was 107 yesterday when we drove to Ikea, and I felt like I started sweating right when I walked out the door. Ikea has misters outside the building, and those were lovely. The heat is like a wall when you walk outside, and it's going to get hotter! Goodness. That said, we have an air-mattress thanks to Evan and Linn, and a futon thanks to Alan and Whitney, so if you have a hankering for the heat, feel free to give us a call!

The Big Move!

We made the big move this last weekend! Zo and Jen buddy got married, and we were so excited that we were able to be there for the festivities before we took off! We did most of our packing on Thursday with the help of Linn, Dawna, Janet, Brig and Keith, and a couple of helpful neighbors from the court. We got the U-Haul all packed up and headed off to Zo and Jen's wedding reception. On Friday morning, Linn and Dawna came to help us clean up the apartment so we could take off right after the wedding. Andy and I hurried down to the temple for the wedding, and while Andy stayed for pictures, I ran back up to the apartment for our check-out appointment (after a few tears). Andy came home after the pictures and we were off..for about five minutes. We hadn't made it to the freeway yet, and the check engine light went on in the rental truck. Luckily, it turned off after Andy was on hold for about 20 minutes with Budget and we didn't have any more problems.

We drove down to St. George to meet up with my family and to stay for the night. Saturday, I drove ahead of Andy who was manning the U-Haul so we could be to the complex to sign the lease in time. It was a good thing, too, because that thing doesn't drive very fast, even with Andy behind the wheel! That, and he had a lovely detour through Zion's National Park. Andy claims he was just following the GPS, but I think he just wanted to feel important and make everyone wait while they shut down the tunnel so he could drive down the middle and not scrape the top with the truck. And with those winding roads I'm glad he was driving and not me.

My mom and dad, Bear, and McCall helped to get our cars unloaded and we were able to go and get some groceries and drinks before the second crew (Evan and Linn, Dawna, Andy, and Addi and the boys) arrived. We unloaded the moving van in about 2 hours and our wonderful moving crew had us out of a lot of our boxes by dinnertime! We had some tasty, tasty Cafe Rio for dinner (very excited they have one down here) and crashed! It only took the turning on the AC overnight to get our apartment down to a nice temperature. We could not have done it without our amazing helpers! Thank you so much for taking a whole weekend to come down and help us! We love you guys!