Life has been pretty good here in Tucson. Even though it’s
not where I wanted to live, we have been happy. Our apartment is nice and
large, and we have made lots of friends in our ward. It is much easier to make
friends when you have kids! I was worried about that part, since our last move
to Oregon was such a hard transition, even though I was excited about living
there. It is wonderful being so close to Adam’s sister Amber and her family and
having them in our ward. Lily loves her cousin Amelia, and they are so cute
together. Josh likes running around outside, even though there are only
sidewalks to play on and no grass. They don’t seem to mind much. And they sure love the swimming pool! I guess the
Lord knew this is where we need to be.
Joshua is 18 months and officially in nursery. He is very
sweet, but such a daredevil! He jumps off everything, runs away from me
squealing and laughing, climbs everything, and laughs even when he gets hurt! I
am a bit worried about what trouble he might get into when he gets older, but he is the most adorable thing in the
world right now. He has a little friend named Norah whom I watch during the
last two hours of church because her parents are busy with callings. He
apparently likes her because whenever we go to her house, he grins and says “Nori!
Nori!” In fact, when she went out of town, he missed her because every time we
drove by her neighborhood, he would get excited and say “Nori!” and would be a
little sad when we didn’t visit her.
He talks about spiders and volcanoes all the time, and has a serious sweet tooth. My favorite thing is that when he is in
his crib, instead of sucking his thumb for comfort, he sticks his finger in his
bellybutton and hums himself to sleep loudly with his pacifier in his mouth. It is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen! The only problem is that when I forget and put him in a onsie, he can't fall asleep for his nap. I can't we won't be doing footie pajamas with this guy!
Lily is growing up so much. She will be four soon, and she
is learning her letters and numbers. Even though she can’t identify numbers
larger than 4, she understands math really well. She can add, subtract, and even
multiply small numbers fairly accurately. Reading is not coming so quickly, but
she has almost two years until kindergarten, so I think it’s fine.
We are doing a preschool exchange with another family in our
ward. Their 3-year-old Violet (Norah’s sister, incidentally), comes over every
other Tuesday for 2 hours and we learn preschool things and do fun activities.
So far we have learned about Noah’s ark, rainbows, colors, the number four,
squares, and are planning to do the letter “G” with some Halloween activities
this week. The odd weeks, Lily goes to Violet’s house. They are so cute! I love
having a reason to plan a hands-on activity to do at home with Lily,
because otherwise, I rarely do that.
Lily wanted to do characters from Frozen for Halloween. So she is Elsa, and we made her a French braided
yarn wig to make it more authentic. It’s darling! Joshua is Olaf, and he loves
his costume. “Olas! Olas!” he exclaims whenever we put it on him. I am going to
dress up as Anna and Adam is going to be a half-baked version of Kristoff. I
ran out of motivation for his costume, so it is not as authentic looking. He doesn’t
care at all though.
Adam’s mom convinced us to go to Disneyland in January, and
Lily is SOOO excited to see all the “real princesses, who live at Disneyland!!”
I don’t even think she knows what a roller coaster is, she just knows that
Disneyland has castles and princesses. That’s all she cares about.
Something very cool happened here recently: they began
construction on the Tucson temple last week. It is a 13 minute drive from our
house! That is a huge improvement over
the 1 ½ - 2 hour drive we currently have, which equates to an all-day trip with
the kids, or a most-of-the-day trip without them. This is a huge blessing, and
I honestly can hardly wait for it to open!
Adam likes his job. He is extremely busy this semester, but
things should get better in January. He is teaching couple relationships,
advanced family theories, and dynamics of family relationships. He rides the
bus every day and is gone 11 hours each day. I thought that would be hard,
since it’s more than I am used to. But it’s not so bad. It just means he gets
less time with the kids in the evenings.
Adam and I went on an amazing date last week: we got to see the Broadway touring production of Phantom of the Opera. I have wanted to see this show for more than 20 years, since I was a little girl. My mom loved the music and we listened to it all the time. I know most of the words to every major song. Finally, after all that time, we got to go. It was fabulous! Truly, I was giddy with excitement probably the first half of the show. The set, music, costumes, and everything else were breathtaking! It was a really fun (and much needed!) night out.
Even though there are still a number of pictures to put on our walls, we are feeling mostly settled and at home here. It's not as close as I would have hoped to our family, and the summer heat was really difficult for me to deal with. But I feel that it's the right place. We are very blessed! We do miss everyone in Corvallis, as well as all our friends spread all over the country! Good thing for social media, email and texting! :) Please keep in touch!
