Dog scolding

This is what happens when you cheat on a dog...

Exploring Phoenix

A couple weeks ago, Scott and I finally planned a day to get out and explore "the valley". We are on the east side of the valley so we went downtown and to the west side. To get from the farthest side of the valley to the other side takes anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes. I was amazed at how long it took us to drive all around. "The Valley" is HUGE! We started with downtown and uptown. There are actually 2 districts of Phoenix. You have downtown which is the business and sports district and you have uptown that's the arts district.   

In the middle of downtown is this old Victorian home. It's the only home of it's kind still in existence in Phoenix. We didn't take a tour. It was expensive and lasted an hour. I'm not sure what you'd see in this house during a full hour. But the outside is beautiful and I'm sure one day we'll do the tour just to say we did.

After exploring downtown and uptown, we headed to the west side which is Glendale and Peoria. We stopped by the University of Phoenix Stadium where the Arizona Cardinals play. We will attend a game while living here. Probably a Monday night football game next year. It just wasn't in the budget this year.

After that we drove 30 minutes north, to the north end of Phoenix to see where the Phoenix Temple is being built. I was surprised at how small it was but it's still going to be an amazing structure, and blessing to those members in that area, so they don't have to travel 90 minutes to the Mesa Temple.

 As we were headed back to the freeway we stopped in this nice neighborhood in Glendale. Another gorgeous neighborhood. But I much prefer the southeastern portion of the valley.

We pulled over to take some pictures and the goose and ducks hurried to us, anticipating a treat. I want a duck.

 At the end of our day we went to the local outdoor mall, which was great. They even advertised that they have snow every night at 7pm the weeks before Christmas, so I'm excited to go in my shorts and short sleeve shirt to witness that. ;) 

Finally we finished our night with going to Bass Pro Shop. I was pretty tired and I can only take so much of outdoor stores so we put a time limit on how long we'd spend in there. Luckily for Scott will live about a mile away from it so he can go and hang out whenever he wants... while I do other things and without his wallet. :)

 And of course we had to see the fish.

There is still so much to explore here and we are loving the opportunities and variety of activities we can do.

Home Sweet Home

 Welcome to our home! During this tour you will get to see the before and after pics of our cozy apartment. The first pictures you will see are pictures taken in the days after arriving here. I'm so glad we are passed that point. Moving is not the funnest thing. But I'm thankful that the next time we move will be a lot easier. 

This is what you would see if you were walking in our front door. This is part of our kitchen and the dining area, with the master bedroom in the background.

Our dining room at the opposite angle.

 This is our living room.

Our bedroom with a very confused dog.

The hallway leading into the extra bedroom. 

The extra bedroom.

 The view from the patio, looking at the living room, dining room and kitchen.

And now to the finished product. It only took us 2 months to post.
Our living room.

 The wall is meant to be left without pictures so we can use the projector. It works out nicely.

The dining area, with a much less confused dog.

The master bath.

The laundry room. Which is right off of the kitchen. A lot of apartments have the laundry in a storage closet off the patio. I'm really glad ours is inside. 

The kitchen.

The master bedroom.

We left out the pictures of the extra bathroom and and extra bedroom. The bedroom is used as a storage room for right now. So it's got boxes and random stuff everywhere, along with our food storage. It's kind of messy. The other bathroom is mainly used for Cosmo's bath time, to give him baths so it is bare and has no shower curtain or anything. We'll eventually make it more presentable if we get some visitors. 

We are loving the smaller space. It's a lot easier to keep clean and everything isn't spread out. It's a nice area and a nice complex. We feel so lucky to be here!

5

Technically 5 years and 16 days. That is how long I've been Mrs. Westwood. I can't believe how the time has gone by. It seems to have flown. But there are so many great memories and moments we've shared over the last 5 years. We are definitely not where we thought we would be after 5 years of marriage. But we are so grateful for the journeys we've taken, and the people we've been privileged to meet. It's been a great 5 years and I'm so excited to see what our next unplanned journey will be. 

We had a fabulous anniversary. We spent the day together which was awesome. We explored Gilbert and Chandler and ended with some sushi. Here are some pictures from the day. 

The Gilbert Temple. We have heard that even though the Mesa Temple is only 3 miles away, we will probably be in the Gilbert Temple district which is about 20 miles away. Either way is fine, we are just so grateful to have a temple so close!  It is on the corner of a main intersection which is interesting.

This is a neighborhood in Gilbert that we decided to stop and see. Everyone has a boat on their back dock. I really want to live here but alas, I probably never will. A girl can always dream....

 And finally dinner. It was oh so yummy!

And this is what we look like after 5 years of marriage.

 

So happy together. 

Cosmo's latest trick

This is for my parents so they can see Cosmo's latest trick. It's the last trick that Scott does. We filmed this the first day we tried it with him. He can sniff the hands and picks which hand has the treat. And for the record they were very small pieces of a treat. He's so fun! We just love him!(Don't mind my obnoxious voice at the end, yes that's how I talk to him).

30

A long time ago (last summer), Scott and I turned 30. I make a point of not thinking about it but it is what it is. I wish I was still in my 20's. Here are some pictures that I never posted because it was still too fresh and we were busy...ya know, moving. But for documenting sake it has made it to the blog. 

 Turning 30 didn't phase Scott, he took it like a champ. This is what you have to do when you go to a Mexican restaurant in a small town on your birthday, in order to get your free fried ice cream. Scott is always a good sport. We were able to spend his birthday at his grandparent's cabin with his parents.  

Then came my birthday. We celebrated in SLC. We were able to spend some time with my dad's side of the family which was fun and then Scott and I along with my parents went and saw "Wicked". It was spectacular of course and the perfect thing to do on my birthday weekend. 

We had to pry ourselves away from the Olympics for a few minutes to blow out candles. 

 Birthdays are always a group ordeal with my family. It's always fun to share.

 That's all... carry on.

The Drive

Yep, still haven't posted pictures of our place. But let's be realistic, only 3 people still read my blog anymore so I can handle letting 3 people down. Maybe if there was a 4th, I would have gotten them up sooner. We are unpacked, it's just a matter of making things presentable for pictures. I can guarantee that the pictures won't all be taken on the same day. My entire apartment completely straightened and clean all at the same time? Like I'd let that happen.

So since pictures aren't available yet, I'll tell you 3 about our journey here. And oh was it a journey. The 2 days before we left, my parents came down to help us pack and clean. Seriously we couldn't have done it without them, our ward and Grady. The previous weekend Scott's sweet brother and kids came and helped us clean as well. But the day before we left we really got down to business. We had a neighbor stop by and help as well which was nice, as well as my visiting teachers who stopped by with dinner for my parents and us. My dad spent 3 hours scrubbing my oven. My mom cleaned bathrooms, the fridge, among other things, even with a wounded foot. So we scrubbed and scrubbed and finished packing the truck (just thinking about it all makes me so glad that it's all over with). My parents stayed until about 10 and then we said our goodbyes and they left. The cutest thing my dad said when he was saying goodbye was that now he knew how his parents felt when he moved his family from California to Utah. It was super cute.

After doing a few other things, we finally made it to bed. And by bed I mean the air mattress and sleeping bag on the living room floor. We were both beyond exhausted and the plan was to be up by 4:30 so we could be on the road no later than 6. We had calculated how long we thought it would take us to get there, knowing that we had to be to the apartment by 6 in order to get our keys. We planned an extra 90 minutes into that just in case we had any trouble. The night was way more eventful that we had planned. Scott was out like a light but of course my mind was reeling with everything that I needed to get done in the morning. I finally fell into a fitful sleep despite Cosmo who was totally weirded out by sleeping in the living room. The night was anything but peaceful. It all started when sometime during the night our doorbell rang. You might think this odd and it definitely was for the middle of the night but we have a wireless doorbell, and unfortunately there are other neighbors in the neighborhood that have the same doorbell so if someone rings our doorbell their chime goes off along with ours and vice versa. Of course my initial reaction was panic. Everything we owned was sitting in a Penske truck and 2 vehicles outside and so I wondered if someone was trying to distract us to steal our stuff (of course it wasn't rational thinking but I was exhausted). Scott got up and no one was outside. We fitfully went back to sleep only to be woken up by the chirping of our smoke detector. This is one of Cosmo's least favorite sounds so he was shaking and can't sleep because he's so scared. And I'm getting really mad because I just want to sleep. I don't do well driving on extended trips and I had no option to switch drivers. Scott took off the alarm and we went back to sleep, only to be awoken 2 more times by our doorbell. Of course all of this had to happen our last night in that house. I was so creeped out. Truth be told, the previous owner of that house that lived there for 40 years had died in that living room (didn't know that til about 2 months before we moved). I had never felt any presence there but of course the thought going through my mind was that it was Howard playing tricks on us. After finally getting some sleep, we got up at 4:45 and finished up things around the house so that we could go. Our neighbor Grady came over since he was up and said goodbye again (he had said goodbye the night before as well). This was a super hard goodbye. Grady later told us it was as hard as saying goodbye to his own kids. I got emotional, Grady got emotional, Scott held it together. But after driving away at 6:30 with the horizon starting to glow on Price America, I couldn't help but cry.

That first hour drive to Green River was a booger. I was so exhausted, and I had to keep snacking on stuff to keep myself awake. We stopped in Green River for breakfast and that was good to get my body awake. We had all of our stops planned since we didn't know previously how far apart each town was and we were basically traveling through desert. The rest of the drive both of us were surprisingly awake. We each had a book on our iPod's to keep us entertained and it really made the time go by a lot more quickly. At our halfway point we were about an hour behind schedule. The Penske truck was not only completely full and heavy but it was hauling Scott's Pathfinder, that was completely full, on a trailer. So it was not going very fast. Of course panic started to set in for me, the planner. The Elder's Quorum in our new ward was planning on meeting us at our apartment at 6, and the leasing office closed at 6. With the way things were going, there was no way we were going to make it on time. The leasing office didn't open again until 10 the next morning and that is the time we had to have the Penske truck back by. Scott made some phone calls and luckily the apartment complex was able to make arrangements for the emergency maintenance guy to come and give us our key when we got there. And the Elder's Quorum were able to come at 7:30 instead. The rest of the drive went smoothly.

As for Cosmo, he was such a trooper! We were blessed with a really pleasant day with temperatures in the 80's rather than the 90's and 100's like we thought it would be. He didn't sleep much in the car but he was really relaxed the majority of the time. He wouldn't do his business until we were 12 hours into the journey and even then we had to prod him to, and then he wanted to go right back to his bed in the car. He didn't like the noises around him.

I've only cried 3 times since being here (shocker for me), and one of them was when we pulled into the valley. Our long anticipated journey was almost over... or was about to begin, depending on how you look at it. After 14 long hours, we arrived and were soon greeted with 95 degrees and close to 100% humidity even though it was dark already. Along with that hot hot weather we were met by Scott's cousin and kids, who live here, along with men and young men from our new ward. Honestly we couldn't have done it without them. It took an hour to unload with about 10-12 people. It would have taken Scott and I all night to do it ourselves. We are so grateful for their service to strangers. Especially since all of them were drenched in sweat by the end, including myself who was just lugging around a very confused 16 lb. dog.

Scott and I have talked about that drive and honestly we both believe in divine intervention that made everything fall into place. Just the fact that we were so awake and alert was a miracle in and of itself. Plus Cosmo didn't get sick from the stressful situation which was a miracle for him.

After a month, we are still so grateful to be here and love getting to explore a new place and meet new people. More to come later. 

We're here!

We are officially Arizona residents. It's been a crazy 2 weeks since we first arrived in our new home. We've had to acclimate to everything, and try and find where everything is located. It's still been wicked hot! Most days it's been around 105 and at about 10 at night it gets down to 92. Sometimes we get into the 80's during the night. Thank goodness for AC! I'm just trying not to think about the electricity bill that I know will be coming.

We're still working on unpacking. But we are almost there! It's been quite the process coming from a 2000 sq. ft. house to a 1100 sq. ft. apartment and trying to figure out how to store everything. Let's just say that as of right now our guest bedroom is used as a storage room. It is nice however to have everything we own on one level.

We are loving it so far! I think we've both been too busy to miss Price. The other night we were talking about how it all felt like a dream. Like it felt so long ago. It's a strange feeling.

Obviously we miss our family and friends a lot, but honestly I've been so busy it's hard to even have the time to call since all of my down time is later at night. My center officially opens on Monday which is very exciting. It's been a busy 2 weeks trying to help get everything ready so we can open.

Cosmo has been doing great! We were really worried about the drive. Google said it'd take a little over 10 hours to drive from Price to Mesa. But with the moving truck it took 14. We had debated on whether to give him a tranquilizer or just his anxiety medicine. We decided we'd just go with the doggy Xanax that we had because he has had some weird reactions to medicines that make him calm down. He did so well in the car! He didn't sleep much but he was relaxed at least. Luckily it was a cooler day so he wasn't overheated at all. As for living in an apartment, he's adjusted pretty well. He's not too fond of wearing a leash to go outside but he's getting better with it.

I'm going to post pictures of our apartment soon but we still have a few things we need to clean up before we take pics.  For now I'll leave you with this picture. Cosmo was taking his morning nap, and Scott decided to lay next to him on the floor. I sure do love these two and love watching how much they love each other!

The move is on

After months and months of anticipation and wondering, we finally have a moving date set for the first week of September and I'll start work in Scottsdale on the 10th. For the longest times it has seemed so far away, and each day Scott or I say "Let's just move now", but now it is here and it's so real. I'm having mixed feelings about it. I am so beyond excited, but there is also a piece of my heart that is breaking when I think about leaving Price and all of our friends here. I'm so excited to meet new people and make new friends but sometimes reality sets in and I wonder if I'll ever see my Price friends again. I had a little breakdown the day I found out our moving date, just for that reason. Obviously I wouldn't let that stop me from moving forward because I know there are still thousands of people for me to meet in my life but it just makes me so sad. Sweet Scott said "This is the moment you've been waiting for for 4 years." Yeah, that's true. But I never thought I'd grow such an attachment to this place or to the people here.

One of Scott's Institute teachers always had a saying that he would tell new students... "You only cry twice in Price, once when you move here, and once when you leave." I guess that's true if you consider I cried most of the first year we lived here and probably the whole month before we leave.

I hate goodbyes and we had to say our first a week ago. Do you remember me talking about our landlords/friends/surrogate parents that live next door? Well Jeanne, the wife, moved back to South Carolina last week. Grady, the husband, will move back when he's able to retire in the next couple of years. These 2 have been a huge blessing in our lives, from plenty of dinners, to letting us live in their rental with our dog. Numerous priceless gifts they've given us to help us in our time in Price. Saying goodbye was super hard and what was supposed to be a quick 5 minute goodbye (so we could get on the road to SLC) turned into an hour and a half of chitchat putting off the moment. I hate crying in front of people so the whole time I was willing myself not to cry. I realized that in the 4 years we've lived here (and in the 3 years we've lived next door to them), I've never taken a picture of them, so I did, and here it is. Great people.

I'll miss the summer nights sitting with them and our other neighbors (that are 85), eating pie, enjoying the cool night and discussing anything and everything you can think of. I hope to have other friendships as great as the ones I've had here. When I moved here, I never thought I'd be crying as I left.

July update

Wow it's been a long time since I've blogged. My mom mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she hasn't seen a new blog post in forever and I didn't realize it had been that long, but 3 months is a long time for me to go without blogging. We have still be pretty busy. So here's what we've been up to:

• May and June consisted of being very busy at work. We took a little break and went to Scott's grandparents cabin to spend time with Scott's family. Scott was also able to go back to Missouri in May and attend some family events along with the dedication of the Kansas City Temple. 
• Scott has been working freelance every couple weeks up in SLC, which has been hard work but worth the paycheck. It also gives us more time to spend together when he is home. And it's been super helpful to have him home to help continue to pack things. 
• Our landlords took down our "For Sale" sign and put one in their yard instead. They weren't getting any bites on our house but they knew theirs would sell quick as it's one of the most beautifully remodeled homes in Price. We are so grateful we'll have somewhere to live until we move.
• We've been heaven blessed with rain the last week. It had been 3 months since Price had had any moisture and our local church leaders decided as an area we would fast and pray for rain on fast Sunday. After telling us we would be doing a special fast, the next week there were 2 massive fires that started near us, one north and one west. Our whole area was filled with smoke and ash. But on the Thursday after fasting we got a perfect rain storm that put out the fire that was creeping closer to our community. Since then we've had several rain storms which has been heaven sent. It has been so nice to have the smoke out of the air.
• Last week I got up before work and went to turn the shower on and our bathtub was filled with some sort of brown nastiness. Thinking that my eyes were just still sleepy, I had to take a closer look and it looked like someone had either thrown up in our bathtub or had a bad case of the runs. It was seriously disgusting. I woke Scott up and he came in and was just as shocked as I was. At first I thought it was dirt but it was a lot chunkier. We had had some friends over for dinner the night before and the girl had used our bathroom but we thought there was no way she would just puke in our tub and not tell us. So after some thinking, we realized that the night before we had made potato salad and had peeled the potatoes and sent them down the drain. Our sink had clogged, even with a disposal and we had to plunge our sink. Well apparently it is connected to our tub going to the main line and had gotten clogged farther down and had backed up into our tub. I was so grateful that all I was dealing with was potato skins, BUT it took more than 24 hours to finally get the problem fixed. Needless to say, by the end we both soaking wet and had come to the conclusion that no more potato peels were ever going down that drain. I could never be a plumber.
• After 3 months I finally got brave and got a haircut today. A couple ladies I know recommended a lady and she was great! She is one of the nicest people, and the color she put in looks amazing but I had a hard time communicating how I wanted my hair cut (I should have taken a picture) and I came home and cried on Scott's shoulder for a while. It's pretty short, shorter than I've had it since high school and just not what I pictured in my head. I am usually of the attitude that hair will grow back and it's nothing to get upset over which is why I laugh when people tell me they cried after a haircut but I'm struggling with this one. Scott, being the loving, sensitive husband that he is, told me he liked it and I just needed to get used to it, but I'm still struggling with it. It doesn't look too bad when it's pulled back. I told him that people with short hair wear big earrings, so he took me shopping and we bought some bigger earrings. He's so sweet! The good thing is that I shouldn't need a haircut before we move.
• We have a packed couple of months ahead. Our plans for moving are starting to solidify. I was able to talk to the big boss and he has it all planned out in his head which is good. He wants me to move down there when the center director moves down, to help him get things set up before we open the center. He is also going to send me to job fairs down there in the next 6 weeks which will be fun! I love getting paid to travel, especially when we need to find a place to live (always a stressful thing to have to do). But it will save us money to not have to make a trip on our own to find a place. Those little things are huge blessings for us. It is looking like we'll be moving sometime in the middle of September, but we are still waiting for exact dates. We are getting so excited. Every time I think about it I get butterflies.
• Scott and I are trying to take in all of the things that Price has to offer that we haven't seen yet, before we move. You would think that since we've lived here for 4 years, we've seen it all. Wrong. We are slackers. On the 4th of July we went up Nine Mile Canyon (it is so much longer than 9 miles) which has some really cool Indian ruins.

Below are some of the only pictures I've taken in the last 3 months so that's all you get.

Cosmo with his cousins Joseph and Makayla. Cosmo had a great time at the cabin, even though his face may say otherwise. 

 The fam at San Rafael Swell aka The Mini Grand Canyon

 San Rafael Swell

 Petroglyphs in Nine Mile

 The Great Hunt pictoglyph

 Nine Mile Canyon

It is upon us

Well, the move is upon us. Scott and I think it is coming quicker than we anticipated. As you can see, our house is for sale and there are some people that are interested in buying.
Everytime I see the "For Sale" sign I get a pit in my stomach. Our landlords/friends are ready to move on to the next phase of their life (much like us), which is moving to South Carolina and are trying to prepare for that so this wasn't a huge surprise that they wanted to put our house up for sale. But it is looking like it could possibly sale before the Phoenix branch opens for my work. So we may end up having to move before we move. There are pros and cons to this. Seriously, who wants to move twice in 6 months, but it could make the "big" move a little smoother. We are just praying that if we have to move before we move, that we can find a place that won't make us sign a lease and that will let us have Cosmo. We've toggled with the idea of moving to SLC until we can move to AZ, but my office here has a plan to transition our entire center to CaptionCall in the next 90 days (we currently have 2 different departments), which they want to do before I transfer centers so I know that we need to stay here in Price until we make the big move. It's going to be a very long 90 days.

My heart is a little sad though. Sure this house isn't much to look at but this is our home. This was our first home as a family of 3. Our friends gave us a huge gift for the last 3 years by letting us have our sweet doggy live with us. That in itself helped me get over the dislike that I had of this town. Once I had Cosmo I could finally enjoy being here, instead of just wanting to be up north.

Luckily, no matter where I go, I'll be with these 2 and that's all that matters. I'm so glad that they like each other. :) They are bff's.

In other news, our basement is finished. It looks a lot different from what it did. It is now one big room which is pretty nice.
The remodel has helped us a lot to get more organized and to put things aside for a yard sale. This move will definitely be different from when we moved to Price. When we came here, we just put stuff in boxes without organizing it, and decided that when we got established we'd go through it then. This time we are going through everything very thoroughly and deciding what we do/don't need. I can't believe how much stuff we've accumulated over the years.

Well that's all for now, I'm going to spend the rest of my day with boxes, packing tape and this...
Oh, and this cute guy (never too far from his Eeyore toy that he got for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Westwood, it's his favorite by far).