Change is Good!

Alright, can I just say how much I LOVE my neighborhood? Seriously, I love it! I was so nervous when we were getting ready to move down here that we would end up in a place where I would never want to leave my house (okay okay, I never really left my house before, but still!) but when we started looking at homes in this area I fell in love with it! Mostly I liked that there were some very tiny "mountains" (I call them this because I miss my mountains) that separated this area from the rest of Glendale/Phoenix, but it's still super close so I can get everything I need. Plus, the main road on the northern part of the area is called Happy Valley Road - what's not to love about that??? They have a great little shopping center, a golf course, a HUGE water park, and as an added bonus (for me anyway) they are building the Phoenix temple up here too! It's quaint but efficient, and I love it!

Okay sorry, back to the point. The first day we moved in (last Saturday, June 11) we got all of our crap in the garage and set up a bed for Sophie to nap and that still somehow took all day. By night Sophie was tired, cranky, and had been in the sun for way too long, so I decided to take her for a walk. Now this is NOT something I would normally do without knowing the neighborhood - in fact in my first house, even though I loved my neighbors, I didn't really talk to anyone or go walking around at all for months/years after moving in. So this was big for me, but I was instantly rewarded. I was able to see all of the cute houses around me, and every single person who drove by me waved and smiled. Not just the little, "oh crap I made eye contact, quick do something!" type of wave, but genuine friendly waves. And one person was coming back from getting their mail or something (and this was 2 streets down) and saw me and asked if I just moved in. When I told him yes, we just got there that morning, he was actually excited and went on to tell me how he'd been living there for 20 years and how much he loved the area and how great it was for raising kids and how much I would love it here. Then he shook my hand and told me to let him know if we needed anything at all. At first I thought - wow, that guy is really nice! But I've learned that EVERYONE here is that nice! I've met about 6 other neighbors with the same results! Shoot, I had a nice conversation with the drive-thru kid at Burger King! And every one of these encounters I was dirty, sweaty, probably didn't have much makeup (if any!) on and several occasions was covered in dust and bits of tile from working all day, so it's not just people being nice to a cute girl or anything like that.

We've just been so blessed in this whole move. Other than our frustrations with the title company when we were buying the house, everything has just been working out so smoothly and we're settling in so nice, it's better than I hoped for! I think that Heavenly Father definitely helped us get to where we needed to be. :)