Trip to El Paso and Phoenix 2019

We've been missing our friends back in El Paso, so we chose a week to drive and visit with them!  Leslie was able to see a lot of close friends from before her mission and we enjoyed our time there.  (Not necessarily getting there-- it is a loooooong drive!)

We are moving...

And the house is up for sale.

It is a gorgeous home, with an array of family and friend memories in every corner.

This is a bittersweet move...
we've loved being here in El Paso with so many wonderful people and experiences.

(More info to come ASAP!)

He's HOME!

Families can be together forever!

Houston

We went to visit our friend Stephanie who is in Houston waiting to have her baby.  To help her pass some time, we vacationed with her!  We had a blast!  We went to the Houston temple, the Houston zoo, and Galveston/Stewart beach.  We also swam in the hotel pool, and hung out at our hotel and at Smashburger.  We love Stephanie!  She was such a trooper to play hard with us at 35 weeks pregnant in the hot and humid weather (95 degrees!)


Leslie and Owen had a great time on the drive.
They were taking a ton of photos
trying to have it look like Leslie was eating trucks...

Finding Nemo and Dory...

                                                               Pretty awesome Owen!  

  

Last leg of our journey!

On Sunday we left Utah and drove as much as we could towards Texas.  We were on a tight timeline since we were due to close on our new home on Monday at 2 pm!  We made it for a final walkthrough at 1 and signed papers at 2!  Phew!  We are thankful to be here!

Some of the fun things we did as we drove our last 16 hours...

Enjoyed the beautiful views

Played the mile game...

Do a weird pose or action for an entire mile.  My mouth hurt so much from keeping it open so wide!  Oh, the crazy things we do to stay awake!

Drawing & coloring

Back to the mile game...  Bob held the car horn down for an entire mile... Nice imprint!

Finally here, enjoying our new home!

Texas

Roll em, roll em, roll em.... rawhide!

This was taken today in front of our home. Hilarious.

Before and After

I wish we had taken "before" pictures of our home. Or maybe the term should be "between". As in, when the movers dumped everything all over our home, stirred it up with some giant spoon, and left us to figure out the mess. For example, I had the toys separated perfectly (I am an organizational nerd) and I guess that when they packed they dumped everything in a couple of large boxes. Little star wars lego pieces with all other dinosaurs, cars, large legos, wooden toys, strawberry shortcake... all mixed together, this time perhaps with a whisk. Why did I organize everything so meticulously BEFORE we moved? We had to do it all over again when they dumped. Talk about tornado rooms. I mean, we had the bookshelves assembled and where did they put the books? On the floor next to the shelves. Not neatly piled, but bent flaps and paperbacks. And we have a lot of books.

No more complaining. AFTER a lot of work this past week, we are moved in.

I like the built in shelves

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Bookshelves in the landing, one of my favorite areas of the house

Our stairs wrap around, so at most, this cutie pie could fall down 5 stairs...

The stairs and landing look over a large dining room/piano room.

And I love my happy poster.

Mamma's weekend visit

My mom came for the weekend. It was great to see her again (I know, it has only been a couple of weeks...)! Highlights of our weekend included:

*giving her a tour of our new home

*being dropped off in the middle of the desert so Bob and I could run 12 miles back home

*Macaroni Grill and Lowe's (yup, we know how to show off our city)

*lots of bike riding (Micah learned how!)

*sharing our new ward with her

*helping her feel better when she was sick

*playing Connect 4

*reading lots of books

before the 12 mile run (we won't show the after...)

Micah rides his two-wheeler!

From Utah to Texas

We did have lots of fun times during our move. Here's a handful of pictures.