our first week in Arizona

We have been in Arizona for 2 weeks (already!).

The first week was.....hard.  The second week has been much, much better.  Seriously, it has been night and day from week 1 to week 2.

We all had our tough moments that first week, especially Brooklyn.  I think she really missed her cousins and not having so much kid action as she was used to.  A few mornings in a row she woke up crying saying, "NO NO NO!"  I think she would see that we were still here and was not happy about it.  She was also extra clingy to me and followed me around everywhere saying "hold you" - meaning she wanted to be held.  And one day a guy knocked on our door to fix our kitchen sink and Brooklyn got really excited.  She was used to having so many people knock on our door in Utah (like Rich and Misty, Mike, Pete) to visit or play with her.  When she saw this strange man at our door she immediately broke down in tears and just sobbed.  I felt so bad for her :(

We did have some good times though that first week.  We went to Nate and Kristin's for dinner one night, to the Jackman's for dinner the next night (a family in our ward who have been so good to us already), and Mike and Camille's for dinner another night.  We are so excited to have family close by and looking forward to fun times with them.    

Here are some things we are adjusting to:

• no more big screen tv and no more cable - I think this has been the hardest for John
• no more big house - now it's a nice, small 2 bedroom apartment :)
• no more siblings and cousins living all within 15 minutes of us
• the heat...wow, it's hot!  It is amazing to me that now when I go outside and it's only 105 degrees instead of 115, it feels "so nice" 
• no more Grandma Sycamore bread...ha ha...this was the first thing I noticed they didn't have here at the grocery store.  But they do have Blue Bunny ice cream, so that's good.

The best part of week 1 was going to church and meeting people (and for Brooklyn to go to nursery and play with other kids).  We love our ward and are really excited about getting to know more people.  They do a lot of activities throughout the week for moms and kids and I was able to go to all those this last week.

And just a couple pictures from that first week (I didn't take many.  I will post pictures of our apartment soon).  

This guy is getting so big!  I put him in the exersaucer just to see how he'd do.  He wasn't too impressed by it, but sat in there for awhile until his big sis insisted she have a turn too.