I think I'm gonna like it here...

but it is going to take some getting used to.

1. We are used to living 2 minutes from Jimmy's work and having him coming home for lunch every day. Having a 40-minute commute each way means we will miss seeing him as often.

2. Snow and ice. It sure is lovely but we just need to adjust. The car sure gets dirtier too.

3. People in Utah are so "utah" (which is a good thing - it's just a unique culture). We ordered take-out at the Olive Garden when we were staying at the hotel and the waitress said, 'okey-dokey'. I had to chuckle because besides myself and my kids I don't think I heard anyone say that in Tennessee. I do hope I'll have better luck finding a hair dresser to chop my blonde hairs here in Utah. Everyone seems to have such cute mom hair-dos. And there are so many more blondes here in Utah than Tennessee, or so it seems.

4. 99.8% of our neighbors are active ward members. Our neighbor was so friendly and came over with a plate of cookies and was eager for her daughter to meet Hannah. I was so glad to feel so welcome and I think Hannah will love having a friend who lives so close. But in some ways I feel pressure to be more social since I live so close to people in my ward. We'll see how that all works out. It's all good - just an adjustment.

5. In Tennessee I lived 10 minutes from 3 different Targets, 2 different Walmarts, about 5 grocery stores, and a nice mall (how spoiled we were). We are not as centrally located here and it requires greater effort to run errands. For this reason, I've decided to not go anywhere all winter with 3 kids. I'm sure that will help the budget immensely. I do want to get together with friends & family but seeing as I haven't even ventured down the driveway to get the mail yet, we may have to wait until the spring thaw to do that.

6. Jimmy sure looks handsome dressed in a suit every day but the dress standard is a change. Thus far he has enjoyed his job working at church headquarters.

Here's what else we've been up to this past week:

At 3 1/2 weeks Maxwell started smiling. He is still working on focusing so generally he is staring at the wall above our heads and smiling. I do think sweet little babes have angelic visitors to keep them company. Max is probably smiling at Grandma and Grandpa Nelson and not me! This is poor photo quality but I was attempting to balance Max on my knee, get him to smile, and hold the camera up in the air to take a picture of him. Talk about motherhood multi-tasking!

We are up to our eyeballs in brown boxes and packing paper. This is the front room of our house. Personally I think we should keep 90% of our boxes packed until we buy a house. That would save on time and then we'd realize that we can probably throw half of our stuff out. All in favor say "Aye."

Aunt Julie came over several times this week to help with the kids and to help unpack boxes and shuffle furniture. The kids love her and eagerly await her arrival. We're excited to be close enough to see Julie and watch some of her BYU lacrosse games.

Ikea here we come! We have a 3-bedroom rental house (with small kid rooms) and since we don't think Maxwell should sleep in the hall for the next 6 months, we decided to buy a bunkbed for Hannah and Abe. They were thrilled to help put it together and played on it for half the day.

Somehow we have free cable and the kids have thoroughly enjoyed watching new cartoons on The Disney Channel. One day Hannah declared that she watched too much tv. I told her this week they could watch as much tv as they wanted (a mother has to survive those ultra-hard weeks somehow) but all that tv-watching won't last long (we don't want to fry those cute little brains).

I've thoroughly been enjoying the Utah foods that I couldn't find elsewhere like these scrumptious Raspberry filled donuts by Hostess and Grandma Sycamore's Homemaid bread.

As for my recovery, I'm not bounding up the stairs yet, but my incision isn't hurting too much. I'm careful not to move any boxes or put too much strain on my mid-section. It still hurts to cough, sneeze or laugh. I'm still oober tired, but that is to be expected with having a new baby and moving. We've all had our ups and downs this week... especially us teary-eyed girlies. Hannah started crying and said she wanted to live in Tennessee forever and ever and ever and wished we hadn't moved. And I've had my moments of thinking I'm the lousiest mom ever and wondering when the hard part will be over. But things will calm down eventually and we'll all feel a bit more settled (at least we can always hope!)