Beautiful Utah!

Love the fall leaves!

Across the street from where we live.

Last Sunday we took a little family drive to Salem lake, about 20 minutes away.

The lake has a bridge...

LOVE, LOVE the fall leaves!

Can't get enough of those colorful leaves.

The kids loved the lake, and so did we.

When we go in the backyard and look to the left this is what we see...sometimes the horses are there, sometimes not.

Chickens in the backyard! Our landlords have lots of chickens!

We are going to play every second we can this fall!

We are enjoying Utah so far!

It feels AMAZING to be done with the move and to have boxes unpacked and house organized.

Miles started school at Sierra Bonita Elementary on Tuesday Oct 16th. His new teacher is Mrs. Creamer. The school was built in 2011 and it's a really nice building. He is having fun at his new school and when we were registering him I asked the principal about extra curricular stuff--he mentioned chess club, and Miles asked if he could join. Joey taught him to play chess several months back. So he joined Chess Club! He rides the bus, and is starting to make new friends.

Hailey is going to start preschool this week at a little in-home preschool here in Mapleton. It was a great monthly rate and a few of the girls in her primary class attend there so I couldn't say no :). She's excited. We are renting a basement apartment (bigger than our old house if you can imagine!) and our landlords have a 4 year old little girl so several times a week Hailey just walks out the back door into the backyard and plays with their daughter, Brielle, so she already has a little buddy!

Clay is adjusting. Since the move he has been much more clingy and not willing to let me leave his sight. I think the last few weeks of having his beloved Mama preoccupied with packing and cleaning, then moving and finally unpacking  has taken it's toll--plus he's left his familiar house and scenery. He's needed extra love and attention, which I am HAPPY to be able to give once again now. He is starting to be his old self again, slowly but surely, and I hope with continued daily consistency, extra mama time and love that he will feel safe and secure in his surroundings once again.

Joey's liking work, and he LOVES that he can how sleep in an extra hour every morning, then take his time showering and eating breakfast and interacting with us and still get to work at the same time he used to get to work in Tucson. He says the people he works with are really nice (they were super nice at Raytheon too) and I'm so happy to have a husband that is easygoing about work and loves the jobs he's had. He's started doing consultant work for Raytheon too :). I think it is pretty cool that not even a week after he left Raytheon they called him and asked if they could hire him to work for them on the side!

I'm doing good. I've gotten to know some people around here, and everybody is so friendly. I am excited to get started on a couple of my own "extra curricular" activities: I am considering joining an adult swim league in Springville so I can continue to swim throughout the winter. BYU has a fun activity in November called "lazY man Iron Man" which is to complete an entire Iron Man (swim 2.7 miles, bike 116 miles, and run 26 miles) but instead of doing it all at once like a traditional Iron Man--which I am pretty sure would give me cardiac arrest ;)--you can join up and then have the entire month of November to complete those lengths of swimming, biking and running. So I think I'm going to try that...and in the Relief Society they are crocheting little baby beanies for the NICU babies--and I've been wanting to learn to crochet so I think this would be a great opportunity!

Well, there's a little recap of life so far. It's only been about 2 weeks, but to see how far we've come and how much we've accomplished in getting settled in 2 weeks makes me happy. Oh, and one of my FAVORITE parts, maybe we can walk around the temple this afternoon. :) It's going to be great to live so close to temples and I'm really excited about that.