Leaving Arizona

I'm back!!! I have been sooo busy moving in, working, having 4 kids!! I have been wanting to write this post for a long time. I thought it would be easy to leave Arizona, but it was harder than I imagined. Arizona was a time of "selfishness" for our family. We moved to Arizona and then just 2 months later Landon was born at 31 weeks. We spent the next 2 months shuttling back and forth to the NICU and then adjusting to our new family of 5. Soon after Landon was born we started the adoption paperwork, brought home Presley, and then adjusted to our new life as a family of 6!! Then we had 2 toddlers!! Wow, were we busy!!! We definitely accepted more help from others than we were able to give. We were just starting dig out of our hole and step outside our front door when we moved to Sacramento. There are so many people in Arizona that we wished we would've gotten to know better. We would mention a family and talk about how much we wanted to have them over, but just never got around to it. I wish now I would've just made the time and not worried about how messy my house was.

Kendall especially had some wonderful friends in Arizona. Her friend Emily was a one in a million friend and they had been best friends since kindergarten, her friends Victoria and Madeline whom we carpooled with to and from school (though luckily their aunt lives here in Elk Grove), and her friend Mady who moved back to Utah a year before we moved to Sacramento. Kendall, as anyone that knows Kendall would expect, has made lots of new friends here and has already started to carve her nitch in her new surroundings. Carson had lots of "girlfriends" back in Arizona and actually has more friends that are boys here in Sacramento. I guess the girls aren't as charmed by his blond hair and good looks as they were in Arizona!!

Arizona was a place that we know we were supposed to live during those 3 years. My very first appointment with the perinatalogist they decided to run a test on the blood flow in my umbilical cord because my other babies were so small at birth. He said it would probably be fine and it was an extremely rare condition. Sure enough, I had that rare condition. They monitored me very closely and then I began to have reverse flow in my umbilical cord and they decided to deliver Landon. I was showing no signs at this time of preeclampsia and would have continued with my pregnancy if we had not known about my condition. Landon is here and healthy because we moved to Arizona!! There is another more personal reason why Arizona was a place we should be. Heavenly Father was watching over us and led to our "stopover" in Arizona.

That being said, we LOVE Sacramento!! We love our house, our ward (congregation) at church, our school (though it is about a year ahead of the kid's school in Arizona), and of course we love the weather!! We are so close to so many things to do with our family. Now that we have come out of our cocoon, I am excited to show my family everything that there is to do in the area that I enjoyed when I lived here. I look forward to taking them to San Francisco, Monterey, Lake Tahoe, Santa Cruz, hiking, overnight backpacking along the coast, and whale watching just to name a few!!

We are so blessed and hope that we are here to stay for a very long time!!