1st Week in Texas

Moving In
We moved into our apartment on Memorial Day. That caused some drama since the leasing office was closed. They knew we were coming and the plan was for us to get keys from Pat, the maintenance worker on call. We met him, and it took us an hour to get into our apartment because he couldn't find the keys and had to cut new ones. I was confused because the leasing office told me they would coordinate with him. We later found out "Patrick" was on call and who helped us, but the leasing office gave keys to another maintenance worker named "Pat."  More drama unfolded as the carpet in the living room had been torn up and replaced with hard floors.  We had confirmed before signing our lease there would be carpet in the living room because Dallin is still crawling. So we moved everything in Monday, and then Janelle and I moved everything out Tuesday and into a new apartment while Justin had his first day at HP. He is directly under a VP and has some neat projects he'll get to work on so we're excited for that!

Here's a few things we've noticed about Texas after being here a week:

• It's not as hot as we thought and the humidity actually feels great. Dallin's chin was super chapped before we left and I'd use lotion 2 times a day to no avail.  Solution: come to the Texas Humidity-it's totally cleared up!
• We are surprised at how green it is here.  I guess we expected dry and brown like a desert, but there are a lot of trees and it's really pretty. We passed several sunflower fields which are gorgeous! 
• We are amazed at how nice everyone is. I guess it's the southern hospitality, and we love it. People always open doors for us.  And we were shocked when at the Wendy's drive through the first words spoken weren't "Order when you're ready" but were "How are you doing today?"  We love the "Yes, Maam" "Yes, Sir" and "Ya'll"
• Everyone here owns a dog. It's crazy- they are everywhere!!There are dog parks and waste bags on every corner!  And while everyone here is taking their dog out on a walk, we are taking Dallin. :)  There aren't many babies around.
• Plano is a wealthy area. There's a lot of business headquarters here. I've never seen so many nice cars in all my life.  Models like: Jaguar, Corvette, Lexus, Porsche, lots of BMW, and even a Lamborghini. It makes us laugh when we see "Texas Editions" of normal models. 
• Just when we were thinking there weren't other babies or children anywhere in this city, we found some... at church! :) 
• Leaving a lot at home you realize how much you don't need. Our furniture consists of a card table, and 2 BigJoe bean chairs from Wal-Mart. 
• Milk lids here pop on instead of screw on
• Stores carry different brands of food like "Authentic Texas Recipe Chili" and it's also weird seeing huge sections of alcohol in stores like Costco and Target.
• A lot of restaurants serve both American and Mexican food. Guess it's called "Tex-Mex."
• We are still very turned around and always use the GPS to get where we need to go.  It's hard to know which way is North, South, East or West when you don't have the big Wasatch Mountains to see and know that's East! The freeway system here is crazy with "double deckers" over each other and lots of tollways (free to us since we have Utah license plates). We get turned around a lot and miss knowing the roads. 

So far we really like Texas and especially the Plano area. Here's one fun video to share of Dallin laughing with his daddy!  He loves getting "eaten" and "tickled" and playing "chase"!  Click Here to watch video. We can't get enough of Dallin's fun giggle!

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