Welcome to Arizona

Welcome Strong family to the sunny state of Arizona . . . your new home!

There is one obvious difference from the landscape in Kentucky. . . where did all the trees go?

I was surprised that the kids didn't ask that, or didn't make comments about it being ugly (those were my thoughts of Arizona when I was a kid going to visit relatives in Arizona).  But instead as we drove along the kids made comments like this, "Wow!  Look how beautiful." Paul and I are excited to be back in a place where as you drive down the road you can actually see what you are driving by, there is scenery, and not just trees, trees, and more trees.

the Hualapai mountains (pronounced Wall-a-pie),
we see them everyday from our house

Welcome to Kingman! 

On the road to our house looking back toward "town"

The desert really is beautiful.  You should see the sunsets!

The kids were very excited to be able to see our new house.  They had seen pictures online from the listing and from the appraisal document, but not in person.  They were even more excited to run around inside and explore. Next came deciding who got which room.  Our new house has four bedrooms which means Elizabeth gets her own room.  We decided and undecided many times before we finally figured out the best arrangement.  Thank goodness this all happened before our household things arrived.

Elizabeth eating a snack in the kitchen

It was almost a week before the moving truck arrived with our "stuff".  But that gave Paul and I plenty of time to scrub walls, wash light fixtures, change air conditioning filters, scrub floors, and clean carpets.  And it gave the kids a few extra days to enjoy swimming at the hotel in the evenings.

Our things arrived on Paul's first day of work.  So I had the fun job of marking each box off the check list of boxes as they were unloaded from the truck (it is like playing Bingo), telling the movers where to put things and trying to keep four kiddos out of the way all at the same time.  It was a little hectic but we managed.  Then the unpacking began. 

As we would unpack things we would load up an empty box with all of the filler paper.  After a day and a half of unpacking we had a lot of paper collected.   John then did what he loves best to sit in "piles".  He took all of the boxes of paper and dumped them out in the living room, I think it was the biggest "pile" I had ever seen him create, he was loving it.  Pretty soon the girls all joined him and they were swimming in a pile of paper surrounded by boxes.,

The move went very smooth, thank goodness.  Most things are put away.  I have rearranged my kitchen cabinets three times now.  I had a little kitchen before, but it was extremely efficient.  This one is significantly bigger and it is taking me a while to figure out how to get things "efficient".  I'm still deciding where I want to hang pictures.  The garage is mostly organized, except for the huge pile of broken down boxes.  We have been Paul has been painting and hanging new blinds and curtains in the kids' rooms.  We have been busy and fall into bed very late each night completely exhausted, but we are very happy to be here.