Living the Mayberry Life

Oh. My. Goodness.  I am in LOVE with our new hometown!!  It's perfect and we couldn't be happier.

The move was crazy but no more than could be expected.  There were times when I didn't think we were going to make it but thankfully we have a great circle of friends and family to count on in our time of need.  From help with watching my little kids to volunteers to help load our trailers in 108+ degree heat, we couldn't have done without everyone!!

Ally & Emily were a HUGE help with packing.  They really seemed to enjoy it and did a great job.  A trip to Jamba Juice was a good incentive too.  Here we are, the last night in Glendale.

All of the work to declutter, donate & sell unused things paid off.  We actually have so much more room in this house than we had before.  Technically it is 200 square feet smaller but we really can't tell.  We have more room where it counts.  The bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchen are all bigger.  We did lose a separate room for the office and we only have one living room instead of a separate family & living room but it's a good trade.  We actually took some furniture out of storage that we didn't think we'd have room for and brought it up.

It took a couple of trips to get everything here and I even drove my Suburban pulling a trailer load up the mountain.  That was a first for me and turned out much easier than I thought it would be.  L.J. kept telling me "it follows you everywhere you go."  He was right.

Our family helped unpack us as soon as we got stuff up here.  We've been welcomed to town over and over again by friends and neighbors.  As I've met new people at church several have said, "Oh, you live in that cute house.  I loved watching what you've done there."

Even though the house itself looks great, we still have some work to do.  The yard has not been touched in years, literally.  The weeds were so thick & were everywhere.  Now that it is raining almost every day, the kids and I go out and pull weeds, every day.  For the most part they come up pretty easy, root and all but some are still pretty stubborn.  We win most of the battles though.  We have filled 11 large garbage bags with dead brush and weeds all pulled by hand but sadly we're only about half way done.  Of course I always forget to take "before" pictures but here are some while we're making progress.



It's keeping us all busy and especially outside enjoying the beautiful weather.  The other day I spent 4 straight hours outside working and never even broke a sweat!  I loved it.  There is only one thing I'd like to change....

The middle school across the street recently had some renovations.  Part of the improvements was a LARGE flood light over the basketball courts.  The light over the courts I don't have a problem with.  The problem is the fact that the light is on all night long.  From dusk to dawn.  Even with dark brown window shades my bedroom is way too bright to sleep very well.  This next picture is standing on my porch, no zoom what so ever.  It was raining so the extra small lights are water from the roof.

I have called to see what can be done.  With school out right now it's not easy getting someone to talk to.  They did tell me they'd look into the possibility of a timer.  I'm now thinking a donation to the school might help move it along and help us out as well.  We'll see what happens.

I really do love it here.  I love being able to go walking with the kids at 2:00 in the afternoon and not die of heat exhaustion.  We don't even have an AC unit on the house and we're just fine.  I've joined a walking group and we go about 5 miles a day.  It's a lot of hills and pushes me pretty hard but I'm so happy to be doing some kind of exercising again.  I love letting my kids go ride their bikes and say, "just be back by 6:00."  My girls love that they can go get the mail for me at the post office or go to the store and pick up milk.  I love that everyone waves to everyone as they go by.  I love being out in the yard and talking to neighbors and making friends.  I love that people come by and check on me just to see if I need anything.

We really have found Mayberry and we love it here!