This is a peek of our apartment complex. It is really huge, this is just a small little part. I finally can walk around it without feeling lost. It took me a couple weeks. But I'm horrible with directions and EVERYTHING looks the same. It's pretty and wonderfully quiet. The apartment has a lot of light and it's clean and pleasant. The people are here are really friendly and always smile and say hi. I like that. And it's crawling with little kids. I like that too.

It IS still apartment living, and that's been different. Here's an example. We move in and they tell us to write down any damages so we're not charged when we're moving out. The front door SERIOUSLY sticks. I mean, I have to lean in with my whole body and give a good hefty push to come in and to get out takes a good THREE VIOLENT JERKS with ALL MY STRENGTH. Even Greg has to pull a couple times to get it open. This thing is STUCK. Really annoying. So we wrote that down. The dishwasher leaks a little bit sometimes, but oddly, not every time. And one of the kitchen cupboards is kinda weird and never closes and just hangs open.

Ok, so I write all these things down and turn them into one of the managers. This woman talks FAST. She is NOT a native speaker and has a heavy accent, is fluent, but you know- not all of her sentences are complete. So talking to this woman about specifics gets a little confusing. So I turn it in and she automatically says, "Ok, I'll send out a work order and send someone next week." Oh, ok. It's not really a problem, but I guess it would be cool to get it all fixed. So I say, "Oh, ok. When are they coming?"

Woman: Next week.

Me: What day?

Woman: Next week.

Me: Not a certain day?

Woman: No, they'll just show up.

Me: Not a specific day? They're just going to show up ANY time next week? If I'm not home will they come inside?

W: Yes, they have a key.

Me: Is there a way they can let me know when they are coming?

Then the confusing- I am literally only understanding SOME of the sentences you are saying- conversation happens. And it comes to her saying they will call me and set up a day, but not a time. So time passes and she calls me on the phone and a similar conversation happens. I mean, I can do it any day, I just want to know WHICH day to expect them.

Woman: What day do can you do it?

Me: I don't know, when can they?

W: This is why we call you. You tell us when.

M: Ok, tomorrow.

W: Ok we send them tomorrow.

M: What time?

W: Tomorrow.

M: You can't give me a time frame? 8-12? 12-5?

W: No, they show up when they show up. They have a key.

Now I'm getting a LITTLE ticked and say: So I'm supposed to wait by my door sun up to sun down for them to come by?

W: No, this is why we call you. You pick a day and they come.

Then the whole, will they come inside if I don't answer conversation happens again, in which she says yes and I STRESS I am not ok with that. And finally-

M: This is the thing. I have a daughter. I don't want them to show up when I'm in the shower and can't come to the door, and suddenly I have strange men come into the house and my daughter is there alone and I'm naked in the shower. I am not ok with that.

Suddenly some clarification and she SUDDENLY can tell me they'll come AFTER 1pm. I didn't have these issues in OR. It doesn't seem like that hard of a thing to ask. I mean, this isn't an unusual situation. But whatever. The whole thing was stressing me out. They came and didn't fix anything. That's the funny part. They sprayed the door with oil and it stopped sticking for a day, they told me to call if the dishwasher gets worse and they DID work on the cupboard, but in the end said there was nothing they could do. I don't really care. I just hated having to talk to the manager about it all.

When you walk in our door this is what you see!

Our whole couch fits! We had to keep a small section of it in our spare room in our old house. It's kinda cool it all fits now. We found the green shelves at IKEA and it works great for filling up the space. I was going to clean my kitchen and make it all beautiful, but I ended up just taking a pic. The fact that we can store stuff on top of the cupboards SAVES us. It simply would not work without this feature. I'm so grateful it's there. At first I liked that everything was white, but it really just makes all the dirt show up extra fast. You can't get away with missing anything. I think my old kitchen masked a lot of stuff. I like everything except the gas stove. I've decided I hate it. Well, hate is pretty strong, but I think it's the worst of them all. It only heats from the small circle and it takes WAY LONGER to heat large pans. Also, if it's a small pot, the heat just flows up around and burns your hand. So you have to cook it on medium or lower. I'm not enjoying it.

I love our spare bathroom. It's always bright and clean, because nobody uses it. In our old house I used the spare bathroom because Greg's weird schedule so it was cluttered with all my stuff. I love that this one stays neat and tidy.

Scarlet's room is so much bigger than her old one. It's great. All her toys fit inside, which makes our house a lot cleaner. There is so much LIGHT in her room. We don't even need a night light. We were worried about her waking up with the sun, but it hasn't been an issue, thank goodness.

I finally finished this. I found it at a garage sale a YEAR ago and finally painted it and put a chalkboard inside. I've been wanting to do this forever. I realize my handwriting is not that glamourous, but I don't care. I say I'm going to redo it and make it cuter, but I know I'm not going to.

Our bedroom is not that exciting. It's a little bigger than it looks in the pic. So I've decided I hate these energy saving light bulbs. They suck. I don't WANT to feel this way, they save 80% of energy costs? Great! Except that they take 5 minutes to actually light up! This works great if you wake up and turn on the light, because you're going to hang out in the room. It SUCKS because most of the time I'm running into the bedroom to grab one thing and leave again and I have to search for it in the DIM, DIM light. What's the point of having the light at all? I hate it. We spent more money on this special bulb, and it's the worst. Such regret.

Our master bath is fine. Don't I look glamourous in the mirror? Greg gave me some of his shirts that got too small and I've been wearing them a bit much. I need to get some maternity t-shirts for the house. However, see how close the towel rod is to the toilet? Yeah, impossible to hang a REAL towel on it without it draped over the toilet. Kind of pointless. And where is the other one?

In the shower! Seriously! Who designed this bathroom? We hung up two hooks of our own for our towels and it's fixed the problem. But seriously, who thought of this design?

Our boy's room. It's a lot more organized than it looks. There was a nice open space in the middle but I sort of messed it up, getting out an old car seat. He'll be sleeping in a tight space, but I think it will all work out. He's gonna be small for awhile. We just need to squeeze the crib and hopefully the swing in there. I really hope they both fit. We will see.

The playground has been GREAT. In the evenings it's swarming with little kids, her age. But I tend to go in the middle of the day/morning and we're the only ones there. It's nice not to have to worry about some kid pushing her off a ledge or throwing the saw dust in her face. No one's ever done it before, but I wouldn't be surprised of it happening. There are some interesting toys on it. The thing she's on just does little bounces and she LOVES it.

She also just loves going up and right back down these steps.

A friend, once mentioned that our old playground was a really safe one and now I see what she means. Once you crawl up our old one, you can't really fall off 'cause there are bars, close together, lining the whole thing. This one you can tip off, just about anywhere.

Greg painted Scarlet's toe nails on a whim. She loved it. But then it was a struggle to keep her off the carpet. We didn't really think about her rubbing it off all over the apartment.

Scarlet has been piling on my hair bands almost everyday. I've been saying for months that I need to buy her real bracelets.

She has been SOOOOO into her baby lately! I've been loving it. It is so sweet. She asks us to swaddle them and she rocks them, sings to them, makes them cry and then sushes them. It is so cute.

She's also become really attached to her doggy. She's slept with them the last two nights and for all her naps, as well.

Scarlet has been doing GREAT. ESPECIALLY happy these days. I think it's 'cause things are FINALLY back to normal. I'm actually around on a daily basis and things have been way mellow. Greg takes our one car to work everyday which leaves us sort of stranded. If I wasn't pregnant, I'm certain we would take the stroller and wander the city but it wears me out to just walk to the playground down the street. So our days are spent pretty carefree, just the two of us at home. So far it's gone really well. As soon as I get bored, I decide where to hang a picture or some small thing that hadn't gotten finished. But now everything is done and I sort of had a melt down on Friday. I started to get bored. It's always a couple hours before Greg gets home, where I start to feel like we've done everything I know we can do (park, color, bubbles, Dora, etc) and we still have hours to go and it gets me a little depressed. And before I knew it I was really missing my friend Laura, back home. Whenever I got to this point at home, I would just pop Scarlet in the stroller and head on over to Laura's. Problem solved. Now the problem just lingers. Anyway, I tried really hard not to cry and then as soon as I talked to Greg the tears came and didn't really stop for awhile. I want a friend.

I know I'm expecting too much. It hasn't even been 3 weeks. But for some reason I thought I would just connect with somebody right away. I don't know if it's the area, my head or what- but it has been a bit of a struggle! For instance, just a week after I arrived there was a really small Relief Society Activity I was invited to. There were only 7 of us there, so I was excited to get to know people. These are the only questions that were asked- Where did we come from? How old is Scarlet? What does Greg do? That's it. I was there hours and it never came up that I can do hair. I don't know, to me that seems strange. Like if they would have asked ONE THING about ME, it would've come up pretty fast. It seemed like every time I said something, the conversation would stop. And I would just think, "What the heck? I'm trying to engage in the conversation. Did I say something strange?" And it kept happening EVERY TIME I would say something! No one got my number to get together. I was a little surprised. I wanted to get everyone's number, I thought everyone was interesting. Well, most everyone. But I didn't really talk to anyone enough to feel comfortable saying, "Hey, give me your number and we'll get together." Anyway, I felt like I was trying really hard and it just wasn't working. And every function I go to it seems like this!

In Central Point, EVERYONE was friendly. I even went a little nuts after Scarlet was born and was afraid to get out of the house and was really self conscious about mothering in public and was just really self conscious, in general, and stopped being myself around people. It was weird and lasted for months. I have no idea why my friends kept inviting me out, but they did and I'm really glad, because eventually I "returned" and everything was great again. But I really regret taking so long to "come out of my shell" and swore I wouldn't do this the next time we moved. So I've been trying REALLY hard to just be me, but I feel like it's rubbing people the wrong way. I don't know. Maybe it's in my head.

My other thoughts are that we were kind of unusual in CP, in that we hoped to work in government and live around the world. Kinda strange for those parts. So that sparked all kinds of interesting conversations. Here EVERYONE works for government and not a thought passes when we mention living abroad. Also, Scarlet was BORN in CP and everyone fell in love with her instantly. She was the only little girl her age, in the ward, and everyone loved her! Here there are soon to be over 30 kids in nursery. We're just a drop in the bucket in every way. Not interesting at all. I'm not trying to say we're amazing and nobody is figuring it out- it's just been harder to find friends than I thought it would be. I'm going to try and set something up with a girl I DID seem to connect with, hopefully this week. We'll see what happens. I also sent out a little blurb to the "Relief Society Classifieds" that I do hair, hoping people will be interested and I'll meet women quicker. Hopefully something happens and this week won't be killer. Otherwise, I need to look online and find some activities to do with Scarlet at home! Anyone know any great blogs for 18 month old kids? Is she too young for simple crafts? I'm just not sure what my options are. Any ideas?

I've been randomly sick the last couple days. No fun at all. And my allergies have been horrible. But they seem to be lightening up. I've been reading The Hunger Games and loving it! It's pretty morbid, but great. I realize, once again, that I can't read something without action in it. I'd like to think my attention span is bigger than that, but it apparently isn't. Work's going great for Greg. Not much to report on. Mostly just orientation type stuff. But he's met a lot of the class he's training with and they all get along really well! So that's been nice.

Oh YEAH. The best part of EVERYTHING!!! Seeing Greg every night! AMAZING!!!! So wonderful. This is so much better than it used to be. As much as I get a little lonely during the day, it is so worth seeing Greg every night. It's awesome. I keep waiting for it to go away, but it's not going to! And let's say he has to stay at work an hour later everyday- that's ok. We see each other SO MUCH MORE. And at SUCH more reasonable hours. It's just NATURAL to work in the day, and wind down at night. And have the weekends off. There is a reason most jobs are like this. It's just natural. I don't think anyone can truly understand until they experience the opposite. It's so much better and I love it. We both do. It's better for Scarlet too.