Going camping

Well, we didn't actually go camping, but that is what Josh called it. After a long weekend with no natural gas to our house (we had no hot water and couldn't cook on our gas stove), we celebrated by using our gas fire pit to roast marshmallows. The kids thought it was great fun.

Emma enjoyed her smore.

These are the beautiful Organ mountains viewed from our street.

Here is what the front of our house looks like.

A beautiful New Mexico sunset.

First New Mexico Thunderstorm

We have been told that this area of New Mexico has a monsoon season of sorts. Clouds can roll in for a brief but heavy thunderstorm. I love a good thunderstorm (even more so without the threat of tornadoes) and was pleased when one rolled in the other night. Emma and Rachel came out on the front porch with me to watch the storm.

This picture shows our great private front yard with a fire pit.

I loved this action shot of Emma

A Place to call home

After looking at rental houses for two days, we found one that we thought would work. We decided to rent for a while for a couple reasons - we haven't sold our house yet in Omaha and we want to live in the area for a little while before we buy a house. The house we found is pretty nice, just a lot smaller than the one we had in Omaha. We get to move in tomorrow and it will be nice to get out of the hotel room. We are giving up access to a free pool (which has been nice in the 100+ degree weather) but I still can't wait to be in a house again. Here are some pictures.



I can't believe I forgot to take some of the front yard. It is enclosed behind a fence and there is a gas fire pit and outdoor kitchen. It's almost like a little courtyard. I'll have to take some pictures after we move in tomorrow. Hopefully we can fit all of our stuff :)

Welcome to New Mexico

Well, we made it. It was the longest road trip we have ever taken and it wasn't actually too bad. The movers finished up at about 6:00pm on Tuesday. We finished up with some last minute things and were on the road by 6:30. We made it to North Platte at 10:30 and stayed the night at a hotel. The next day was our longest. We left at 8:30 am, gained an hour, and got to Sante Fe, New Mexico that night. We stopped in Las Vegas, New Mexico to eat dinner. The third day was 4 hours and we got to Las Cruces around noon. We had a few hours to kill before we checked in to our hotel so we ate lunch and drove around some of the neighborhoods. It really does seem like a nice place. The next few days were spent looking at rental houses. We found one on Saturday and now we are no longer homeless. The movers are going to deliver our stuff on Friday and we are all excited to get out of a hotel. It should be interesting figuring out where to put a lot of our stuff. We are losing over 1000 square feet and a garage space. The houses don't have basements here and in general they are a lot smaller. It will be good for us to get rid of a lot of our stuff. We went to church on Sunday and the people in the ward were very friendly. More than one family invited us over to dinner that night and then another called for an invitation this week. It is a small ward and they seem to be excited to get a new family.

There are times when I sit back and think "what have we done?" We left so many good friends, a great school, a nice house, and an amazing ward. But, we both feel that this is the right thing for our family right now. Things are falling into place and our first impressions of Las Cruces have been very good. Now we just need someone to buy our house...

Blog Makeover

My blog has been too boring for quite a while. We've been in a hotel for a couple of days (and I've had a little bit of time on my hands) and today I decided to spruce it up a little. I actually changed the URL as well. Right now it will redirect from the old one (adventuresinchildhood.blogspot.com) to the new one (bloomfieldfamily.blogspot.com) but if you have it linked somewhere, please change your links and your RSS feeds. Originally we had two blogs - one was for the family (Aaron started it) and then I wanted a blog too, so I started one that was supposed to be for the kids. I got tired of updating 2 different blogs, so I merged them together, deciding to use the one that I set up. Now that it has been the family blog for a while, I wanted to change the URL to make it easier to remember and to better reflect what the blog was about.

Also, the new name. I've been trying to come up with a fun name for a while now and had basically come up with nothing. I was thinking about the past few years and how we've been in a lot of different situations. We've had to adapt to new towns, wards, friends, schools, etc. Instead of focusing on all the things we will miss about the old places, we are trying to make the best of our new situation. We first made the big change by moving to Omaha and most recently, the move to New Mexico. We hope that where ever we may be, we can bloom where we are planted.

A Tale of Two Cities

The first time I was in Omaha, the high temperature for the day was 5 degrees. The first time I was in Las Cruces, the high was about 100 degrees. All in all, I think I would rather be hot than cold. I hope that after a summer here, I'll still feel the same way.

Our life in boxes

Moving is such a huge job. Even though we had packers/movers it was exhausting. It makes you realize how much stuff you have! It took two long days for the moving guys to put our whole house inside of a truck. Since we are renting a house in New Mexico for about a year, we will have to move our selves when we buy a house. I am already not looking forward to it.

Blown out the door

Our last week in Omaha was filled with lots of storms and tornadoes. The Sunday before we left a tornado hit (not too far from where we live!) at 2:30 am. At least 100 homes were severely damaged and 7 were completely destroyed. Luckily, no one was killed. David and I huddled in the basement when we heard the sirens, I turned on the news and saw that the storm wasn't directly in our area, so I didn't wake the other kids. Unfortunately, it would have been too late if we had been in the area of the tornado, it was at such an unexpected time - the tornado hit before the sirens went off. Then Monday night the clouds looked like this.



This storm was didn't spawn any tornadoes. I love the way the clouds look. It can be kind of ominous, but beautiful at the same time.

We left on Tuesday evening to start the drive down to New Mexico. Wednesday night a really bad tornado hit north of Omaha. It hit a boy scout camp (I believe it is the one that our Church uses) and 4 boys got killed. I love a good thunderstorm, but the tornadoes can be pretty scary. Our kids are relieved that we are moving out of "tornado alley".

Our last trip to the zoo

One of the things that we love about Omaha is the zoo. They have so many really nice exhibits. I took the kids one final time. We went to some of their favorite places.

The giraffes.


The sculpture garden.








And the aquarium.


They really love the huge tanks. You walk through a tunnel and the sharks, eels, fish, and turtles swim all around you.




Rachel and David both had some money to spend. They love getting stuff from the zoo gift shop. They have almost any kind of animal you could think of. David got two more turtles and Rachel fell in love with this mom and baby Kangaroo.


We will really miss the Omaha zoo!

Catching up...

I haven't been very good at blogging the past couple months, so I wanted to catch up a little bit with the main adventures in our lives.

Josh was in a cute music program at his school. It was an opera of the three little pigs.



Rachel had a piano recital. She did a wonderful job on the 2 songs that she memorized for the recital.


Emma turned three! She loves taking care of her babies and was delighted to get a stroller, some bottles, and some diapers for her babies.



Josh had a great time playing soccer this year. He keeps getting better and better and scored several goals.



David turned 8. This year was special and he had more than one time to celebrate his birthday. We had a party at home, and then another one in Utah when we went for my sister's wedding.


We had a great time in Utah celebrating Sarah and Spencer's wedding. The kid's outfits were a big hit.


David got baptized on May 24 by his Dad. Grandma and Grandpa were there to celebrate with us. Unfortunately, I have very few pictures due to a couple of snags that we hit on the baptism day. A baptism before ours ran long and then we didn't have the keys to the clothing closet. I was a little flustered at the beginning, but the baptism was very nice. Rachel gave a great talk that she wrote her self and then Dawn (David's grandma) gave a talk as well.



So, that somewhat catches you up on the important stuff in our life. There will be more posts to come about our latest adventure - moving to New Mexico.