In the midst of a heat wave in Arizona we moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico! What better time to escape Arizona then during a record breaking heat wave in late July! ^_^

The immediate drop from highs of 115 to highs that barely touch 100 was great but I the fact we moved next to a river was really icing on the cake.

Doing our regular thing, we have been exploring the local scenery, parks, national monuments and such. We’ve hiked Picacho Peak, Pine Tree Trail, and visited La Cueva, but by far the most impressive place we visited has been White Sands National Park. At White Sands National Park you can actually slide down the sand on sleds! It’s a super impressive visual that just pops up out of nowhere as you’re driving through the otherwise plain desert. Maxine and I made more angels in the sand than we could count!

Speaking Spanish Helps…

I have to say, if you can understand and communicate in some good old fashioned espanol, you’ll be way better off then if you can’t. Even dropping off our U-Haul after emptying it we immediately ran in to a service person who didn’t speak any english. Albeit, they weren’t the u-haul rep but the u-haul rep wasn’t present. ^_^ All the kids running around and a huge majority of the population that you’ll run in to in Las Cruces, at the park or just around town tend to default to speaking Spanish. Of course most of the adults and all of the kids can also speak english but that’s definitely not their first choice. I’ve been working on my Spanish with Duo Lingo for quite a while so it’s been nice to have a mild understanding of what’s going on around me. I don’t use anything beyond the basic pleasantries but I have none the less been enjoying it.

Fairewell Trailblazer

Before leaving Arizona we bought a 2010 Nissan Murano with 90,000 miles on it to replace our Trailblazer which had over 200,000 miles. The trailblazer really served us well for the roughly 150,000 miles we put on it. It even kindly towed our belongings here one last time with an over-stuffed u-haul and the roof piled high not unlike the Goofy Movie!

Nothing was really wrong with it except some cosmetic plastics but we felt the desire to get in to something a bit younger with significantly less miles as we get ready to do a pretty big road trip this fall trekking a few thousand miles! So the trailblazer has now changed hands after being on craigslist for one whole day. ^_^. So long and thanks for all the road trips!

It takes a village

It seems like we are always living with or planning to live with all the family members we can convince to converge on the same domicile at the same time. Currently we have three generations in one house which is crazy. Despite it being easier to keep the peace in smaller crowds, there really is something great about getting to connect with family members on the level that only comes with seeing their response to you tripping over the trash can in the kitchen at 04:30 in the morning as I try to prepare for my 05:00 developer meeting. Seeing how people communicate and change because of the impact of other people is just great. Or better understanding the way people act because they’ve been huge parts of each others lives for thirty plus years is just awesome to observe. I know Maxine is just loving having a bunch of people to interact with. As a matter of fact, at this very moment Maxine is following her grandmother (Tay-ta) around outside trying to help with landscaping, building up the dirt circles around the trees for irrigation. Family is just great and I could write a lot about how awesome it is to have the opportunity to develop these relationships.

MOVING ROAD TRIP!

We’ve got a two week road trip in the books set for October! We are moving to the east coast and don’t want to have to drive straight through so we decided to try out the PODS moving service. We just pack up our life in to a container and head off on a road trip! We’re going to cruise around the country for a couple weeks and when we’re done, we call them up and tell them where to drop the pod off. So far the service seems too slick to be true. More on this later…