Hello, I am starting this blog to keep all my friends back in Ohio up to date on my move and new life. Since this is my first post and I have been living here for 36 days now, it will be a long post. (A lot's happened) I recently moved from a very small town in Ohio, to Tucson, AZ, and so far I'm not a real big fan of big city life. (I will say that I have discovered an unexpected weakness for Starbucks that took me completely off guard. White Chocolate Mocha Latte- Wow! ) We arrived in Tucson on Sunday, May 7th. My Mom and Dad drove a trailer full of Jariah and Becca’s stuff, my oldest brother, Justin drove our second car, and it’s a good thing they all came because our “new house” was in BAD shape! (It seriously made me long for my trailer, if you can believe that!) When our friends Asa and Tim arrived with my stuff, I wanted to jump in their truck and tell them to head back home to Ohio because I felt like I had landed on mars! (I never really wanted to live on mars… hmmm…) The guys ripped out all the old nasty flooring and cabinets and we replaced it with nice clean laminate flooring and new base cabinets. We also got the whole house painted, and it’s looking better all the time. By the 11th, everyone who came with us from Ohio was sick. I even lost my voice completely for like 3 days, it was horrible. I could barely even say goodbye to my Mom, Dad, and Justin when it was time for them to leave on Saturday night because I had no voice! I was sick for the first 3 weeks that I lived here with some sort of cold/flu thing. Less than a week after my cold ended, on June 6th, I was off to Phoenix (2 hours away) to pick up my sister Jess and niece Ness from the airport!! It had been 30 days since I‘d seen them so I was very happy to have them!!! On the way home from the airport we went through an InsAnE sand storm. Whoa! I have only seen stuff like that in old western movies!! (Centennial comes to mind, and as I recall, the lady who lived through those storms later killed her whole family…) Talk about scary, we couldn't see a thing! I pulled my car in between 2 semi-trucks and just made sure that I could see the truck in front of my car the whole time. The truck in front was my "Knight" in shining armor. (It was a truck from a company called "KNIGHT"). The next day, Wednesday, June 7th, I got bit by about a million red ants (Zion says that they weren't actually red ants, but they sure looked red to me) and my leg and foot are still itchy 4 days after the fact. Two days after the ants, on Friday, Jess, Ness, Becca, Brandon and I went to a water park and got fried, despite the fact that we were all wearing sunscreen SPF 50!! Ouch!! We did have a lot of fun at the park though; and Ness even went down a huge water slide all by herself! I was soooo impressed! The good news is, Becca, Brandon and I will be coming home to Ohio for 3 weeks very soon and I can hardly wait! Woohoo, I'll be home for family camp!! Unfortunately, that means I’m stuck doing activities for John, but on the bright side, I get to see John and everyone else!!! Oh, by the way, What was I thinking?!?!?!