Life in Missouri

If you had asked me when I was 18 where I thought I would be in 5-6 years, I would've said hopefully married, possibly with a kid, and living in Salt Lake. I NEVER pictured my life living outside of Utah.

And I think Heavenly Father was laughing at me and how little I knew what was headed my way.

So here we are 6 years and 5 states later.

Once I realized my life may not end up in Utah (at least not for a while), I still never dreamed that I would live in the mid-west, in Missouri.

And here's the biggest shocker: I love it here!

I love all the trees, they remind me of Oregon. They're just all deciduous instead of evergreens.

I love our townhouse. For once we are not living in a crappy apartment but in a place that feels like home.

I love the location we are in. We are close to everything! Every store, the freeway, library, etc.

It is my favorite place we have lived location-wise.

After all the places we've lived I have learned that I am not really a city girl, and I am not a country girl, but I am a suburbs girl. And this is the perfect suburbs location.

sweet bridge on our drive from the airport to our new home.

We live in Blue Springs, home of David Cook (who beat David Archuletta from Murray!), a suburb of Kansas City.

One thing I do not love about Missouri - it is SO humid here.

It is 7am and the humidity is 81%.

Milk is expensive here!

Aren't the cows a whole lot closer to us here? Shouldn't it be cheaper?

The garbage truck doesn't have a robotic arm to pick up your trashcan. Guys walk along with the truck and bring your trashcan up to the back of the truck. (Maybe other places do this? This is the first time we have had our own garbage can instead of dumpster). Once it's been emptied they put the trashcan back up against your house.

Cicadas make the weirdest and loudest sound ever.

Turn up your volume and listen.

We live in tornado alley. Eek!

There are sirens that go off throughout the city when there is a tornado watch or warning.

And maybe I freaked out one day when our smoke detector went off and I thought it was a tornado alert...

Chris works every other Saturday at Walmart (as the optometrist. Everyone seems to think he just got a random job there pushing carts. um no!) so we don't get to go out exploring as much as we want. 

But we've done a few fun things:

In our little backyard grilling for Chris' birthday/the 4th of July.

 The birthday boy. (Geezer alert!)

The grill master :)

We went to the Independence visitors center to learn about the church history in this area and saw this cool building across the street.

It is the Community of Christ temple so we went and toured that while we were at it.

It was very interesting. They had some cool artifacts from Joseph and Emma Smith, and had the jail door from Liberty Jail.

We have a swimming pool at our complex and we've taken advantage of it on the hottest days!

It's hard to tell if Londyn enjoys swimming or not...

She doesn't crack too many smiles but when we get her out she always tries to get back in her floaty.

We went on a little hike walk at the Burr Oak Woods Nature Center.

 The terrain stayed the same the whole time, no changing landscape, no changing elevation...

definitely something we'll have to get used to for "hiking" here.

We can't wait to do some more exploring here!