Making the Adjustment

After living back in Ohio for the past six weeks, reality is starting to set in... and set in hard. We do not live in Arizona anymore and never will again. All those things that we always thought we would have time to do and kept pushing to the back burner, the places we wanted to go, gone. It's too late.

This was our fourth cross country move so therefore I was sure it would be easier. HAH! It's not. The kids and I are staying with my parents and that in itself is a challenge all its own. Just finding room to put our stuff or store it is a difficult and slow process. The moving pod we used is currently at a local U-Haul (10 miles away) and I've only gotten a quarter of it emptied. I'm having to separate our things between three houses and loading and unloading it all on my own.

Our moving pod still with tons left. Oy!

Another adjustment that many wouldn't think much about is that a quick trip to the store is no longer actually quick. In Arizona, everything was less than 15 minutes away. Now, 15+ minutes is a normal time and distance resulting in a "quick" trip taking at least an hour... IF I'm alone and get in and out of the store fast.


The weather. Can I talk about the weather?! Thankfully, we are not into the hot and humid days yet but we have experienced a few days like that and it was not pleasant. Not pleasant at all. Come July, you'll probably be able to find me on the floor in a puddle of sweat camped out in front of a fan trying to find some sort of relief. I won't even mention the winters because I'm just going to hibernate this year.


The time change, oh the time change! Arizona does not do daylight savings and boy do I miss that. It made bedtime SOOO much easier. Daylight was always over by 9 pm at the latest during the summer. But here, the kids are still trying to stay up later because duh mom! There is still light outside. They're having a hard time with that adjustment.


I really hate to sound like I'm complaining or ungrateful so I'll just move on to the GOOD adjustments.


I can see my family more than once a year! I love love love to see the kids playing with their cousins. I grew up in a large family with literally hundreds (not exaggerating at all, my parents came from families of 12 kids) of cousins and I can still remember the family get-togethers where we would all play hide and seek, kick the can, tag, and all those other fun games that we played until dark and even after.

There is room to roam. People have yards with room to play and run and you can't look directly into your neighbors' yards/houses. That was probably my biggest complaint about Arizona (or at least city) living. The yards were teeny tiny and even if you lived in the Arizona countryside, you didn't have beautiful green yards (unless you worked HARD at it) where kids could run barefoot without having to worry about stepping on things that would hurt you. That's the other thing. In Ohio, we don't have to try to grow grass. It just does! We had to water our yard EVERY day in Arizona if we wanted any hope of a green yard.

I could prattle on and on about the adjustments I'm making or the differences between the two places but I'll spare you or turn it into a whole post in itself. :) My point was that things aren't going according to how I thought they would (do they ever?!) and making these adjustments is taking a little longer.