Life in "Winsconsin"

Haha, our nephew Drake has a hard time saying Wisconsin, it usually comes out as "Winsconsin," pretty stinkin cute! Anyway, after two straight days of driving my mom and I made it to Madison. The drive was  definitely kind of boring through Nebraska, but once we hit Iowa it got alot better. It's really green out here in the Midwest, although pretty dang flat. Driving that long made me feel like a old grandma though, I don't think my lower back has fully recovered yet!

We had gotten here on Thursday night, so Friday morning my mom and I ran a bunch of errands and got stuff for the new place while Jared was at work (and when I say "at work" I really mean the 100 mile bike ride his Trek department did that day, the perks of working there I guess!). It was ridiculous how much crap we got, did some serious damage to our bank account! On Saturday we spent the day painting the apartment which actually went pretty quickly because our stuff hadn't gotten there yet. Sunday we went to church and it was nice to reconnect with some of the people I had met when I visited Jared there back in April. The movers came with our stuff on Monday morning. It only took them 30 minutes to unload all of our stuff, pretty comical. We spent the next few days unpacking and organizing everything. For the most part everything is put together except for a few boxes Jared needs to go through. It is nice to have so much extra space in this apartment. Both of the rooms are huge compared to our old place, and they both have pretty big walk in closets, which is awesome! We've also got the garage for storage and tonight Jared got some hooks to hang his bikes from the garage ceiling so there's literally nothing on the floor of our second bedroom, perfect spot for visitors. We've even got a nice air mattress for you so please come see us!

Tuesday was my birthday, the big Two Five. I like to think of it as the quarter century year, but another math geek (thank you Kathie!) pointed out that it is a perfect square year, which is pretty cool too! We went to dinner at Panera, their strawberry poppyseed salad is seriously out of this world, so delicious! Then on Wednesday we had some of our friends, Jen and Ivan, come over with their two cute little girls Lily and Sofi. We had dinner and cake and then we played some Just Dance. It was nice to have some friends over, made our place seem more like home.

Today was my mom's last day here, so we decided to check out downtown before she left. There are alot of cool shops and restaurants down there by the Capitol Building and the university. We had fun walking around and checking it out. We also found this European Bakery that has some good pastries and sourdough bread. It reminded me of my grandpa's bakery in Cleveland, except his is definitely better!!

It was hard to say goodbye to my mom. She was seriously so much help this past week, we could not have gotten our apartment in order without her! It's sad knowing we are so far away from all of our family and friends, but I'm just glad that we are together now. In a twisted way the long distance was probably good for me because it's made the actual moving part of this alot easier. As much as I would love living close to family, I'd obviously rather be with Jared, even if that means being with Jared 2000 miles away from everyone else.

Anyway, Wisconsin itself has been nice so far. The weather has probably been the best part. I know it will get hotter, but this past week has been in the mid 70's, low 80's with a nice breeze that comes through our windows all day. I think we lucked out with our neighborhood. It seems to be a newer development with some four-plexes like ours but then alot of single family homes as well so it doesn't feel like an apartment complex or anything like that. Even though I definitely miss the mountains, it is really really pretty out here, super green with alot of trees. It's awesome too because you can drive three minutes out of the city and it feels like you are in the country and in a completely different place.

Here are some other random Wisconsin tidbits I've noticed since I've been here:

- Everything closes early around here, by 10 pm everything is shut down.
- They only mow the lawn about three feet back from the road along major streets and highways, the rest of it they let grow high, kind of weird.
- Alot of the homes here have detached garages. I would shoot myself if I had to park my car in the garage and then sludge through 4 feet of snow in sub zero temperatures during the winter!
- People definitely have some awesome accents out here, I've already started picking up on some of it, so I'll probably start sounding like a Wisconsinite (whatever that word is!) here pretty soon.
- The Super Walmart here has underground parking that is insulated. . . I'm living in fear of the winter!
- All of the houses here have wood trim
- It's always cloudy here during the afternoon
- Most days have been pretty windy, I'm not sure if this is a constant, let's hope not

Last time seeing Utah mountains, or any legitimate mountains for a while

Completing one of his many "man projects" 

This was the kitchen island which he successfully constructed.

He credited the completion on his amazing Lego building skills haha!

We finally have a grill!!

The pretty green out here!

This was literally two minutes away from our aparment

and we definitely don't live in the sticks.

It's crazy how fast the landscape changes around here!

Living Room

Kitchen

2nd Bathroom

Our Room

Our Bathroom