We FINALLY left for Texas on Saturday afternoon of February 25. We found out on Friday morning that we would be leaving in the morning, which meant that we had to get busy and finish packing and cleaning that day. We ended up not leaving until around 4 pm or so the next day, which was fine, there was no huge rush for us to get there, we were just anxious to finally head out. We drove down to Provo where we stayed the night before driving to Colorado to pick up all of our stuff that had been in storage since we were last there in September. From there we drove down to Amarillo and then to Brady, Texas. It took us a total of 3 1/2 days to get there and let me just say it was a LONG few days!! We only drove about 8 hours a day of actual driving time, but averaged about 10 hours a day in the car a lone.
When we got to Brady the cell phone service was terrible, there is not 3G access here and so we could sort of connect to the internet on our phones, it would just take a while to load, and then it was hit and miss with the calling service. It will either go directly to voice mail or we get a busy signal. It has definitely been interesting! Well we stayed in a hotel for about 4 days while we finalized all of our housing for us, one of the other families and for the crew. We were able to FINALLY move all of our stuff into our house that we are renting on March 3. It was so nice to finally able to make a home cooked meal, fast food and eating out was really starting to get old!
So far we are really liking it here. The town we are actually living in is Mason, TX which is about 30 minutes South of Brady, where we thought we were going to stay. It's a pretty small town, with a small grocery store and several gas stations, a few restaurants and a few parks. There is a Walmart in Brady as well as in Fredericksburg (which is about 45 minutes South of Mason). We are part of the Fredericksburg Branch and so we get to drive 45 minutes to church every Sunday (versus the 5 minutes it used to take us!). It's a nice little branch and we are getting used to it. Parker is the ONLY 3 year old so they don't have a Sunbeams class in their primary, he gets to go to class with the 4-5 year olds. He seems to be really liking it and everyone says he is a blast to have in primary!! Tyler is actually doing really well in nursery too! There are about 4-5 other kids in nursery with him and as long as he has his blanket in the same room as him he is good to go :)
The drive to and from Brady and Fredericksburg is really pretty. It's not flat and brown like I was expecting. It's really hilly, green, lots of trees and lots of wild flowers on the sides of the roads- pinks, purples, yellows or oranges. We are excited to see how this summer treats us, except we aren't too excited about the extreme heat that we have been hearing about!! Right now the temperature has been in the 70's So far we have experienced 2 thunder/lightning storms. The first one was HUGE and woke me up in the middle of the night. The lightning was constant, non-stop and really bright. I was freaked out naturally because the entire phone service was completely gone and I couldn't get anything internet wise either so I couldn't check to make sure there weren't any tornado watches/warnings. So basically I was up for a good hour and a half watching the storm and making sure nothing was coming, until finally the service came back and I was able to look at the weather radar and found that we were okay. We have also heard that tornadoes are not very common here and nobody seems to worry about them, which is a HUGE relief!!
