something better: January 2013

Austin & I now live in the Midwest!

We now reside in Saint Peters, Missouri. We love it here so far! It has been a wonderful first week here and we are excited to get in the groove of things. We are slowly learning how to get around town and how to get to our favorite stores. We've been quite busy this first week making sure we have all of the necessary amenities for our apartment.

We first began with a nice non-stop flight from Seattle to St. Louis. We traveled with quite a bit of luggage since we didn't know when we'd get all of our household goods that the moving company packed up and were transporting over here. We picked everything up at baggage claim and got our rental car. Since we had so much luggage, we got an upgrade from a Ford Fusion to a Jeep Liberty. Austin & I thought it looked like a pretty nice car but looks are definitely not everything! The car was horrible and just wasn't as zippy to drive as our CR-V is. We missed our cars and we were excited to have them arrive in St. Louis. We eventually got to pick up our cars on Friday from a local towing company that received the delivery of their cross-country trip.

We ended up staying at two hotels during the first week and we sure had some interesting experiences with both! Our first extended stay hotel was seriously a dump! I don't know why we expected more of it since we only paid $35 a night. Anyways, we wanted to get out of there ASAP but we ended up staying there for two nights until we could find a different extended stay. The other hotel we stayed at was much nicer except the huge downfall was that we had some disobedient neighbors in our hall who smoked cigarettes all day! The hallway reeked of smoke and Austin & I were very displeased. Other than that, the room was nice and we stayed there for two nights.

The experiences we have with our hotels really encouraged us to find an apartment ASAP and move in there fast! We took an apartment tour with CORT, a relocation company. This was set up for us by Altair, the moving company who oversaw our move. We visited many different complexes and we finally decided between Sun River and Sun Valley (we got those names mixed up quite often). We ended up going for Sun River because the rent was much cheaper and the apartments had the exact same layout (they were build at the same time by the same company). We liked the location and found an apartment that fit all of our needs. We are also pleased that we can save more money to save up for a house after our lease is over! Btw, houses here are way cheap!

I finally moved out of the hotel while Austin was at his first day of work at Boeing on Friday. I took all of our stuff to our new apartment and waited till Austin was done with work. We are so excited to finally be in our apartment! We are just waiting for our stuff to arrive here in St. Louis so we can fill our apartment with all of those fun wedding gifts we haven't even opened yet!

Throughout the week, Austin & I have been shopping around for all sorts of things. We found car insurance, a washer and dryer, household items such as garbage cans, shower curtains, floor lamps and an air mattress. We also got new phones and joined together on our own phone plan!

We are hoping that all of our stuff arrives either today or tomorrow! We are ready to sit on a couch and sleep on a real bed!

We had an enjoyable Sabbath day at church at our new ward, the St. Peters ward. We meet some really nice people and hopefully we'll meet more younger couples to hangout with!

This week while Austin is busy at work, I plan on job searching and learning more about this area. I am hoping to join Masters Swimming and get back into the water. I've realized that the best workout and the most in shape I have ever been was in high school when I was on the water polo and swim team. I also hope to learn a lot about budgeting, smart grocery shopping, how to cook yummy recipes and how to be a good home maker! So if you want to share any ideas, I'd be more than happy to! I want to try some new hobbies and have projects to work on. I'd like to sew, knit/crochet and do a lot of DIY projects to make our apartment a home.

Austin is really enjoying work so far. He has his dream job as a design engineer and I am so proud of him for all that he has worked for to get this job! We are seriously so blessed and we are very happy that it brought us here to Missouri. It seems like a really great place so far and we are excited to explore more and go on adventures.

Austin's first day of work at Boeing!