a tour of our house in Surprise

Get ready for a photo-intensive post as I take you on a tour of our home here in Surprise.

Here is the living room.  The television has a digital satellite and, because we live in a large metropolitan area, we get quite a few free stations.  And, with a Roku to get BYU TV, who needs cable???
 

This is our kitchen.  I love all the storage space and the gas stove/oven!

Here is the dining room,  You can see the gas fireplace and the little window that looks into the living room.

This is our front door.  The couch that Steve was sitting on in the first picture is just to the right of the picture and you can just barely see the entrance into the dining room.  

Just outside the front door is a nice covered porch.

This is a view of the hallway as seen from the living room.

The first door on the left is a storage area.

Second door on the left is a half-bathroom

And the third door on the left is the laundry room, complete with a deep sink.

The door straight back in the hall leads to the two-car garage.  The Johnson's left their bikes for Steve and me to ride.  

The only door on the right in the hallway leads to the master bedroom.

and a HUGE master bathroom.  That tub is where we keep our laundry basket since neither Steve nor I are bath people.  The shower is very roomy and lovely.  And, we each have our own sink for the first time in 42 years of married life.  Bliss!

This is the walk-in closet just to the left as you enter the bathroom.

Going up stairs we have the large family room area.  

Steve and I use the huge open floor space to do our morning calesthenics.  Our computer is up here and I use the roll top desk to pay bills.  We don't spend a lot of time up here so we keep the AC at a pretty high temperature.  Thank goodness for the fan!

There are three more bedrooms upstairs.

and a nice full bathroom with two sinks.

Last of all, this is the little bit of yard space where I can plant things if I want to.   The Johnsons have a cactus corner and some other assorted desert-loving plants including lantana which are very attractive to hummingbirds.  I hope to plant a tomato plant or two this winter.  

The rest of the yard is taken care of by the homeowner association.  

Exploring Marley Park

Steve and I live in a housing development in Surprise called Marley Park.  You can Google search it - Marley Park Surprise - and it gives a little bit of an idea of the neighborhood.  The Johnson's left their bikes for us to use and we have enjoyed exploring the different streets.  

There are bike lanes on many of the roads.  There is even a road has a bike lane AND a golf cart lane!  I looked on the map and you really couldn't drive a golf cart on this road to a golf course - it is just for folks who don't want to drive their car, I guess.  And I have seen a few folks doing this.

As residents of Marley Park (and because the Johnson's pay homeowner association dues), we can use the pools.  Last Saturday, we decided to check them out.


Steve is enjoying the swimming pool and below is the lap pool.


the entrance to the pool area...




another view of the building just before the gate entrance.  Residents can reserve the pool for private events.  There is also a lovely clubhouse that also can be rented.

You can see by these photos that it is a really nice pool!

I think of some of the fellow senior missionary couples whose assignments have them serving in Ghana, Madagascar, or Chile that seem pretty exotic but I can't imagine their living quarters are even a fraction of how we are living.  They likely have small rooms and maybe no air conditioning and they might even have to use a filter for their faucets.  They wouldn't have a dishwasher or probably even a washer and dryer at their disposal.  And here are Steve and I living in what feels like a luxury condominium on a two year vacation!  It is sobering and humbling and makes me want to EARN the many blessings we have.  Our "trials" are very few.

We had a strong windstorm Saturday evening and it blew down many trees and broke of lots of branches around town.  This happened just two doors down...



We also got a very nice rain storm Sunday evening.  Probably got an inch.  This is the "monsoon" season here.  Storms built up in the mountains up north and then come down from the east (NOT the west like storms do in Missouri) into the Phoenix valley.  It has elevated the humidity level to ....oh, maybe 35%.  Yeah..... nothing like Missouri right now.

Next time, I will give an extensive tour of the house....

Three weeks and counting....

We have lived in Arizona for three weeks now and I have some observations:

1.        I cannot imagine why anyone back in the 1800’s when Arizona was being settled would have even considered living here after experiencing a summer.  I cannot even think how it must have been to live here without any electricity to power a fan, a swamp cooler, or an air conditioner

2.       Arizona tries REALLY HARD to make living here visually appealing because, goodness knows, natural growth is pretty boring (except for the saguaro cactus which are really cool looking).  They landscape every piece of open public space with heat-loving, low-water needing plants and it is truly lovely.  They also grow patches of low-maintenance (meaning it doesn’t need to be mowed every week) grass wherever they can.  Because, you know, the eye can only tolerate only so much brown and tan.  We need green in our lives to promote sanity – especially in the intense heat.

3.       Arizona is the land of retired people and they actually have “Silver Alerts”  that are sort of like “Amber Alerts”.  Warning….. a senior person has wandered off or a senior person is driving their car and here is the license plate.  They had one of those on the 4^th of July and it was plastered on all the freeway notification signs.  I guess they have many incidents of seniors driving the wrong way on freeways.  Yikes.

4.       Arizona also has their own special kinds of weather alerts – severe dust storms.  We had one tonight.  Stay in your homes was what we were told.  NO PROBLEM!  Too dang hot to be outside anyway.

Speaking of 4^th of July, it seems like it was WEEKS ago instead of just five days ago.  The local scout troop plants flags in front of homes that subscribe to the service and this greeted us early on the 4th.  

The Johnson's are subscribers, I guess.  We started our day with a breakfast / flag ceremony at the church. 

It was potluck with people encouraged to bring breads and fruit.  WELL,  on the two long banquet tables, I saw two tiny bowls of fruit and the rest was carbohydrate city – cinnamon rolls, muffins, donuts, donut holes, my small plate of gluten-free muffins.  Just two gallons of milk and two gallons of juice for the masses completed the “breakfast”.   I KNOW all the kids buzzed around the rest of the day on all that sugar.  We had lunch with a long-time friend, Evelyn Kerr, from my MU hospital days who now lives in Tempe.  

We visited my sister Jerri in her new rehab facility in Mesa.  She had just returned from an overnight stay at the hospital where they had to debride the dead skin off her burned forearms.  Not sure how long it will take until she gets to return back to her home.  So sad. And, afterwards, we had dinner and a small backyard fireworks display at my niece’s – Amy and Cory Ellsworth – home also in Mesa. 

Here is Colby.  His twin, Cade, was not up to much as he had just had surgery to insert a rod to help his scoliosis (from the muscular distrophy)  Colby had his inserted a couple of years ago.  Their dad, Cory, grew up on a dairy farm so his "mid-life crisis" was to buy a dairy cow and here is her calf.

setting up for the fireworks

    

    

As we drove back to Surprise (taking literally a full hour to go from the east end of Phoenix valley to the west end), we admired larger firework displays on either side of the freeway

I got to help Steve drive a brand-new (less than 5 miles on the odometer) Chevy Malibu from a downtown Phoenix dealership back to the mission office on Thursday.  Nice car - TERRIFYING ride.  All I could think was "DON'T WRECK THIS CAR"

We have a new mission president as of July 1^st and this week he hit the ground running.  He toured the office on Monday the 3^rd and on the 4^th, he had a leadership meeting at a stake center in Peoria.  We actually went there after the breakfast so Steve could meet a fellow to replace three TIWI’s on cars that were going to be at that meeting.  A TIWI stands for “teenage independent witness” and it is literally “Big Brother” in your car.  Which is a good thing for 19 and 20 year-old drivers.  It monitors seatbelt wearing, speed, and reckless driving.  Anyway, back to the new mission president – he then spent the rest of the week – Wednesday through yesterday – at zone conferences throughout the mission.  The first two were down here in Phoenix.  On Friday, he was in Flagstaff and on Saturday he was in Prescott.  Steve attends all these meetings.  Flagstaff is a 3 hour drive away – Prescott is 1.5 hours away so, rather than come all the way back to Phoenix Friday night, everyone just stayed up in Prescott.  I drove up to meet Steve and on both the drive up and back, I saw evidence of recent and current fires!  Saturday morning, before the zone conference started, I found the house where my grandma and grandpa Fraedrich lived back in the 70’s.  

I complain about the heat and the barrenness but, being here in Phoenix is wonderful because I have so much family and we have so many friends who live here.  While in Prescott, I learned of two former-Missouri church families who live up there!

My sister Juli had doctor appointments down in Phoenix on Friday so she came for an early dinner before she headed back up to Payson and I headed to Prescott.  And, we had dinner this evening with friends we have known since we were in Woodbridge, Virginia back in the late 70’s!  Fred and Nancy Richardson – a wonderful, wonderful couple

Getting Settled in Phoenix

Oh my, it is REALLY HOT down here!  We arrive to temperatures of 120 degrees.  Even with our tinted back windows and a windshield cover, the steering wheel is too hot to handle so Steve bought these our second day here.  

My sunglasses are usually too hot to wear right away.

But, when the temperatures drop to 110 degrees, NORMAL temperatures in Phoenix in the summer, it feels great!

We live in the Marley Park development -  the cutest neighborhood here in Surprise.  

Here is our side of the twin home where we live

All the grounds are maintained by the homeowner's association but we do have a small enclosed patio at the front of the house where I can grow things if I want - in the fall and winter and spring, of course!  Marvin and Rebecca Johnson, owners of the house, have planted a few desert-loving plants already.  I will try to grow some tomatoes, I think.

This is the entry area with the front door off to the left.  Continuing to the back you will find our two-car garage and a narrow alley way.  No yards to speak of.

Steve and I have had to awaken pretty early to beat the heat on our walks and bike rides (The Johnson's left their bikes for us to use!)

Even though it is the desert, they do have some green spaces in the common areas

One morning walk, we saw this guy - a very bedraggled looking coyote - just roaming the neighborhood!

And this hilarious sight....these two dogs looked like they were sitting on the top of a high fence barking at passers by.  Actually, they must be on some kind of structure up against the wall that allowed them to check things out.  The one on the right was the barker.

We live 14 miles away from the Mission Office but we have to travel on surface streets so it is about a 30-minute commute one way.  We are in the office 9-5 Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  We get to leave at 4 on Thursday and at 1 on Friday.  Getting used to a 35-hour work week without afternoon power naps has been quite an adjustment.  We come home just totally exhausted.  Steve has to be on call 24/7 to address any vehicle issues that occur.  He has already had to handle his first fender-bender.  I am in charge of all the missionary arrivals and departures which goes in a six-week cycle.   In each cycle, we seem to have about 8-10 missionaries leaving and the same arriving.  I prepare welcome and farewell packets.   I order plane tickets but don't have to actually purchase them - Salt Lake does that.  I also process baptism information.  I answer phones when the receptionist is not there.  

We are right by a Deseret Industries and have made several small purchases to help organize our things here at the house.  We have discovered all the Wal-Marts and the various grocery stores (there is even a Kroger-associated one called Fry's) between the office and home.  In Columbia, I was never much of a Wal-Mart grocery shopper but, without an Aldi and with high prices everywhere else, I guess I will become one.  We even got to find an Urgent Care last week as Steve developed a urinary tract infection!  We both are just not drinking enough water here!

I will write more about our office in the future and I will also dedicate a blog to the inside of our home.  I close with a random Charlie Brown siting in a local Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market.....

Second Week in the MTC and Zion

Walking around the MTC campus (during our exercise and back and forth to classes and devotionals), we regularly passed these two statues.  This is Samuel Smith, the first missionary for the church back in the 1800's.


And this sculpture represents modern-day missionaries (although they should be wearing bike helmets!)

We spent a lot of time in the classroom - Steve learning about managing vehicle fleets and me about office stuff.  Now that we are actually in our jobs, some of what we learned will never be needed (like, I will never need to do the monthly newsletter and Steve won't have to do finances - those are jobs covered by other individuals in the office). 

Here is our group of office missionaries on our "graduation" day!

(Lambson, Mustard (France), Jensen (Chile), Sister Haywood in the blue top (Philippines), Hogeman (Orlando), McNary (Calgary), McCracken (Riverside, CA), Glanfield (Ghana), Tooley (West Virginia), Jackson (Portland), Boyle (Madagascar), Johnson (Mississippi) 

Thursday afternoon, June 15th, we packed up our stuff from our MTC room, 

We stopped by Kirsti and Ryan's apartment to collect the rest of our stuff (cello and computer) and away we drove from Provo.

We went as far as Cedar City that night.  The next morning, Friday June 16th,  we made a four-hour detour through Zion Naational Park.

  Parking is VERY limited in the park so it is best to ride a shuttle bus but, even getting there at 8:00 am, the lines for the shuttles were terrible.  It took us an hour to finally board.

But, the scenery was completely worth it!

Maybe we can return again someday (NOT in in tourist-heavy summer time) and explore The Narrows.  We did hardly any walking, just rode the shuttle.  We actually did have to drive through the southern part of the park to leave and they had the coolest tunnel ever!  It was over a mile long and there was no electric lighting inside.  At intervals throughout the tunnel, windows were carved into the side of the mountain to let in natural light.  It was pretty amazing to see.

Then, on to Payson by way of Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell

We drove through Flagstaff where we had dinner at a Wendy's and sat next to an LDS Boy Scout troop from Queen Creek (south of Phoenix) who were returning from a high adventure at a camp in Utah.  They were a great group of leaders and boys.

The drive between Flagstaff and Payson was just gorgeous - nothing but pine trees and mountain meadows.  With the late afternoon sun slanting down, and listening to a Best of Hans Zimmer mix CD that Steven made for me years ago, it was a lovely drive!

We got into Payson before dark (a FIRST in Lambson history) and enjoyed spending time with my sister, Juli, on Saturday and Sunday before driving down to Phoenix to start our ACTUAL mission...

We took an early Saturday morning walk around the park in Payson 

And admired the water fowl....

I didn't think Canada Geese went as far west -