First and foremost, Chris and I have grown so much closer than I could have imagined over 6 years ago! I think being just far away enough from family has made us have to rely on each other so much. We have truly become best of friends! We have also grown so much in the Gospel. We watched Maricopa grow from 2 wards to 6 plus a Spanish branch and now its own stake! We have had so many opportunities to serve including primary, young men/women, and most recently, serving in the Gila Bend branch. We made some amazing friends who we now consider family and I can't imagine what I would do without them. Even though I know I'm not saying goodbye to them, its so sad for me to know that we aren't going to be just a few minutes away from them anymore. We started our lives together there. Our home there saw so much laughter and smiles and happiness but also saw sadness in trials that I know have brought us closer to each other and the Lord. I have definitely learned to just have faith that everything will be better than ok in the end and to just be happy with what we have right now. We have been blessed far beyond what we deserve. I will forever remember our first home and the place we started our little family!
I have tried my hardest to find a picture of the house and can't seem to find one anywhere! How sad is that!?
Anyway, here are a few pictures of my primary kids from the bend....yes this is the whole primary minus just a few kids who weren't there that day! Aren't they cute? I already miss them.
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With all of that said about Maricopa, we are very excited for the next chapter in our lives. We are back in the valley and civilization again! We are renting an apartment for the time being and couldn't be happier. Happy to have a place just big enough for the 2 of us and takes about an hour to clean and best of all NO YARD WORK! We had plans of going to our new ward and not talking to anyone so we could just lay low for a while....that's not going to happen. Its a smaller ward and our first Sunday there, we had so many people coming up to us and introducing themselves and telling us how happy they were to have us. We have felt so welcomed there already and are happy to be a part of this new ward now. It is definitely hard getting used to 3 hours again though. Gila bend was only 2 and we usually started around 15 minutes late because there was never anyone there on time!
A few weeks ago, our brother in law TJ turned 30! So his wife, Jen threw him an 80s themed bday party since he was born in the 80s! It was so fun to see everyone all dressed up in how they remember the 80s! Here's just a few pics from my phone from that night.
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