I’ve lived in Utah a whole year now.  I can hardly believe it.  Anyway, as was inevitable, living in Utah has changed my life in a few ways:

1. Kids everywhere. Any one of my children has 5 or more possible play-date friend options within walking distance.  This means that my children play more at other people’s houses and more children play here than I’ve ever been used to in the past.  Despite my previous aversion to other people’s children, it’s been quite nice.
2. We’ve always enjoyed little camping trips, but now they’re all in the desert.  I’m a lush forest and flowered trails kind of girl, but Matt keeps trying to convince me that the desert is “beautiful in its own way.”  I’d agree that parts of it are magnificent.  The miles and miles of flat, ugly, and boring in between the magnificence are a little less impressive though.  Here’s where we camped over Labor Day, at Goblin Valley State Park:
3. Did you know that you can buy food storage/emergency essentials (like huge buckets of wheat) as well as LDS literature in most local grocery stores?  That still weirds me out a little bit.
4. Utah makes you fat.  No, seriously.  All of my clothes are too tight now, and since I refuse to take any personal responsibility, I’m flat-out blaming it on Utah.  Matt, if we move back to the South or midwest, I promise I would lose 20 pounds in a year.  The only logical thing I can think of to blame this phenomenon on is the abundance of long-lost friends that live here and the accompanying lunch dates to catch up.  (That was a weird sentence, but I don’t really know how to fix it.)
5. There is crafty stuff everywhere, and I am not much of a crafter– never have been.  But I have admittedly been influenced by some of the stuff I’ve seen, and I’ve even had the courage to try a few things myself.  I wish you knew how uncharacteristic that is.  So, I made this FHE chart for our family.  I totally dreamed up the whole concept by myself while browsing the rows at Hobby Lobby (waiting for a picture to be framed).  Not only that, but I realized that I couldn’t be an official citizen of Utah unless I put some kind of vinyl quote on my wall.  So I custom ordered this little ditty from here based on an FHE lesson we had once and have returned to in concept many, many times.  I guess it’s sort of like a family motto or goal or something like that.  (I painted that little house. Move over, Picasso.)

Anyway,  I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I can come up with.  Oh, and obviously moving to Utah has made me a way lamer blogger.  I recently browsed through all my old archives and I thought, Hey, I used to have a pretty cool blog when I actually spent time on it.  I’m still undecided about whether I’m going to do blog therapy or let it keep sliding downhill.  Time will tell.  But no matter what happens, it’s all Utah’s fault.

p.s.  As a side note, despite the temptation that abounds on local billboards and magazines, I have not yet had plastic surgery, been to a quick-cash store, or done eyelash extensions.  I do, however, have fantastic neighbors and I’ve had the privilege of attending several meetings and firesides and conferences taught by amazing people, so you know, it’s not all bad.