March 2014

Plano---spanish for flat

The city's population was 269,776 at the 2010 census, making it the ninth most populous city in the state of Texas and the 70th most populous city in the United States. The city is home to many corporate headquarters: Alliance Data, Cinemark Theatres, Dell Services, Dr Pepper Snapple Group,Ericsson, Frito-Lay, HP Enterprise Services, Huawei, J. C. Penney, Pizza Hut, Rent-A-Center, Traxxas, Siemens PLM Software, and Toyota Motors USA.

In 2005, 2006, and 2011, Plano was designated the best place to live in the Western United States by CNN Moneymagazine. In 2006, Plano was selected as the 11th best place to live in the United States by CNN Money magazine. It was also selected as the safest city in America in 2010 and 2011 by Forbes. Plano schools consistently score among the highest in the nation. It has been rated as the wealthiest city in the United States by CNN Money, and the United States Census Bureau declared Plano the wealthiest city of 2008 by comparing the median household income for all U.S. cities whose populations were greater than 250,000. In 2008, Forbes.comselected Plano, University Park, and Highland Park as the three "Top Suburbs To Live Well" of Dallas.

                                          

Logan: 

  Logan started his new job on March 3rd as a Senior Credit Analyst……..(Logan will update his experience later)

Hanna:

Continue to unpack and decorate. Goal is to get it unpacked as quick as possible since we move every year; more than likely, by the time I have the place how I want it we will move again. 

Connor:

Still his happy little self, moving to a new place doesn't seem to shock him. He continues to love to explore, play with cars, and having books read to him. We are no longer experiencing the snow and extreme cold of utah. Therefore, Connor gets to go to the playground a lot more. He continues to become more and more independent. . He understands so much and can follow simple commands, and his word vocabulary continues to expands daily. 

Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch:

When we moved here we found out that Brittany Wallentine (Moon), who we grew up with in Warner Robins, lives 5 minutes from us. Her husband is currently in Dental school and have lived in the area for 3 years and plan on staying here and practicing dentistry upon graduation. We are excited to have a little piece of home here and look forward to growing a friendship with Brittany, her husband and their two boys, Grant and Kaiden. 

We were invited to go with Brittany, Spencer Moon and their friends to Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch.     All of us, with the kids, piled onto the safari trolley. The trolley had food buckets attached to the sides. As soon as we entered the gates the animals came running towards us. We saw horses, Z-orses (zebra crossbred with a horse), camels, emus, pot belly pigs, kangaroos, rain deers, bears, lemurs, goats, sloth, and cobra; plus many other little attractions for the kids. Connor had a blast and so did we. 

February 2014

On to a New Adventure:
Everything seems so sure real. It doesn't seem real that we will be moving to Texas in two weeks. After we accepted the offer we invited our friends that live in Provo over to share the exciting news. A year ago, Talmadge did an internship at Ernest & Young in Dallas and was offered a position upon graduation. We knew the Henderson family would be moving to the Dallas area but were not sure of the exact city.We informed them we would be moving to Plano. It just so happens, after much researching, they had chosen to move there; as well, because of the great school district and low crime rates. Since we would be moving to the same area we began looking for apartments together. We've been neighbors before and thought it would be fun to be neighbors again.

Parting gift from our good friend, the Henderson Family

Goodbye Utah:

Before saying good bye to Utah, my friend's Lacey and Lauren took me out for a girls night. We went and ate Mexican and then went roller skating. It was a great parting memory to have with these ladies. 

Since we have moved so many times we have become pros at moving. Packing and loading went as planned. We may be great at moving now but we still do not enjoy it but who does? We decided to pack the moving truck up the night before the move and spend our last night in Utah on our air mattress. So glad to move away from Utah in the winter, because I don't know if I would have easily said goodbye to Utah in the summer. We look forward to our new adventure in a new state.

Dad - Just pack me like this. I don't want to make that drive again.

Our North Salt Lake Apartment

The 6th place we've lived in our almost 5 and half years of marriage. 

Ready to go.

lots of oil rigs

Fast food is yucky!

Our new normal. Welcome to city life!

(8 members of the Elders Quorum showed up and had us moved in, in under 45 minutes)

Plano Texas is now the place we call home! 

Our New Address: 

7401 Alma Drive

Apt #1624

Plano, TX 75025 

We still can't believe we are here. Everything has happened so fast. We went from freezing everyday to now only having to wear a little sweater. The smell (grass, trees, dew), sounds (birds), sites (green trees) remind us of our home in Georgia. The mountains have been replaced with water towers. And driving on the interstates is as if you are on a mountain, you can see for forever. The instates here are huge, I guess everything is bigger in Texas. Southern hospitality is real: people open doors, pull out shopping carts, give Connor toys for free, a lot of smiles and waves. 

The Dallas Zoo
Logan had a week before he started his new job, so we thought we would go out and have some family fun. We did enough unpacking to live, but decided to spend some time together as a family. Unpacking would come soon enough, I would have plenty time to do that. We decided to go explore our new environment. Drove through downtown dallas on our way to the dallas zoo. We didn't realize how small of a city Salt Lake was until driving through Dallas. The Dallas Fort Worth area is huge! Never though I would live in such a big city. But I've realized no matter where I go, as long as, I have my family I can call any place home.