Our Big Change!!!

Well, some of you know & some of you may have caught on from earlier posts, but Aaron was accepted into to management in training program through Sam's Club in January.  With this we knew once he had completed it he would be a manager, but we would be relocated at the beginning of the summer.  After months of wondering, we were finally assigned to Wichita, KS.  We were happy with this location, but really didn't know too much about Wichita.  We did know this would mean Kamden's 3rd school in 3 years, Aaron's first time to ever really move & the first time in his life to not be living in Joplin.  For Me it meant moving from the place I have called home longer than any other place I have ever lived, the place Aaron & I first lived together, the place we spent our first night as a married couple, the home we first brought Kamden to, the house where we buried some of our pets, the place where we have many memories for the past 10 years, the ONLY home Kamden ever lived in.  It has been hard accepting the changes we were about to face & to leave great friends & family.  It got harder & harder as we said good bye to our church home, our twin girls, our jobs, our friends, our family, & all other contacts we had made in Joplin, MO.  Neither of us have ever been to Wichita, so we really didn't know what to expect.  We went one weekend & just looked around & tried to familiarize ourselves with our new surroundings, then went back for several days to look for houses & such.  We were successful on our first day, the 3rd house we looked at.  We found a place we really liked that was in the school district we were wanting & the house was double the space we were currently in, plus there are lots of kids in the neighborhood & a neighborhood park across the street & it is 10 minutes from Sam's Club!  The only problem was that we had to be in Wichita by the 25th for Aaron to start working & the house would not be ready for us until the 1st.  Luckily they let us unload all of our stuff into the garage while they finished working on the house & Aaron's Aunt Lisa let us stay with them until the house was ready.  That was really a life saver for us.  While we waited to get into the new house we went to the park, for 5 hours, went to the zoo, went for a walk down by the Arkansas river, went to a bounce house, & watched lots of TV.  We met many of our neighbors the day we unloaded the truck & are very excited because they are all so nice & helpful & one has a 4 year old little boy & one has a 5 1/2 year old little boy, so Kamden will have several friends.  One even invited us to a couples get together at their house on the 30th, so we are looking forward to meeting people there.  Kamden is excited about moving into the new house.  He is going to get a playroom & the house has stairs (a full finished basement, thank goodness).  I'm sure our animals are going to be excited to get settled because our little apartment in Loma Linda is also the only home they have ever lived in.  It has been quite the adventure & we are excited to get into the house & get settled.   Come visit us!!!!!   We will have a spare bedroom

The playground in the small suburb we will be living in

Playing around in the pool on one of the weekend trips we took to explore Wichita 

We found the Chuck E Cheese 7 it is much bigger than Joplin's, so Kamden was excited

Hitting golf balls in our back yard one last time.  I am really going to miss it out there.  It was such a nice, quiet area!

Our first home together

Dirty feet after a day of loading the U-haul

Our last meal in our first home

Kamden leaving his mark

Last night in our first home. We hadn't actually planned on spending another night there, but it was just too late to head on to Wichita.  All our stuff was already packed in the car & truck & I was not unpacking a single thing, so we had nothing to sleep with on that last night & we froze to death!

Our empty apartment.  I am NOT going to miss that terrible blue carpet!