Per Jana’s request, we are moving on to what we’ve been up to in Austin, Texas. The following is an attempt by be to document our time while in Austin. I am breaking it up right now into days just so that I can go through it all in my head.

1^st Week in Austin Texas

Sunday April 3^rd, 2011 – Arizona to Texas

This was the day that we have awaited and prepared for since finding out that Austin, TX would become our new home. I had to miss General Conference due to Air Force duties. At 7:10pm that evening we boarded an airplane with a way one ticket to Texas for the whole family.

The airline was very accommodating to us having our whole family fly. They shipped our car seats (3!) for free, gave us priority check-in, priority boarding, the first row in the airplane (2 seats on the left, 2 on the right and a lot of leg space), and more.

I broke the No-electronics-On-During-Takeoff/Landing rule to get this video of Heber bidding farewell to the Phoenix city lights.

Heber Bidding Farewell to Phoenix

Just in case you couldn’t guess, it is pretty tough trying to move around an airport with an infant and 2 curious toddlers. At one point Heber escaped and the more we called to him the faster he ran. He made it all the way to the top off this luggage ramp (in the upper right where it enter the wall) just enough to peep his head inside before I ran up there and swiped him up.

Monday April 4^th, 2011

We got in after midnight on our flight, so by the time we got out of the airport and into our rental it was early Monday morning.

This would be our ride for the next four days, a 2011 Mazda6. I had fun using the tip-tronics option which allows you to put it an easy manual mode.

We got to our Hotel, The Red Roof Inn, and it was pretty ghetto. We didn’t feel very safe and were happy to only be there one night.

We went straight to our new apartment after getting a late breakfast. Once again, it was pretty ghetto, too. I guess I should’ve taken my coworkers advice when they said to stay away from anywhere near the office. Oh well how bad could it be...

Tuesday April 5^th, 2011

The next several days would be full of trying to survive in an empty house with a broken AC. You don’t realize how much little things you need to function normally until you try to get by with everything that you brought in one bag.

Here are some pictures of the apartment, as well as kids air-drying in the front room (WARNING EXPLICIT CONTENT), and easy meals using plastic-ware.

I like to tell people that we live in the ghetto, that over 90% of the people speak Spanish (according to our repair guy), and our neighbors play mariachi music that you can hear out our windows and feel through our floors. However, we really like the place, for several reasons:

1. I love being close to work and being able to ride their in my work clothes. It’s actually just as fast by bike if not faster because of the all traffic I can bypass and shortcuts I can take.
2. I think Rachel would agree that it is nice to live in a smaller place. It’s plenty big enough for our family (2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms) and is so much less to deal with. Now our house works for us instead of us for our house. Or something like that…
3. There is a nice little play area (photo), pool, workout room, and mariachi music.

4. It’s also very close to church. It takes about 5 minutes to drive there.

5. Mariachi Music!!

6. It’s a great opportunity to learn Spanish, even all of the cusswords!!

Okay I’m done. We are looking for the positive. We only signed a 6 month lease. So whether we go to graduate school in Virginia or keep working at Fugro it will go by like that.

Heber and Hannah looking over their 'hood.

Wednesday April 6^th, 2011

Finally, we get to the reason why we uprooted and came to this foreign land. Today I started my job. It is nothing like I’ve ever done. For instance they expect me to work 40 hours a week!! Actually, I wish it was just that. I can already tell that they are going to take advantage of my salary status to get me to work more without paying me for it. Am I complaining? No. They are very generous in other ways.

The Oasis

My kind and friendly boss, Jerry, told me of a nice place to take the family out to (and to make sure to put it on our reimbursable moving bill as “Meal during move”). He didn’t lie. The restaurant sits and the edge of a cliff that sits over a big lake.

You get to enjoy the sunset and eat fancy food with all the rich Texans. I had shrimp (of course) wrapped in bacon (incredible) and stuffed with jalapenos (amazing!!).

Thursday April 7^th – Saturday April 9^th, 2011

By Thursday our moving truck still hadn’t arrived but we did receive our van and some familiar faces. Rachel’s parents, Claudia and Gary, kindly drove our van to Texas for us. Gary went to Texas on his mission and has the Texas look and attitude down. Some would even argue that he was born a century too late. Anyway, he has wanted to take his wife on a trip to Texas ever since his mission and now almost 40 years later he did. They stayed until Monday morning and were very helpful and enjoyable the whole time. In fact, we enjoyed them so much that we didn’t have time (or at least the awareness) to take a single picture the whole time.

Sunday April 10^th, 2011

We managed to get together enough of our clothes to look decent for church on Sunday. We left Arizona feeling adventurous and special and got to our ward just to be another typical move-in. I’m pretty sure some people rolled their eyes as I explained with excitement how we moved for a new job and left our families in Arizona and blah blah. It seemed like everyone was from Utah, had graduated from BYU as an Engineer (or Lawyer) and is now working (or going to school) in Austin. I even tried to add how both Rachel and I graduated from ASU together with degrees in Engineering, just to be shut down by some couple who both had PhD’s.

Okay, I might be exaggerating. While it is true that many people seem to be in the same situation, it is not true to say that we weren’t well received. We have made some good friends already.