Idaho!

Well, I wouldn't exactly say moving is over yet (*looks around at boxes and shudders*), but we are finally here, at the very end of the journey. Whew! The last bit of driving (from southern CA to eastern ID) went well and we are in our new house. It's huge! That will be nice in the winter when it’s too cold to go outside. Since my boys were sleeping in a converted dining room in the last house we were in, they are reveling in the carpet, huge walk-in closet, and absence of chandelier in their walkway. It looks like there are tons of kids on the street, and several neighbors came over to help us move in and bring us food, even though they had no idea we were showing up. DH's sister also brought over her trailer (from the other side of the state) to help us move stuff from the storage unit to the house, which would have taken a lot longer otherwise. We still have boxes everywhere and we need to replace quite a lot of furniture that either we left behind in Arkansas or that was crushed in the trip (those Walmart bookshelves never do last through moves). But we have a place to be. And it's MUCH nicer than the canal house!! We drove by it today and...yeah. The house itself is probably fine, but it looks like it was dropped into the backyard of some industrial plant...which it sorta was.

First impressions of how it looks here: you can see the Tetons from our house--in the distance, but they're there. At our end of town, it smells like grass and wilderness, which is a very good smell. (At the other end you smell potatoes--which is also a good smell, but sometimes you want to smell nature instead of French fries.) Lots of college-aged people walking around. Compared with most of the other college students I've seen (counting ones I've attended and ones DH has worked at, this is #10), they look like runners--they are all lean and energetic. This would be one of the least ethnically diverse places I've lived, although once the university semester starts up things will probably change a bit. I was a little worried the food would match, but I'm happy to say that the grocery stores seem well stocked in interesting things--not only green curry, which we were hoping for, but plenty of spices and bulk yeast and also mint jelly, something I love and haven't seen since we lived in Charleston. Holly, the store you told us about looks great. We have a list of breads to try.

Oh yes, and I had a lovely housewarming welcome as well--I won RJ Anderson's new book WAYFARER in a contest, and it arrived the day we moved in. Lovely! Like having a friend waiting at the mailbox for us.

As soon as the repair guy gets the furnace vent put together, we're off to look for furniture. I hope you're all having nice summers!