Farewell to the Great State of Arizona

Well, I've definitely been putting off writing this post....it's been quite a while since I last blogged.  But I knew this would be my next post and I guess I just wanted to avoid it for a while.  It's time now.  Here it goes...we moved to Utah (incase you didn't already know!).   I've moved quite a bit in my lifetime...over 10 times...but this time was different for sure.  Nick joined an anesthesia group based in Phoenix that put him on a quick partnership track.  So when we moved to Arizona, we were planning on making it HOME...as in, the place we raise our kids and put down roots.  We went with a completely different attitude and we fell in LOVE.  Arizona was awesome!  We lived in the BEST neighborhood.  Our ward was like one we've never been apart of before, complete with genuinely kind and good people...and I doubt it will ever be rivaled (no joke!).  We lived a mile away from Nick's brother's family....our kids finally had cousins nearby!  Some of our close friends from Virginia lived there too.  And the climate provided my weather of choice....hot, warm, and cool.  None of that cold, white, powdery winter stuff to deal with!!  So when I say we fell in love, we really did and we felt soooo blessed to be there.  Almost too good to be true, it seemed.  As the "honeymoon" phase of Nick's job passed, life for Nick changed.  While his family was loving life, he lost his. 

Here is a portion of the note I sent a friend:

"It became apparent that Nick's job was killer. They worked the man to death. He was rarely home and when he was, he was dead tired and too wasted to do anything he wanted. It started to get really bad in January/February. There was absolutely NO balance in his life at all. Obviously this quickly became a family issue. Nick was NOT looking for a new job though because we really loved AZ. We were just praying that things would improve at work as Nick gained more "seniority." Anyways, after a particularly difficult week in March, we found ourselves dedicating our Sunday fast to the job situation. I just prayed that things would improve and that Nick wouldn't have to be soo stressed all the time. The VERY next day, we received an email from an anesthesia group up here in Ogden, UT that said they were looking to add a partner and they remembered Nick had shown interest (during his last year of residency, Nick went and met with this group a couple times....it was actually the group he wanted most to join, but they just weren't hiring the year Nick finished residency). We were pretty shocked that they were hiring so soon (they had said it might be a few years) and we decided that we needed to try for it...so we booked a flight for an interview and put the matter in the Lord's hands. There was some stiff competition, but I just had this feeling that he'd get the position. It was really bittersweet. I actually cried for a couple days because I knew I'd miss AZ sooo much. I seriously wanted to live, die, and be buried there! Haha! Over the course of getting licensed and credentialed in UT (which had to all be done on the down-low so that the AZ group wouldn't know until we were ready to put in our 30-day notice), things just literally fell into place. Things that could have taken months to process, took weeks. Seriously, the hand of the Lord has almost never been more apparent to me. I KNOW this is the place for Nick and our family, which is such a blessing, because leaving AZ was really hard to do and I don't know if I would have done it without this knowledge."

Arizona Scrapbook:

The furniture we sold before we moved:

 Pre-Season Baseball Games!!

I'll always remember the little 5K race where I placed 2nd in my age group

23:43--a personal best time for me:

 The Suns...we were prepared to become their biggest fans.  Oh well...Nash bailed too.

The army truck Carson crashed through a steel gate.  What?  You don't know that story??  

It's a good one!!

Perhaps our greatest loss....Ordyna Sunday Dinners with cousins:

Nick's shoulder surgery in Scottsdale...the jury is still out on the success of his impingement repair.  

Less pain?  Perhaps.  More maneuverability? Not yet.  

I literally have thousands of pictures taken outside in Arizona.  Truly the weather was awesome...swimming in the summer and hikes in the winter....year-round outdoor fun!

This is a joke.  He was registered to attend Kindergarten in AZ, but it never happened, haha!  

Good bye hot tub.  

I love this Christmas Day picture...you see how warm it is...how green....

but you still see festive holiday decor!

Nixan was baptized in AZ.