In moving from the green of Iowa to the desert wasteland of Nevada, I was mentally preparing myself to be able to tolerate the bleak desert landscaping.
When we drove up to what looked like palm beach, I was pleasantly surprised. There were trees, bushes, flowers, and yes - even occasional blades of grass. If it wasn't for the dry heat, I could have sworn I was in Hawaii!
 |
| Ok. Ok. So I may have mislead you just a tad. These pics are actually from a nursery near by. |
 |
| But where do you think they put all of those plants?? Right in our backyard :-) This is the clubhouse at our complex. Henderson is by far the most landscaped city I have ever seen! Starting at our complex, I will take you on a virtual drive around town. |
 |
| Cruising Green Valley Parkway, 2 blocks up from our house. |
 |
| I LOVE the palm trees! |
 |
| Ok. To be fair, here is a view of the natural terrain. |
 |
| Henderson is the 2nd largest city in Nevada. But it still has the feel of a town. |
 |
| The streets are super wide, so it never seems like there is any traffic. |
 |
| There is a really nice outdoor mall just under a mile up the street. |
 |
| Plenty of palm trees at our local Smiths, about 3 blocks up from our complex. |
 |
| There are these great rec centers all over town with outdoor pools. You can swim for $3.00 and toddlers are free :-) |
 |
| James had a great time playing and crawling around in the pool. They gave little kids these nice life jackets and he actually kept it on the whole time. |
 |
| A girl I met at the Stake 24th of July parade invited me to come swimming here with some girls in her ward. She was nice to let me tag along. |
 |
| Ok, here we are back at the complex. I will give you a quick tour of the place:-) |
 |
| There are probably like 30 buildings, and they all have little pathways that run between them. |
 |
| This is the clubhouse pool. It is one of 3 at the complex. That's right. We have 3 pools! Crazy. These are all condos owned mostly by retired folk, so it is a pretty safe neighborhood. It's not often you get jumped by an old granny with a cane. |
 |
| I love all of the landscaping at our complex. Not a ton of grass, but they make up for it in bushes, trees, and plants. |
 |
| This is the walkway to the side of our condo that leads to the pool. |
 |
| James and I swim in the pool just about every day. We sometimes get trapped by an older man with a never-ending monolog that has been known to put James right to sleep in the pool! His name is Fast Freddy and he is Italian. He likes to ride his road bike and is recovering from being hit by a car in an intersection. He told me "My x-wife was a Mormon, but you know, I'm . . . Italian! Catholic! I never really went to church or anything, but I was christened and I am Catholic." I guess he may not be my 'golden contact' but you never know! :-) |
 |
| This is our lovely condo. Unfortunately we don't get the whole building, just the top floor. |
 |
I have spent WEEKS agonizing over how to cram all of our furniture into a one-room kitchen/dining/living room. We don't have much extra space, but at least we can now walk around.
|
 |
| We have plenty of light in our place, which makes it seem cheery. |
 |
| I was pretty happy with how this shelf turned out. I about drove Chad crazy with petitions to hold different things up so I could "see how it looks." Several mistakes and a few empty nail holes in the wall later, I finally figured out what to put here. Yay. |
 |
| Our piano is actually recovering quite well from its 3-year stint in Iowa. The humidity just about did it in . . . we had it tuned twice before realizing that tuning it was a completely futile effort. We just about kicked it to the curb before moving, but I didn't want to get rid of a piano before I knew I had a replacement . . . even if it was giving James bad pitch. Turns out all of this dry Nevada heat is doing it good, as it is now magically in tune! Even after 23 hours on a moving truck. Looks like there is hope for the piano yet. |
 |
| This is our guest room/baby room/family room. Kind of crowded in there, but we are making it work. |
 |
| If you come stay with us, you just may find yourself camping out in our Rainforest Suite. It comes with your very own toddler to take care of in the middle of the night :-) There is also a connecting bathroom door . . . but it is currently being blocked by a crib. |
 |
| My office. |
 |
| The bathroom just off from the kitchen. The closet doors you can see on the right are where our washer and dryer are. |
 |
| Our bedroom |
 |
| The patio off the bedroom that serves as our backyard. Not a very good substitute for the grass and play set that we used to have - but that is how it goes when you are living in a complex. |
 |
| The other wall in our bedroom - once again, crammed with furniture. Mismatched furniture at that! The frame doesn't really match the room, but we had nowhere else to store it, so up it went! |
 |
| An experiment with vinyl lettering :-) |
 |
| The master bathroom. I would have rather had more living space than two bathrooms, but what can you do. James the one-year-old in diapers has his own bathroom, and so do we. |
 |
| The master bath, no whirlpool included. Just big enough to make it a pain to clean. |
Ok. The house tour is over :-) It's not that exciting, but at least we are finally unpacked and decorated . . . for better or for worse I am not sure!
