I like to move it, move it!

I have the moving bug. I have moved 19 times in the past 10 years - and now I'm about to make it an even 20.

Thomas and I gave our two month notice to our apartment management today. Our lease is up in February and we have decided that we hate commuting. We're going to be moving closer to the downtown Phoenix area.

I am pretty excited about the move. It's a little bittersweet to leave our current apartment. I have really like it, but I am ready for a change.

Our current apartment was built about 3 years ago and is considered a luxury apartment. Rent is about $880 a month. My daily commute to work takes approximately 50 minutes each way. These are some of the great things that I will miss about our apartment:

• Ice maker in freezer
  
• Garden tub
• Crown molding
• Close to shopping and freeway
• On site pool, gym, dog park, barbecue grills
  

And this is our apartment floor plan -
The apartment that we are moving to was built in 1981 (it's older than I am!). Rent will be around $680 a month. My daily commute will take approximately 15 minutes each way. These are the things that I am looking forward to when we move to our new apartment:

• Two Bedrooms
• Two Bathrooms
• Pool
  
• Close to work and freeway
  
• Golf course view
  

This is the floor plan of the apartment that we will be moving to (I created this floor plan using Paint, so it may not be quite accurate) -



With this tough economy, it will be nice to save some money on gas and the lower rent price. But the best part is that we will have a guest bedroom!



Consider yourself invited to come and visit!

Just for Fun

Whether you like President Obama or not, it's funny.
Well, it made me laugh anyway.
Enjoy!

Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night!

October has been a busy month. We have done so many things! And have been blessed in so many ways.

First off, Thomas and I celebrated our first year of marriage on the 3rd. Since we're poor and General Conference happened to take place on the same weekend, we decided to stay home and have a low key anniversary. We had a lot of fun, even if we just watched conference, painted cheesy projects, and cleaned our house.

When I was a kid, my mom and sister would go pick out some crafts and do them while we watched the different sessions of General Conference. It was supposed to help us stay awake and listen to the prophet. This year, I was able to do the same thing with my husband. We painted our very own Halloween decorations; a pirate ship and a haunted house with sparkled white ghosts.

The weekend after General Conference our friends, Josh and Lydia, came up from Tucson to visit us. We went to the nicest bowling alley that I have ever seen! It was brand new, and was well lit. It didn't smell like smoke, and we had a restaurant server who brought us drinks and appetizers. None of us were very good bowlers, but we had a ton of fun and plan on doing it again in the future.

When Josh and Lydia come to visit us, or whenever we go visit them we will usually go out to eat to someplace new. This time when they came up to visit us, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant. It was really weird, because you eat everything group style and you eat with your hands. I would not recommend going with someone who has a cold! The food was acually pretty good, and it was fun to try something new.

While Josh and Lydia were visiting us, Lydia and I had the opportunity to visit the Arizona State Fair. I have always loved going to the fair - and I would just like to say that the Eastern Idaho State Fair is WAY BETTER! They had a lot of rides (we only went on 2 rides though), but they didn't have the same variety of food (I miss tiger paws), or as many animals to see (but they did have a kangaroo).

And to top everything all off, this week we were lucky enough to go to the U2 concert here in Phoenix. The Black Eyed Peas opened the concert. Thomas had never been to a rock concert before - U2 is an excellent first concert to go to. I enjoyed the concert immensely.

And look --> it's The Edge!

We truly live a blessed life.

Hard-Working Dog

Thomas has never liked small dogs very much. He thinks that they're always yappy and badly behaved. When I got Tarzan last Christmas I made a promise to myself that my little dog would not fit the annoying-small-dog stereotype.

Tarzan doesn't bark, he loves to play fetch, he doesn't wear clothes, he's totally potty trained, and he likes the outdoors.

The one thing missing for my well-behaved dog was professional training. So, over the past few months Thomas and I have been taking our dog to a beginner training Class. In this class he has learned all the basics that all well-behaved dogs need.

He has learned a ton of new commands such as sit, lay down, stay, and come. As well as other commands that are less common but equally useful: take it, leave it, no or uh-uh, and wait.

These classes also focused on doggie etiquette: greeting other dogs politely, playing nicely with other dogs /children, and not jumping up on people when they pet him.

Next week he will begin the intermediate class. We are very excited for the next step in Tarzan's training. Congratulations buddy!

Lazy Days of Summer

We have done so many fun things since we've moved to Arizona. Some of the fun things we've done in Arizona: we went to the World Wildlife Zoo, camping, we took a trip to the Bio-Dome, country line-dancing lessons, we visited the Grand Canyon, and now we can say that we've been down the Salt River.


This last weekend, my friend Sarah came down for a surprise visit. We had a lot of fun with her. We went out to some fun restaurants (In & Out and Toby Kieth's I Love This Bar And Grill), we went window shopping, and had our weekly training class for Tarzan. But the best part of Sarah's visit was floating down the Salt River. We bought Tarzan a life jacket so he could come too - he's such a spoiled dog!

It was so relaxing to go out on the water. The place where we went was just outside of Mesa, Arizona. We rented the tubes and got a free bus ride for our drop off and pick up. Thomas thought it would be a good idea if we tied all of our tubes together. He also thought ahead and got us an extra tube that held a cooler with bottled waters in it. Thomas is so smart!

We saw a muskrat in the water and a bunch of birds. I was surprised at all of the wildlife that was near the river. It took about 4 hours to complete the journey. We were all sunburned and tired when we were done, but it was totally worth it. I give it a 2 thumbs up!

Birthday Boy

Yesterday was Tom's birthday!

We had a ton of fun and Thomas had a lot of surprises. Our morning started out with a breakfast in bed of cold cereal - yum!

Then, Tom's best friend Josh came up from Tucson to visit for the day. We went to a store called Fry's Electronics where Josh let Thomas pick out a present. He chose a game called Overlord II.

After that Josh took us out to eat for second-breakfast at a Waffle House.

Around 1:00, we drove to Tempe Town Lake and went on a two hour segway tour. None of us have ever been on a segway before. It was a ton of fun! It was really easy and relaxing.

At 6:00 that evening, Thomas had his biggest surprise, a party! For the past few months, I have been secretly planning to invite some of Toms family over for dinner.

The only thing that I told Thomas was that I was going to make him dinner for his birthday, and that he had to wear a "cowboy outfit." He guessed that I was taking him horseback riding or to a rodeo after dinner.

Instead if a horseback ride, or a rodeo - we had a Murder Mystery Dinner. It was so much fun and everyone dressed up like they were in the Wild West.

Thomas was very happy and surprised!

MONSTER TRUCK

Thomas and I have something that we refer to as our "white trash" list. Our white trash list is a list of things that we think some people would judge us for doing. If something is fun to do and you can find people in cut-off jeans or wearing mullets, then we put it on the list.

This list includes things like:
1. Visiting the county fair
2. Going to the X-games
3. Attending the rodeo
4. Watching Nascar
5. Seeing a demolition derby
6. Going to a music concert (Thomas has never seen a live band perform)

A week or two ago Thomas and I went to a monster truck rally. The mullets there were glorious to behold! And I don't think I have ever seen so many tattooed bodies in one building. Since we didn't want to stand out, we dressed-down for the occasion *note the fashionable orange ear plugs*.


For those of you who have never been to a Monster Truck Rally, let me give you a little insight... First of all, trucks have names. You don't cheer for a particular driver, you cheer for your favorite MONSTER TRUCK! They have names like "Grave Digger," "Ultimate Destruction," "Bullseye," and "Superman" (pictured below).


There are 2 parts to the Rally. The first part of a Monster Truck Rally is the race. Only 2 cars race at a time, and the 2 cars do not race side by side; it's too dangerous and they're too large for that. They start at opposite ends of the arena and the finish line is in the center of the track. Pictured below are Bullseye and Grave Digger racing (Grave Digger won this round).


The racing is done tournament style with the winner of each race moving up in the bracket to a quarter-final, semi-final, and finally the top 2 trucks have a final race. The winner of the tournament was Ultimate Destruction. He was so happy, he did a victory roll and had to be removed from the arena by a bulldozer.

The second part of the rally is the Freestyle Event. Each truck is given 2 minutes to do as many insane tricks as they can. They are judged on their difficulty level and accuracy - sort of like gymnastics only it's cars on steroids. The freestyle is way more fun to watch, and is everything I imagined it to be. They do things like wheelies and jump over buses.



The best freestyle show was done by Grave Digger, but for some reason, all the good trucks always seemed to finish up upside-down.


It was tons of fun and just as "white trash-y" as I always hoped it would be! But the most important thing that I learned was that you should always remember your fashionable orange ear plugs.

Family Fun!

The past couple of weeks have been filled with good times. We have been fortunate enough to spend some time with a lot of our family.

First, Thomas had his Liljenquist family reunion in Bear Lake in July. It was a lot of fun and 13 out of the 15 living Liljenquist kids were able to make it. The cabin that we all stayed in was HUGE! My favorite part of the weekend was the Karaoke night where I was impressed by all the talented singers. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures I stole this one off the internet.


Secondly, Congratulations goes out to Ben and Shawneen on the birth of their son, James. We got to go see him about a week after he came home from the hospital. This photo is of my sister-in-law Shawneen holding James. I love it when new grandkids are born because it makes me feel like I'm not the new one in the Liljenquist family anymore.


The next week, we started a new training class for our dog Tarzan. He's a quick learner and is having a ton of fun with the class. He now knows several new commands and is learning all about how to be a polite K-9.


Finally, my mom came to visit us last weekend. It was really great to have her here. We didn't do anything exciting but I am finally caught up on all my laundry! Thanks Mom!

Fat and Happy

I am the worst blogger ever! I guess I'd better give an update on what we've been up to since our last entry. I'll start out by saying that Thomas and I both have great jobs.

Thomas is working part-time at a small computer store called SoftQue. He fixes old computes and occasionally builds new ones. He's taking 2 summer classes at Mesa Community College - Microeconomics and Computer Basics.

I'm working at CBS Outdoor, a company that sells advertising space on billboards. I'm a receptionist there. I answer phones all day long, and I ship out a lot of mail.

Thomas still doesn't have a calling in our ward, but I'm on the enrichment night committee. We're still feeling like the newbies in our ward, but the people all seem nice.

We used to be homeless and unemployed - Now we're just unemployed

We arrived in Phoenix two weeks ago today. We spent the first few days with Thomas's brother Ben. It was hard for us to sleep in a full-sized bed (especially since Thomas is 6'5). Then we spent the next few days in Tuscan with Thomas's best friend, Josh, and his new wife, Lydia. They have a little dog named Jones - and he and Tarzan had a ball romping around together. 

On Sunday, we signed a lease for our new apartment. It's so great to be here finally. We shipped our furniture with a semi truck shipping company and couldn't pick it up until Monday. Thomas and I had to pick it all up in a Uhaul. It was a pretty freaky area of Downtown Phoenix. Then when we got to our apartment Paul and Ben (the Bro-in-laws)  helped us to move everything up to our second story apartment.

And pretty much every day since then we've been unpacking all of our things. We have so much packing left to do even though we've unpacked tons already.

Great things about our apartment:

1. The swimming pool (palm trees and waterfall included)
2. Our apartment is the corner apartment and has a wrap-around-porch
3. We have our very own laundry room
4. I think our funiture looks killer sweet 
5. There are a ton of closets to store our things in
6. I love our green accent wall in the living room
7. But my very favorite thing is the DISHWASHER!!!