Flashback: Moving to St. Louis

The very first adventure we had concerning St. Louis was just getting there. My parents are incredibly awesome and offered to drive our car out, so we lucky ducks got to fly instead of driving 1400 miles with a 3-month-old. Luke was pretty excited about his first flight:

The seat is so big and he is so tiny! (We held him,
of course.)

Besides watching all the people around him, Luke was pretty entertained for a while
with his squeaky puppy bib (it really squeaks if you squeeze it).

He was a little angel on both flights (we connected through Dallas, I think). We didn't pay for a seat for him, but we magically got a row to ourselves both times anyway: On one flight there were only 5 seats in a row, so we just picked seats on the 2-person side of the aisle; on the other flight, we booked the aisle and the window in the hopes that the middle seat would be the last one chosen by someone flying alone. Totally worked!

Daddy showing Luke the runway as we land 

Luke was a trooper about us unpacking, too. He was just barely getting old enough that he could entertain himself for a few minutes (he had just discovered his feet the week before), which made our work so much easier. I caught him talking to himself and the rabbit for a few minutes one day:

It's hard work laying around while everyone else unpacks, though.

Moving so far away from our friends and family (and the only state I've ever lived, in my case) has certainly been hard at times, but we are so spoiled to be in an awesome branch with lots of other BYU expatriates. More than a dozen people showed up to help us move all of our stuff in (which represents probably a third of the branch's active male membership!). Two days after we moved in, we were invited to an informal get-together hosted by a bunch of the ex-Utah folk. Everyone was (and has been since!) so kind & welcoming.

It took a good 3 weeks, but we finally got everything unpacked & all settled in. Just in case you're super curious, here's a choppy video tour of our new place.