Hello Ohio!

First impressions of Ohio:
- it rains every week
- the sun is only out for a couple hours each day
- it's not as humid as I had expected
- it's very green - it looks like a giant golfcourse
- I will be okay here.

Matthew and I flew into Ohio on Tuesday, June 30th. He was PERFECT on the flight! He slept the entire time until the last 10 minutes, at which point he woke up and stared around at everyone. I couldn't have asked for a better flight with him. Ironically, we watched "New In Town," the new Renee Zellwegger movie. While I am not a fan of Renee AT ALL, it was kind of funny because she moves to Minnesota in the winter, and some of her experiences with her first winter make me think of how I will be this winter in Ohio.

Mike met us at the airport with roses (what a good husband!), although he had some trouble finding us. I was holding Matthew and had already pulled our luggage off the carousel, so I couldn't go after him, so Matthew and I watched Mike wander back and forth among all the other carousels for about 20 minutes. It was pretty funny. I tried yelling at him, but he didn't get close enough to hear us.

We didn't get to see much of Ohio because it was starting to get dark, but what we did see on the drive was very pretty. Mike drove us the hour from Cincinnati (that's where we flew into) and arrived at our corporate housing apartment. It was a super nice furnished apartment with two rooms, and the complex had a pool, a really nice fitness room, and a tanning bed! It also had a really nice movie room with a big screen and couches that you could use, but we never got around to taking advantage of it. We were quite comfortable there.

That first weekend was the 4th of July, so we headed over to Centerville (the next town over) to check out their parade and festival. It's fun to have all these little towns that still have town parades where the fire department drives through and they have the mayor and town council waving at people who really don't know or care who they are. They had a big crafty fair with local vendors and homemade crafts and stuff like that. It was really a nice day. Matthew was a good sport too.

I spent the rest of the first week completely lost. I never really appreciated the way that Arizona streets are straight and only run in one direction and only change names between cities (and only some of the small streets). In Ohio, streets completely curve so when you think you're going south you end up going west. They also change the names of the street at every other intersection (okay, that's an exaggeration, but it sure felt like that!). So that was my first week in Ohio!