Hope you're sitting down.

If you have known Jeff and me for longer than 3 months then you know that we don't tend to stick to our plans very well. In fact, it is more appropriate to say that our plans are more like little stories that we tend to keep re-telling ourselves over and over until one day we decide to do something completely different.

We aren't moving to Arizona anymore.

We are moving back to Cedar City.
(Gwen-- you can stop screaming and hyperventilating now . . . it really is okay, and I really am happy with the decision).

So let me rewind:

For the past month or so I kept having the thought that Jeff & I could move to Cedar, rent, and just continue renting out our house in AZ. Jeff loves Cedar. And he is guaranteed 2 assistant coaching positions there-- Football & Baseball.

However, I never said anything outloud about this idea because let's be honest, I really really wasn't a huge fan of Cedar last time we lived there. At all. And I sort of refused to live there this past 10 months and made Jeff commute back and forth 4-5 days a week. And I didn't want to give Jeff any sort of big ideas about moving back there, especially if the feeling went away, cause then I'd be stuck. But the thought kept coming up, and every time one of the P.E. job postings on the school district websites in AZ disappeared, the idea about Cedar reappeared.

We've been thinking that Jeff would probably just have to substitute teach full-time in AZ and hopefully get to know one of the coaches at one of the schools well enough that he could help coach somewhere by Spring. Which was sad to think about because he wants to coach more than anything, that is what he loves.

Then last week I was sort of in the dumps. And I couldn't explain why, other than being pregnant and hormonal-- which hasn't really happened to me throughout the pregnancy. It was a few days of feeling like sitting up was too much work. . . then I even steam cleaned our bathroom, thinking that accomplishing something would make me feel better. (Needless to say, it didn't work).

So Saturday I finally brought it up moving back to Cedar to Jeff and it was like watching a kid on Christmas morning. I'm surprised he didn't choke on his sandwich from shock. He said that if he'd made a list of the top 10 things he never would have expected to come out of my mouth, that would have been number 1.

Sunday we talked about it some more and then I stayed up until 4 in the morning looking up stuff about renting in Cedar and renting out our house in AZ, jobs, etc. I spent Monday morning on the phone with property management companies in both AZ and Cedar. This is already turning into a novel, so I will just sum it up that financially it makes sense to rent out our house in AZ and rent a place in Cedar. We were heading down to AZ this weekend for a preliminary interview and for him to take the Arizona licensure tests, but now instead we are flying down, packing what is left in our house, and driving a moving truck back up. Yee haw!

We went to Cedar yesterday and looked at a couple of places. We really liked one of them and should hear back today from the property manager whether we can rent it or not . . . if not then we will be heading back up there this afternoon to look at some others. Jeff will still be student teaching in St. George so we are going to continue living with his parents during the week and then live in Cedar on the weekends so that we can get the house settled and go to Church there a few times before the baby comes.

So there you have it.

For those of you who worry about my mental health, here is a list of why I think Cedar will be okay this time, as opposed to last time:

1. Before, I was working full-time and going to school full-time. Therefore, I was not able to leave for a few days whenever the cold became too much for me, and Jeff & I didn't see each other very much because he was working and going to school as well. NOW, I won't be working or going to school (and I have mastered the art of staying at home), so I will be able to drive to St. George or Vegas for a day or 2 or 3 until I am ready to go back to the cold again.

2. Before, we were in married students wards at church, so we were surrounded by all sorts of little families with babies and girls who were staying home with their kids. Therefore, I left church depressed every Sunday since we'd been trying to get me pregnant and hadn't succeeded and so church became a 3 hour reminder of such every week. And, I didn't make any friends in the ward(s) because my full-time school & work schedule didn't mesh well with the stay-at-homers (and it's hard to have a lot to talk about with a girl with who has 3 kids when you're sort of really bitter that you don't even have the beginnings of 1- as immature as that sounds). So the obvious difference now is that I will have more time, and a baby in common with the other stay-at-homers AND I won't leave church upset every Sunday.

3. Jeff has crossed-his-heart-hope-to-die promised that if he starts to fall back into the "Jeff-O" routine of hanging out with his buddies then all I have to do is say something, and it won't be considered nagging, and he'll snap out of it. (He doesn't think he will at all, and that I should give him more credit because he has grown up a lot in the past 3, 2, or even 1 year . . . so I guess we will see on that one).

4. Jeff has also promised to make an effort with me to make new mutual friends so that we can hang out with other couples that we both meet. As opposed to before, which meant we were hanging out with guys that he has known for years and I was left to make conversation with random wives that I may or may not have liked and/or had anything in common with.

5. We will be living in a better housing situation than before and I am going in with the mindset that Cedar is probably where we will be for the next 20 years, so there will be more motivation to really settle-- instead of looking at it as a temporary stop on our way to somewhere else. (I may even hang a couple pictures on the wall, or even a decoration or two!)

5. I recognize that post partum depression may hit me like a Mack truck-- but I promise not to disappear off the face of the planet if it does.

So there you go. No mas Arizona.