Our First Dust Storm

Yet another new experience for the Lucero family:

Jonathan called me as he was leaving work just after 5:00pm yesterday and said, "Look out the window! Do you see that huge dust storm coming?? Its right behind me!"

It was our first dust storm, so we were both excited - ha ha!

I said, "Well, you'd better drive fast then! I'm going to check it out!"

So I loaded Christian into his stroller and walked to the southern-most empty lot in our neighborhood to see the storm.

It seemed far away, and so I figured it wasn't headed towards us. HA!! Suddnely the storm was upon us and we had to run home (a funny sight to see, I'm sure!).

We returned home to find the power was out. I expected it would be brief, but no ... it was an all nighter. By God's good grace, the storm had significantly dropped the temp outside, so we were able to open our windows (hesitantly, because there are all sorts of bugs outside who would love the chance to come inside, and our windows don't have screens).

Sounds like most of Buckeye lost power, but we could see the lights of Buckeye in the distance.
I was stressing about having to be home with the baby all day w/o air conditioning. When I called the utility company at 5:00am today, I was told power would be restored by 6:00pm. UGH! So thank goodness the power came back on much earlier than they told me. WHEW!!!!
I can't pull the storm photos off my camera to share, so below are the pictures I pulled from a news website:

Aw, how cute!!!

A Month Later ...

Today marks one month since our move to Arizona. Here's how things are going:

It's still HOT here. But the mornings and evenings are cooling down a bit, so that is nice. Christian and I try to take a hour-long morning walk each day. We try to start out before the sun rises over the mountains because as soon as the sun appears, it starts to get hot.

We've had encounters with two of the desert creatures mentioned in a previous post: a black widow spider (who had spun her web in a place Christian could have easily discovered - fortunately, that room had not yet caught his attention and I spotted the spider before he did) and a scorpion. It wasn't the huge variety that I envisoned from "The Mummy." It was about the size of the tip of my finger, but I have since learned that those scorpions are especially dangerous. Needless to day, I think we'll need to have an exterminator come out on a regular baiss.

Last night we attended a BBQ for members of "Buckeye's Busy Bees," which is a local parenting group I got involved with at my mom's suggestion (thanks, mom!). The BBQ was our first event with the group and we made friends with a family, and the husband/dad also works at Palo Verde. So he and Jonathan visited for a while last night while Christian and I mingled with other moms.

We attended Calvary Goodyear today for the first time. The pastor follows Calvary's traditional style of "verse by verse" teaching of the Bible, so we felt right at home. It’s a small church, and only provides childcare for the later of the two services on Sundays. We were at the early service, so we sat in a room at the back of the sanctuary with a window separating us from the sanctuary. Prior to starting his message, the pastor walked into the room and said, "I don't know if anybody has said hello to you, but I wanted to come in and welcome you." He made a point of saying hello to Christian, and I said, "This is Christian." And actually, at that moment, we dind't really know he was the pastor, so when he stepped onto the stage a minute later, we were very impressed that he stopped in to say hello to a family he didn't recognize. After the service, he greeted people as they left and somehow even remembered Christian's name and told him goodbye.

Jonathan is really enjoying his job – and having every Monday off. Because last week was a holiday week, he got off work at 3:30pm every day. He's made several friends already, with whom he eats lunch frequently. He's also found a Bible Study group. He attended his first meeting last week and he plans to keep attending.

Stay tuned for continuing updates!

Jennifer