Thoughts and Discoveries

The last two weeks have allowed me to have several thoughts and new discoveries about my new home.

• If you have too much stuff, MOVE. It will force you to let go of things that you never could let go of before. Not that you ditch the important stuff.....you just finally realize what stuff is truly important and what stuff you were hanging on to out of habit or nostalgia.
• If you do move and you pay for all of your boxes, you're not applying yourself. We moved here and paid exactly $0.00 for boxes. Scour Craigslist, ask around to your friends, ask at the grocery store....you never know how much will turn up. My friend's husband runs the Chik-Fil-A in Sioux City and they saved so many great, sturdy boxes for us...all for no charge to us.
• I've had the pleasant surprise of learning that Nebraska does not tax soft drinks. Coming from Iowa, where they're not only taxed, but you're also charged a bottle deposit (bribing people to recycle, which they should do anyway...ugh!), this was a very nice surprise.
• I must admit, the traffic (or lack there of) in Sioux City totally spoiled me. Don't get me wrong-it's still nowhere near the traffic here that we had in Cincinnati, but when you move to a city that's twice the size of your previous city, you get, well, twice as much traffic. Not that I'm complaining at all--it's a fair trade-off for living in a bigger city with more shopping, more cultural activities, etc.
  
• Lincoln is not an easy city for making left turns. They are fond of placing concrete medians on major streets, thus causing a fun chase of backtracking and u-turns when you need to go left.
• After basically a decade of living in cities built on major rivers, Lincoln seems very flat, with, for the most part, very logically laid-out streets in a grid pattern that makes sense. This has made learning our way around much easier.
• Lincoln is so very, very bike friendly. During our first week here, we left the kids with Cliff's parents, got on our bikes and rode to campus to walk around and learn where everything is. The bike paths are extensive and easy to use. Cliff can get from our apartment to the music building on campus in all of 10-15 minutes.
• Living in family campus housing was a very wise move. There are so many other stay-at-home moms here whose husbands are in school. There are also kids for Laura to play with and flat sidewalks for her to race around on her Big Wheel. Couldn't be happier with our housing decision thus far.
• We went to see the Lincoln Municipal Band play in the park our first weekend here. The group is surprisingly much smaller than Sioux City's, but they put on a nice show just the same.

Well, these are just some of the things that have come to mind in our short time here. Once the last boxes (knick knacks and wall hangings, mostly) are unpacked, I'll try to get some pictures up of our new digs.

Gina