Home sweet home.... not.

We just got back to Oklahoma from our trip to IL and I'm already bitter. The ride home was long (but not as long as the ride there - only 11.5 hours) and pretty depressing to be honest. We drove from almost a foot of snow being on the ground, to just dead grass as far as the eye could see, from below zero degree weather with flurries, to 40+ degree weather with overcast skies. Even though it's December 23, it feels like Christmas is over for us since we're back in the hell-hole we've called "home" for the past year and a half and away from our families yet again. Before my "Oklahomie's" get mad, I'll say there are three good things about living in Enid. The first is my good friends I've made here. I'll never ever forget them. The second is our obstetrician. We REALLY like him and I'm sad he won't be delivering our baby. And the third is Enid has some of the lowest gas prices in the country. (It's $1.51 right now!) But really, I hate it here, except for our friends and my job. I have yet to meet an non-Enidite (someone who didn't grow up here), that actually likes it here. All of our military friends seem to be counting the days until they get to leave. I met a girl online at one of the military spouse forums, and she was moving to Enid a few months ago. She was asking me all about Enid, and I was trying to gloss it over as best I could, in attempt to make it seem "not that bad". Ironically, they live right next to us now, and I saw her in our back yard last month and asked her how she was liking it. She gave me that "you've got to be kidding me" look, and pretty much flat out said she hated it here.

After the holidays is always a little depressing because all the hype is over, and in our case, we're away from our hometown's and families again. But coming back to Enid makes it ten times worse... At least. It doesn't feel like Christmas here because there isn't any snow. The snow at home was SO pretty. I loved it, even if our car thermometer read -9 at one point. The cold and the snow make it feel like Christmas, since I grew up in northern IL. This 40 degree weather, with no snow on the ground, with dead trees and grass as far as the eye can see just doesn't do it for me. And I've noticed that not many people in Enid do the christmas lights thing. That's depressing too. Despite my rant, I'd move anywhere, no matter how much I didn't like it, as long as I got to be with my Mark. He makes it all worth it. We're both VERY excited to move though. Granted, Phoenix won't have snow either, but at least Phoenix will have other things to keep us entertained and keep our minds occupied. (Plus we'll have a newborn so we probably won't have time to concentrate on anything else.)

We took TONS of pictures at home, and I'll write more about our time up there tomorrow. We have to download all the pictures on to our computer and Mark is hooking up the new monitor to the computer he built, so I'll get to all that after work tomorrow.