It never ceases to surprise me when I find myself in the middle of a real conversation with my five-year-old. I'll ask a question, or she will, and the other will respond, and two minutes later I realize that not only is my little girl very curious, she is also quite bright and getting very grown-up.

Tonight, she was telling me a story about a dragonfly that she found with a friend, and I said something in the voice of the dragonfly. I expected her to react to the silliness of a talking dragonfly, but instead, she stopped, thought a moment about what I'd said, and than smiled. "That's funny."

It was no secret to anyone that I was not excited to move to Orem. I liked where I was in Ogden, I liked my house, I liked my neighbors and friends, my support network, and the walkability. I liked my favorite restaurants and stores, and the proximity to my family. I was not happy about leaving.

I have found that for me, the key to liking a new place when I move there, is to find a few things about it that I love, and that I can't find elsewhere. So, the things I have discovered about Orem that I love:

The fruit stands. Kezie goes to Cherry Hill Elementary, so named because this area used to have fruit trees galore. While I haven't run into any cherries yet, there are little peach and apple and pear orchards tucked away into a lot of the local neighborhoods, and there is often a stand outside where the family sells the fruit by the box. The price is good, the quality is good, the service is friendly, and you can actually watch people picking the fruit that you are about to eat. I have a half bushel of pears on my table right now, ripening and waiting to be canned in a couple of days.

The library. The Orem City library rocks. The selection is good. They have entire seasons of TV shoes, past and present, which you can rent for a dollar or two. They have sheet music, and ebooks, and nice employees, and a book drop that you can use even when the library is open, so you don't have to drag two kids out of the car and into the building just to return a book. Plus, if I want something that they don't have, Orem residents can also use the Provo library for free.

The BYU creamery. This tiny little grocery store has excellent prices on milk (and BYU brownies) and actually has decent prices on a lot of other things, too, including deli chicken and corn dogs. Plus, they have an in-house ice cream shop. And, in the corner, there is a picture of beard-growing contest winners from the 1950s. Methinks there is a rebel in the store management.

Provo Canyon. It makes the drive to my in-laws much shorter, and more pleasant. It's pretty. Last time we drove through it, we saw a goat riding in the back of a pickup truck, ears flapping in the wind. What's not to love?

There. Four things so far. After four months in Utah County, I think I am finally convinced that I'll enjoy spending the next five years here.

Kezie loves dinosaurs. She says she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up. We've been to the dinosaur museums in Vernal and Ogden, so we told her I'd take her to the one in Lehi for her birthday. A few weeks later, i found out that they had reduced admission prices every Tuesday in August, so the girls and I could go to the museum for $4 total. I was really excited about this, and so were the girls.

We got to the museum, and found a line. A loooooong line, which we waited in for half an hour before we could even get in the building. It was crowded, and noisy, but it was fun, and worth the $4. We will not be going back and paying full price, though. The Ogden museum is much, much better.
Kezie's favorite dinosaur is the T-Rex. (Yes, I know this is a Utahraptor. It was too crowded to get a pic in front of the T-Rex).

Ivy's favorite dinosaur is the triceratops, so the girls built one.
There was a person working on some fossils in a lab, which you could watch from the museum. Ivy was fascinated, because there was a real person in the museum.