Happy Halloween!

Great Falls Park

Home tour

I kept waiting to take a video walkthrough of the house until it looked cleaner or better, but I just went took the plunge and took a video anyway. So, please pardon any random kid socks, blankets, full laundry baskets, unmade beds, etc. that you might see :)!

Settling In

We have one week under our belts here in VA. It's been a trying week, all the unpacking and organizing while keeping up on Jack's school work and maintaining some sense of normal routine. I keep meaning to take pictures of our home, but the moving truck came in mid-week and I couldn't bring myself to take pictures with brown boxes all over the place! I think most of the boxes in the house have been unpacked now, so I'll work on getting some pictures up soon.

I think we've turned the corner, though, and things should be getting easier from here on out. We went on our first field trip on Friday to the Air and Space Museum in Chantilly. It's about 15 minutes from here, and the boys really enjoyed it. We've been there before -- on our May 2009 trip back East -- but it's a long time in a little kids' life. Peter kept marveling at all the airplanes and telling me he was going to ride in them. Jack and Thomas listened as I read the descriptions for the planes, and they really seemed to be absorbing it. It was time to go home for lunch before we had seen the entire museum, but it was great to know that we live so close that we could visit anytime we want. They have an IMAX theater there, and I think David and I will take the boys to an IMAX show about airplanes sometime -- I bet they'd love it!

We also got a library card on Friday, and the boys got to check out new books. Even Peter found a little book about diggers that he's been carrying all around.

Weather-wise, we had a few warm days when we first arrived, but then it started cooling down. The leaves are starting to change, and we're hoping to go to a park or take a nice drive to really see the leaves and take pictures before they fall off.

We ordered Halloween costumes for the boys, and they're very excited about them. Originally I was going to make my own, but I had trouble finding the materials I needed (I guess there was a run on white sweats!), so I gave in and bought some inexpensive costumes online. David has high standards for Halloween because he has great memories of the costumes his Mom made him as a kid, but even he agreed that it was acceptable to buy costumes considering our moving craziness :). So Jack and Peter will be motorcycle drivers and Thomas will be Iron Man.

So, life is starting to settle in a little and feel normal. David has next Friday off, and that may be when we take the kids to DC for the first time. We haven't decided what we'll see yet, but we'll be sure to take lots of pictures. I know eventually I'll manage the kids on the metro by myself, but for that first time I'm looking forward to having some extra hands!

Last day in Colorado

We have a rental house secured in Herndon, VA, our belongings are on the moving truck, our cars are on the car carrier, we've completed our exit walk-through with our landlord here, and aside from some laundry and packing tonight, we're ready for Virginia. It feels really good to be at this point. It seems like the last several weeks have had so many ups and downs (and honestly, a little skewed toward the downs), and it's a relief to know where we're going and to be mostly ready to be there.

Maybe it's good, in a way, that the past few weeks have been challenging. I've been so busy organizing, packing, conducting lease business over phone and e-mail, etc. that I haven't really had time to be too sad about leaving CO. We really have had a wonderful stay here. Let's see -- some of the highlights:

- Camping (truthfully, cabining) up in the Rocky Mountains with family
- Fishing
- Summer T-ball
- Swim lessons
- Fossil hunting
- Thunderstorms and hail
- Pikes Peak
- Spending time with family and friends who came to visit us
- All the boys' birthdays
- Cave of the Winds
- Dinosaur Museum
- Beautiful parks
- BBQs with David's co-workers

We left the Winter of our Discontent in Buffalo and came here to a Golden Spring and Summer. I know we'll enjoy our time in VA, but I'm sure CO will always be a special place to us.

Please keep our travels tomorrow in your prayers! We will be sure to offer up any frustrations or stresses for the intentions of our family and friends. We'll update you soon after we arrive and get settled in.

Oh Where Oh Where Will The Campbells Be?

Somewhere outside of the DC metro area, but we're still not sure exactly where. What a week we've had! We've had 3 possible rental homes in VA this week, and all 3 of them have fallen through. Two of them were the owners' decisions to pull the houses off the rental market, and one of them we backed out of because the owners were asking for insanely high security and earnest money deposits.

We have one more potential home, and we'll get all the final details for that on Monday morning. Hopefully everything works out! Our movers come on Tuesday, and I'd rather not have to tell them that our stuff will be shipped to "Reston or maybe Herndon or McLean, we don't really know yet".

In other news, Jack came down with strep throat yesterday!! I took him to Urgent Care today because I had a feeling it wasn't just a regular sore throat, and sure enough, it's strep. If it weren't so sad how much he's been sick in the last few weeks, it would be a little funny -- poor kiddo! The nurse-practictioner told us that strep is extremely contagious -- and there is a good chance the other boys will get it, and possibly David and I also. Doh! We really don't need that this week! I'm hopeful that somehow the rest of us will manage to dodge it, but at this point, no matter what happens, I'm just putting one foot in front of the other. I know praying for patience is a good way to have your patience tested and strengthened (whether you like it or not), and now I'm wondering if at some point I prayed for perseverance? :).

In any case, we're alive and baby-stepping our way to Virginia. I would love to have my own personal Mary Poppins right now who could snap her fingers and make all of our stuff fly off the shelves and into organized piles :), but I'm making OK progress. I don't think I'll have to put in any super late nights or anything to get everything organized by Tuesday. The boys and I are going to have pizza and a movie night tonight (or in Jack's case, maybe pudding and a movie), so we're all looking forward to that.

Time for this gypsy wagon to move on

In less than 2 weeks, the movers will come and pack our belongings, we'll hop on a plane, and we'll head for our next 6-month home in Virginia. David told me we're living a bit like gypsies during our 2-year adventure, and I've realized how true it is! We roll into a new town, unpack our belongings, mingle around in the community for a little while, then pack up our wagon and move on to the next new town where we start all over again. It's funny -- I've always known growing up that we actually do have gypsy roots back on my dad's side. We've always talked about our gypsy roots as being the source of our love for adventures, travel, hopping in the car and just taking a drive. Now we get a chance to live like gypsies for 2 years, and although parts of it are very exciting, it's also ... unsettling. It's hard to become part of a community for 6 months and begin to really enjoy all the little intangibles that make it feel like home -- knowing the best streets to take, seeing the same friendly faces at Mass every week, making friends with the library lady that we see all the time, etc. Two weeks from now, we'll leave our community here and the hole will close up behind us and we'll plunk down in another community in another state, and we'll have to start finding all those little intangibles all over again.

This gypsy lady is looking forward to when the wagon stops for the last time!

That being said, I definitely feel like a veteran at moving this time around. Less than 2 weeks to go, and we don't know where we're living in Virginia yet (we have a couple of potential houses, but nothing definite yet), I haven't started sorting or organizing our belongings, I haven't done any cleaning, and I'm not really all that fazed by it. OK, I'll admit that I am a little bit tense :), but as David would put it, my Worry Box is only so big, and I just don't have room for everything in it right now!

I'm also excited about going to Virginia. It's a beautiful part of the country with tons of interesting museums, historic sites, monuments, etc. to see. We have good friends from college that live out that way, and we'll also be able to visit Bonnie, Jason, and Joyce. We can even take a trip up to Hopkins to see how the old alma mater is doing.

Now, hopefully we can all stay healthy these next 2 weeks -- we've had a terrible time with sickness here since going to California! Jack was sick, Thomas was sick, Peter was sick, David was sick, I got sick, Jack got really sick again (stomach bug that came and went for almost a week!), and I got sick again. I tried to figure out what good God might be able to do with our sickness, and I decided that slowing down, taking several sick days off from homeschooling, and not worrying too much about our move to VA was probably a good start. So, we're in a good place, soaking in the lovely Colorado fall (it's already started here! Cooler weather, leaves changing colors -- it's gorgeous!) and looking forward to our next adventure.