A Little R&R

On Saturday, we took a little break from what has been the constant cleaning, organizing and unpacking that our lives have become since we moved into the house. The kids were going a little stir crazy from all the time in the house and all the trips to Home Depot :) So we decided not to do that for a bit, at least for some of the day on Saturday. (You couldn't expect us to take a whole weekend day off, of course!)

We debated a few ideas...there is so much to see and do in such a short distance. And we have plenty of time and opportunity to do it now!We decided to head downtown to see the Jefferson Memorial. That one is the hardest to get to from Metro, but we did initially intend to take the Metro. However, after trying to park and locate the Pentagon Metro stop unsuccessfully, we ended up just driving downtown. We got a nice parking spot in the small lot right on the Tidal Basin and walked the short distance around to see Thomas.

Oh, first though I should mention a quick unintended side trip we took on our way downtown. I took a wrong turn (that's how we learn the roads...seriously!) and we ended up driving right past the parking lot for Roosevelt Island. I've never been before, but our neighbor told us about it and we decided to stop since we were driving right by. There's a footbridge from the parking area to take you across the Potomac onto the island which sits right in the middle between Virginia and the District (oh, I should mention that we decided to start calling DC 'The District' since we are now locals as it seems the thing to do). Anyways, on the island are a few trails and quick hikes but also a monument to Teddy Roosevelt. It's pretty impressive, although certainly off the beaten path. The monument area is under renovation but it's a nice quick walk up there to explore. I'm sure we will be back to try the other trails :)Anyways, back to Jefferson. After visiting the memorial, we walked back around the Tidal Basin and rented a paddle boat for 4. We spent time boating around and enjoyed nice views of Jefferson and Washington monuments. The kids loved it, and Quinn even tried his hand...err, feet at paddle boating. It was tiring but fun!We then headed home, and got there in about 25 minutes. I'm still in awe that we can be to such incredible (mostly) free amenities and be home that quickly! In fact, I should mention that I'm still in awe that we live in Virginia. There's just something about this area that I love, and that feeling has only been renewed in our first 2 weeks here. Yes, there's traffic and yes, houses cost more - but it's all worth it to me and I don't feel like our quality of life has suffered. I'm hoping my answer is still the same in the days and months to come, but for now I am very happy we moved back to the East Coast!

School Visit

On Tuesday afternoon, we had a tour of the kids' new school. It is a public K-5 elementary school that is about 2 miles from our house. The kids can walk or bike to the school in about 10 minutes, or a drive is 10-15 minutes (because of the roundabout way you have to drive there).

We met with the principal and she gave us the tour and answered all of our questions. The school is undergoing a pretty major renovation that began in April 2010 and will mostly be complete when school opens back up in September. Evey room is being redone in some way, and we got to see the brand new (and huge) library, new classrooms & new blacktop and playground area. The school has two levels and made Blessed Sacrament seem tiny.

When we got to the school, all of the kids were in the gym watching a performance by the 5th graders who studied World Civilizations this year. They were all dressed up and singing cultural songs...it was quite a production! I was amazed by the diversity of the kids sitting in the audience...looking out over the sea of students there were so many different faces. The signs for the bathroom were in English, Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese. That's a sign of the diversity for sure!

In terms of size, it's a big school...there are 4 classes each for grades K-3 and 3 classes for grades 4 and 5. Each class has only 18-22 students! Compared to BS, Quinn had 32 kids in his class and Keely 25 so that will be a much nicer ratio. They also have advanced programs available to all children, both in class and in an advanced learning center. I was really impressed with the facilities and opportunities for advancement!

The school day runs from 9:15 AM to 3:55 PM, and they do have child care before and after if needed. They also have a morning program run by teachers at the school with various activities (i.e. gym games, drama, music, art, math, science) - you can drop the kids off at 8 AM and they can pick a different activity each day. This is free and occupies the kids from 8 until school starts - a great option to extend the school day for working parents. Obviously we don't need any of these extended options initially but it's great to know they are there!

While we were there, I got all of the registration paperwork and I've started filling it out and getting all of the supporting documents. I think we were all excited by the school visit and the kids are looking forward to starting in September!

As a side note, the cleaning continues at the house. The house has had only 2 owners, D (since their last name started with a D) and S (similarly because of their last name). D lived in the house from 1953 until 2000. S for the last 11 or so years. Apparently, S had a theory when they moved out - leave anything that was D. Their other theory was not to clean out anything, just pile their stuff in with D and then take it back out (or so it seems). Hence the goodies from before 2000 and sometimes as early as the 50s that we are finding throughout the house. So anyways, we have two sheds in the backyard...both good size and in good shape on nice concrete slabs. The bigger one is going to be a true shed and James told Keely that she could have the smaller one for a playhouse. In cleaning out the smaller one yesterday, they found an old copy of the Washington Post from April 3, 1994! It was fun to browse through it last night...relive some of the stories that were prominent in that year and see some of the grocery ads and how cheap things were 18 years ago. Too bad the paper wasn't older, it may have been worth something! Ah, the joys of buying a 1950s house continue :)

Home Again

We are slowly settling into the 'new to us' house. Moving day was very eventful, and not surprisingly long and tiring. The challenges of moving into a house built in the 1950s became evident pretty early in the morning. Some of our furniture would not fit down into the basement because of the smaller doors. We were donating a refrigerator, washer and dryer to Habitat for Humanity ReStore and just getting the fridge out of the basement was a huge challenge. The doors had to be removed before it could be fit out. We also had to coordinate the large amount of trash that the sellers had left on the curb when they cleaned out the attic. I use the term cleaned out loosely, because we found all kinds of goodies up there when we explored it and tried to put our own stuff up there. By goodies I mean mostly empty boxes and not the $50k in cash I was hoping to find :) So back to the furniture not fitting...our leather sectional was in no way going to fit downstairs, even though it would make a better fit for the recreation room turned family room with the 52" TV. So we compromised and put it in the living room upstairs. No big deal. But that meant the living room furniture had to go in the basement, and that took 3 tries and removing several pieces of the couch before it finally fit through the door. I was seriously crossing fingers and not watching as the movers tried time after time to maneuver it through. In any event, it fit and everything else followed suit pretty nicely. By about 4 PM, we were all 'in' the house - albeit with things in the wrong places and boxes seemingly everywhere.

The first few days were busy with unpacking boxes, moving furniture, cleaning and organizing. Who am I kidding?!?! It's all still going on, of course! But we have the kitchen and dining room done, and only a few boxes remain in the living room. The kids room are still a work in progress, mostly because they lost a lot of storage space from the built in shelving units in their closets. Keely's room is in better shape than Quinn's. The basement is coming together too, but there are still lots of boxes down there (mostly books). I've got the easy job, going to work during the day while James is here organizing and working on the house. We've made several trips to Home Depot, a trip to IKEA and lots of trips to the grocery stores to restock the pantry. I definitely forgot how much money goes out the door when you buy a house. It seems like a never-ending credit card swipe :(

In other news, today we will be visiting and touring the kids' new school. The neighborhood is very quiet and we haven't met many people yet. Patience is a virtue here, and the schools are not even out for summer yet. We did meet our next door neighbors, and they had us over for dinner on Saturday night. It was great, they are very nice and we got along well. They have one daughter, she is 10 and has autism. It is not a great match for a friend, but the kids did enjoy playing with her on Saturday night. We know there are other kids around because we see them at the bus stop so time will help meet them I am sure. It took 5 years before the kids had friends in our neighborhood in Utah, so we know it takes time. I guess I was just hoping for a busy kid-friendly neighborhood, but kids just don't play outside like they used to and friends seem to come from school and activities (sports, etc.). Because the houses in our area are older, there is quite a mix of ages in the area - from elderly original owners to newer young families to mixed families with interesting combinations of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.

We are getting settled and I am happy with the house. It's beginning to feel more and more like home, and it's definitely good to have a home again. My goal is to get settled before we leave for Ireland in two weeks. I think it's do-able!

Another Closing Story...

When we arrived in Virginia, we headed over to our new house for a walk through. It went well, and was mostly purposeful in informing me of things that are present in the house that I couldn't remember or hadn't looked at during our short visit in April. I am slightly embarrassed to say we only spent about 20 minutes, or maybe half hour in the house and I didn't even venture into the backyard or the garage. Crazy, I know. In any event, I was pleasantly surprised with a lot of the features I saw at the walk through (i.e. ceiling lights, closet space - a coat closet and a linen closet!). My realtor was laughing as I walked through exclaiming over the littlest of things...but I honestly didn't know what was there in some cases.

After the walk through was the closing. For the second time in less than a week, we walked into a title company - this time as buyers. This was a face to face closing, meaning the sellers sat across from us and we all signed documents at the same time. It's the first state where we have ever done that. It was interesting, and I liked it because we got a chance to ask the sellers some questions and receive immediate answers. We also got a feel for their moving out of the house as we were worried about the amount of 'stuff' in the house and how they were planning to get it all out in time. I left feeling more confident that they would actually be cleaning the house in addition to moving out their stuff. However, we still don't know but we'll find out for sure tonight...

The sellers have been renting the house from us the last week. We agreed to this to appease them because they wanted to be in the house until June 24th, but we compromised on June 7th. So we've been living in hotels since May 26th. We stayed in an extended stay here in Virginia for 3 nights when we arrived, then checked out on Friday and back in on Sunday for another 2 nights. That's 10 nights of hotels in total, in case you lost count. The reason for the check out was to head to New Jersey for the weekend - with two bonuses, two nights out of hotels and to see family.

The trip was fun, albeit exhausting. We saw lots of family, and it confirmed the true reason for moving back here. To be a 4 hour drive (yes, even in traffic) away is really amazing, and to watch the kids play with their cousins & to be spoiled by their grandparents truly makes the stress and struggle worth it.

Now we are focused on one thing, our move into the house. We will spend the night there tonight on sleeping bags, and the movers will be there at 7 AM tomorrow. We are so excited to get settled and I can't wait to sleep in my own bed again!

Stop #5 and Arrival in Virginia!

Well, I've gotten way busy and sidetracked so I didn't get to write about the remainder of our journey so here goes...

We awoke on Monday morning in Chicago and had another 8 hours of driving ahead of us. The good news was that it was our last long day of driving. We had purposely planned the last stop to be Pittsburgh leaving only about 5 hours remaining to Virginia. The drive from Chicago to Pittsburgh can be described with one word: tolls. We drove through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania and paid to be on every road that day. Despite the stops at toll plazas, we made good time and it was nice to have the drive broken up into so many states (instead of 10 hours in just one state). We stayed at a hotel just outside Pittsburgh, primarily because it took pets and was inexpensive with the bonus of an outdoor pool. For the first time the whole trip, we got to swim on Monday night. We also had ice cream for dinner...because sometimes it's okay to do that! We did that one night on our trip from Virginia to Tucson too, and it always sticks in my memory. Anyways, the only regret I have about our hotel location was the traffic we encountered upon leaving on Tuesday morning. Honestly it was less than a half hour delay, but we were getting an early start to make sure we got to Virginia in time for our walk-through at 1 PM. Even with the delay though we arrived at about noon, in time to stop at a bank to get the cashier's check we needed for our closing.

Two points of note about this journey...we crossed into Eastern Time Zone on the drive from Chicago, and we passed over the 2,500 mile mark of driving!

When we crossed into Virginia, Quinn exclaimed "I'm home!". Meaning he was born in Virginia...not the same part of Virginia, but the same state nonetheless. And Keely did a 180 on the 5 day journey...she went from bawling in her bedroom in Utah and not wanting to leave, to saying she doesn't care what time it is in Utah because there's no one there she cares about :) Ah, the drama and mood changes of a 7 year old. In all seriousness though, I think the journey itself was therapeutic and allowed us to have a smoother transition to our new state. We had plenty of time to reflect and adjust, and now we are all excited to be here starting a new adventure!