A new place....

Well, Friday night is here....and we FINALLY have chosen a place to live. It was weird to not have an address for a while. Today when a woman asked us what our address we said "we don't have one, we live in a hotel." But, now we do have one....

Before I get to that.

Time to catch up.

If had to describe the drive up here in one word I would say: smooth. Mike and I spend Monday night packing the car including topping our car with a soft roof top carrier and loads of things the packers wouldn't pack and we didn't want to throw out. (liquids of all sorts: cosmetics, perfumes, all medicine, etc) We also were careful to pack only things we would be willing to lose should the carrier detatch from the car and fly off (heaven forbid). The car was PERFECTLY organized. We took a picture of the excellent organization of the back seat and trunk and as soon as I muster up the motivation to upload pictures I'll post it. I always worry about keeping the kids happy. After a lot of preparation we had a backseat of tricks:
box of books
shoebox size box of little animals, ponies, etc
box of individual tupperwares of goldfish, crunchies (baby cheetos) juice boxes, small boxes of water, dehydrated fruits, apples, fruit snacks and bagels
coloring books and markers
DVD player and DVD's (DUH!)
A new car with four "butties" on top for Andrew to push and listen to. We heard the siren of his play police car for many a minutes on our drive.

They really did great.
We listened to Maisy Mouse and Little Einsteins more than a couple of times, ate lots of goldfish. Emma made us pull over so she could pee on the side of the freeway no less than 9 times. Having the potty in the car is one of the most genius things we've ever done.
We detoured in Georgia to visit my cousin Alyn and her family. I hadn't seen her in 11 years so it was quite a treat. It's so funny how our kids are second cousins...and yet between Alyns little blonde Lia and my Emma they could pass for sisters with their blonde curls.
Here's what our little "cousin connection" looked like. Thanks for the pictures, Alyn. I swiped them from your blog.



The stop was perfect for the kids. We put their pajamas on them and in 5 minutes after we left they were both sound asleep in the back seat snuggled up with their blankets. We took full advantage of the sleeping children and drove until 1:30 a.m. I enjoyed the freedom of listening to whatever I wanted since Mike was asleep too. We stopped in Florence, SC and travelled a total of 654 miles the first day. Not too shabby. The kiddies both woke up at the hotel and we got a room with two beds. We each slept with a kid and they went right back to sleep. My head hit the pillow and I was out....thankfully the kids were too. Andrew enjoyed his first crib free sleep snuggling up with daddy all night.

After a nice breakfast we were off again. We were so happy to Norfolk for the first time and were so excited for our new adventures.
Our hotel is nice. For the bargain price of $45 a night we have a one bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and washer and dryer. It's homeless living at its best.
We had a whole list of houses to see....
First house: eek!
Second house: EEEK! Lock the doors!
Third house: NO bloody way!
Fourth house: GREAT, far from work but annoying rental company and cheesy 80's wallpaper and decor.
Next house: NO!
next: same scary neighborhoods we've seen before.
We were beginning to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into. The stress was building and we were turning on each other. I at one point accused Mike of being "high on helicopters" and he in turn a little later offered to fly me to Arizona (how sweet) so he could finish on his own.
We agreed today not to turn on each other. We threw our cards in the air and the wind led us to Virginia Beach....and to the lovely townhouse community pictured above. We knew it was the place for us. There have been sacrifices made:
It's smaller than our last house, but we're making our kids share a room so that we can still have a guest room....and there isn't as much storage as there was in our last house which should be interesting for the ammount of "STUFF" we have, but we're going to do our best to use the space well. We can't wait for our stuff to arrive and to move in next week! Yey!
We are only a couple of miles from Oceana Naval Air Station which makes for lots of jet noise which the kids love. Andrew is OBSESSED with any aircraft over head. He can find them in seconds and hears them from miles away.

After a day of meloncholy, we're excited to be here again.