Catching up on Stuff We Have Missed

In all the craziness that is finding a house, and packing and moving, we have neglected to update the blog for some time. Following are a few pictures and such about our adventures for the last few weeks.

June 15 was Sammy's birthday. Our crazy sweet girl is 4 now. Her birthday was a bit of a whirlwind, but she didn't seem to mind. She opened her presents that morning and was very excited with her haul of littlest pet shop toys and the polli walks sandals she was admiring not too long before. They are admittedly pretty cool.

That morning, Ashley had a dentist appointment and immediately following that, we had to leave for Maryland to go house looking again. We had put in an offer on a house the week before, but they accepted another offer, so though it was Sammy's birthday, we had to find a house. The kids went with us and were pretty good sports about it. While Ashley was at the dentist though, Trent took Sammy to Build a Bear and let her build a stuffed animal for her birthday. Sammy immediately picked a frog and named it Trintra. Here is Sammy giving Trintra her fluff bath.

We found the house we are closing on that day and another that we intended to offer on if our offer wasn't accepted. Surprisingly and wonderfully, it was accepted and we have spent a lot of time going through the efforts to close. We are scheduled to close in late July and will move in the first part of August. It is both stressful and exciting.

With all of that, we moved out of our home in Virginia the week of June 22. Our pack out dates were June 24 and 25. Jon and I spent Monday night and most of Tuesday in the hospital. So, there will be more to get rid of on the unpacking end than I would have liked. Oh well. They loaded the truck on June 26. We camped out and cleaned and left our house for good that Sunday the 28th. We really loved living there and will miss it, but there is nothing like a scrubbed clean empty house to force you into feeling ready to move on.

Jon perched in the dogwood tree. He spent most of Friday in this tree watching the packers load the truck.

Last picture on last day in our house in Virginia


That Sunday that we left our house, Trent's wonderful grandma, Lula Thatcher, passed away. We had originally planned to head up to Pennsylvania and visit Gettysburg and Philadelphia as we were going to be in a hotel all week anyhow, and it didn't much matter where. Our plans changed though, and we found the Best Western at Zions Crossroad to be an excellent place to be. We got Trent on a flight for Wednesday so that he could be to the funeral, and we stayed where we still knew where everything was and had access to the JAG School so that I could secure my Power of Attorney and fax documents as needed for the house. It also had a pool, which was key for the kids who spent at least 2 hours every day playing in the water. They had a great time.

On Friday, we headed to Maryland and stayed at a friend's home there to prepare for our 4th of July at the White House. That is a separate post, and I will get to that soon. I am sure I have mentioned before how wonderful the Krajewski family is, and I will no doubt mention it again. They were in New Jersey for the 4th and kindly loaned us their home, which will be just under a mile from our new home (Ashley is thrilled). It was nice to be out of the hotel and to prepare for our memorable and fun 4th of July.