One Month and then the Big Big Plane Ride

I just went back and read my last post from April!  I haven't blogged since then since we have been living a VERY regular suburban life and loving it!  We have been living in an apartment in NOVA (Northern Virginia for those of you not in the "know").  I laugh because I had never thought of NOVA before a year ago!  It is definitely its own culture.  I love it for many reasons and laugh at myself for living here for many other reasons.  Here are the reasons I love it: 

• access to AMAZING libraries, and I have access to at least two within 3 miles of my home.  I have completely rediscovered my love and passion for reading thanks to them.  My kids love it too, and it is such a change from the horrible library lady we had in Owensville, MO. Yep, I hope she gets her just desserts.  I grew up with an amazing library experience in Elmhurst and this lady ruined it for me and my kids in Missouri.
• diverse population.  I go to the grocery store and am guaranteed to hear AT LEAST 3 different languages, one time I counted 5.
• grocery stores.  I have within walking distance 3 grocery stores that carry anything and everything I can imagine.  I used to get excited when I went to the discount grocery in Rolla and scored some organic something or other.  I also have access to a Trader Joe's and Whole Foods within 15 minutes and now sometimes that seems too far, can you believe it?
• schools.   I know this should be first, and technically it is, but I was thinking about me for a minute.  My daughter goes to an amazingly diverse public elementary and my son goes to another amazingly diverse Christian preschool where all the kids are loved and encouraged to play and learn.  My daughter's school is 30% ESL, so she has met friends from all over the world already. 
• Museums and a great park district.  We have taken full advantage of many, and no where near all.  There is so much to do here.  We have made it to the Smithsonian Art, Natural History, American History, and Native American museums, and the kids have taken several wonderful classes with the Fairfax County Park District.  http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/parktakes/  Look at all the stuff they have to enjoy!  I also played volleyball with an awesome bunch of women that was not associated with the park district:  http://www.chantillyvolleyballclub.com/womens-league.html Can you find me?  I am in the Winter 2011 Champions picture!! 
• no farm.  This will also be on the dislike list, but it has been like a vacation not having to tend to a greenhouse and a couple of acres of vegetables and flowers.

Here are a few things I am not so into:

• it is expensive.  Very, very expensive.  I am looking forward to moving to Bangladesh so we won't have the killer rent that we have here.  Here is the cost of living analysis comparison (for someone making 50K) saying we lived in St. Louis, which we were 100 miles from and moving to this are is:  Equivalent income in the city you are moving to: $77424.50. Percent increase to maintain standard of living: 54.85%. When I looked at the average home price it was 200K and here it is 670K.  It is nuts.  Most of the people where our daughter goes to public school live in apartments, townhomes, or got a great deal on a single family house.  The families at the preschool are a bit more upper crust, but still down to Earth, for the most part. I wish I had a camera in the minivan the first day I dropped my son off at preschool in my "ancient" 2001 Nissan Quest and followed the Land Rovers, BMW's, and Acuras into the lot! 
• having a yard to send my kids out into.  For their own good and mine.  I miss their ability to run off and go into the pool while I was working around the yard, or playing with their pets, or digging in the dirt.  When my husband and I did play tennis the kids inevitibly found a mound of ants, or climbed a tree or hid in their fort of bushes, but it wasn't quite the same.  I have to say that our son learned to ride a bike a 3 years old thanks to the parking lot, though, so that is awesome!
• Farming.  I do miss being able to grow my own food and provide it to others.  'nuff said.  I'll get too sad because we had a great farm.
• Pets.  We didn't move any of our pets and I am so gracious that we had wonderful friends take them in even though they were not young at all.  They have the best life they could have and are not having to stay in apartments and get flown all over the place, so that is good, but still.  We all love a little cuddle from our furries.

Well, we are getting ready to move on in less than two weeks and get back to visit family in the Midwest.  I am hoping I'll be able to keep you all up to date more as the days pass.  We fly out at the end of this month and can't wait to see our friends on the "other side"!

Why I cannot teach in person.

I have just gotten back on my blogger page and started reading blogs after taking at least a month off and was inspired.  I read a blog from http://www.vodkamom.com/2011/04/mermaids-arent-only-in-neverland.html. 
I got to go play volleyball all night and come home and am not able to sleep and then her post got me thinking, brought a tear to my eye.  I have hardly been able to write a blog since I was really working hard writing an online science course.  I was associating the computer with work rather than pleasure or enjoyment.  I sent one semester's worth of a course in and met my deadlines and am working on 2nd semester at a more reasonable pace....it is time I dive back in.   I feel like I am in a confessional...thank you Catholisism.
I took my kids to mcdonalds on Monday and then to the park under the power lines.  Yes we have a really nice network of paths and parks, but they are located under power lines.  Also, our apartment is extremely close to one, and probably not the best for our health.
But I digress...they really really loved it.  I got some coupons from my sister to spoil them with, and she made sure it was cool to send them.  I am not a perfect mom, my kids know all about mickey d's.   I know it is even worse since I had this organic farm and such, but we don't live in a vaccuum. 
So we were going to mcdonald's, but it was also perfect timing for kids getting out of the high school right across the street from it.  I knew we were in for it when I saw a crossing guard there.  That is really good though, to make sure kids don't get hit by cars and that they drive a bit more carefully coming out of the parking lot. 
We got our order in at mcd's at just the right time before it got all crazy and busy.  And then I got in a huge hurry to get out of there.  All I remember is a girl in a short skirt and her thong hanging out the front without any acrobatics--no bending over picking up her science book or dropped change.  Just out and--OUT OF THE FRONT. Seriously???  This is o.k. with her parents and the school?  Obviously it was fine with the 5 boys she was hanging out with.  ugh.   
I decided right then and there I am no longer looking into teaching here.  I was really kind of considering it at least on a part time basis, but oh how that changed things.

And then I read that wonderful blog post today from a teacher that had a girl donate her coveted mermaid dolls to kids in Japan.  How do we get from that to thongs???? IN THE FRONT.
I know--not the same girls, not the same parents...but...but....Seriously, why can't we have a more empowered female culture here.  If we don't do something about it, someone else will.  What happened to all the work the women did in the past century?  I am sure they didn't work for that?  And those of you that know me, know I am by no means a prude.  I just think many of our girls have lost a sense of pride in themselves and their bodies.  They have so much more to offer the world.  They should take a lesson from the sweet kindergartener in vodkamom's blog.  If you get a chance, really read this post and all of the rest of her posts.  She is a kindergarten teacher with a seriously twisted, sweet sense of humor!

Hollis is 4!

I cannot believe this little guy is 4 years old today. He is my second 8 pound bundle of love and is as happy and loving as the day he entered the world. We are so blessed to have him in our lives and he entertains us constantly. Happy birthday big man (but you will always be my baby).

Updating--plus---we have our assignment!

I have been so uninspired to write a blog mainly because I feel like our life is kind of going along as normally as it could. I am also writing curriculum and it gets to be a drag so that I don't even want to write for enjoyment.   I will however update you all with what has been going on since the last post.

We had a very nice holiday here as a family and enjoyed not having to drive 6 hours to grandparent's houses for them.  We also missed them and the rest of our family members enormously, although it didn't really hit me (I mean really hit me and make me sad)  until after New Years for some reason.  Because we didn't have to drive anywhere, the kids were able to do the entire Christmas thing with the cookies and milk for Santa and we got to see them open their presents in their own home in pj's.  It was really sweet and will probably be a tradition for years to come while we are hours away by plane from our families.

Andy graduated from his training and they had their flag day.  Usually flag day is when they give you the flag of the country you are going to, but they had so many without confirmed appointments, that nearly everyone got an American flag!  Then the holidays hit, which meant noone was working or working at the same time others were working in order to make a decision of where to send everyone.  On Friday a couple of weeks ago, Andy surprised me with a bottle of wine and the kids with some root beer.  He found out where we are going through word of mouth--hardly the ceremonial revelation I was expecting. 

And we are going to........


Bangladesh!!!

We are very excited and understand that it is a tough post, but the International Schools there are excellent and our R & R that will happen twice a year will be in Sydney, Australia!  Our wonderful friends are also going there, as well, so it just keeps getting better and better!  I have a feeling we will also be making small trips to some of the weekend getaways that seem very affordable and look amazing! 

I will update with more as soon as I know more!

Wish us luck~

Defeated by the blogosphere

I thought I would be able to update on Chicago and bring you up to speed by now so I will include highlights of Chicago and our trip out to VA with some bullet points:

• saw one of my best friend's pregnant belly and got to meet her newborn son
• ate chicago pizza
• ate at portillo's---hot dogs are to die for if you are not familiar
• ate more pizza
• ate some more portillo's
• visited with my other BBF in Chitown and her kids and hubby
• ate some more pizza
• hung out with my parents, sisters and their families
• celebrated with most of my family my grandmother's 95th birthday!!!!!!!!
• ate some more portillo's
• ran into the gal that I used to walk to school with from kindergarten through 12th grade and met her twins
• trick or treated in downtown Elmhurst, IL with my kids
• ate some more port...just kidding...just checking to see if you are still reading
• in the midst of all this, had our van break down and had to give it it's first tune up eva--at 160,000 miles, not bad I say, expensive yes!
• drove to our new place and paid about $50 in tolls, who knew that it would cost to avoid a mountainous drive
• got to drive through a tunnel in PA mountains
• arrived at our new place
• bought most of our furniture off craiglist and at IKEA

All in all we have adjusted well, settled in, and Bank of America loves us.

Where I left off....

I think I left off telling everyone about our unaffordable apartment that we love.  After we decided we wanted this place and signed the lease the world was our oyster.  It took me a second application and lots of white out to complete the application since I hadn't eaten and was done like a turkey on Thanksgiving.  It was really quite embarassing and Andy was no help because he was even worse off than me and he doesn't know my ssn.  It was just easier since at least I knew both of ours for the application. 

We drove to a delicious Greek restaurant that had a Salvadorian section on the menu called Dehlia's.  Did I mention yet that the food choices here are unbelieveable?  We had a great lunch and called back in with the leasing agent before officially leaving town to make sure that everything was on the up and up.  I was a little nervous with the mortgage still on our credit and if other stuff hadn't registered as being paid off yet since the auction that our debt/income ratio would be bad.  We got confirmation that we got the place and hit the road. 

Our general idea was to go south and head to Richmond and go west from there.  It looked like more of a straight shot that way through all of the mountains.  We got stuck in traffic almost instantly and had a sort of head start only because of the carpool lanes for 10 miles of it.  I think it took us 2 hours to go 20 miles, seriously.  We made it through Richmond and then it started getting dark.  Those of you that really know me, know how paranoid I am about driving at night or being a passenger in a car at night.  We were doing great until we were on the 2 lane highways that were up and down and curvy.  All I could think about was huge deer.  About 4 hours into our drive we pulled off at a town called Farmville.  No joke.  We found a sleezy motel and got one of the last rooms since it happened to be a college town (who'd of thunk) and it was homecoming. 

We tried to plan the next day and since Andy bought a book at that fly fishing store a couple of days before, guess what we did?  Found a place to fish or really I should say for him to fish.  After driving on the BlueRidge Parkway for a while and enjoying the scenery, we got to where we were going.  We drove to the cute little town of Buchanan and found where we could camp at the North Creek Recreation Area and did a little hike.  Hiking in VA reminded me of some of the places we would bikeride in Southern Illinois with a lot more up and down.  It was really pretty and there happened to be an Adventure Race of some sort going on.  I had just started hearing about this kind of thing.  They involve 3 events and are usually done in teams from what I can tell.  It was neat to see all these people, some of them families, mountain biking after orienteering their way to their bikes.

Camping was the usual fun except it was cold.  I am such a wimp when it comes to cold.  It got down to 42 and I have a not so insulated bag, so I really wasn't warm until Andy went fishing in the morning and I put myself and my bad inside of Andy's and the sun was out.

We got going that day and went to get directions from anyone that would offer them at the local gas station/Burger King.  I literally got the "you're not from around here are you?"  What do you think goofball that I am and just need to know how to get out of here.  I really wasn't offended because it was a sweet old man that asked me this and gave me great directions that I had to decipher once I got back in front of our map and could makes heads or tails of what words he was saying.  On the way to our next stop, we stopped and ate a cute little restaurant in a small Virginia mountain town.  Ma and Pa's:

We drove north and enjoyed the scenery and decided to stop in another town for the day and fish.  This time we got a hotel room and cleaned up before heading out to fish (I actually just read mostly, while Andy fished).  Andy fished at a spot on the Jackson River called Petticoat Junction!  The town we stayed at this night was Covington, Va and boy the town was stinky. I don't know if it was just where our hotel was, but it stunk.  I have a feeling there was a paper processing plant around. 

From Covington, we decided we should probably get back to our kids and we drove the rest of the 6 hours to Indiana and were grateful that they were in such good hands while we were gone.  During this part of the drive, Andy managed to rip the handle off the drivers side back sliding door, which has yet to get fixed.  The kids were happy to see us and we had a great time staying and visiting in Indiana for a few more days.  It was nice to not drive anywhere.  Next time:  Chicago.

New Lease on Life (and an apartment)!

Has it really been a month and a half since I last posted??? 

My friend Lori asked if I was still doing the blog and it jogged my memory, "oh yeah, I was going to do this blog to keep people up to date more and to have a sort of diary of our new adventures."  We are settled in very nicely into a two bedroom apartment in an area of Alexandria, VA called Kingstowne.  Andy and I dropped our kids off with his wonderful parents in Indiana while we came out here together to find a new place.  The drive here was more mountainous than I was expecting and we went a different route home to avoid all the up and down on our poor little Nissan Quest.  If you ever drive here from Louisville, I recommend coming the more southern route that is more straightforward. 

We arrived after a 10 or so hour ride and got here just in time for D.C. traffic with no exact plans for a place to crash for the night.  Did I mention the traffic yet?  I have been in some rush hour stuff in Chicago and St. Louis but this was unreal.  Later we would meet people that described their rides as, "My ride in is only 45 minutes, but my ride home is 3 hours."  We knew moving out here we would only have one car, and since we sold the other one at our auction and are not rolling in the dough, but sheesh 3 hours??

Our criteria was simple for our future home:

• safe
• close enough to a metro station so we could walk/bike to the metro
• in a ridiculously low price range for around here 1600 max
• 2 bedrooms, but 3 would be nice

We got an expensive cheap hotel room at the Econolodge in Falls Church that first night and then found a local bar to chill out after our drive.  Dogwood Tavern was just what the doctor ordered.  They had a large variety of microbrews that I had never heard of and heavenly food.  After making our way back to the hotel we continued our search online and with our Apartment Guide courtesy of the Washington Post that my friend Paula had gotten for me.   We picked out a few that looked good, mostly by price and size and we were kind of sticking to the Falls Church area since I thought that was where a lot of homeschool activities were going on. 

First place we looked at the first day the price was right, it was a bit far from the metro so that meant a bus ride of some sort and it was just so congested in the area.  We got a tour of a model, which I would later find was the way it goes.  They show you a model that looked pretty, clean, odor-free and then you had to go on blind faith that the one you signed your lease for was close to the same condition.  I did not like this and made it known that if you can't show me the inside I at least want to know what unit it will be so I know if I am next to the trash compactor or sewage plant or whatever.  When I did this at the first one, I felt Andy look at me like "what are you doing, you are being a little pushy".  Pushiness pays off because we were shown a model on the "garden level" also known as a basement.  The garden level apartment model we looked at was on the main floor and walked right out to the grass when you went out the sliding doors.  The unit that we would be getting when we went to look at it, was a stinkin' basement.  First one we looked at was the last on my list already.

We saw about 4 or 5 that day and most were either "garden" basements and one was too expensive and didn't really seem very kid-friendly, more college/grad student/bachelorish--but it was hardly a block from the metro.  This one was the top of the list that day.  We regrouped--Andy went to a fly fishing store he spotted and I went to TJ Max and bought some clothes that I am wearing now nearly every day (two shirts and a pair of boots) that's my wardrobe.   I have some jeans that I alternate with to really get 5 different outfits.  You know I am joking right?, but not really.  While I was at the Max, Andy got online at Panera and got a deal on a room at a Hyatt or Hilton but we had to pay for internet there.  Crazy, right?  Several adult sodas later, we mapped out a new list that included an apartment complex that had some townhouses in our price range, but had this review on apartmentratings.com:  "It is a great place to live as long as you don't mind living in a retirement community".  When we took the tour that about summed it up, plus too far from a metro and guess what?  We would again be offered a garden apartment with one of the townhomes we originally wanted above it.  I guess you have to wait until someone dies to get one of those. 

The second place we went to, Andy had aparently said a secret prayer before we went to.  We were going into territories unknown about 7 miles east in Springfield, VA.  We were done with the Falls Church area.  It was too pricey, and so congested with construction still going on everywhere.  So, on to Springfield with no lunch or breakfast and coming off yet another lame tour.  I was just going along with Andy, I was out of ideas.  He said, "I know this is going to be the one".  "Sure, whatever", was my attitude.  I thought we were way to far out to be near a metro. We showed up at lunch and only one rental agent was there and she was just signing a lease with someone so we had to wait.  We ate the offerings of cookies and coffee gratefully since we were starving and this was going to take longer than we thought.  Finally our turn arrives and we got the schpeel and toured a 2 bedroom that would be the actual one we could move into that day.  We loved it.  Then we started talkig about a model one she had just shown us that had a sunroom (sort of) in it and asked her the price of that one.  She said that if we were considering that one we should spend about 20 bucks more a month and do the 2 bedroom with a loft and extra bathroom.  We mulled it over looked at the floorplan on paper since one would not be available for a month, which was when we wanted to move in anyways.  Then she told us how her husband rides his bike to the metro that is only a mile away and takes the metro to work in D.C.  And, she tells us that there is a bus stop that is only a 5 minute ride to the metro if you don't want to walk or bike.  I don't know if it was the hunger pains, the continuous circle of crappy apartments with one that was nice and met our criteria, or the prayer--but we signed a lease that day. 

The apartment is over our price range, but the $1600 one was over our price range to begin with considering we still are paying our mortgage in that farm we still own back in Missouri.  Eh-what's another couple hundred when you can't afford the first 16?  I know it is bad Emily Post manners to share financial information, but I wanted to share with you and remind myself later how much it costs to live modestly in the D.C. area.

So, we went back and retrieved our kids.  I will fill in those blanks in the near future.



Day 3 of looking   


We arrived after