A Whole Lot of "News" to Report......

Whew.  We've been busy.  Not blogging but .... sellling, buying, packing, moving, unpacking, laughing, crying, comforting, meeting, greeting, and organizing.  In a nutshell, it's been a crazy ride making our hopefully final move to Wyoming, OH from Cary, NC.

While we had grown to really enjoy NC and felt like we had found "our people" ... we didn't like the idea of moving the kids again later on down the road.  It was becoming apparent just how important friends are to the "tween" crowd.  Time is rushing by so quickly.  Did we really want to maintain a split calendar in Wake County?  What age is the "right time" to move?  Do we want to stay in NC permanently?  Is that the right thing professionally?  Personally?  So....we started the "what if" game.  It quickly turned into the "how soon can you get here" game.  And here we went again.

I can't say this experience was a smooth as the others.  It certainly lasted much longer, the house selling was far more dramatic (70+ showings in 120 days), and it was far harder to actually leave than we thought it would be.  And being a single parent for six months led to a lot of blood, sweat, tears, prayers, chocolate, and wine.  But we did it.  Again.   God gave us the strength and the support and just the right people for the job.

So here we are in a village just outside of Cincinnati, OH.  We did far more research on this than we had previously.  We had a bit more time ... and we don't plan to go anywhere else for a long time.   So... this move was important.  We knew what we hoped to find...great public schools (who really wants to finance four kids in private schools?), small community, walkability, proximity to a larger city, diverse demographics and neighborhoods.  You know, true neighborhoods with houses that are as diverse as the people in them.

We found it.  Our house is "new construction" for this village... it is 40 yrs old.  There are fewer than 10,000 people that live here ... and I will just bet we will meet every last one before long.  The kids walk or ride their bikes to the elementary, middle and high school from our house.  No school bus rides... sorry guys.  The neighbors call you when your kid isn't wearing a helmet.  Or crosses the street without a crossing guard.  The librarian erases your debt because your movie went undetected (and hence unreturned) in an unpacked box for two weeks.  The crossing guards hand out hellos to the kids ... and biscuits to the dogs.  Really.  It's a place you can raise a family ...feel at home ....and plant some roots.  That's the plan.

So .... here we are.  It was hard to leave.  It always is.  We miss our friends.  That ... as we have learned ... never gets easier. But you can't win if you don't play.  And .... I think we won.