The Wait

We move a lot. That kind-of goes without saying. But our move to New Jersey was unique in that we knew we'd only be here one year. Kindergarten for Claire. One year of preschool for Maddie. Colin's year one to two. These days when our kiddos are so very young are such wonderful, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime moments and we do try to live every day just for that day. And we have definitely enjoyed our time in New Jersey. But it's hard to NOT think about next year. Where will we be? There were exotic possibilities: Hawaii. Florida. Germany. There were interesting possibilities: Washington, DC (stuff to see). Colorado Springs (never tried Colorado before). There was the close-to-home possibility of Illinois/St Louis-area that would make it possible to have birthday parties with family and weekend visits to the grandparents' houses. And that just names a few places that were out there! The questions were endless: Should I buy the kids new winter coats while they're on sale or will they not need them? Do I need to go through all of the boxes downstairs before we move to some tiny house overseas? Will we want to rent a house or buy?

Fortunately for us, the Air Force finally put an end to the waiting game this month. We will be moving to Washington, DC this summer. Well, OK, we'll be moving to Virginia, but Phil will work in DC. So the answers to the rest of the above questions are: yes (glad I did!), probably-but-don't-want-to, and RENT. And we should be there for around three years, so we should be able to actually relax for awhile before worrying about what's next! I guess we'll have to continue to beg our families to come see us, get in the van and go see them when we can, and get ourselves ready to see the sights of our nation's capitol.

We went out house hunting as soon as we could and quickly found a nice house. According to the folks we know there, the rental houses in the areas we were looking at get snatched up very quickly as it gets closer to the summer move season, so we hope we've avoided that craziness.

In between checking out houses, we reconnected with some friends there that we knew in Altus AND we managed to squeeze in a very quick trip to the Air Force monument:

Colin checking out the wild blue yonder

View of the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetery and the National Mall

The kids are pretty sure they waved to the president on Marine One, too. I think all of the excitement may have worn them out a bit, though.