We MOVE... on

After searching in several cities in the surrounding area, we finally found a cute little house on a small penninsual in Norwalk. My amazing little brother, Jackson, offered to fly up from North Carolina to help us move. Seriously. He offered to fly here to help us move! (I have an awesome family. I think I was MIA in the blog world to write a post about the time when my sister, Josie, flew out to help me with the initial lice situation. She gets credit for saving me from a looey bin at that time. My family = awesome. THANK YOU JACK AND JOSIE!!).

Adam and Jackson throwing stuff away.

See Jackson's leg? He's hefting more stuff into our trash pile at the dump.

Anyway, Jackson came up and basially moved us into our new place single-handedly. Adam and I, and a couple of people from the church helped out here and there where we could, but Jackson truly bore the brunt of lugging our junk. Half of it went to the dump (the soot half), and the rest went to our new place. It was cold hard work. Poor Jackson was so worn out in the end that he could hardly move. Heroic service, in my opinion. We managed to squeeze in a drive up to Sandy Hook and Newtown. Jackson works as an assistant principle at a school in North Carolina, so the recent shooting there affected him in a unique way. The signs and ribbons were everywhere around town. The elementary school was, understandably, completely blocked off and inaccessible. It was a sobering experience for us both.

This is a fraction of the letters sent from all around the world to the people of Newtown. I took this in the Town Hall there where they were on display for anyone to thumb through. Tears were shed reading some of the heartfelt messages.

Life in our new place has been great in so many ways. It feels so good to be settled, finally - anywhere, but we are glad that it's here. Of course, we miss aspects of our old digs; the history, the gorgeous and spacious yard, the "climbing tree", the chickens (had to sell them as they are not allowed in our new neighborhood), the woods (that's Adam mostly, he loved to trail run), and especially our neighbors and friends. However, we are loving many aspects of our new life; proximity to ... everything, playground across the street, small community beach a block away, nearby community bus stop with friendly kids, more natural light in the house, less house/junk to clean, etc. Even though the street we are on is prone to flooding - usually when there is a high tide combined with a full moon or a storm - we are happy here. We even get to see wild turkey, deer, and plenty of water birds around the neighborhood.

This is deceiving because our place is not as tropical as it looks here. The photo is enhanced. Even so, I can't believe I get to live here!

This is the view from our front yard. When the tide is low, it is a muddy marsh. When the tide is high, it is beautiful with amazing sunsets.

 

This is a video a neighbor took during a recent flooding on our street. We had to move our cars a couple of blocks away to higher land, but it only lasted about 7 hours. No real harm done.

The girls seem to have adjusted to their new school without any trouble. They are happy, and that makes me so happy. We were also happy when Progressive sent us a check for our full policy limit amount a few weeks ago! Things are looking up, and we finally "normal" again (knocking on wood).

We had a pretty big storm a couple of weeks ago. We played hard building a snow man and an igloo. It was the first time in ... ever that I outlasted my kids playing in the snow. It was therapy. They play in the finished igloo for only a few minutes. The next day it was a tiny melted heap on the grass. Yes, grass.