Bowcuts on the move...

It's been awhile since my last post. We are still here. I haven't given up blogging yet. We've just been a little pre-occupied. So let me catch up a bit.

We moved. And I will never move again. Call me a wimp, I don’t care. Some of my readers have made recent triumphant moves to California, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan and even Korea! I don’t really hear you all complaining (except maybe for the very minimal complaints of my dear Korea friend, but you don’t really count—international moving is a beast of its own). I moved 8 miles away and it was horrible. Have you just done it more than I have? Perhaps you’re just stronger, more resilient than I am. I don’t do it gracefully. I don’t enjoy packing up everything I own only to turn around and unpack it days later. Here is a fairly recent picture of our living room, and I don't expect it to change any time in the immediate future.
At one point in my life, every one of my earthly belongings fit into my college automobile--my Chevy Celebrity (a classic set of wheels, I might add). Now, they barely fit into this massive moving truck.

I’m a little embarrassed that we own this much stuff. Once you own a house, there is this magnetic force that draws STUFF into every nook and cranny. Cleaning out the attic, the basement, every closet and cupboard, it just seemed endless. It is now my mission to curb the accumulation of stuff…for every new thing that enters, something old must leave. But I digress. Let’s get back to why this move was so horrible.

· Closing on the Silver Spring house. We had a bad combination of neurotic buyers in a slow real estate market. To make the deal go through, we had to eliminate a hornet’s nest from our shed, have our almost brand new furnace serviced, have a number of repairs done on a house in excellent condition (if I do say so, myself) and gently explain that the holes left in the walls from me taking the window treatments in my daughter’s bedroom were indeed reparable. Spackle and paint work wonders, people. Anyway, I spent a lot of time dealing with contractors and service men, while trying to pack with two little kids.

· Brian was sent to Idaho the week before we moved for another business trip. Enough said.

· My Mom, who is notoriously phenomenal with helping with big, life-changing, events/crises was away in China the week we moved. We were still recipients of lots of help from friends and family, but still, it would have been great to have her here.

· The closing on our Bethesda house was postponed several times due to various loose ends.

· The girls came down with horrible colds (the coughing, thick, nasty runny nose type)

· In addition to her cold, Samantha was teething and woke up almost hourly for several nights. The night before we moved we got about 3 hours of sleep.

· We stayed at my parents’ home while we were in between houses, but my poor stepdad came down with shingles—I was a nervous wreck that my girls would come down with the chicken pox. Normally that wouldn’t have been a big deal, but doing chicken pox while moving would have been terribly inconvenient.

· The movers dropped a box on our baby grand piano, scratching it, and damaging the music stand. They damaged it before they even got it out the door!

So is my complaining warranted…even a little? You can be honest.

As I was giving my sad story to my sister on the phone, she suggested that some cosmic force creates huge road blocks in front of REALLY good things. In other words, the fact that this move was so hard was because it was SO worth it. I kind of hummed along and said, “oh yeah, that must be it”, not really buying it. But so far, I think that cosmic force really did come through for the Bowcuts. We love being here. Sure, we’re still drowning in boxes and adjusting to a home that needs some updates, but overall, we are delighted. A few highlights:

-the neighborhood, the neighborhood, the neighborhood. This truly is why we’re here. It is beautiful. I have to show off our back yard because I think right now it really is my favorite feature. The window above the kitchen sink overlooks it and I love that I get to look out on it multiple times a day.

We love the location—so convenient to the Beltway, our favorite shopping, easy commute for Brian. Very close to NIH should I ever land the perfect part-time job there.

-this place reproduces like rabbits…literally. There truly are rabbits everywhere. It’s totally bizarre. I grew up in Kensington, just a few miles away and sure I saw a rabbit very occasionally, I have never seen anything like this. We were all excited because we have a resident bunny who lives in our backyard. It’s very tame and Ella has gotten within just a few feet of it before it hops off. And then as I’ve gone running on several different routes through the neighborhood, I see our resident bunny isn't such a novelty. They are in almost everyone’s yards, they hop across my path as I run. But bunnies aside, this neighborhood is swarming with kids. For starters, there is a little boy next door Ella’s age, and a little girl her age, named Nora, two houses up. Nora heard that Ella would be moving in and had been anxiously awaiting her arrival.

-the Bethesda Ward (mormon term for church congregation). We’ve only gone one week, but we’ve been very warmly welcomed and so far it seems like a very interesting, engaging community. Plus, several of the people were at one time in the Kensington Ward, where I grew up—it’s nice to have some familiar faces mixed with the new. The Primary seems to be a good size and Ella had a blast at the primary pool party this past weekend.

-the grocery stores. I don’t know what it was about Silver Spring, but the quality of the grocery stores was severely lacking (Trader Joe’s was the exception). Our neighborhood referred to a nearby store as the “Soviet Safeway” because there was never anything on the shelves. Also, our neighborhood invited the managers of the local Giant to a neighborhood meeting so we could complain directly about the lack of shopping carts and rodent holes in the bags of bread. I walked into the Safeway in downtown Bethesda and I almost cried. It was fully stocked, lots of organic choices and a parking lot elevator that didn’t smell like urine. Eureka.

Overall, we can already sense that the agony of getting here was worth it. We’re still working on making it feel like home, but we know that really only time can do that. Address change cards will hopefully make it in the mail soon. We also love, love, love company, so please come visit/stay. The only requirement for room and board is that you peel off a little wallpaper... :)