July 8th- July 18th
Somewhere in the middle of that whirlwind of fun we closed on our home and moved all our stuff from storage in. It was crazy! It was such an emotional time full of mixed emotions. On one hand I didn't want vacation to end, to have to return to reality. Especially when my reality was unknown and would involve not being in Richmond with all I had known and come to love. On the other hand I was just so anxious to get to our home and move in!
I have to admit. The first week or two were pretty hard. There were a lot of tears, a lot of stress and just a feeling of loneliness and despair. I should have been so happy to have a home but without the previous owners nice stuff and without my stuff unpacked it looked so sad. Also the home was left SO dirty! Like i'm cleaning the bathrooms and picking up someone's else's hair dirty!? So gross and depressing. It didn't feel like a home at all, it literally felt empty. Erik had to start work immediately and so I had no help to unpack, clean, organize let alone entertain Lucy. So moving around big stuff was impossible, and doing big things like assembling beds had to wait. I didn't remember moving being this difficult and depressing before! Anyway, you get the point. It was just hard!
I decided the only way to get through it was to accept it to be a slow process and be patient. I just had to get out of the house and try to find things for us to do and slowly the unpacking would happen.
One day I was unpacking and Lucy was playing nearby and I looked over and she had fallen asleep right on the floor! I totally felt that way too!
Most days I just wanted to curl up in a ball, ignore the mess and take a nap!
We escaped to one of our 5 pools.
Eating our woes away with Fruit by the Foot! ;)
We found our cute local library.
They were having a puppet show!
It was actually SUPER lame. But Lucy thought it was hilarious!
It was cute watching her faces!
Heavenly Father was totally watching out for me! One day I ran into an old friend in Walmart. Mary and I haven't seen each other in probably 6 years. She lives nearby and has a little boy who is 2. She totally saved us and was so nice to invite us on an outing to D.C. with friends one day. It was so nice to get out!
It made me so excited and happy to live near D.C.. It really is a cool place with a ton to do. (duh!) We enjoyed the American Indian Museum kid section and then continued to the Zoo. Best part? It was all free! It gave me confidence to be able to go downtown by myself. We will be doing that more often! Thanks again Mary! That outing was MUCH needed! ;)
BIG NEWS! I would like to interrupt this post with an important announcement from a happy momma! Amidst all the changes in our lives Lucy decided she was ready to be done with diapers the first week we were in our new home! What? As if I didn't have enough happening. I was leary of it all since it hadn't gone that well previously. But, wow! Now i get what people mean when they say "wait until they are ready". It was so different this time. I wouldn't even call it potty training. No training involved. It just happened! Even at night- no pull ups, no diapers! She only a handful of accidents. It was painless and wonderful! I will never try to push this issue again. This was totally the way to go!
Free meal at Chick Fil A for dressing like a cow? Yes please!
We spent many mornings sleeping in way too late, cuddling in bed way to long and just being silly!
I loved it!
One of our favorite things is this cute little rabbit that lives in our backyard. We see him nearly every evening. Lucy loves it! It really is so fun! We try to leave him carrots. I like having this pet unlike a dog that for a couple days I was sure we were going to go get. HA! Sure glad I didn't go out and buy a dog! We are so not ready for that! Not sure what I was thinking! I was in a bad state at that point! ha!
We checked out the mall. Which happens to be outlets. Which is awesome.
And Lucy approves of the play area.
We visited "Dr Erik" at work. Lucy LOVES getting her teeth checked by daddy.
Erik is settling in at work too. He has stayed pretty busy with all the summer patients.
He has been happy that he has been able to keep up to speed with his schedule and has loved meeting patients. Erik's Dad is not ready to retire or even slow down yet so although patients are free to schedule with whichever doctor they wish Erik still needs to come up with his own new patients to help build the practice.
So, in order to help offer patients more hours Erik works a weird schedule.
Monday-Wednesday: 9am-6pm
Thursday: OFF
Friday: 7am-4pm
Saturday (all but one a month): 8am-2pm
We are adjusting to his not so cushy schedule. It takes Erik about 30 min. to get to work. But he usually leaves about 45 min. before his first patient to get there early, and at the end of the day doesn't really get out the door until 15 min. after he should be done with clean up etc. So really you add 45 min- hour to each end of when he is actually home.
It's been an adjustment to not have him home till near 7pm. We have had to push dinner back and therefore Lucy's bedtime to about 8:30pm so she can actually see her Dad.
We don't mind that our Daddy has to work on Saturday's. I thought I would hate it. But it's kinda nice to have Thursday's off. I like the mid week break and I like that when we go out to do stuff it's not crowded! It works for us, for now.
Thursday's have become our "yummy breakfast" mornings.
Erik is the best at making yummy breakfasts! And Lucy is obsessed with pancakes, waffles- pretty much anything syrup lately. I finally bought frozen waffles and she eats 3 every morning! ha! Although this girl is picky like her Mom, when she likes something she sure has the Fox appetite. She eats more than me sometimes! She can put it down!
We also found our local Chipotle to ease our Richmond withdrawals! ;)
Love this place!
Looking back these weeks were pretty blurry. At times I felt numb. But I can see how things got better and better each day. And now, you ask me about where we live and I start to GUSH with joy! It really has been a testimony to me of our Heavenly Fathers love. He truly has been looking out for out family and I can feel his love. Erik and I almost dailly discuss how amazed we are at how blessed we are. Looking back we bought this house in a bit of a rush, and in a bit of a desperate state. Although I was confident about some things I had really researched, there was a lot I was just hoping would be okay because I was just happy to have a house. ha! Silly I know. But you know what? It has all worked out! It has probably worked out even better than if I had researched and tried to plan it!
You will see in the next few posts all that we have discovered and love about Woodbridge but I want to just write a little bit of an overview of our area and why we love it so much.
So technically we live in Woodbridge. But we live in the area of Lake Ridge. See it?
What I love about it so far:
- our neighborhood backs to the Occoquan River
- bike trails through the neighborhood and surrounding areas
- our ward is great! plenty of young families and everyone has been so welcoming
- There are about 9 kids in the ward who are within a year of Lucy's age. Often they have older siblings and are even the babies of their families so their mom's are busier but it's still someone to play with and I have met some great ladies!
- I really love how small our ward boundaries are. It's pretty much just the Lake Ridge and WestRidge neighborhoods. I love how close everyone is!
- Our neighborhood/association has 5 pools, 1 splash pad, tons of bball courts, tennis courts, and some awesome playgrounds. It also has events and clubs like the Mom's club I recently joined. It's a great community feel.
- stores are SUPER close! This is important to me! Grocery stores are close and then if I want bigger stuff like Walmart, Target, Costco, Ikea, every restaurant imaginable, and the Huge potomac mall/outlets that's all down in woodbridge which takes about 10 min to get to! YAY! It's all right there!
- Close to 95 for visitors and to get into the city
-Just over the border of Fairfax County so we get the best of both worlds. Live in the cheaper Prince William county but enjoy rec centers, parks and events from both.
There is so much to love here! We feel so lucky that we ended up here. Of course we still miss Richmond a ton, especially our friends. Really, the student life rocked! Being a grown up is hard! But I really had prepared myself for the worst leaving paradise and although the first couple weeks were bleak things are going much better now much better and I know we can be happy here. I can see it! And we are just so thankful!
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