Goodbye Bloomington, Hello Huntington

Collin, Jenny, Laurel, and Annie relax in our front porch hammock one last time in Bloomington 

What a whirlwind these past few weeks have been! Since we've finally gotten past the frantic "Which box has the shower curtain??" stage of moving, and are into the more gradual long period of settling in, I thought it was time to start updating my blog again.

Three weeks ago, Collin successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, "The Biogeography and Phylogeography of Disjunct Eastern Hemlocks Populations." Pretty much, it means he knows a lot about hemlock trees (the tall evergreen tree, not the poisonous herb), and he's spent a really long time in school. Anyway, now the girls and I get to call him Dr. Daddy, which is pretty fun. Grad school has been a long, difficult, and very good journey for both Collin and me, but I'm glad it's over and we can move on to the next chapter.

Collin's parents were able to come visit us to see Collin defend, so we wanted to move quickly while they were still around to help. Collin gave his defense talk on a Monday, and we were up in our new house on Saturday. As soon as Laurel (who is a week and a half shy of two years old) figured out we were packing everything up, she ran to her room and packed her prized possessions to make sure we were bringing them. Although she did a great job packing her blankets and teddy bear, I had to unpack them all again and put them in her suitcase so they would be nearby at all times.

With help from both our families and friends from church, the impossible-looking task of packing up and cleaning out our house was completed, and soon everything we owned was strapped into a large moving truck.

Then we said goodbye to the little house that Collin and I have lived in since we got married five years ago. It wasn't a terribly special house, and it had it's share of problems, but I loved it. It was the perfect place to begin our lives together. Toward the end, though, we were really bursting the seams of the two bed, one bath house, and it was time to move on even if Collin's job hadn't changed.

I'll write more about our new house soon, but I'll just say that God has provided so amazingly in giving us this place to make our home. It's a lovely, 145-year old Victorian, well maintained and with all sorts of potential and quirks. In this picture, Collin's dad is on the porch roof, handing our box spring through the window since it wouldn't go up the narrow old staircase. We've been up here for almost three weeks, and I still wake up sometimes and wonder where I am and what happened to the view of the park-like cemetery I used to see out my bedroom window at our old house. But every day we get a little bit more settled, rearrange a bit more furniture, hang up a few shelves, and make this house a little bit more homey.