New Beginnings

Whew! What a month it has been! June has sped by in a blur of packing, driving, boxes, lifting, and now unpacking. All of us successfully made the long trip from Connecticut to Texas and we are now reunited in our new house where Abbey has chosen the pantry floor as her favorite spot and Grace has decided the converted one-car garage, which we’ll use as an office/sewing room, is called the “basement”.

I drove with Grace and my dad (who kindly flew up to Connecticut to accompany us down) and Rob drove about two weeks later with Abbey. It was kind of odd to be making the reverse trip that we took 3 years ago when we moved from Dallas to New Haven, but in all practical aspects the drive went well for both of us. Grace did great in the car, just about as well as a busy two-year-old could be hoped to handle a 4-day road trip. You could see her growing more fretful as the afternoon grew long each day, but there was a minimum of actual losing it. Unlike, say, that time we drove with friends to Niagara.

We spent a long two weeks apart as Rob finished up his last days as a resident and I handled some work being done on the house. Grace and I stayed with my parents for about half of the time and then officially started living here and stopped our daily 60-mile treks there and back. The Metroplex-- it is huge! Robert finally arrived, to much fanfare from Grace and me, and now we are happily ensconced amongst boxes in various states of unpacking and IKEA furniture in various states of assembly. Well, maybe “happily” isn’t exactly the right word. We’re working our bums off and living in chaos and eating like crap, but it is all just a necessary step to starting anew and making this place home. I think we’re doing a decent job maintaining our sense of perspective so we are bearing up under the havoc well.