Fall Again

So, it's been over a year since we moved here from Utah.  Northern Virginia (or NOVA, as we locals call it) is amazing, nasty rat children not withstanding.  Our concern over the longevity of the car has kept us closer to home than I would like, but we've still visited amazing places like Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Mason Neck State Park (ticks!), Virginia Beach, Washington DC more times than I can count, both Air and Space Museums (DC and Dulles/Chantilly), and other mundane-seeming but actually really cool places like Wegmans (both in Fairfax and in Gainesville), the dog parks in Vint Hill and Reston, an amazing little bakery in Arlington (http://www.heidelbergbakery.com/), and a cheap little greasy spoon in Manassas with surprisingly good diner food and perhaps more than a few flies in the summer (http://www.ashtonfamilyrestaurant.com/).

Things aren't how I would have them if I had the power to make it all wonderful. The kids in this neighborhood are scary and unpleasant (they've taken to stalking our boy on his Play Station Network and ridiculing him--we only just figured out today that he can block them), and the money situation is always tight, but, all in all, here is absolutely better than Utah.  The constant blooming of trees and plants, the greenness, the amazing sound of cicadas and frogs in the night (spring peepers!  Tree frogs!  Leopard frogs!), the astounding array of birds (including our hoped-for cardinals), and the way that wind actually cools you off.  Not like the hot desert blasts of Utah summers.  Here is absolutely better, even if it's not yet perfect.

Sadly, there has been one really bad thing--I'm gaining weight.  Pretty quickly.  I have got to find that place in my head again or I'm going to totally blow this, and I'm not sure my health can take that again. 

Anyway, here are some pictures of our beautiful new world.  Love!

Half Life

It's been a while since I've written, and things have changed.

Drastically.

The dream of escaping that dinky-assed dustbowl slum? Has come true in a big way. We left Utah on September 3rd, arriving in Prince William County, Virginia September 7th. Just in time for Tropical Storm Lee to kick the east coast's ass. I wish I could say without doubt that it wasn't my fault. But I can't--disaster seems to follow me, precede me, and otherwise all-around associate itself with me. Just a short time before we moved, I was talking to my Utah insurance agent about moving here. She said, "But you've got a hurricane coming!" I laughed and said, "Sure, we may have to dodge the occasional hurricane, but at least we won't have to worry about EARTHQUAKES anymore." Ten minutes later, a major quake hit Virginia.

Me and my big mouth.

So here we are, finally on the east coast. We have cardinals partaking of the feeders out back. We have a flowering dogwood, which I've wanted since I was a girl, right out our front door. It'll spend its fall blazing scarlet, its winter covered with bright berries, and its spring awash in riotous bloom. We have a brilliantly magenta fall-blooming Crepe Myrtle right outside the back gate. We have mourning doves, jays (REAL jays!), sparrows, finches, a squirrel or two, and a SKUNK!

I have a flower garden, already laden with mums and a profusion of tulip, daffodil, and alium bulbs (some a gift from the lovely lady next door).

It's amazing. Been here a month, and we've already taken Sean to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space in Chantilly, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Air and Space Museum in DC, and to an airshow and the beach in Virginia Beach. What an amazing place, how much happier I am!

There are people I miss in Utah, but I don't long to be there with them. I long for them to be here. Because here?

It's better.