And I'd like to take a minute just sit right there . . . I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-air"
Well, this is a little off, as non of us are now the prince of Bel-air, but otherwise it's quite accurate. We moved a month ago this Sunday and it's been quite the whirlwind. We're all very thankful for the holiday weekend we have to take a few deep breaths and start to feel like we're settling in.
I have a lot to recap in this post. Pictures from our surprise trip to Virginia for Christmas. A wonderful visit with my parents and then my brother who went home on Thursday. The holiday was full of surprises and was a lot of fun. After surprising the Grandmas in VA for Christmas and enjoying a holiday with lots of family, Beep and Pops drove back to Florida with us. (The were planning on coming to visit after Christmas before we surprised them). Then, Dad flew back to VA to work for a few days while Mom stayed here and played with Jacob during my first week of work and Mark's first week back in Gainesville. At the end of that week Dad planned to fly back to FL but little did he know that so did Henry. Henry offered to take him to the airport but took him early "because he had to get to work". He then went and parked his car and snuck into the airport waiting until Dad boarded the plan to board behind him. Conveniently when planning this 2nd surprise of the holidays I had Dad's flight confirmation and knew his seat number so Henry was able to book the seat next to him on the plane. He surprised Dad by coming and sitting next to him and then they flew to FL together. Mom, Jacob and I went to pick them up at the airport and while Dad came out to the car Henry snuck out of the airport and down the exit road (it's a tiny airport). As we were leaving the airport Dad saw a "hitchhiker" on the side of the road and pulled over to pick him up while Mom started freaking out until saw Henry and was one again shocked. It was perfect! :-) Then we all got in the car and met Mark for a dinner to celebrate my birthday.
This coming week will be another new adventure for me as it's the first week since we've moved that I'm on my own with Jacob and Bailey while Mark's working in Gainesville. Fortunately he only has to be there 2 days this week because of the holiday today and then a conference down here on Thursday.
Living in a big city is a whole different ball game. There's more to do than you have time for AND more traffic than you have time for. The news stories are crazy and it takes a lot more time to run a simple errand. It definitely feels like life in the fast lane and will take some adapting to find a new balance that fits our family. That being said we've had some great adventures so far. We've been able to go to the St. Pete Saturday Morning Market twice (a place we loved visiting before moving here), spent a morning at the Tampa Downtown Market, explored the beautiful Gulf Coast beaches and towns, have eaten at two new yummy restaurants, visited the Florida Aquarium and have already been to the zoo twice. I was reading the paper on Thursday and couldn't believe the list of weekend events in the area. We're going to have lots of great new adventures this year and have lots of new things to share with our out of town visitors.
I've also realized in past week that this blog may turn into an outlet (of sorts) for me to share the "joys" of complex living during the next year. We're renting a townhouse in a large complex for the year so we have some time to settle in Tampa and decide where we want to live permanently. There are so many great places to live here, and so many terrible places to commute from and to that we need to know where we'll both be working before we decide where to look for a house. In the meantime, we're trying to settle into a 3 story townhouse in a very busy complex. Fortunately (because we can leave quickly) and unfortunately(because of "busyness" and constant noise) we live at the entrance to the complex. We have nice amenities, a garage, 2 porches, 2.5 bathrooms and a dishwasher so there are plenty of advantages; but as we learned last week that we also have the lovely "advantage" of being directly next to the emergency siren sensor to activate the complex gates. We've gotten experience this "fortunate" event 3 times in the middle of the night since moving in. That's all for this edition of "complex living at it's finest". Until next time :-)
Pictures from the past month . . . my pictures are in a million different places right now so as I find and download them I'll upload more:
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