Home Temporary-Sweet Home

Well, we made it to New Orleans. At least the kids and I did. Damien's last day of work is April 11 and since he wanted to put in some long, long days to get everything finished we figured it would be worth it for the kids and I to come here early. We flew my mom up to help me drive down (once I came to my senses and decided it would be pretty difficult to drive the 16 hours alone with two toddlers). My sister Emily had been with us the week earlier - my parents went to Paris and so we got the privilege of taking her in for 10 days. It was a HUGE blessing since I spent that week packing and running errands. Just having two extra hands to entertain the kids or stay with them while they napped and I went out was such a big help. I don't know how I would have gotten everything down otherwise. My parents flew back from Paris last Sunday night, Emily flew back to New Orleans on Monday night and my mom flew up to VA on Tuesday morning. We left VA Wednesday morning and drove about 10 hours to Trussville, AL. We stayed the night in a hotel and ate at a surprisingly good Mexican restaurant. When we got to the hotel the kids had been in the car for so long I wanted to let them play and run around some. And although it had briefly entered my mind that we might be bothering the people below us, it was confirmed when we got a call from the front desk saying that they had called to complain. Woops! Who goes to bed at 9pm anyway? You can imagine my horror when I was woken up the next morning at 7am to Orin running back and forth across the room. After a simple, free breakfast, we hit the road to finish up the last 5 1/2 hours. About an hour into the drive Nina (the kids name for my mom) reminded me that it was Orin's birthday. Yes, I'm a terrible mom! I knew it was that day and had been telling Orin that his birthday was "tomorrow", but for some reason when we woke up it just didn't come to my mind. Luckily he was turning three and didn't care. :-) We got in around 3pm and as soon as we stepped out of the car the heat and humidity hit me. I can't say how happy I was to feel it. This winter in VA has seemed to drag on eternally and I didn't think I could handle much more. I LOVE the heat and and looking forward to a New Orleans summer. The kids were AMAZING in the car. I must confess that we do have a portable DVD player that we use for long trips. But we alternated watching a show and listening to a CD and they were perfectly content. We literally only had about 5 minutes of whining from Micaiah the entire trip. It was hard to leave Damien for 10 days - I think it's the longest the kids or I have been apart from him. In the car on the way Orin said, "I'm sad - Daddy's far far away in Virginia." They've had some entertaining phone conversations and will be happy once he's here. I'm so excited that we'll be here for a few months. It's such a relief not to have to worry about spending enough time with each family during a short 7-day trip and not neglecting someone. We hope that our families will get to know the kids (and vise-versa) before we move to Dallas and eventually take them overseas. Damien is also looking forward to a little down time after a very tough year at work as well as with his health. It will be great to have him home with us during the day, although much time will be spent contacting churches and raising support. Although this is our second temporary home in the last 18 months, we know it will be a good one for this short time in our lives. (our apartment was in the bottom two windows of the home in this picture.)