A Six Month Hiatus is Entirely Unacceptable

First, let me just say how sorry I am for having skipped SIX MONTHS on our blog!! The busy-ness of life as a teacher kept me from being regular with my posts, and by the time the summer came I was entirely out of the habit. I'm not sure how regular I'll be in the coming months, but I will try to be!

A quick summation of the last six months:

Jeff and I put our house on the market in February, it sold in May, at which point we had a five week window in which to find a place to move to, have a yard sale, sell other items on Craigslist, pack up, clean the house, and move! What a crazy, exhausting five weeks that was. We decided to rent for a while since we figured it wouldn't be too likely to be able to find a house we wanted and to close on it in five weeks. We chose a fun, temporary, crazy alternative to our 3400 square feet on 3.5 acres in the country: a high-rise 850-square-foot apartment! We are at the Reston Town Center which is a fantastic, urban planned community full of amazing restaurants, great shopping, and free, fun concerts on Saturday nights all summer long! Our apartment building has a beautiful workout facility and a roof top pool (which has amazing views) and other nice amenities. Jeff and I love the easy lifestyle here. We can take the elevator down and walk a block or two and find ourselves among all kinds of options of shops and super good places to eat. We LOVE being in where the action is. The countryside is beautiful, but we find we are well suited to the urban lifestyle. Last weekend we drove out to take a short trip on Skyline Drive, and I loved being out in nature and enjoying the unblemished beauty of what makes Virginia so gorgeous. But when it comes to day-to-day life, we like where we're at. Also, Jeff is much closer to his job here, which is a huge relief to him -- he hated that long drive. We signed a six month lease, which takes us through the end of the year. After that, we are considering our options... Continuing to rent here is one of them! :)

Earlier in the spring, before we received the offer on our home, Jeff received an impressive job offer as well, which left us agonizing for weeks over what was the right decision. The job would have taken us to Bucks County, PA, of all places (where I grew up and where Jeff lived as well back in the 90s); he would have worked in Newtown (at Lockheed Martin) and we probably would have lived in Doylestown. It really was a difficult decision for many reasons. The bottom line that we came to, though, was that if we moved to Pennsylvania, I wouldn't have been able to continue my teaching career. The reason for that is twofold: first, Pennsylvania is overloaded with teachers as it is and it's difficult for even regularly-certified teachers to find a job; second, Pennsylvania doesn't recognize my alternative-route license. I really feel called to teach, and there are other practical reasons why it seems wise for me to continue teaching. Besides that, we didn't really want to move to PA. We like Virginia. We weren't too eager to leave our life here. So we bit the bullet and turned down the offer, which was difficult; but we feel we made the right decision. Jeff has been so supportive of my new career and wants to see me excel in it. I love him for that. :)

So, speaking of my new career, I have found a full-time position to which I am transferring this coming year! This is fantastic for a few reasons.... The location is ideal. We moved just outside the other end of the county, far away from Blue Ridge Middle School which is where I was last year. My new school is a 15-minute drive away now -- perfect. Second, I'll be at Potomac Falls High School, and this is exciting to me because I feel like I may be more suited to working with high school students and because the rigor of the higher-level math classes will be more interesting to me. I'll be teaching two sections of Geometry and three sections of Pre-Calculus. And third, it's full-time instead of my part-time, every-other-day position at Blue Ridge. I am grateful for the part-time position I had at Blue Ridge last year because it allowed me a nice, lower-stress-than-usual transition into my new career (God knew what He was doing after all...), but I'm ready for a more consistent schedule and regular workload now. My official first day is August 14, and the first day of school is September 3. I'm preparing, though, and I'm feeling more and more confident!

So that's the run down. Below are a whole bunch of pictures so you can get a taste of what has been going on in our life. Enjoy! And thanks for visiting! :)

We visited the Beamers in Texas in February. Kallie kept asking for Jeff! She's the cutest.

Wesley watching Pop Pop play his guitar

Jeff and I visited Charleston over Spring Break. Despite the chilly weather that week, we greatly enjoyed Charleston's charm and beauty.

Mary and Gray came for a visit and we all went to the Udvar Hazy Center - of the Air & Space Museum. Gray was a bit tired. :/

Precious

More precious. I love my fun, joyful little Gray.

Popcorn for my kids! We watched Moneyball the last few days of school. And yes, I made them answer questions and have discussions about how math has a big role to play in the world of sports!

 At the entrance to Doukenie Winery, one of our favorites in western Loudoun County. Here I was looking for a lens cap I had inadvertently left on the roof of the car as we drove off...... :) Thankfully I did find it.

Golly, but is this man handsome

at Crissy and Bryce's wedding! Oxford, PA

Our foursome from back in the day... Love and miss these girls.

Beautiful couple and so in love

Don't you love those eyes?!? And that smile!? This is Kiff's Wesley, who is turning one next month!

Wesley and Pop Pop!

Gray's Second Birthday Party!

Sweetness

More sweetness

Sweetness overload

Boxes, boxes...

and more boxes...

Goodbye, country home!

Hello, urban living! The view from our balcony. We're on the 14th floor.

And here's an inside shot of our little apartment -- "little" being the key word here. But we love it! The bedroom and bathroom are off the to the right.

My little kitchen. But I love it! :) We've got a little office off to the left of the kitchen here. And that door you see on the left is our front door.

Jeff on the little balcony. But.... go ahead and guess.... he loves it! :)

Fourth of July fireworks viewed from our balcony. We could see a handful of fireworks displays across the horizon. Pretty cool. This was zoomed in; we were actually pretty far from them.

Our rainy drive along the Blue Ridge last weekend... and some fun with the cam. The background in this pic is the Shenandoah Valley as seen from above on Skyline Drive.

Ah... gorgeous. Also along Skyline Drive.

Relaxing with some Starbucks one Saturday morning on a bench in the town center.

Trip to the National Zoo in DC this past Friday. Jeff took a spontaneous day off. Love that. :)

This poor guy kept sort of swaying his trunk and front feet side to side. It seemed like he was really unhappy. Zoos are fun, but at the same time they can be really sad places.

Lioness 

So human-like

Jeff was taking my picture, and then sha-ZAM, a big elephant sneaked up behind me to give me a kiss!! ;)

My new school... Go Panthers!!