June Wrap Up

June was filled with lots of fun summer activities. Benny and I started adjusting to the summer heat. Katie and Chris met up with us at Busch Gardens one day.



Eleanor was tall enough to ride a new roller coaster, despite having to wait out a thunderstorm for a while.


I got to babysit these munchkins one day. They're at such a fun age! They pretty much entertained themselves with their water table all morning.


We got to go see Eleanor at her Friends and Family show, which was adorable.


We were busy getting unpacked and settled in all month.

Mom and Dave came for a visit. Our first guests in our new home!





We went to Yorktown Beach for an afternoon to get a reprieve from the heat.


We attempted to meet up with Katie and Chris's family at Busch Gardens again later in the month but got turned away due to a blackout date, so Benny and I found a park where we could take a walk and have a picnic instead.


That just about wraps up our June. Mostly busy finding furniture, getting our house settled, and family time!

The Rest of May

We arrived in Williamsburg in mid-May. When we got there my sister was so nice to let us stay at their already full house for a whole week while we waited for the keys to our house.

It was so fun getting to spend time with all the kids on their turf, getting to know their routines.




Benny wanted to go to Colonial Williamsburg for one of his last "vacation" days.


His first day at his new job!

Once we got keys to the house, we got busy finding deals on Craigslist and other re-sale sites/stores to get things we needed. First time owners of a washer/dryer.

Our pod full of our belongings from San Diego arrived in the middle of the week. We figured we would enlist the help of Chris and maybe some others that following weekend to unload it. Instead, Katie and Chris said they wouldn't mind popping over after work that afternoon to help get us started.

As soon as they got here, I ordered pizzas for everyone, went to go pick them up, and by the time I got home everything was almost completely unloaded. It took them a total of 46 minutes! A record. And I did almost nothing.

But the pizza was good!

We are so incredibly grateful to Katie and Chris's family for everything they've done to help us get settled here. We absolutely love being near family and we are loving our new home!

Road Trip Part 5 - Chicago and Virginia!

After we left Badlands, we didn't have a whole lot of other destinations on our agenda. We also knew there weren't many free camping options as we kept moving East. Since we didn't want to be paying for a lot of motel rooms, we knew we would be doing a lot more driving than exploring.

We made it through Minnesota.

Onto Wisconsin.

And then Illinois.

We decided to stop that afternoon in Chicago. We pigged out on our very first deep dish pizza.

The next morning we decided to explore a little bit of the city before officially hitting the road again.



Of course we had to see Cloud Gate in Millennium Park.





After realizing the insane cost of parking ($40-$60 if you stay for over an hour!), we speed walked back to the car and decided we saw enough of Chicago.

We decided at the last minute that we would drive to my mom's house in Round Hill so we could see her for mother's day. We had about 11 hours to go so we decided to just try and drive straight through so we could just crash at her house.



It was our longest day of driving but we were ready to be in Virginia!

We made it around midnight - we were so glad to get to spend mother's day with her!

It felt good to finally be on the East coast! Time to go get settled in Williamsburg :)