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| Beautiful Missouri! We absolutely love this drive to our house. It makes for a gorgeous run, too! |
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| Little Miss Farmer Jett |
It's mid-October and the leaves are changing in southwest Missouri. I haven't updated the blog since sitting in the airport at the end of July waiting to catch a plane back to the U.S. My hope was to finish it then, as I was afraid it would take me months to get back to it, but I obviously didn't. At least I'm finishing it now . . .
Costa Rica was a fabulous adventure! It was a wonderful experience that we will remember for a lifetime. There are some things we wish we did differently, but the reality is that it provided us a much needed break and distance from our life in Midlo. Quite honestly, I'm not sure how things would have turned out if we hadn't left. Thankfully, we did!
We returned to the U.S. at the end of July and had a great time visiting J's family in Texas before heading north to our new life in Missouri. The kids had two weeks to get adjusted to our new
everything before starting school; they did a marvelous job.
J started nursing school the week after the kids. Going back to college is certainly an adjustment, but I'm proud of the effort he's making and his desire to do something to make a difference.
Looking back now that things have settled down, I'm amazed at the whirlwind we survived the last six months. J resigned from his job in February, and before we left for Costa Rica at the end of March, we: flew up to Missouri and bought a house we'd looked at in December, filed our taxes, went on a week-long ski trip, sold our house in TX, created some legal entities for our kiddos, [C] had lasik surgery (totally awesome, by the way), threw a birthday party for H & L, withdrew our kids from school and prepared to homeschool for the remainder of the year, packed up our house, made two trips to MO with our things, etc., etc. Whew!
Costa Rica was a welcome reprieve, but the craziness continued here with registering for new schools, changing banks, filing TONS of paperwork, etc. Fortunately, we can now breathe a sigh of relief! We're pretty much settled. :)
So . . . THE BIG QUESTION . . . Why Missouri????
Honestly, J picked it. For years, one of his favorite past times has been looking at real estate in different parts of the country -- Colorado, Wyoming, North Carolina. When he started work in TX, his original plan was to just work for his company for three or four years to get some experience under his belt. Little did he know that his job as the first salesman would lead to such a wild ride (under his leadership in sales, the company exploded to 25 times its worth!). Anyhoo . . . about a year ago, we read an article about the top 10 places to raise families in the U.S. From that article, J found a great community in southwest MO. He knew he wouldn't stay with his company for much longer and arranged for us to look at homes in MO in December 2012. We did. And here we are. Yes, there are some crazy in-between details, but that's basically the story.
Here are {a lot of} photos sharing some of our fun since our return to the U.S.:
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| Fun at Gran's |
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| Fun at Grandad's |
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| Fun at Grandma's |
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| Fun with TX friends in MO! |
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| Welcome gifts from new neighbors |
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| First day of intermediate school (5th grade) |
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| First day of 2nd grade |
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| First day of kinder!!!! |
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| Superhero day |
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| First week of school lunch date at home :) |
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| Jett athletes - two soccer players and a dancer |
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| Grandpa visited for Grandparent's Day. |
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| Jett fishermen fishing the James River near our house. |
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| Tubing! |
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| Gran and Hi-C visited in September. |
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| J's perfected tree swing |
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| My boys and the tire swing |
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L picked this guy at a pumpkin patch
a few miles from our house. |
