Wow... The last time I wrote in this was nearly a year and a half ago! There's no excuse for my lack of keeping you all up to date other than we've been BUSY... and tired. We're still both but since our move from Vancouver, BC, we have gotten ourselves somewhat settled into our new home, which we purchased and moved into almost 3 months ago. It is my hope that now we're in a home that's ours, that we like, that I'll feel more motivated to jot things down for memory's sake.

Where to start? Since I last left off, of course. Wouldn't it feel weird to read about our things as they're happening now without having some background of how we got here? Yep. I thought so. So, please bear with me. I can't start this up again cold turkey. I turned 40 this year, went through quite a beating. I'm being overly dramatic of course, but it really hasn't been a piece of cake.

After we sold our house in Vancouver, we stayed with our friends, Kim & David Block and their two kids, Alex and Tyler for a week. I can't thank them enough for their hospitality and generosity and as I write this, I miss Kim, dearly! We needed that time after we sold our home to wrap up loose ends before starting our trek across the continent from Vancouver, BC to Boston, MA. I think we arrived in Boston on March 5th, 2011 after less than a week of very agressive driving. Chris did most of the driving and I did what I could. We stopped over night twice along the way, once being forced to stop somewhere in South Dakota because the driving conditions were pretty bad, and dismal. The kids were AWESOME! Thanks very much to lots and lots of DVD movies! We arrived in MA and into the open arms of some now very dear friends of ours, Naomi & Ted Mayer who welcomed us into their home until we could find a place of our own. They went on a trip to Europe for a few weeks and we house-sat. Chris started his new job at Tencent Boston as an Art Manager. We looked for houses, either to buy or rent and I did what I could to get Owen back into kindergarten. We looked at a lot of potential homes but nothing that worked for us. As time was running out, we figured we should probably rent for a little while before we committed to buying a house so that's what we did. We found a rental in Bedford, MA that fit our requirements and moved in sometime mid-April of 2011. Chris worked hard and by this time already had a trip to China under his belt. In fact, when we moved into our rental, he was in China. My father-in-law, Rick came by to help us move.

I couldn't get Owen back into Kindergarten to finish out the year. Because of his age and the requirements being different in Canada, I had to re-enlist him in Kindergarten for the 2011-12 school year. So from the time we moved back into the states until school started up again in the fall of 2011, I had the kids to myself and we explored, we visited family and had lots of free time. It was so nice to be close enough to family to see them a lot more than we had in 5 years. It still is.

Chris worked hard. Made several more trips to China for his job. Then things changed around a bit and traveling to China no longer became a requirement and he was added the title of Art Director to his job responsibilities list. Owen attended Kindergarten at Lt. Eleazer Davis Elementary School in Bedford, MA and had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Seldon. Ana was enlisted in preschool at Open Arms Christian Preschool and had two amazing teachers... Ms. Donna and Ms. Shelley. Owen had school from Tuesdays thru Fridays with Wednesdays being a shorter day and a three day weekend! Ana had school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings from 9 - 12. The kids made friends and through them, I made friends. They had lots of playdates and lots of birthday parties to go to. I signed the kids up for Tae Kwon Do last fall and since then, Owen has kept at it and has worked himself up from a white, to a yellow, to an orange and now to a green belt! Ana, however, after one month, decided she had enough. Master Youn intimidated her. Owen tried his hand at baseball this past spring and just finished his first season of t-ball.

After almost a year of renting Chris and I discussed our options again and got in touch with our realtor, Ellen. We were informed by our rental office that our rent would go up a considerable amount which really frustrated us. I'm glad we had a roof over our heads during that time and I'm glad we could maintain a roof over our heads during that time but I couldn't justify paying the monthly amount they wanted us to pay. It wasn't even all that great of a place to warrant spending that amount in rent! So, we house hunted again and looked at a lot of places. Being that we had lived in Bedford for a year, the kids were somewhat established, had friends, it was a close drive to work for Chris... lots of things just made sense for us to try and stay in Bedford. We did find a place in Littleton that we offered on, but that didn't work out. I'm glad. We found our current place in Bedford and worked really hard to try and make this purchase work for us. We're still in the same town, the kids are going to the same schools, keeping their friends and activities and it's 2 to 3 minutes closer to work for Chris now. And we're in a nicer home, bigger and the kids are happy - that's all that matters to me. Owen learned to ride his bike sans training wheels here and the kids have lots of friends to play with, a field to run around in and we even added to our little family - Luna, a 1 and a half year old all black, fluffy, soft cat that we adopted from the ASPCA at the end of May. She gets along well with Zoey, our now 9 year old dog who is starting to show her age and slow down.

The kids made it through a year of school! I'm so proud of them. Ana graduated from Preschool on May 31 in the company of my parents and Naomi. She'll start Kindergarten and ride the bus and attend the same school with her brother. Owen has "leveled up" as he calls it, and will start First Grade in the fall. He's excited about that after claiming he's been bored in kindergarten for most of the year. He's also commented on how he hasn't learned anything at all but I can see his progress for sure!

And this summer is sure to be an exciting one! My sister-in-law Sara and her husband John are expecting their first child, a girl in just a few weeks! Owen and Ana are very excited to have another cousin to play with and I'm looking forward to having another niece to hold and spoil. We plan on making several trips up to Vermont and to Rochester before the summer is over.

A lot more than I've written has happened, both significant and not so much and perhaps those will come up in future posts but for now this should be enough information to segue into my next few written ventures without anyone feeling, "hey... wait a minute! What happened?"