Good-bye Bloomington. Hello Oxford.

Samantha: 38 Months, Week 2
Aedan: Week 13

This week's blog starts on our anniversary, July 22nd.  We already celebrated it by going out to dinner on Friday night, so we didn't have any real plans for the actual day.  We usually watch our wedding DVD on our anniversary, but with everything being packed up and in a state of chaos, we didn't even have a chance to do that.

We tried to cram in as many "last" Bloomington activities as possible before me moved on Friday, so on Tuesday night we decided to go to the Bryan Park Pool for the last time.  Aedan came with us too, and we had him all dressed in his swimsuit so he could get wet too, but then he fell asleep in his car seat and stayed asleep for most of the time we were at the pool.  He wasn't too impressed at first. :)

Later, once he woke up, we decided to bring him into the water with us.  We didn't have a swim diaper for him, so we didn't let him in the water for too long in case he pooped.  So we mainly hung out in the shallow part, letting him feel the water on his feet and legs.  He was very quiet, looking around at all the kids splashing around in the pool around him.  Samantha wanted to bring him out in the deeper part so she could teach him how to swim.  I got her to come over and sit by us long enough to have Daddy capture a couple pictures.

We had a great time at the pool for the evening.  It was fun hanging out as a family in the water.  We'll definitely have to try out the pool in Oxford as well because our little girl loves to be in the water, and it seems like Aedan enjoys it as well.  Samantha can now let herself go under water and hold her breath so she doesn't get water in her mouth.  She can throw herself into the water and get herself back up to standing without any assistance.  She is such a little daredevil around the water.

On Tuesday Ben had a CT scan to see how his infection was doing after the extra week of IV antibiotics.  He had no more doses to administer, but had to wait until his appointment with Dr. Kasza on Wednesday to see if it could be removed or if Ben would have to continue with the IV antibiotics.  We didn't do anything too special on Wednesday morning because we had some more packing to do before loading day on Thursday.  Ben went to his doctor's appointment after putting Samantha down for her nap and came back with no IV in his arm!  The doctor said that the CT scan basically showed his insides looking just like a normal person, which is amazing considering the surgery he just had and the infection that caused him to return to the hospital.  Ben was free and clear, no infection, no more antibiotics, and hopefully a return to normal life with a semi-colon.  (Ha ha, do you get my joke?  A semi-colon?)

Wednesday night we had a busy evening planned, not to mention the last minute packing we still needed to complete.  We planned to meet the Roll family and the Nikolova family at Bryan Park for a picnic and one last get together.  We wanted Sadie and Samantha to have one last chance to play before we moved, and it was such a great evening together.  Samantha and Sadie love each other so much, and it was precious seeing them interacting with each other, Sadie chasing Samantha around the playground, and the two of them riding slides and dancing together.

What a wonderful time with dear friends on our second to last night in Bloomington.  I so enjoyed watching Sadie over the past year before Aedan was born.  It was precious to be involved in her life at such a young age and to be able to see Michelle a couple times a week as well.  I know Samantha really missed Sadie when she wasn't coming over to our house anymore.  They truly are best friends. :)  Thank you for taking these sweet pictures, Michelle!

After being at the park way past all the kids' bedtimes, we decided it was time to call it a night even though no one wanted to leave and say the final good-byes.  We will see each other again, friends, I just know it.

Ben and I got both Samantha and Aedan to bed pretty quickly when we got home so that we could get finished with the last boxes to pack.  We had our lamps, outdoor play equipment, and other odds and ends to finish getting in boxes.  The detail oriented side of my personality was not going to be satisfied until we had everything packed up and ready to be loaded in the truck the following morning.  We wanted to make loading as easy as possible, and I think being prepared helped.  Ben and I were up until after midnight finishing our packing, but it still was kind of a fun, surreal process, packing up our possessions from our home together, getting ready to move to a new home and embark on a new adventure together.  It was fun doing this together with Ben while watching America's Got Talent that we had recorded from earlier.  It might sound crazy, but this is nice quality time to me with my husband.  You take what you can get when you have two little kids running around.

Thursday morning we woke up on the early side so we could have everything ready when people arrived at our house at 10:00 to start loading up the U-haul.  Ben took Samantha to drop Roscoe off at the kennel for the night and picked up breakfast at McDonald's for us.  We then showered and took apart our beds, starting our laundry of sheets and towels.  Here is a cute video of Samantha interacting with Aedan that morning at breakfast:

A little after 9:00 we left to drop Daddy off at the U-haul store so he could pick up the truck, while Aedan, Samantha, and I went to Mindy's house to drop off Samantha for a morning of playing with Cora and Millie.  Mindy was so kind to offer to watch Samantha for us while we loaded the U-haul, so that way we wouldn't have to corral or entertain her when we were busy with other things.

Our help for loading the U-haul started arriving around 10:00.  Ben's parents came down, my dad came down, and several friends from ECC and IU came over to help us.  It was so wonderful to have so much help.  The strong guys helped carry out the heavy things, we filled the top part of the truck with boxes, and then everyone just started carrying everything out of the house and piling it on the grass in front of our apartment.  With all the help we had, they made swift work of emptying our apartment.  In fact, we were done loading everything up by noon.  That's pretty good to get an entire truck fully loaded in under two hours.  We were glad it went so smoothly and quickly and were so appreciate to everyone who came to help.

We had a lunch of sandwiches, chips, vegetables, and fruit for all of our helpers, and then after a while Ben went to pick up Samantha from Mindy's house.  By the time they got back home, we had pretty much everything cleaned up and were ready for our walk through.  Ben's mom did a huge job of cleaning up the rooms as they were emptied so that way we didn't have to go back in the afternoon to clean and have our walk through.  Here is our empty apartment, ready for our final walk through.

Samantha thought it was pretty interesting to walk around our empty apartment.  When she left it was jam packed full of boxes, and when she returned it was empty.  She wanted to see everything in the back of the U-haul truck, and then she wanted me to take pictures of her and Aedan together before we left our apartment for the last time.

It was strange leaving our empty apartment.  When we moved into Oakdale Square Apartments four years ago, we didn't have any children and Ben was just beginning his journey to get his Phd.  Now, we are moving to a new town for Ben to be a professor, he is close to finishing his dissertation, and we have two beautiful, wonderful children.  Even though we are leaving Bloomington, I think there will always be some Hoosier left in us.

It was already the middle of the afternoon when we did our apartment walk-through, so there was no chance of Samantha getting a nap in that day.  We loaded up the remaining things and traveled in a caravan over to the hotel we were staying at for the night.  If we would have known we could get loaded up and checked out that quickly, we may have thought of traveling to Oxford that same day and staying in a hotel there, that way we could have started unloading first thing in the morning.  However, we really had no idea how long it would take us to get everything done, and even thought there might be an off chance that we'd have to do our walk-through on Friday morning.  Anyways, it was nice to relax after a long day's work.  We got a two bedroom suite because it was cheaper doing it that way than getting three different hotel rooms for Ben's parents, our family, and my dad.  We let Samantha lay down and watch a show to chill out for awhile, and then we decided to have one more night out in Bloomington.  

We went out to Mother Bear's for pizza for dinner, by far our favorite restaurant here.  (It will be difficult to find a pizza place that tops it anywhere else.)  Then, we bought Samantha a little IU t-shirt, dressed Aedan in IU clothes that were given to us, and Ben and I put on our IU t-shirts as well for some family pictures by the Sample Gates on campus.  I thought it would be fitting to get our family pictures taken here because this is where our family started and where Ben will finish his terminating degree.

After getting back to the hotel and settling both kids in for bed, the adults hung out and talked in the living room area of the hotel room for awhile, but we had had a long day with another one looming before us.  I think it was not even 10:00 when everyone started heading for bed.

Friday was moving day, but the morning was a bit hectic with getting out of Bloomington and on the road.  We had to get everyone up and showered, eat breakfast, pick up Roscoe, and of course, wrangle two little kids.  We left later than we would have liked, and I tried nursing Aedan again before we left so that we could drive as long as possible before having to stop, but he wasn't interested in eating.  So, that meant that right before Martinsville he was getting pretty fussy and Grandma holding the pacifier in his mouth wasn't appeasing him.  I planned to just stop at the Walmart so that Grandma and Samantha could walk around inside the store while I nursed Aedan in the car, but right before we arrived there, Aedan fell asleep.  Samantha was extremely tired after not napping the day before and not sleeping very well in the hotel, so we convinced her to take a nap in the car, even though it was before lunch which is not when she usually naps.  Grandma read her books, and pretty quickly after that, she was asleep.  Yay!  But then, about twenty minutes later, Aedan woke up crying because he was hungry, the pacifier wasn't going to work for him, so we had to pull off the road.  Samantha, of course, woke up as soon as we stopped and wouldn't close her eyes again.  So she and Grandma went inside Walgreens while I nursed Aedan.  We got back on the road around 11:15 and still had quite some more to drive.  I tried to convince Samantha to try going back to sleep, but she wouldn't.  She was too excited to get to our new town and see our new house.  I wish she would have napped longer than twenty minutes because I knew that would make for a long afternoon at the house trying to unload the U-haul with a cranky, tired three year old on our hands, but what can you do?  Getting a three year old and a three month old to sleep at the same time in the car takes some magic.

Once we finally got to Oxford, we wolfed down some lunch from Wendy's while sitting on the kitchen floor.  Some of Ben's family from Ohio came down to help us unload which was much appreciated, especially the boyfriend of their college-aged daughter who was able to carry all the heavy stuff for us.  We got everything unloaded and in the house pretty quickly with all the hands to help.  Ben's family took charge of putting together the beds and crib so that we at least had somewhere to sleep that night, and then we started tackling the living room.  I have to admit that I was frustrated and very overwhelmed.  I had packed all these boxes slowly over the last several weeks, and now we had the task of unpacking them and putting everything away in a matter of days.  I longed for a magic wand to "poof" everything in it's place, or to fast forward a few days when all the work would be done.  I was excited about this change and new adventure for our family, but I am not the biggest fan of the moving process.

Ben's parents left that afternoon because they were leaving for Mexico on a missions trip the next day.  Ben's extended family left after helping us get everything unloaded.  Jeni and Alaina met us in Oxford that afternoon to help us unload and to stay the rest of the weekend to help us unpack and organize our stuff.  My dad also stayed through Saturday afternoon to help out as well.  Both Samantha and Alaina were pretty tired and had their moments of not sharing with each other.  Aedan spent a lot of time in his swing so that we could get things done.  It was hard.  Having all these things to do while also taking care of your kids is very taxing.  We were all pretty exhausted, and sometimes I would look around at all the boxes and all the things that needed to be done, and not know where to start.  Ben picked up some family meals from Bob Evans for dinner, and then Jeni and Alaina went back to their hotel for some rest and down time.  My dad, Ben, and I did a little bit more unpacking that night, like getting the shower curtain put up and towels out for showers the next morning, but we tried to sit and relax a little bit that night before diving in again the next morning.

Saturday was more of the same.  The first room we tackled that morning was the play room so that Samantha and Alaina would have a clean, picked-up room to play in while we did unpacking.  Jeni tackled our kitchen for us, unloading and organizing almost all of our kitchen stuff.  Ben and my dad worked on hanging out blinds and curtains.  I worked on unpacking as many boxes as possible, particularly the random boxes with things other people wouldn't know where we would want the stuff to go.  We had a productive morning and were making progress, slowly but surely.

My dad left for Chicago Saturday afternoon, and the rest of us decided to take the night off and do something fun with the girls.  After a good nap for Samantha at home and Alaina at the hotel, we all went swimming in the hotel pool.  The girls enjoyed themselves, and Samantha had a great time wearing her floatie and jumping into the pool all by herself, over and over again.  These two girls really love each other.  I'm so glad that they have all these precious times together during their first three years of life.  I sure hope that Ben finds a tenure track job somewhere close by so that they can continue to see each other often.

After swimming we went to Skyline Chili for dinner and then to a local ice cream shop for dessert.  We were stuffed, and it was getting close to bedtime for all.  So Aunt Jeni and Alaina came back to our house for a little while to pick up some things and say good-bye.  They were staying at the hotel in Oxford for the night, but would leave the next morning while we were at church.  We were so glad for their help and their company.  They are going to have to come back another weekend for a fun visit and not a work visit.

Samantha loved having our house full of family, and I think she went through a bit of people withdrawal once everyone left.  She is definitely a people person, and we have had so many visitors at our house with Aedan's birth, Ben's surgery and hospital stay, and our moving.  This is the first time in a long time that we will have our house to ourselves for an extended period of time.  This is home now.  :)

Sunday morning we decided to try out a church called Oxford Bible Fellowship that came recommended to us by several different people.  It is really close to campus.  Samantha was not afraid to go into the new classroom and seemed to enjoy herself when we talked about it with her afterwards.  They learned about Mary anointing Jesus' feet with perfume and made a pretend perfume bottle as a craft.  They even pretended to wash each other's feet.  I was glad to hear that they have a pretty good lesson for her age group because we are definitely interested in a church with a good kid's program.  We want her to be learning and growing each Sunday, not just babysat and having time to play with toys.  I kept Aedan in the service with us because at first he was asleep in his car seat.  It was much smaller than what we were used to at ECC, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just different.  I connected with another mom that I had been emailing back and forth with.  Unfortunately, they had a missionary speaking that morning so we were unable to hear a sermon from the pastor.  We will have to come back another Sunday to hear a sermon in order to judge what we think of the church and whether or not we would like to make it our new church home.

Here's our little guy being tickled and talking to Daddy after a diaper change on Sunday morning.

There's not too much else exciting to report from Sunday afternoon into Monday because we were busy trying to get settled as quickly as we could.  I was an unpacking fiend and successfully got all boxes unpacked and put away by Monday, July 28.  It was a crazy, busy weekend, but I felt so much more settled.  I don't do well living in a cluttered space, so I felt a sense of relief when the last box was collapsed and put into the garage.  It felt good that after the weekend, all we had left to do was to hang our pictures.

Monday morning Ben went out to run several errands while I stayed home and continued to do things around the house.  Here are some cute pictures I took of Samantha and Aedan snuggling together on the couch that morning.

Monday night we decided to go explore Uptown Oxford, to take a break from work at our house and spend time together as a family.  We went out to dinner at Chipotle, sitting outside because it was such a beautiful night.  It was actually rather chilly at times, especially for it being almost August.  Here is Aedan talking up a storm with Daddy during dinner.

Then after dinner we went across the street and let Samantha play in the fountains.  She ran around and got wet to her heart's delight.  Do you like her little outfit and sunglasses?  She picked it out herself on Monday morning, saying "Daddy's really gonna like my pretty outfit."

It felt good to be getting settled in and to be getting to know our new town.  There are some fun things about living in a smaller town, and after visiting the fountains, I think Samantha is sold on this place.  :)  I think we're going to like it here.