A New Leaf

We made it to North Carolina. It is beautiful here and I am afraid that I may never want to leave. There is something about being here...a little song plays in my soul when I think about it. I love Delaware and Utah is my home but North Carolina is...*sigh*...I don't know yet! But it is somewhere along the lines of wonderful!

Coming to North Carolina has inspired me to turn over a new leaf. I didn't bring my sewing machine and I haven't found 1.1 million things to occupy my time as of yet and so I find myself with a lot of time. Alyssa's only a year old and I think we have about 5,000 pictures. I have slowed down a little bit but my goal is to organize all of those pictures; delete the bad ones, document the good ones, make little movies, and archive all of those important moments! The thing with being behind is that you then feel like you have to catch up and then miss staying on top of what is coming in each day! So it'll be a little give and take, back and forth until we figure this thing out!

Alyssa is growing up. She put those sunglasses on herself. She spend 20 minutes or so taking them off or putting them on. She knocked her bow out in the process!

That tongue is often out! She's getting more teeth...maybe it will start staying inside more.

We went swimming on Tuesday and again today. She has a ballerina swimsuit and a watermelon swimsuit. She's such a babe!

Her new favorite activity is putting things away. She has all the cards from my wallet and spends a long time taking them out and putting them back in a school bus. Today she started putting them on a ledge on the foot board of our bed. She also likes wet wipes. She first wiped the ledge off and then put her cards on. I'm afraid she might be a little OCD!

A Tribute to Yellow Manly

For some people their car is just a mode of transportation. For us, Yellow Manly has become part of the family. He has been there through it all; through short and fat and tall; through thick and thin and rain and snow and ice. He has been coast to coast and seen things that only a yellow Xterra can see.

He had some proud moments like when he got a hitch.

He had some shameful moments, like when he was towed 150 miles across Southern Utah desert.

He made it through the sweltering heat of Las Vegas.

He proudly transported our new bed home from Sam's Club.

He endured the drudgery of disposing of our old bed.

And despite the verdict of his poor condition a year ago this month, he managed to go on a trip from Las Vegas to Salt Lake and back as well as drive from Las Vegas to Salt Lake to Los Alamos to Amarillo to Dallas to Knoxville to Washington, D.C. to Deleware. We are grateful he made it as long as he did, especially with a gimp oil pump.

He served a faithful life accumulating over 190,000 miles and seeing the Land that We Love. It is with great sadness and solemnity that we finally lay him to rest after he met his tragic fate: a blown head gasket. It will be different without Yellow Manly in our lives. We will miss him. It will be an adjustment. But we will move on and look forward to new friendships in new places.

May he rest in peace.

Maybe you've been wondering...

Maybe you're wondering what James Taylor is doing on my blog. Maybe you didn't even know it was James Taylor. But it is. And yes, Carolina is in my mind. It's pretty almost official. We're moving to North Carolina for the summer. Raleigh to be exact. And you thought I was crazy moving to Delaware!

All in all, I'm pretty excited. Jose helped me feel better about moving. The couple leaving North Carolina and letting us live in their apartment for the summer helped me feel pretty good about moving. Reasonable airline tickets to make my trip to SLC still possible helped me feel pretty good about moving. Living 359 miles (that's 5 hours and 50 minutes) away from Anna and James helped me feel pretty good about moving. And all of these things are ways that I believe the Lord has helped me feel pretty good about moving. I'm grateful He is able to provide a little direction from above. I'm grateful that I'll get to come back to Delaware when it's all over and consider my affinity for Carolina.

If you're in the area, stop on by! We'll eat some BBQ maybe and see big bugs and go swimming together. It'll be great!