Still alive - barely

We are alive, and we survived our move to Washington. For the record, the week before Christmas isn't the best time to move to the Tri-Cities area...especially from a sunny state, and especially if you aren't prepared for 8 weeks of cloudiness and no sun.  

Gratefully, we are enjoying sunny skies. 

Lots has happened since our move. 

I only have a few minutes today, and I'll post some photos later, but here are the cliff notes. 

• Moved in, and had to clean and paint the entire house. 
• Highlight of the painting was little miss's room that we did in five colors, blended together with pink on the bottom, graduating up to cream on the top. It really is a wonder and quite lovely. Our oldest daughter went for a beach theme - linen colored walls with a sea blue/green accent - it's pretty. 
• Furniture procurement & putting the house together. 
• Road trip to see my brother and his family in Oregon (only 8 hours!)
• 3 months of car shopping (I was limited to a 10 mile range)
• Teenage driving lessons - oh me oh my! (She drove to Pocatello & back - only 9 hours!)
• A quick trip for hubby & me to Ut. to attend the Utah Coalition Against Pornography Conference
• Application process for grad school (yep, for me!) - still waiting to hear back
• Opened my music studio, and started 7 piano/violin students
• Teaching our daughter how to run a business - she is now self employed, teaching piano lessons
• Taxes...including employed, self employed, unemployed, home office, cross nation move, rental real estate refinance, two homes sold, one home purchased.  I finally threw in the towel after two weeks of working on them, and paid someone who really knew what they were doing to do them. Good thing - now I"m not to blame. He said they were "fun" - they were definitely out of the box! 
• And finally, I've been occupied with work and gathering individuals together to form a coalition against sexual exploitation in the state of Wa. Tonight is our first meeting, we've invited our local and state representatives, and our aim will be to bring a legislative resolution recognizing pornography as a public health crisis, which will then give us the ground to stand on to work towards child protective legislation, and possibly, national legislation.

I'll be honest, our move to Wa. has been difficult for me. I'm pretty outgoing and friendly, and it was hard to leave my friends in Fl. behind. I haven't found the same types of friendships here yet. And so I've been in mourning. My kids and husband leave the home each day and have social interactions - I haven't found those yet, and I'm an extrovert who needs this! I've realized that perhaps this just isn't the time...so I've been able to throw myself into my work - working with women going through betrayal trauma due to a spouse's sexual addiction(s).  I've found much peace and purpose in this work, and am finding passion in pulling together the coalition that we will hopefully form tonight.  So excited! 

So, there it is - our past 4 months in a nutshell. Still alive. Still kicking and saucy as ever!