Wednesday, September 5, 2012

The Move and the Zoo


We made the big move on August 10th.  David went up the night before because our trailer drop-off time was between 9am-6pm.  So, he came up and sat in the house all day waiting for our truck to be dropped off.  Mom and I drove up on Friday with the boys and towing a u-haul.  Even though we packed our house up and stored everything for the summer we still had enough things in St. Matthews to fill a trailer.  

The drive was smooth, the boys did pretty good except for Collins' first two hours in the car which were a nightmare.  I think he finally accepted the fact that there was no amount of screaming that was going to get me to stop the car.  We got up to Alexandria about 4 and about 20 minutes later our trailer showed up.  Talk about timing - us getting there after an 8.5 hour drive, three boys who are excited to see their daddy, their new home and are ready to explore their new backyard, a truck full of our things we haven't seen in over two months, and a u-haul that has more stuff in it.  Luckily for us, the Chastain boys helped David unload the truck.  

We have a great house in Alexandria, Virginia in the Waynewood subdivision.  It was right off the George Washington Parkway which borders the Potomac River.  It has five bedrooms and a playroom. The space is terrific and I have a huge laundry room.  The house is vintage as one of my St. Matthews friends referred to it but it has great space.

It took us the next week to unpack the important stuff.  BecBec was here cracking the whip on us making us get things done.  She sewed, unpacked, and organized.  I just tried to keep my head above water from drowning in boxes, packing newspaper and children.  Mom left the following Wednesday and I have to admit that David and I had a lazy day of doing nothing but relaxing and trying to get motivated.  

One funny thing that happened was we were all downstairs in the playroom trying to find some sort of organization system for the toys when Hughes went upstairs.  Hughes looked at the window and shouted down to us "the truck is getting the hell out of here".  Um, WHAT?  We had talked about the moving truck being picked up.  Unfortunately, that's not the first time that phrase has been uttered from his mouth.  Only once before and it was at Mrs. Ann's house and he said "I'm going to get the hell out of here".  I had to get him to repeat himself because I wasn't sure my ears heard him correctly but, no, I heard right.  We talked about how that wasn't appropriate for him to say and we figured he got it from Home Alone because he had just seen that movie.  Now, after hearing him say it twice hopefully our more serious talk stuck and he won't be saying that again!

So, BecBec left us and headed on her way to her two-week Alaska adventure.  We managed to find our way to the National Zoo.  We took the metro down, had lunch and then went to have some fun.  The exhibits are huge and very "real".  The zoo is free and is quite awesome except that it's downhill and what's goes down must come up :(  It was a long hard climb with the stroller but David did it.  


 There's a cheetah back there.

 My favorite




 The lionesses had just been given huge chunks of meat.  There were probably eight of them just gnawing on these giant hunks of meat.  


 King of the Jungle

 Panda scratching his hump.

The zoo was lots of fun but it was time to go.  We got on the metro easy and headed towards Huntington Station.  We got off at the correct spot and headed to the car.  The problem was we didn't realize that there were two parking garages at the Huntington Station.  So, after about 45 minutes of trying to find our car, trekking back through the station with three tired children, we finally found it and headed home.  I would give us a B+ on our first adventure out.


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