Virginia is for Lovers

2 weeks and 32 hours later we're finally here in Virginia and we've been busy getting settled. Carissa has been unbelievable in putting together our new home, unpacking, and organizing everything to boot. Jason went right to work the day after arriving at 2am. He only had to be up at 5am and travel from Fredericksburg, VA to Bethesda, MD. But now that we've been here for two weeks we finally are able to sit down and catch you all up on everything that has been going on:

• Leah has finally warmed up to Nana and Papa Chong. It took awhile but not she'll give them hugs and kisses before bed. They just finished their basement and have an incredible theater room complete with a candy and snacks. Leah loves digging into the jars of goodies. The other night Leah had her fill of sourdough pretzels and when she asked for more Carissa told her no. 5 minutes later, Nana walked down the stairs and Leah picked up the pretzels and ran over to Nana and asked her if she could have some. Of course, Nana obliged. Leah is quickly learning where her bread is buttered.

• After Jason bragged about the awful humidity and heat of the South, this Virginian August has been rather tame. In fact the weather has been so nice that we have been eating dinners outside on the back deck. I guess Carissa deserves it though since she had to endure a brutal winter in Salt Lake City this year.

• Carissa has quickly learned how to get around our little 'burg. She knows where all the essentials are: Wal-Mart (All 3 of them. I don't know what kind of indicator that is when you're little town has 3, 2 of them of the Super variety), Target, Michaels and the Mall. I do know that she missed the old grids of Salt Lake City for the first few days. The roads in Virginia really are just an indication of how old the place is. The roads meander around countless properties staked out centuries ago in no logical manner. To confuse things further, roads here all have numerical markers and often the same road will turn into a few different roads altogether. For example Route 1 is also Richmond Highway, Kings Highway, and Jefferson Davis Highway, all depending on where you're at on the road.

• Jason has been busy with his new job. In his first two weeks he has probably put in 120 hours and traveled to Manhattan twice and Bethesda, MD 6 times. He has been incredibly tired. Unfortunately, this means that he is also incredibly irritable and cranky. Apologies to the wife and daughter. He is a project manager for VitaTech Engineering where we design shielding solutions for electromagnetic fields. The first paycheck in a long while went a long ways to make up for the hours worked.

That's a brief snippet of what we have been up to. We're all doing fine here though we do miss our friends and family out west. But as the time passes we are feeling more and more secure and safe with this move. We thank everyone for their prayers. In an effort to make up for the lack of posts we'll add some more from the last month.