On the road again...

My scribbled notes about Days 13-15 are in the car, so I'm still not caught up with the Midwest portion of our trip. But just to update, we've been in Pittsburgh at Tom's parents' for the past two days. It's been a nice break, home cooked food, getting to sleep in, even getting a movie night tonight (Iron Man -- quite good!). We went to the Pittsburgh Zoo and today mostly stayed home, played with silly string (thanks to Ramsey, Collin's mom), did some errand shopping for the remainder of our trip. The kids are quite self entertaining here, either with toys that we have from the car or just running around in the family room. And it sure helps to have the loving watchful eye of two grandparents around.

But as we prepare for the last two legs of our trip, I realize we are out of routine. Out of the road trip routine. When I was cleaning/organizing/repacking the car today, I saw the old relics of the first two weeks of *the* road trip: a map to Legoland, the EZ66 guide book, the kids meal toy from the Sonic drive in. We've only been here for two days and some of those things seem like ages ago already. Just like how, sadly, some aspects of life in Sunnyvale seem like months ago, even though it's only been a couple of weeks.

And though we embark on the last two legs of our trip, it's not with the same leisure that we did the first umpteen legs. We are trying to "make time" now, even more so than getting to Indianapolis before dinner or our 6.5 hour "marathon" to get here. In getting to Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, it was to get in before dinner or within a reasonable hour so we have time to spend with family in each place. But now, we are trying to get to Boston, to resume regular life.

We'll have to look for a rental, interview real estate agents, start working, apply for driver's licenses, etc. Cook, run errands, grocery shop. And although making and reconnecting with friends will hopefully be fun, it also comes with the extra burden of *needing* to make friends in order to start to feel connected. It wasn't the leisurely optional friend making, it's the kind where we hope to find someone to replace the Thomas & Alice's and Eric & Chia-Chi's of our lives. To find a church, a growth group, a mom's group, a school(s), housing, neighbors, etc. all to try to regain a semblance of the comfort we had after 15 years in CA.

It's been fun to talk to a couple friends from Sunnyvale. Our neighbors said it was weird to look across the street, see "our" door open and to feel like someone else was living in our house. Our growth group called and left a voicemail on the cell all saying Hi. I got to talk to Alice live and Tom got a message from Richard. It's nice to be in touch a little as we head into completely new territory.

Sooo, back on the road tomorrow. The kids did great in the car from Indy to here, 6.5 hours, our longest day. We have two 5-hour days ahead of us -- although there's a little bit of apprehension on my part, not knowing how the kids will do on the road again, I'm quite excited to roll into Boston and finally enter into this next phase of our lives