I'm baaaaack!

I've been so behind on the blog, and I'm sorry to those of you who check it occasionally to keep up with our family.  Now that the move to Maryland is over, we're mostly settled, and the girls are back in school I feel like I'm going to have all time time in the world to blog and catch up on all my projects (yes, I know I'm kidding myself, but I can hope!).  Aside from keeping our family and friends up to date on the recent happenings in our family, most importantly our blog serves as a journal for our family, so it's important to me that I get it up to date,  which means I want to even include events that happened as far back as 8 months ago.  Bear with me as I get caught up so that I can get around to posting the recent stuff!

Things are good at the Trousdale home.  We moved to Maryland at the end of May.  We left Texas on May 29, and moved into our house in Maryland on June 1st.  Leaving Texas was hard.  I think I surprised myself by how much I ended up liking Bryan, TX because when we first moved there, I just couldn't get over how small it was.  But we did love it and it was because of the many wonderful frienships we made during our time there.  But we always knew we would eventually leave, and so we will always look back on our time in Texas with fond memories.  We're glad we get to keep the friendships, and that it's easy to maintain them through facebook, blogs, skype, & phone calls, even if we're far away.

From the time we started grad school, I would often hop in bed at night and say to Mike, "let's talk about all the places we could end up."  He got bored of this frequent discussion really quickly :) I would even research different cities, and dream about living in an exciting place.  To me, I think the DC area is the most perfect fit for our family right now, and we're really happy we're here.

Mike enjoys his job as an Economist with the FDA, and has plenty of time to also spend with the family.  It's a good job, and he enjoys the people he works with, the projects he's working on, and the reasonable hours.  After 6 months, he'll be able to work from home one day a week, and after a year, he'll be able to work from home twice a week.  We turned a small walk-in storage closet into a little office for him so that he'll be able to have a quiet place to work when the time comes.  He bought a road bike and has started to cycle to work 3 times per week.  It takes him about 25 min by car, and just under an hour to bike.  It's good exercise, and a new hobby that he's excited about. 

I love the area for it's rich history, the accessibility to DC (1 hour door-to-door by Metro), the proximity to so many other places for day trips, weekend trips, or longer.  We've had a lot of fun exploring museums, historical sites, DC neighborhoods, and nature.  I can't wait to do some more and have a long list of destinations that we're excited to see.  The kids have enjoyed learning and exploring new places this summer.  I also love the neighborhood we live in - we're close enough to the city, but still enjoy a nice family neighborhood.  Our neighborhood is surrounded by many different churches - Ukranian Orthodox, a Muslim mosque, a Hindu temple (I think?), and many Christian denominations.  I love too see all the different churches because of the many cultures that they represent in the area.  Besides that, it's green and beautiful here, and there is SO much to do that it will be impossible to get bored.

The girls have enjoyed that we live on a street with LOTS of kids!  We're on the corner of a street with a cul de sac.  There are 10 kids that live on the street, and eight of them (ranging from 10 to 5) are always running from house to house, playing together.  They love having scooter races, riding bikes, playing in each others backyards or basements, or going to the park at the end of the street.  It's been good for the girls to have immediate friends, and I like that all the kids play together, no matter how old they are.  The girls have made lots of friends at church, and we have a family from church in our neighborhood with a girl Elaina's age and a boy Erin's age.  The girls started school last week and are making friends and like their teachers.  They said goodbye to many friends in Texas and so I worried that the move would be hard on them.  While they still miss their Texas friends (and talk about them a lot), I'm glad that they have made friends here quickly so that it hasn't been a lonely summer for them.

Most of all, we're happy to be together as a family.  There have been a lot of changes in our lives recently, but I'm glad that we go through the changes together.  I'm just so thankful to have these 4 people in my life.
  

And now...watch out, because I will have lots of updates coming in the next few weeks! :)