Mark and Betty spent the next few days with us in VA to help us get settled, and bring us some furniture. Work was still being done on our home so we stayed in a nearby hotel and came each day to see the progress.
Within a few days, we received our delivery from storage form 2013. We had a fair idea about what was in there, and we were happily surprised about some of the things we forgot. After this delivery and Mark and Betty’s furniture, all we were waiting for was our air shipment with our kitchen items, linens, pillows, blankets, towels, more clothes and some toys for the kids, so we could start settling in until our shipment from Turkey would arrive several months later.
It was a quick trip to VA, and we were thankful for their help and that they could see our new home.
Our house was finally done! We had the floors refinished, swapped appliances and backsplash, and had the main level painted. Nathan had his work cut out on the outside of the house…more to come on that later.
We had a couple weeks until school started, so we took advantage of the time and explored and rexplored. This is Manassas Battlefield.
Another day we went to the Stribling Orchard about 20 mins west of our home. The kids had fun wandering through the orchard and picking apples and peaches. It was a hot day!
There is a fishing dock on the pond that back up to our house. We got the kids a pole and they started to fish.
Another day we went to Shenandoah River State Park to check out the trails and campsites.
Another day we visited with Nathan’s cousin Jennifer and her kids Michael and Catherine. It had been many years since the cousins all got together and was fun to catch up with them for the day.
We are lucky to have Long Park about a mile from our house. Benjamin played a soccer season here and we come up to the park sometimes to play and hike on the trails.
Re-take of a photo we took in Long Park when Caleb was 5 days old…..
One day we met up with good friends from Jordan who moved to Virginia one week after us. It was fun to get together and the kids picked right back up despite it being 3 years since they saw each other.
Unpacking storage we founds lots of gems…these are some of my good friends from high school, and they are still dear friends to this day.
Nathan and his friends from high school
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We found some sweet wedding memories.
Our wedding flower girls. MacKenzie is now 23, Delaney 21, and Zoey 17!
Uncle Nathan and Sam
The kids enjoyed playing an old Nintendo 64.
Benjamin’s room..the boys had Nathan’s bunk beds (separated) from when he was their age.
Eliza’s room…Eliza had Mark’s old bed from when he was a boy and they painted it white for her.
Caleb’s room
It was a rainy summer.
Accompanied by many beautiful rainbows
When it wasn’t raining, the kids were usually outside playing.
And we enjoyed meals outside and the kids made lots of snow cones.
Eliza did a one week tumbling camp. She loves gymnastics and had so much fun this week.
At the end of the week they put on a little show.
Nathan’s garage barber shop opened for business.
One day Nathan took the boys canoeing on the Shenandoah River and they had a great time!
It’s good to get settled in and was a fun way to finish off the summer before school starts.
After Caleb’s birthday we spent another week in IL, and had fun hanging out with family and doing different activities. The cousins loved having time together, and it was so sweet to see these two girls bonding and becoming good friends.
Hanging with Aunt Elizabeth
No IL summer is complete without lots of ice cream. Dairy Mart for the win.
The boys explored one of the nearby lakes with Nathan one afternoon.
We went to a Thrillbilly’s baseball game one evening. There were a lot of foul balls hit into the parking lot this game and a hoard of kids chasing them out of the stadium.
Exploring downtown Marion.
One morning we went to Tunnel Hill, an old railway now trail, to hike around.
We drove up to Salem one day and everyone had fun at the pool and going to Chico’s for dinner.
One more trip to the Herrin pool. Sam was a lifeguard at the pool this summer.
We had family photos taken before we left. It had been almost 5 years since the last family photos.
We hit the road early the next morning with Mark and Betty to get settled as a family in Virginia. We loved the time we spent in IL with everyone over the summer, and will look forward to the next visit.
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