The Entrepreneur Branches Out

Joy the Entrepreneur has found another thing to love about our new home: It is right next to a well-traveled sidewalk.  She couldn't sell many paper airplanes in Conway because there wasn't a lot of foot traffic in our neighborhood.

Now that we live less than a hundred yards from a fairly busy sidewalk, she has revived her paper airplane stand.  Since it was pretty hot today, she also decided to sell cups of water (straight from our tap--talk about a high profit margin).

She made fifteen dollars this week, despite the fact that her two assistants drank some of her merchandise.  She still paid them a dollar or two for their help (which they earned--I actually saw Anna make a paper airplane sale while Joy was away from the stand for a few minutes).

I Love to See the Temple

Phillip and I decided it would be a nice Sabbath family activity . . .

. . . to visit the Washington D.C. Temple's Visitors' Center this afternoon.

Thanks for getting the door for me, Anna. :)

Inside they had a cool cutaway model showing the inside of the beautiful temple.  I am so excited to live within an hour of a temple again!  I've missed the peace and clarity that temple worship brings into my life.

They also had some nifty tablets where the kids could digitally color scripture pictures, and we watched a couple portions of "Meet the Mormons," including a new segment I hadn't seen before.  I always find those bios of incredibly diverse saints really entertaining and inspiring.

After the videos, we walked the lovely temple grounds before heading home.  The sister missionaries at the visitors' center gave Daniel a "junior missionary" badge/sticker.  He really does look like a junior missionary (except for maybe the untucked shirt--we have a few years to work on that).

Unpacked, Sort Of

Before

During

After

Now we just have to unpack fifty boxes and figure out where to put everything. :-/

When people ask when we moved to Maryland, I never quite know how to answer.  Do I give them the date we left Arkansas, the weekend we checked into a hotel here, the day we got keys to our townhouse, or today when we finally got our beds, computers, and kitchen gear moved in?  I think I'll just say, "June."

Fun on the Floor and the Walls

The Good News: The trailer with most of our belongings is parked on the street near our new home.

The Bad News: People in our new ward aren't available to unload it until Saturday.  Fortunately, our Relief Society president loaned us an inflatable mattress, and a fold-up table and chairs for our kitchen.  Thanks, Sister Lund!!!

While we're waiting for our furniture and toys to be unloaded this weekend, we've spent the week reading library books and playing card games on the floor . . .

. . . playing outside with our sweet new neighbor Leila . . .

. . . and taking an urban hike to the grocery store . . .

. . . during which we passed a Fiat whose owner is obviously a BIG fan of Hello Kitty.

One of the things we picked up at the store was a package of magic erasers.  Todd got tired of writing the alphabet on paper, so he used a green crayon to write it on the walls of our second and third floors.  He got all the way through the capitol letters and made it to lowercase "h" before Joy caught him.

I had Todd "help" me clean the letters off our walls, and I was grateful that Anna and Daniel were willing to help, too.  Ironically, when our Arkansas landlord checked the condition of our old home before we moved, he cheerfully observed that there was no crayon on the walls.  I replied, "Yeah, for some reason my kids have never done that."  I should have added the word "yet."

Got Keys?

Our rental application was approved today!  We checked out of our hotel and made an appointment to meet our landlord and pick up our keys.

She couldn't meet with us until late in the afternoon, so we spent a few hours at a park near our new home.  It has a pond, about a mile of walking/biking paths, and a really cool playground with . . .

. . . a little zip line . . .

. . . fun slides . . .

. . . a climbing wall (race you to the top!) . . .

. . . and a panel with the ASL alphabet, in case you want to brush up on your skills.

And now, the moment we've all been waiting for!  We finally got the keys to our new home: a three-story townhouse on Goose Landing Circle in Columbia, MD.  It's even got a white picket fence.  Most of our belongings are still in a trailer in a nearby town, so we'll be sleeping in sleeping bags and eating dinner on the floor tonight, but at least we now have three bedrooms and three bathrooms instead of one of each at the hotel!

Lions and Reptiles and Crabs, Oh My!

We're still waiting for approval to rent the home we applied for.  In the meantime, our friends the Hoffmans invited us to come to the National Zoo with them this morning.  I made at least three wrong turns driving into D.C., and another two wrong turns driving out of it, but we did manage to make it to the zoo.

I have to say, it was pretty cool to stand just a few yards away from some honest to goodness lions . . .

. . . but my favorite part of the zoo was the reptile house.

It was fun to look in the terrariums and see if I could spot the lizard, snake, or other creature housed therein.

Plus, I like turtles.

Anna's favorite creature in the zoo was the sand cat (shown here taking a sand cat nap), which inhabits the deserts of North Africa and Central Asia.

I think Joy's favorite part of the zoo was the bamboo shoot she used to whack every hard surface we encountered on the walk back to the car.

Speaking of wildlife, Marylanders are very fond of eating crabs, which are plentiful in the Chesapeake Bay just a few miles away.  It's common to see cars with a crab-shaped sticker bearing the pattern of the Maryland state flag (which looks like a cool medieval crest).  As I see that unique symbol of state pride over and over here, and think back on many signs I saw in Conway showing the shape of Arkansas or its flag, I wonder why I don't recall such expressions of state pride in California. Do they not take pride in their state, or do they assume that everyone already thinks California is awesome and they don't need to state the obvious?

Searching, Reading, and Swinging

Well, we made it to Maryland.  Last year I looked up a couple interesting places to stop during our interstate road trip, but this time I just wanted to drive straight through to our new state, with occasional stops at Chick-fil-A to eat nuggets and play on their playgrounds. 

On Saturday we settled into our extended stay hotel.

Each in their own way.

Our rental search as turned up two good prospects, and we've applied to rent one of them, but while we're waiting for all the paperwork to go through it's hard not to go stir crazy in our little hotel room.  To stave off cabin fever we went to Barnes and Noble to buy a few good books . . .

. . . and paid a visit to a nearby park.

We may not have a home at the moment, but we still have the Lord and each other, and that's enough.