We left our empty house and began our 2,224 mile journey on March 26 after breakfast at Blazin’ Bagels and loading up the truck (It barely all fit).

We were slightly delayed going door-to-door around our court and up the street looking for the owner of the car who parked in front of our car trailer…. unsuccessfully. Andrew backed the truck in diagonally on a hill to hook up the trailer.

We spent 3 nights in hotels, had some great scenery, listened to audio books, went to bed early, and ate continental breakfasts and diner food. We crossed into Indiana on March 29 and arrived at our new house at about 9pm.

We had an art date with our friend Nina in her garage studio. She is so very talented and we have a few of her paintings. She also teaches kids’ art classes in the summer at Country Village and Aiden was old enough to attend this past summer.

We did our usual roam around Redmond town center, riding escalators and buying snacks.

We were able to coordinate another Team Awesome gathering with almost everyone from our team but Laura who had move to California. This was a great group of people that I started my career with (and became parents together) and we couldn’t have had a better Team Awesome leader.

We never missed an opportunity for bubble tea and milk powder buns (for me it was usually a corn and ham bun or red bean mochi).

We hung out with our neighbor Arshan, and Ishrat made a beautiful and delicious going away dinner for us. She is a wonderful cook and we spent many mornings having tea together on the weekdays.

We spent a lot of free time with Connor and Genevieve who were a few houses up the street from us. Moving away from them was a little easier because they would be moving only a couple months after us to the Chicago area, and we were excited to be within driving distance of each other. Aiden and Connor both love chai tea and are always building train tracks together. Oliver and Genevieve are great little friends who love each other.

We played at the park and slumber partied with Tom and Emily. Several of our other friends came to hangout throughout the day. We had a lazy morning with bagel breakfast sandwiches, coffee, and The Lion King. We had one more dinner with them before the kids left. The picture was full of smiles and then afterwards it was nothing but tears, tears, tears. It hurt my heart to leave these two (three).

I squeezed in several working coffee dates with Hanako when we could find time. We almost never take picture of ourselves but manage to take many pictures of our coffee and snacks. We usually required a work break to run through Ben Franklin for some craft inspriation.

We had a lot of boxes piled up, Andrew and the boys hopped on a plane to leave them in Indiana with our parents where they had a fun-filled week of grandparent and cousin time, and I kept on packing.

We were also lucky enough that the timing meant we were home to meet the newest arrival to the Hampton side of the family.

Our family helped us coordinated getting a few items to our new house and had air mattresses, blankets, and pillows for us so we could slumber party in our new, empty house after we closed. While prepping our house in Washington to sell, we boxed up and shipped a car load of stuff via Amtrak. I don’t remember how much it was, but I remember thinking this is a great deal. The downside is someone has to be at your destination to pick it up from Amtrak (which for us was doable).

We’ve been talking about it for a year, and we’d really like to be closer to our families. I’m already working from home, and Andrew’s position has allowed him to make the transition to work from home. We’ve been casually looking at houses during some of our visits, and started to seriously look during our Christmas visit. We expected to see houses we like but not feel pressure to buy anything just yet, but one house made an impression.

It was the last house on my saved list, the largest (which I was interested in smaller), and at the top of our price range. Nothing in the photos jumped out at me, but I saved it to our list because the price per square foot was really low (a weird way I sometimes sort house listing because it could indicate a good investment). When our realtor asked to schedule a time to see it, the owners said they were in the midst of moving out and didn’t want anyone seeing it that day or the next. Okay, we took that as a sign. It wasn’t meant to be. But two days later we checked in again and were able get a showing. We were instantly excited.

It’s in a small neighborhood of 25 houses, surrounded by trees, which was no common where we were looking. The lot is mostly wooded with a creek running through the backyard and slightly larger than the average neighborhood lots we saw. This meant privacy between houses. The extra square footage meant plenty of room for 2 of us working from home and 2 kids growing and running wild. It needs updating but it’s in great condition, and over time we’ll be able to put our own stamp on it.

We put in an offer, going back and forth with the owners a handful of times. They accepted, Andrew flew back to Washington for work, and I rescheduled my flight with the kids so we could get an inspection done while one of us was in town. We planned to fly back to Indy for a long weekend to close our new home February 15th 2019. It was a whirlwind.

The progression of a two year old wait for, receiving, and having the paper removed from his birthday cupcake. We will not name the individual responsible for rudely trying to prevent him from eating paper.

Aiden wondering when he gets to dive into this cake…

Christmas breakfast with cousins…

Aiden and Oliver each got one present early before everyone arrived.

Then we opening presents with everyone but Ali who was sadly home very sick (we all got struck by the sickness eventually, luckily it was only a 24 hour thing).

This is how we’d find the boys when we went up to bed.

Yoshi would like to come in and eat with us. Instead he rests his tongue on the glass and hopes we’ll feel bad for him.

Reading, movies, and snuggles… plus the guys being total guys.

Aiden took Granny’s Christmas present out for a test drive in the snow.

All of us adult kids got a night out to see Jeff Dunham!

We played at the Greenwood Community Center. Aiden and Graham made their way through the climbing tree. It look a little persuasion to get Graham back out.

Ali and I worked on some string art.
The guys helped with some very guided assistance from us.

This was Oliver’s first flight with his own seat! Despite paying for an additional seat we got a whole row to ourselves and the boys weren’t all over each other because I sat between them. It was a pretty pleasant flight.

Aiden has his first ice skating experience and loved it. He used the little walker for a while but by the end he didn’t even want to hold our hands for help.

We visited the Holliday Park Nature Center. We saw a turtle, owl, frogs, snakes, squirrels and a Woody Wood Pecker.

We also went to the Plainfield Library for story time. After reading 999 Tadpoles, the boys got to make their own pond with 999 tadpoles using dobbers. Then upstairs they had a life-size candy land game.

Sarah was in town for the first half of our trip. We managed to escape the littles and do a little painting.

Aunt Sheryl and Malachi came over to spend the day with us.

We went to the Hernandez’s for New Year’s Eve and played with “baby AJ”. We brought her one our favorite toys as a gift, magna-tiles. Aiden and AJ built with magnets while this other little monster hovered happily around the food table.

The boys got to open one present and their Christmas stockings before Christmas.

We had our whole family Christmas on Christmas eve. Aiden was very patient pacing himself with Oliver’s gift opening speed.

Sharing snacks and playing together…

We snuck out with dad one evening to get drinks while MeMe and the little went to bed.

After Sarah headed back to Philadelphia, Andrew and I started on Mom and Dad’s Christmas present. Andrew’s getting ready to start cutting and double checking my measurements. We got super lucky that the tile did not need any horizontal cuts.

We got to the end and were short 2 little tiles and had to make a run to the store before we could finish up.

Here’s the finished project (it took us roughly 2 half days). We also added under-cabinet LEDs.

This is myself around Oliver’s age. I was comparing with pictures at my parents house. I’d say he has my looks and Andrew’s personality.

This was our second time flying direct into Indy without help. Aiden was a helpful big brother and Oliver threw his toddler tantrum before we got on the plane at our gate, and luckily that was it.

We explored the Indiana State Museum with MeMe and Dzia Dzia.

We had cake for Aiden’s birthday with Aunt Sheryl and Malichai.

We got out the train and went to Beasley’s farm for popcorn, cider slushies, and pumpkins.

The boys got to play at Granny and Papo’s during the wedding and then I headed south the next day to catch up with them.

This sleeping arrangement lasted about 30 minutes before we had to get out the pack n’ play. Oliver would run out the door and look for us then run back, sit at the doorway just looking out, or follow Aiden to the bathroom.

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I was so excited to be able to attend and celebrate Lauren and Drew’s wedding this weekend.



AJ was very happy with how our photos turned out.

Trying to get a picture of these 4 goes something like this…

Popsicles kept them still for about 30 seconds.

They got soaked playing in the rain and the sprinklers.