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 woke up the next morning to a winter wonderland with trees across several of our neighborhood streets, and piles of branches everywhere. You can see my 12 inch ruler in our driveway. In the last picture we’re attempting to get out of our driveway and and up the hill to the airport. I think we left 4 hours early.

We were snowed in for the next several days sledding and hanging out with our neighbors. We got to a point where almost everyone on the street was working to dig a lane up and out of the neighborhood.

After 2 weeks, we were able to list our house on a Friday without fear that visitors might end up trapped at the bottom of our icy hill. We found a nearby hotel with a pool and spent our weekend there, and by the following weekend we had 2 offers and accepted one with no contingencies (We had a pre-inspection, and the buyer had an inspection done before sending an offer).

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 rented a storage unit to get the house emptied out, found a realtor we like, and other than that it’s business as usual.

We all test drove a Tesla…. for fun one weekend.

Waffle brunch with some of our favorites!

The kids love these candy making kits we find at Uwajimaya. I would secretly like to do them myself after they’re in bed.

We visited Andrew at work in Redmond Town Center for coffee and cake pops. Aiden dressed for the occasion. I don’t remember why we painted faces, but they loved it.

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.

I took pictures of all their kids in their costumes. Of course, Aiden’s didn’t last all day so here he is. The pumpkin he make is the one with giant eyes right above his head. It’s my favorite!

That evening we headed to Rambo and Axel’s house for pizza and trick or treating. Andrew and I were Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Aiden and Oliver picked out their costumes with Granny and Papo while they were in town. This rescued me from needing to make Aiden into an eyeball, his first request. He has already commented that he’ll just be an eyeball next year.

After the party we headed home and hung out with Tom and Emily for a bit, then opened presents. We also got to have Aunt Sarah in town for the weekend, so here and Aiden snuggled up to watch Harry Potter together and took Brody for lots of walks.

Andrew and I wrote Aiden a letter (to keep in his baby box) and tickets to a play with his friends, The 3 Little Pigs. We also made sprinkle and white chocolate marshmallows and strawberries for birthday evening dessert.