a post! a Virginia post!

I am sorry that I have been MIA from blogging. We are finally getting settled here in VA and it's wonderful, but it's been a roller coaster ride! I am going to {try} to do one post per day to get caught up.

As I mentioned before, Derick is here to do a Master's in Public Administration. He is starting his third week of classes, and he is loving it. We actually just found out that Derick was one of only 10 students, out of the 270+ that applied, to be admitted for the Spring semester! Plus, his program is ranked 13th in the Nation. He is already forming a great network out here and is doing well.

Virginia Tech's campus is awesome. The buildings are really beautiful and unique.

Blacksburg is a really cool town. It's big, but not huge, so it still maintains somewhat of a small town feel. It's beautiful and green. It's easy to navigate. We have everything that we need between Blacksburg and the neighboring town, Christiansburg, which is a nice change from our previous VA town, where we had to drive 45 minutes to get to any store other than Walmart.

Here is our townhouse:

It suits us fine for now. There are many things that we like but many that we don't. Since we came to VA in the spring, there weren't many housing options, and after dealing with a nightmare of a management group for another house, we ended up with this one. We will probably keep looking for something else to live in for the remainder of our time here, because we want to be closer to everyone else in the ward, parks, etc.

Highlights from our trip and our first month here:

1. Visiting with Derick's sister, Danielle, and her family. Pictures of all of this will come later.
2. Finding out that we could still get in-state tuition! Woo-hoo!!! If we would have come one semester later, we would not have been able to get it. It cut Derick's tuition in half!
3. Getting back into our own place.
4. Lincoln was a champ on our drive. I was so worried that it was going to be a nightmare to drive across the country with him, but it wasn't at all! He was so good!
5. Sleeping on the living room floor of our house and watching movies on Derick's laptop because we didn't have any of our stuff yet.
6. Eating a makeshift dinner in our hotel room, consisting of a rotisserie chicken, cheese, crackers, and bread. These are memory makers, ya know??
7. Listening to the Weezer song from Cars 2 like a million times because Lincoln loves it so much.....wait, is this a highlight??
8. Visiting Richie, Krystal and Graham this last weekend in Pittsburgh! Pictures of that to come as well!
9. Listening to Lincoln sing, "New house, new house!" for the first couple of days after moving in.
10. Taking Lincoln to storytime at the Library and not having creepy Steve as the storyteller! Some of you will know who I am talking about. Ha ha ha. Lincoln really loves storytime and looks forward to it, which is nice.
11. Lincoln's class that I signed him up for.
12. The delicious donut shop that we discovered. YUM.
13. Reuniting with friends from SVU that are also going to school here.
14. Our ward. Everyone is really nice.

One thing that has been difficult is having Lincoln sick. He has had a cough since we got here. I took him to the doctor and we are trying to get it figured out. Hopefully he will be cough-free sooner than later! Poor little guy!

Also, after the long trip, Lincoln was so exhausted (and probably stressed from all of the changes) that he was not himself. It was like Lincoln's evil twin showed up for a couple of days. Thank goodness he is now adjusted and having fun.

We sure miss everyone back in AZ, but are excited to be back here! Like I said, I am going to try to do a post per day, so stay tuned...