Hello from the Old Dominion State!

Hello, friends! It has been a minute (more like two months), since I’ve stopped by my little corner of the internet. Those two months have been jam-packed with massive to-do lists, tons of things to do, and general chaos.

1. Back in June, we packed up our home in El Paso, sold the house, and moved into a hotel for 10 days. Our original moving timeline had to shift a bit, so we had a gap between when we sold our house and when we actually left. After two years, we said goodbye to Texas with a drive around El Paso and one last meal at Whataburger.
2. We headed east and drove 2000 miles in three days. Our first stop was to visit my brother-in-law in Oklahoma, and we made sure to eat dinner at Zaxby’s when we stopped near Nashville on our second day. We crashed with my in-laws for a few days then closed on our new home in Northern Virginia. Since our household goods wound up in storage, we decided to make some updates to the house. We’ve repainted, installed new floors, swapped out a bunch of light fixtures, and updated our door hardware.
3. In the midst of all this, I managed to not take a day off of work and have been slogging through my summer semester courses. This summer has a pretty heavy course load because we are also starting down the dissertation path. We got back together for our second summer residency (aka EdD Summer Camp), and it was great to see everyone and hang out in person. We’re just about done with our summer assignments. I’ll then push on to figure out my dissertation topic. Any ideas?
4. One major perk of moving back to Virginia is being close to friends and family. Virginia Tech had an alumni night at the Nationals game last week. My friends and I bought outfield tickets and had a great time catching up.
5. We’re starting to settle in to our new home. Our household goods should be delivered today, so we’ll spend the rest of the week unpacking. Mac has started his new job, and the cats are keeping an eye out for the wildlife in our neighborhood.

How has your summer been?