At The Aquarium

Jacob and I had a great time at the Monterey Bay Aquarium today. It was his class field trip and I was able to chaperone on the trip.

It was about a three-hour drive over there with a charter bus and all, so it was quite an adventure. However, the kids behaved very well, and the aquarium was very nice, so a good time was had by all.

Even though they had tons of spectacular exhibits there, one of my favorite things was watching the harbor seals play out in the ocean just beside the aquarium. That was really fun to watch.

We've all been doing just fine the past couple of days. We did split up this weekend, though. I went on a women's retreat in the mountains, and Jason and the boys went to the beach with the church youth group. Jericho actually got to camp on the sand dunes Saturday night, but Jason and Jacob came back that evening to be ready for Sunday.

The women's retreat was very nice, but it did kind of give me a wave of homesickness for my Morgantown friends. I am enjoying meeting all of these nice new people, but I looked up at one point in the weekend and realized that I really knew none of them there very well at all. That really made me miss my old friends that I know very well and am very comfortable with and don't have to work hard to get to know. It made it worse that I couldn't get any cell coverage at the lodge and couldn't call those people that I missed. (So much for "more bars in more places".)

Plus, being away for the weekend and then coming back to our new life in this rental house made me realize that while we have been getting used to where we are and how things go here, we aren't settling yet. There's a difference between learning about a place and even beginning to feel at home here. This realization kind of jarred my "transition" equilibrium around for a day or so, leaving me not so sure what I should be doing Monday morning with the new week.

However, we did get good news from Morgantown that we had a good crowd show up at an Open House on Sunday, so that was encouraging. I'm sure that as soon as we do sell our house and buy a house here, it will help the "settling" process.

For now I am going to go and do those things that I know needs to be done in either a rental or a home that we own: load the dishwasher, check on the homework progress, and let the dog out. A little certainty in the midst of everything new.