Hello again! It’s been WAY too long since my last update. I have a decent excuse this time, though. A LOT has been going on. I’m probably going to wind up leaving something out in my discussion below, but I figured I had better cut my losses and get an update posted before something else happens!
First of all, Gwen, the boys, and I have completed our move to Virginia, and are all set up at our new house. I can’t tell you how awesome this house is, and how excited we are to be living in it! This place is by far the largest we have lived in so far, and it has some very cool features in it. I will be posting some more pics and an update specifically related to the house later on! The move itself went pretty well, as we had an excellent team of mover
s that did a bang-up job packing up all our stuff and getting it unloaded here in Virginia. We were finally able to set up a point-to-point delivery, which means we avoided having our stuff go into storage. Up until yesterday, however, our otherwise excellent move had been marred by one issue; our cat Phoebe was missing. She somehow escaped from my in-laws house the first night we were in Virginia, back on 18 October. We had just about given up hope on ever finding her, since it had been 3 weeks since anyone had seen her. Then, out of the blue, we got a call from a couple that live not 500 yards from where she went missing, saying they had found her and cornered her in their shed. We were overjoyed! Phoebe has lost a lot of weight and had a wound on her shoulder that needed stitches, but is otherwise fine.
William and James are doing great. We found out last week that James has a cleft palette, which is a big reason why he has so much trouble sucking. This will require surgery to correct, which has yet to be scheduled. Fortunately, the cleft is in the soft palette at the back of his mouth, which will require only minor efforts to correct. It also isn’t slowing down his appetite at all!
While all of this has been going on, I’ve been trying to settle into my new job at the Pentagon. This job involves work that is very different from anything that I’ve done before. There is a lot for me to learn, including an alphabet soup of new acronyms! I’m also trying to adjust to the fact that I’m no longer responsible for a department of 30+ people. Instead, I’m only directly responsible for myself;