As we are starting the next chapter of our experience, I decided that a new blog would be in order. I am still working out the kinks, so you might see a few changes to formatting over the coming weeks, soon enough it will be fully operational.
So where are we? As the title alludes to, we are located a few miles east of Derry, New Hampshire. A few fun facts: at just over 30k people, Derry is the fourth largest city in NH / it is known as the agricultural center for NH (read: they like to grow food and cows here and I can ride to a few local farms that sell their plant and animal parts to the public) / one fellow working on the house said welcome to "cowhampshire" / the first potato in the US was planted here / Derry includes two of the oldest continually operated private academies in the nation. While there are lots of people here (it is the North East - there are people everywhere) once you get out of the "city" you know you are in the tree covered hills of the area. Everyone we have met (with only a few exceptions) has been welcoming and seemingly glad to have new "southern" neighbors. Once the folks across the street from us found out that I cook and we are from Texas she exclaimed, "are you f*$%ing kidding me, real Texas BBQ across the street!" - they being from upstate NY and having travelled to Texas, were a bit excited.
We are in the final stages of seeing our home finished and should close and move in within the next few weeks. As with all things real estate related, there have been a few interesting "bumps" in the road, yet for all of the anxiety and stress we can see it coming together and look forward to planting for a bit. Thus any overseas travel will simply be short term adventure not permanent relocation ... unless of course we do move globally again!
Stone is a growing wonder device. He is off of the charts in two of the three standard metrics used on kids his age and as usual he is a hit wherever we go. We are currently staying in a friend's condo waiting on the house to be finished and there are lots of groups of kids around. So as I was following Stone as he was exploring the area we came upon a group of older boys (5-8 in age). I said hello and waved and a mom was there making sure things stayed under control. Turns out they are Russian (or at least that is the first language). So Stone tried to play with the boys, and they were nice and patient, but he is not quite old enough yet to know what to do when they throw a full size soccer ball at him - he just stood there and giggled and let the ball bounce off of him. They were not amused and ran off to go do other big boy stuff like wrestling ... I don't know that Stone would have picked up too much Russian in that short play time ... but you never know ;).
I am sure there are other updates, and we will get the posted soon. I simply wanted to send out the link so that we can continue the story.
Jeff
