As many of you know, and some of you don't, Chris and I are MOVING! Ahh! 2 weeks from TODAY we will be packed up and driving a moving van down to Hampden Sydney, VA.
We have been getting lots and lots of questions over the past few weeks, so I will try to clarify in this post. If I leave something out, just ask and I'll try to fill you in!
Where is Hampden Sydney? You may never have heard of Hampden Sydney because it is very very small, so here are some facts for you:
1. It's too small to be a town (4.5 sq miles), so it's considered a CDP (a census designated place - a concentration of population) for statistical purposes.
2. It's very close to the geographical center of VA.
3. It's home to an all male college with an enrollment of about 1,100/year (smaller than my high school!!).
4. The closest town is called Farmville.
So, why are we moving? Chris was offered a position helping coach basketball at Hampden Sydney College. If you know Chris at all, you can understand what an amazing career opportunity this is for him. I think we can all agree he will be better off in the gym playing and coaching college basketball than being a consultant behind a computer screen.
What's Hampden Sydney College like? It's a small male college but absolutely beautiful. The campus reminds me a lot of William and Mary. All brick buildings and a very close-knit community. Their mascot is the Tigers and the colors are garnet and gray.
How's Hampden Sydney basketball? HSC is a Division 3 team in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC). They're 10 time ODAC Champions and have made it to the NCAA D3 Final Four twice. Check out their
schedule for this season and come to a game!
What is Katie going to do? I don't know! I am in the process of looking for a job. I have been applying to every opening at HSC and Longwood, scanning the classifieds, and will hopefully start hearing about more opportunities through word of mouth once we get down there. It's definitely a bit harder to find a job down there than in the D.C. area..!
Where are you going to live? We don't know! We are driving down 2 weeks from today and if we don't have a place by that point, we are throwing our stuff in the Head Coach's garage until we find something. Again, we are working with the college and scanning the classifieds - we'll keep you updated once we find out!
Are you excited? Yes. We both are. I am very sad to be leaving the area we are in now, especially because several of my best friends are all within walking distance of our apartment, but I am ready for a new adventure. Chris can't wait to be part of a team again, and this time he'll be getting paid for it.
Can we come visit? YES!! Our door (once we have one, of course!) is always open. Any visitors are welcome, all the time.
We started a 2,000 piece puzzle at the beginning of the week and finally finished it! We're pretty proud of the accomplishment. Despite the fact that Eric bought it brand new before we got to the beach, there was still a piece missing. I'm writing a letter.
Last year when we moved into our apartment, my mom and Lauren stopped somewhere on the way and bought us a housewarming gift - a bamboo plant that someone named Shmamboozle. Since we are without place to live for 1.5 weeks (hopefully only that long!), he has been traveling with us in the car. I have to say, he did pretty well for the first day of travel. Then I accidentally left him in the car for a day and he wilted, so in retaliation, he decided to tip over in my seat on our way to a wedding reception so that I had to dry my dress via the air conditioning vent en route. He also fell over after the wedding and soaked the floor under my feet later. Thankfully he only has to be watered once a month, so I'm hoping he's resilient :) It hasn't been a very successful trip thus far.
The drive to H-S yesterday went really smoothly. We had no problems with the truck and we got there a lot faster than we anticipated. Chris was racing other trucks on the road - here's a picture of him passing a slower, lamer truck.
Fields and hills as far as the eye can see in every direction!! This next year is going to be an experience compared to D.C. To provide everyone with an update, we saw a couple places yesterday and have not decided on one yet. We loaded our stuff into a garage and are going to spend the next week while we're at the beach deciding where to live. One interesting piece of trivia for you though: one woman wanted to rent us the house in which Robert E. Lee had tea hours before he went to Appomatox to surrender! Unfortunately it was too expensive for us!
My dad came out to help Chris lift all the really heavy stuff. After a few slight mishaps, such as our stuff not completely fitting in the truck, a freak storm that soaked us through and kept us from loading things up for over an hour, and our property inspector being an hour late for our walk out inspection, we turned in our keys and hit the road. 
As you can see from the picture, people are allowed to climb all over it like a playground. My favorite is the little boy clinging to the big toe on the right foot! The area is pretty new and a lot of fun. We ate at McCormick and Schmick's for our anniversary and I even got some seafood as part of my dinner (of which I am not generally a fan). 
The restaurant was right on the water and the food was delicious.
Sorry for the lack of updates these past couple weeks. We are in the throes of packing/ moving!
Friday night we went to Rosslyn's "I Love the 80s" movie night. It was Back to the Future - a classic. Outdoor movies are always so much fun. The crowd was really into the movie and cheered when the Delorian successfully time traveled, and of course when McFly stood up to Biff. If you haven't watched the movie in awhile, you should!
One year ago yesterday we got married. It's already been a year! It was wonderful and flew by so much faster than we had anticipated. We're already packing up our first apartment (!) to head down the road toward another adventure. Thanks everyone for celebrating with us at the wedding :)
Today Chris and I decided to take advantage of some of our tax payer dollars at work and went to the National Zoo. We took the metro which is still running slowly and is way overcrowded due to the red line accident a week or so ago. It was a wonderful day because it wasn't too hot or overcast, which of course meant the zoo was really crowded, but we ran into several people we knew throughout the day. Some pictures to entice you to visit the zoo soon:
We have been getting lots and lots of questions over the past few weeks, so I will try to clarify in this post. If I leave something out, just ask and I'll try to fill you in!
We barbecued, watched fireworks, dressed in red white and blue, and spent time with family to celebrate our nation's birthday. Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!
A few weekends ago Chris was out of town so a couple of the girls and I got together for the evening and enjoyed a bottle of wine or two. Anyway, Chris went to open a bottle for dinner the other night and when he pulled out the corkscrew he found the cork from a previous bottle still on it! I'm not really sure how this happened, but I definitely thought it was funny that for some reason I (or someone else) put the corkscrew away without taking the cork off. Guess I should pay more attention next time...
Okay, who has played this game?? It is really addicting! Brick breaker was on my Blackberry and I loved it. I wasn't any good at it - in fact, my mom had a higher high-score than I did in the game and she claims that she doesn't even play it that often. I recently had to give up my Blackberry due to upcoming work changes and now I can't play anymore :( I googled it to see if I could play online and found out that many people play the game including Dan Steinberg and Nick Young, who unfortunately both had higher high-scores than me... Anyway, I'm sad to say my days of playing brick breaker are over...
