boxes piled high

in one room at least. if anybody is going to have their stuff when we get there, it'll be the girls and all 4,356 of their broken, mismatched doodads and thing-a-mah-bobs.

we leave in about 22 days for virginia to find our sweet spot. texas has been great, but we're so far from my folks it's almost like, what's the point? the hardest part for me was telling my mom and dad. silly, right? 35 years old and afraid that i'm hurting their feelings by making a decision that's such a good thing for my kids. but still. it was hard. i'm definitely leaving a part of my heart behind in texas. again.

that said, this time around texas hasn't been quite right for me.

houston is isolating. but at the same time, it's crowded. we don't have shiny new cars and we don't have a zero lot line in cinco ranch, so it's hard to feel like we fit in. never really found our groove in a church. never pushed ourselves to get out and get social and do things. for two years, i've been a bit of a house mouse keeping the kids indoors because the apartment complex outside is changing so, so much.  break ins. a couple domestic spats right outside our windows in broad daylight. junk like that.

katy is gorgeous, but we didn't give it the old college try and i don't think it was on accident. it's just not us.

virginia is his stomping ground. his mom and sisters and nieces and nephews live there and while i'm pretty scared they're going to think i'm weird (they probably already do) and a little eccentric (guilty), it means our kids have cousins and cousins and cousins to play with and room to run and ride bikes and get muddy and act like hooligans.

that's the hope anyway.

with all these moves (we moved alaska to texas two years ago. two years before that, we moved to anchorage from eagle river), it's hard to feel solid. hard to know exactly who you are and what you want.

but maybe that's the idea. new scenery. new life. new interests. new jobs. new memories.

and hopefully, this time, the right fit. roots, ya'll. we're putting them down...