Florida Chronicles

It makes me sad sometimes that I quite blogging, but no matter how sad I am, I can't seem to find the motivation or the time to start it up again. I actually tried about a month ago, but blogger was having issues and no matter what I tried, I couldn't get my pictures to load, so I took it as a sign and walked away again. Now we are on this fun adventure in Florida and I don't want this time to slip away undocumented. In fact, I make the kids write in a journal every morning as part of our school routine so they can always remember the fun things we did here. It doesn't really seem fair to ask something of them that I'm not willing to do myself, so here I sit. In FLORIDA! It's been two weeks, and I still get excited when I say it.



For anyone that happens to read this (not sure anyone still reads blogs) and wonders why we are suddenly living in Florida, here is the very short explanation.

Part of Josh's residency program is to complete four months of trauma training. The hospital in Michigan has something set up with two of the hospitals in Tampa that allows all of their residents to come here one at a time for four months. Total side note and not really important is that Josh is actually the last resident that gets to come to Florida, the program has made a change and the rest of the residents will be going somewhere else. Anyway, we've known all along that Josh would be coming here and the plan the whole time was for me and the kids to stay in Michigan because of various reasons including school and small housing accommodations. Anyway, about a week before Josh was supposed to leave I woke up feeling very depressed about how lonely I would be for four months and then looked outside and saw that it was snowing AGAIN and felt even more depressed, so I called him up at work and said "we're coming with you!" End of short story.

Josh was definitely happy that we were coming, but had his concerns. Will he be too distracted to write his paper, will we go crazy living in such a small space, will I go crazy trying to home school everyone? In the end though, we both agreed that even though there would be challenges, this would be a really great opportunity for our family to get back on track. Not that our family life has been terrible, but we have certainly felt like busy schedules and too many distractions have pulled us a part.

So, after a week of rushing around to get everything squared away, we loaded up both of our cars with only the most important items (no tv or xbox) and set out for sunny skies.

There are so many things I could write about already, but I will have to save most of it for next week because it is already way too late and would like to be nice mom school teacher tomorrow instead of grumpy mom school teacher. But I do want to mention a few of the great perks of living here.

1) Family time! Even though poor Josh is working crazy long days and nights, we have found plenty of time to go exploring together. And, we've already been able to hang out with Josh's brother Beau and his family who live 3 hours south of us.

2) No TV and no XBOX! Josh and the kids aren't as excited about this as I am, but this right here made coming all worth it. The kids are actually playing together, and reading books together instead of sitting in front of a screen. And, the effects on everyone have been noticeable. (more on that next week)

3) Smaller house means a lot less time cleaning! I really miss my garbage disposal though. Surprisingly, more than the dishwasher.

4) Warm, glorious, sunshine! My heart is happy!


Really, my heart is happy. I'm in heaven!