So... Where are We?

Life has finally settled down again.  For a few months... until that baby is born.  And then we leave.  Again.  But for now, it's settled.  Or as settled as I can ask for this year.  I am now without excuse, and will resume the semi-regular updates of your favorite traveling Sherwoods.

But first, a summary of the last six weeks.

At the end of July, we all got on our last ridiculously early Lufthansa flight from Cairo.  One-thirty in the morning is entirely too early for me to be loading suitcases into a car.  And as we were loading suitcases into the waiting car, Brandon got bothered one last time for money.  Goodbye, Cairo.

Our trip went uneventfully, and I reveled in the luxury of having another parent to help wrestle children a very, very long day of travel.  We arrived at my parents' house in Raleigh in the late afternoon, ate pancakes, put the children to bed, and went to my father's office where he used his soon-to-be defunct OB skills to pronounce baby number four a boy.

Saturday we packed up for a week at the beach with my family, where the children had a wonderful time with cousins and aunts and uncles and crabs and sand.  We stayed another week at my parents' house before heading to Brandon's parents' house in Missouri.

We arrived after midnight following an eighteen-hour day of driving, setting a personal record for everyone but Brandon.  The girls enjoyed playing with more cousins and aunts and uncles (but no crabs, just cows) in Missouri before we headed down to Texas to see Brandon's sister and their four children.  After Texas, we spent a few days in Tennessee at a water park resort on our own, and then finished our summer progress with two days in West Virginia to see Brandon's older brother and their six children.

By then end of our travels we had visited six places, packed eight times, seen nine siblings, fifteen cousins, and traveled for over ninety hours.  I'm glad that home leave only happens every few years.

We've settled in Arlington in a townhouse a little over a mile away from FSI while Brandon spends the next four months studying Azerbaijani before we leave for Baku at the very, very end of December following the birth of our baby boy.

And maybe then I can catch my breath.