A long time coming...

The joys of unpacking...  Actually, Maya thinks it is pretty boring.

OMG, I can’t believe how the time has flown!  My last blog entry was the first of September and here it is just after Thanksgiving!  Well, since September we have managed (finally) to get moved into our rented townhome.  We made a long trip back to Odessa, rented a U-Haul and hired some help to load it from our storage locker.  Then we had a bit of a visit with family before driving the U-Haul back to Nacogdoches followed by a grueling few days of unloading in the heat.

 

Compared to our RV kitchen, our townhome kitchen is huge!
One thing is the same though, David still makes great pancakes.

 

Since then we have been unpacking, unpacking and unpacking.  I only thought I got rid of a lot of stuff.  Let me tell you, more of our stuff is going to find a new home.  We’ve vowed to downsize by half again before the next move.  Really, we did do a decent job of “de-stuffing” ourselves almost four years ago.  But since then we have lived on the road with much less and we realize that we haven’t missed the stuff that was stored.  (With one exception, our Select Comfort Bed!  It is good to be sleeping on it now.)

 

Nacogdoches has a good Farmers' Market

 

Most ‘things’ have become just that for us now – ‘things’ we can easily live without. But the stuff I have the hardest time letting go of is books, family things that have been given to me and photographs, both the ones I have taken through the years of family, vacations, etc. and the ones I have collected from friends and other artists.  So, most likely there will always be some stuff in my life.  But I will think long and hard about adding anything new to the collection.

 

 

A Trip to the Pineywoods Native Plant Center's Fall Plant Sale

 

Maya loves a good plant sale

 

The sale made me lonesome for all my Plant Sale volunteers
 and friends at the SA Botanical Garden

 

As always, Maya knows who needs to give her a pet

 

 

Life in the small town of Nacogdoches is pretty quiet now that we are mostly unpacked and settling in.  Our house is one mile from school, an easy walk, bike ride or three minute drive.  Downtown is another mile down the road from school or two miles from us. There is a gas station on the corner two blocks away from our house.  The grocery store is three blocks away and the Post Office is just across the street from the grocery.  After years of living in big cities, this is kind of cool.  But there are many things small towns don’t have.  One of them is traffic, that we don’t miss, but there is not really a good grocery store.  That we do miss.  Alas, as we have found in all our travels, there is no perfect place.  But all in all, we like it here for now and are beginning to feel at home.

 

We just returned from spending Thanksgiving with my parents in Odessa.  They were feeling fairly well for all they have both been through this year and we had a nice visit and good food.  All of us were very grateful this Thanksgiving and counted our blessings.

 

On the way back to Nacogdoches the traffic was horrible coming out of DFW.
All that traffic and rain too!  We were glad we were going the other way.

 

On another note, school is winding down for us – two more weeks, then final exams.  We have both enjoyed our classes this semester.  I have been making new photographs and enjoying using the print lab in the art department at SFA.  It has been fun to learn new skills and be printing photos again.  David has been having fun with his classes in the Forestry School too, although he didn’t realize he would be writing so many papers.  All in all, it looks like we both might pass this semester.

 

Fall is here, the first week of December!

 

It has been an adjustment going from ‘road warriors’ to students and settling down.  But I think we have gotten most of the major shocks behind us – one of the biggest being that it now takes longer than 15 minutes to clean the house.  We don’t know how long we will live in “Nac” but it looks like we will be content to stay a few years so long as we get to hit the road and the trails come summertime.  And speaking of the road, we are going to take “Silver” out on the road for our month-long Christmas break and do some winter camping in Texas.  Wanna come along?

 

 

New neighbors, Ginger and Rachel

 

 

Unpacking is messy and very tiring -- we are all glad it is mostly done!