Discovering our new city

The kids, Greg, and I are getting excited about our big move (although to be honest we have been so busy that I have yet to sit down and think about leaving my friends - especially my very best, dearest friends Kate and Paulina - that is going to hit me hard at some point in this process - we have raised our babies together for the past three years). The town where Greg will work is about 20 minutes outside of Grand Rapids and the population is around 12,000. There is a university there with over 20,000 students (guess they are not figured into the population?) which is exciting to me. From what I have read there are lots of walking and biking trails from this area to Lake Michigan which borders the area. I am so excited about that - Arkansas is severely lacking on that front and it is so hot here that it is hard to get outside in the summer.

I am hoping that we will fall in love with it there and stay here indefinitely. Moving is exhausting. Another pro of Michigan is there are lots of colleges and universities when the kids get older so that we can pay in-state tuition. That is another limitation to Arkansas - very few centers of higher education. We will leave in a week and a half to go house hunting and hopefully make an offer on a home at that time. Kind of a whirlwind, but we're excited. The schools are also supposed to be excellent in this area which is exciting, too. Just hoping we can make it for the start of school.

It will be sad to leave here though - we have been happy here and life out in the country has been so much fun with the kids. And again, leaving my friends will be so hard. SO HARD (SO HARD, my darling K and P, but we don't need to think about that yet). Off to get food for my starving kids!