Camping with the Owens and Home Hunting

We were able to spend about 5 days regrouping in Omaha before heading on our next adventure. We headed down to Meramec State Park. Here we met the Owens, Eddingtons, and the Rowlands. They all arrived earlier and had floated down the river, which was an adventurous story for another time.
We enjoyed having some time to sit around the campfire, go on a hike, tour the cave, play outdoors, splash in the river, and catch up with old friends.




Another highlight was that Kristen helped to pull out Sheri's other top front tooth that was loose. Now we could call Sheri "Toothless".
Before:

After:


We had a great time and are very grateful that Kristen puts so much effort into planning these fun times together. I hope to be more like her in the future.

We stayed through Sunday morning and then left Sterling and Sheri with the Owens for the week so that the rest of us could go to Columbus, Ohio to search for a new home.

We were aware in May that Matt might have a new job opportunity coming. He began filling in as the Columbus plant manager beginning in June after we returned from Africa. We were about 90% sure that they were planning to offer him the position at this point and felt that July would be the best time to search for homes. However, Matt wasn't given a formal offer until July 28th. I had a lot of angst about whether our trip was premature and how long it would take for the whole process of moving to get underway. In an ideal world you put your house on the market in the spring and move before school starts in the fall. But in the real world these things take time. Sometimes this is a blessing and sometimes it brings challenges. In the end, it all works out, I suppose.

Back to our home hunt in Columbus, we stayed in a hotel for 5 days. I looked at many homes with a realtor, bringing Eve and Christian along for the ride. Eve was so helpful with Christian! I couldn't have done it without her. I think she also enjoyed giving her input. Our realtor joked that Eve would be a realtor someday. Each evening we would show our top 3-5 homes to Matt, focusing on a new area each day. By the end of the week we had a good idea of what we had to choose from, although it would take us a few more weeks to finally settle on a home to put an offer on. We drove home through Illinois, picking up the other 2 kids. (Thank you Kristen!) We were happy to be done traveling for a while! Matt, on the other hand, continued to travel back and forth to Ohio for work. Coming home on weekends became less frequent. Still, we felt very blessed by this new opportunity, especially since Matt will not have to travel with his new position once we are established. We decided to put the kids in school here in Omaha until everything is in place to move to Columbus. July was certainly a, event-packed month!