A Gypsy Summer and A Van Gogh Home:

I'm really feeling like a gypsy this summer. Since late May, Sean and I have been--either together or individually--to:

-Arizona (for a wedding!)
-Boston (I went to visit Megan!)
-New York City (Sean went with his Dad!)
-the Bay Area (3 times to see friends, attend weddings, and relax!)
-Florida (Both of us went to spend a week with my family!)
-Santa Barbara (To spend Sean's birthday with Victor and Beckett!)
-Laguna Beach (Spent a weekend with Uncle Ronnie and Auntie Karen!)
-San Diego (Sean went for a week as a leader for his friend's youth group!)
-Manhattan Beach (house-sitting for a week!)

That is not to mention the (seemingly) countless nights I spend in Manhattan Beach for work, nor the almost 2 weeks of single minded devotion that we have given to the games of the 30th Olympiad, nor the fact that: WE MOVED.

The calendar tells me that we moved 3 weeks ago, but we've spent maybe 5 nights total in our new place (individually or together), and absolutely all our belongings are still sitting in the big mess of a pile that we put them in when we shoved all our stuff in here around midnight 3 Saturday nights ago.

I keep telling Sean that I'm continually about 5 seconds away from a panic attack. I recently told some of our friends...only half-jokingly...that we might be settled in by Christmas.

It's not like things are slowing down, either. Sean is out of town this weekend, and next weekend we have plans to be out of town, and then Cayla is coming for a 10 day visit, and Seth and Jamie are getting married, and, and, and!

But we are very happy. We love our new home--even in its unsettled state--so just imagine how much we will love it when we have it all set up. On Thursday we walked, hand in hand in the blazing heat, to the Fullerton Market and Sean got a tri-tip sandwich and I got roasted corn on the cob smothered in butter and pepper and Tabasco. Then we drove TEN MINUTES (so wonderfully short!) to our dear church, and attended Mass with the sun shining brilliantly through the stained glass windows above the door. We are so much closer to the life we want to be living. Slowly, slowly, things are moving in the right direction.

And my favorite part? The walls of our new home are exactly the same color as the walls of van Gogh's bedroom: