Our Crazy Olympia Adventure

It's hard to believe that this trip even happened since it was over so quickly, but what a ridiculous endeavor that was!  James is a finalist for a Head of School position in Olympia, Washington, and although the whole thing started off with not a whole lot of thought, and his resume was sent in on a whim, by the time we got to this stage it has become a serious consideration that may change all our lives very soon.  The trip came about because they required him to go for his finalist interviews, and the decision was then made that if we are going to be serious about this, we need to see the place as a family to actually get a sense of if we could live there.  So, despite it being a terrible idea to drag two babies half way across the world for 4 days, we did.  Let's be clear, it was exhausting.  But with that as a given, I think all in all we did well.  With 13+ hours flights there and back, plus travel around that, we had two very long days.  Thank goodness we were traveling off prime time and both journeys we had extra seats to spread out on.

Eowyn slept very little on the way over, and but wasn't too grumpy about it.  It just meant that by the time we arrived in Seattle we were all dead on our feet.  Liam was also really well behaved and cried a little a couple of times due to ear aches, but otherwise was quiet and kept himself busy with the ipad for a bit, with the tv screen, and eating and napping.  On the journey home we had 2 full rows of 4 seats so Eowyn slept about 6 hours, which was amazing.  I think we all got a bit of sleep on that flight.

All in all we were just basically exhausted or tired and so jet lag wasn't a real problem.  While we were in Olympia Eowyn did amazingly and slept well through the night.  The rest of us spent a fair amount of time awake in the early morning, but we expected all that.  We were nervous about all being in one room while we were at the hotel, but it turned out to be fine.  Liam was pretty quiet even when he was awake for 2 or 3 hours, (or just from 2am onwards one night!)  We went to bed as early as we could each day, and did the best we could with a busy schedule.

In the few shorts days we were there we had a tour of the school, met a yoga teacher/mom of small kids, met up with Justin and Jane who drove from the military base to visit us, had a real estate agent show us homes for two mornings, meet up with a Baha'i family who took us to an amazing children's hands on museum, checked out the farmers market, ate dinner with the board and search committee for the school, had meetings and interviews for a full day for James and met with two other women with kids for me, did a bit of shopping, and that's about it!  People were so so kind, helpful and just generally nice, which is definitely a plus for the place.  The near constant rain was definitely a minus.  Otherwise it's certainly a sweet enough town, on the water, and nature all around.  Progressive kind of feeling, it seems.  Who knows though!  At any rate, the poor kids did what they could.  Napped where they could, and generally held in there.  Sweet Eowyn almost fell asleep in her high chair at the board dinner.  So cute and sad at the same time.  Liam had bathroom issues due to the scary sound in the airplane, which resulted in some embarrassing moments of him peeing in a garbage can.  Ask James about that!  At any rate, we've had some bathroom struggles since then, but mostly all was ok.

Eowyn and James close to the end of our second flight to Seattle

Meeting up with Justin and Jane - nice to see friendly family faces in the midst of chaos

Dinner at a BBQ place with Justin and Jane

My birthday breakfast at a Budd Bay restaurant

Cheeser from Liam on the day of departure

Birthday photo - breakfast before another long travel day

Waiting at the airport for our flight

Now that all the traveling is over we are just waiting on the final decision.  We have been back and forth about leaving here, so it definitely isn't an easy choice, but we are also aware that our time here is coming to an end sooner rather than later.  Perhaps it will be as soon as the end of this year, and if not, most likely in the next year or two.