Wander project (images taken in the last few days) more of Us...

The pictures today focus more on the 365 challenge pictures, in particular, the last few (13) days of that challenge. The post today deals with the transition we made as a family from Cincinnati to Greenwood Indiana. Less than a year after the twins were born we decided that we needed to be closer to the family. The first year of the twins was hard; we had also undertaken to build a house and moving. In May of 1999, we decided that we were going to move back to Indiana. I happened to get a job, that afforded us some level of support for the move (paying for the moving company and a lot of the expenses), so we took the job (it was in the same company just a different city). The previous year while in Cincinnati Ohio, I was working for the worst boss I have ever worked for, so for me, it was a chance to start over, and to get away from that person.

We drove around Indianapolis for three weekends looking at houses. The kids stayed at my mom for two of the weekends. My wife and I knew what everyone wanted, and we were looking. We found a house that we both liked, and on the Monday after that weekend called the realtor. She told us that unfortunately, the house was no longer on the market. We decided to make an offer anyway. The seller accepted our offer, and we were moving! That house we bought remains the longest house we’ve lived in during our entire 27 years of marriage. Nearly ½ our marriage and nearly half the Bean’s life was spent in that house. The twins lived there for more than ½ their lives. That will change over time; aging does that.

We moved to Greenwood in October 1999. We landed in Greenwood, and I was off to Chicago. I worked in downtown Chicago for most of the next three years. Now, when I was gone, my wife had family near. One of my sisters lived just down the street from us. My other sister and parents lived just 40 minutes away in Bloomington. Driving to Chicago nearly every week was a tough process. I did have some local clients over the years, that was always good. But for the most part, I was working in Downtown Chicago. My wife was introducing the Twins and The Bean (although the Bean had been before) to the Indianapolis Children’s Musem and the Indianapolis Zoo. We were members for many years while in Greenwood. Things were settling in for a long stay!