Scintillate: Goodbye Bangor, Hello Berwyn

Departure. Last view of Paul Bunyan. Video journals. Pig and Bobby's constant chatter. Stopping every other hour for bathroom breaks. Beef jerky. Alyssa reading aloud. Chocolate. Genet's ipod breaking. Five Guys' Burgers and Fries. Doggie problems. Hotel that allows pets exceeding my rather low expectations. Jojo and his american ingenuity. Kicking Alyssa off the sleeper couch. Thanks be to God for my own bed. FaceTime. Hotel waffles. Windshield wipers flying off the car while driving on the interstate. Moving van breaking down in Indiana. Snacks. Frustration and elation. Traffic. Mom hogging the chocolate covered pretzels. Bickering over music selections. The helium booth and all the hilarity it provides. First glimpse of the Sears Tower. More traffic. Driving past all the little places and streets that will soon become so familiar. And finally we can see our street. Oh, wait, it's the street next to that one. Hold up there's our house! Cue the fanfare! Arrival.
Quite the blur of activity, right?
Well, we got to the house (it took me a few weeks to start calling it home) Thursday night (January 24th). We went to my favorite restaurant (besides Governor's on Broadway, of course), Dawali, and saw Peter and Michael! It was great to be all together and a major stress relief...which was a good thing because the moving truck ended up being two and a half days late (we actually made up a song about that to the tune of Veggietales' Gated Community...but if it's up to me then you'll never hear it lol). As I'm writing this, I've already felt (mostly) settled in for a week and a half or so. But the first few days were rough. No wifi, no friends, no bed. The very first night we crashed in sleeping bags on the floor, in the rec room. I remember listening to my feeling-sad-playlist and, at the same time, being really really glad that I'm not an only child. For reals.