Greetings from Cary, NC!

As usual, I have not updated in quite some time, so there is much to tell!


First, and most importantly, WE MOVED!!!! We moved to Cary in mid-July, and right now we are living in a townhouse (we are renting) until we can decide where in the general area we want to purchase or build a new house. For anyone who is interested, Cary is about 110 miles East of Winston-Salem and is located mid-way between Durham and Raleigh on Interstate 40. Basically, Durham, Raleigh and the Cary area all sort of run together. I tell people that we have moved to a big city, but several people keep reassuring me that this is NOT a big city. I'm sorry, but when it regularly takes me almost an hour to make it 9 miles down the interstate because traffic is at a standstill, I consider that a big city! I guess it is all relative though...it is certainly "big" in comparison to other places I have lived! At any rate, we are all getting adjusted to the new area and our new "home." Duane and I are both settled in at our new jobs and we are both enjoying what we are doing. Glad we have no regrets! Sarah adjusted great to her new preschool. We had one week of crying at dropoff and she has been great since then. We are so blessed to have such an adaptable and easy-going child! Even Mr. Winston is taking things in stride. He was on edge and barked a lot the first few days, but he has since gotten used to sharing a wall with a neighbor and no longer barks and howls at every little noise. I forgot to mention that we did spend 2 weeks here in Cary with no furniture except Sarah's crib mattress and our air mattress. The movers came to Winston-Salem to pack up our lives at the end of July and all of our stuff was delivered to us here in Cary on July 31. After 2 weeks on an air mattress, we were certainly ready to sleep in a real bed...and eat our meals at a real table rather than picnic-style on the floor! Here's a picture of Sarah helping us pack things up in Winston-Salem and a picture of her last morning in her very first bedroom!

In other news, we are all set to close on the sale of our house in Winston-Salem this Friday. Closing was originally scheduled for July 31, but got pushed back until August 15. After much headache and stress, we are FINALLY all set to close in a couple of days. We will both be glad when it is all over and we have that behind us! Then we can start focusing our efforts on looking for a new house and getting out of the rental townhouse!

As far as Sarah's latest skills and accomplishments, there are too many to name. She is extremely verbal now and can communicate very well with us. She is starting to form simple 2 and 3 word sentences, so it is just amazing to see how quickly she learns. Some of her recent funny sayings are "See amarrow" (for "See you tomorrow") and "O-dokee" (for "okee-dokee"). She is also working on learning her alphabet, she loves to sing and play "Ring Around the Rosie", and she still enjoys being outside and loves to sing and dance to music. We are coming up on her second birthday so quickly...it is hard to believe!

Hope you are all doing well and that we will have a chance to see or talk to many of you soon! Until then, take care!

Busy, Busy

We have been busy, busy around here trying to get our ducks in a row for the big move! We had a few minor repairs to finish up that were pointed out as part of the inspection. Thankfully, Grammy and Paka Lehtinen came to visit last weekend and Paka was able to help Duane get the repairs done. Between that and Papa Bagwell's electrical help the weekend before, I think we have all of the repairs marked off of our list!

Yesterday was Duane's last day of work at Wake Forest after 11 years of school and employment there! It was also Sarah's last day of school at New Horizons, which as I continue to say, has been very difficult for me. Today Duane and Sarah will be heading up to Cary so Sarah can visit her new preschool for a few hours and meet her teachers and classmates before starting officially next Monday. Hopefully her visit will go well and she will adjust fairly easily to her new routine. Barring any work-related conflicts, I am hoping to meet them at the preschool for a portion of her visit so I can check things out myself before Monday. You all know me...I like to at least feel like I am in control of things even if I really am not!

This weekend we will be moving to our new temporary home in Cary. We are renting a townhouse that is close to Sarah's new preschool and close to the interstate for our 15 minute commute into work each morning. Although our official moving date is not until July 31 (that's when the moving company will be bringing all of our stuff from Winston-Salem to Cary), we will begin staying at our new place this weekend so that we don't have to all endure the Lehtinen Family Commute each day for the next 2 weeks! We will be bringing minimal things just to get ourselves through the next few weeks: clothes, kitchen supplies, bathroom supplies, toys for Sarah, her crib mattress and our inflatable air mattress. Oh, and of course we will be bringing Mr. Winston! Hopefully Sarah will cope well with sleeping on a mattress on the floor as opposed to being confined in a crib...if all goes well, we may transition her to her toddler bed when all of the furniture gets moved to Cary. We'll keep you posted!

Guess those are our updates in a nutshell. I will make an effort to post sometime next week and let you know how we are all adjusting to life in Cary! Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!!

As it is late, and WAAAAY past my bedtime these days, I will be brief. Just wanted to let you all know that our house officially went under contract Sunday afternoon!!! As you can imagine, we are thrilled to have this huge obstacle out of the way. We will be closing at the end of July, so there is a lot to take care of between now and then. Over the long holiday weekend, we will be traveling up to the Raleigh-Durham area to find an apartment and a storage unit so we can move in the coming weeks. We are also in the process of lining up the moving company through Duane's new employer. We are dreading the return to apartment life, especially now that we have a dog and a toddler, but at least it is just short-term. We are hoping to be in a house sometime this winter, assuming we can find a home in an area that we will like.

I am in my third week of work at the new job. I am really enjoying it...it is a nice change from the world of academic-based research. I especially enjoy the variety that comes from learning about different diseases and treatment options! It is keeping me on my toes! Between the work at my new job and trying to finish up things that I left unfinished at Wake Forest, I am staying busy with a variety of work-related tasks. I try to focus on my real job during the day, and I "moonlight" for Wake Forest in the evenings once I get home and we get Sarah in bed for the night. It has worked out well so far...I have managed to get a paper revised and resubmitted, have a conference call with some folks, revise another paper, review some papers for the editor of a diabetes journal and answer lots of questions for other folks along the way. We shouldn't have much longer before we get this last series of papers submitted...maybe then my work load will slow down. I won't complain though. They are my papers and reflect the work I did during my time as a postdoc, so it is only to my benefit to see them through to completion.

Duane is getting geared up to start his new job in about 4 weeks, and I am trying to mentally prepare myself for transitioning Sarah to a new daycare as well. Boy, do I DREAD that! I am sure she will do fine...she is a very adaptable child. But I am not so adaptable, so I am more concerned about how I will manage!

Sarah is doing great. Talking all the time and getting really close to beginning to potty train. Her latest accomplishment is learning to count to 5 in Portuguese. Her teacher, Ms. Rita, is from South America, so she has been teaching them how to count in Portuguese. They are like little sponges at this age...it is amazing how quickly they learn new things!

In spite of our busy and hectic schedules lately, we are trying to spend as much time with our friends here in W-S as possible. We are certainly going to miss them all once we move! We know we will still see them all regularly, but it won't be the same as it is now. So leaving this city is a little bittersweet for us.

Hope you are all well, and we hope you enjoy your holiday weekend! I'm sure we'll be updating soon as more things develop!

So Much to Tell!

So, as is usual, it has been a while since I have updated. Well, there's lots to tell, so I'll get started!

1- My last week of work was pretty anticlimactic. I just packed up my 8 years worth of stuff and that was about it. Nichole organized a nice Genomics farewell party for me with cake and ice cream, so that was a nice way to say goodbye to everyone at once. On my last day there, I thought I might feel sad, but I didn't at all. So that was a good affirmation for me that I had made the right decision by choosing to leave Wake Forest for a new beginning. I will certainly miss some of the Wake Forest people, but those are the people I will remain in contact with despite distance.

This same week, Duane had a series of interview at 2 biotech companies in the Research Triangle area, so that was encouraging. He really liked both companies and felt he would be happy at either, so we were hopeful that he would get a job offer from at least one of the companies.

2- The following week we headed down to the beach for a nice family vacation before I started the new job. We went to Kiawah Island, SC, again, so I guess you could say this has become our preferred vacation spot. We hit the beach every day and took Sarah into Charleston to the SC Aquarium one morning. We had perfect weather the entire week, so that was fantastic. Sarah absolutely LOVED the beach. She played in the sand a lot and was completely fearless when it came to the ocean. She would run straight out into the ocean and would not stop until someone caught up with her and basically rescued her from drowning! She got knocked down a lot by waves, but that didn't seem to bother her. I think we have a water baby on our hands!

Our arrival home from vacation was not so pleasant. We came home late Saturday evening to a broken A/C and a broken deep freezer. Long story short, we had to endure the intense heat Saturday night, all day Sunday, and Sunday night. The repairman managed to work us in first thing Monday morning, so we had A/C by the time we all got home Monday evening. The freezer is another story. We lost a LOT of food, and the repairman will not be coming until NEXT Thursday. Our entire garage and house has smelled like rotten meat almost all week, and no matter how much we clean and disinfect the freezer, the smell comes back!!! So we have had a lot to deal with this week!

3- Immediately before we left for vacation, Duane got a job offer at one of the biotech companies in RTP. Then, while we were actually on vacation, he got an offer from the other company! Here we were just hoping for one job offer, and he ended up with two offers and a tough decision to make! After much thought, he decided to accept the job with the first company, Athenix, which is an agricultural biotech company. While he will be doing many of the same types of lab experiments he is skilled at, this will be a new experience for Duane as he has no agricultural experience. The company works on insect and pesticide resistant crops and has recently branched out into research and development of biofuels. So we are both excited about the possibilities and opportunities Duane will have with this company. He is all set to start on July 21st!

4- So all of this brings us to this week, which was my first week of work at Cato. Monday was orientation, which was just a typical day of HR stuff, benefits explanations and paperwork...BLAH! I spent the rest of the week in meetings and classes, and reading as much as I could in between. It was really neat (and enlightening) to sit in on some of the sponsor meetings and get a feel for how the whole clinical trial and FDA approval process actually works. Of course it is hard to know anything after just one week of work at a new job, but I think I am really going to enjoy working in this aspect of science.

I also got Sarah registered at a new preschool in Cary, NC. Her first day will be July 21, which is Duane's first day at his new job as well. Guess we will be doing the Lehtinen Family Commute to RTP for a while!

5- So it seems that the only thing left before things fall into place is for us to sell our house. We have 2 sets of interested buyers, so we are hopeful that we will soon get an offer from someone and will be able to relocate to the RTP area so that we are not doing the 200 mile round trip daily commute for much longer. I've only done it for one week, and I already dread it! It makes for a long day when you leave the house at 6:30 AM and don't get home until 6:30 or 7:00 that evening! I just keep reminding myself that it is temporary...the house will eventually sell!

Those are our updates in a nutshell. We have a new camera, and so we are still working on downloading our beach pictures onto the computer. Once we have that done, we'll post pictures. This weekend we are busy with regular household duties, Jacob's 2nd birthday party, and a visit from my friend Jennie! I'm just thankful to have a few days off from so much driving!

Hope you are all well! I'll try to update again soon, but can't promise anything since our lives are a bit topsy-turvy right now!

Update From the Past Few Weeks

Well, we have had some very busy weeks and weekends lately. To summarize briefly...

The weekend after Mother's Day, we attended Noah's 2nd birthday party at the Children's Museum and we also attended Megan's graduation celebration. Both parties were such fun, but they certainly made Sarah tired!

We spent Memorial Day weekend mostly in Anderson visiting Mimi and Papa Bagwell and Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Marisa. Sarah enjoyed walking around downtown Greenville, especially the Reedy River Falls Park. She was fascinated by the children's fountain area, so we spent a bit of time there. We also went to the Greenville Drive baseball game. It was our first time visiting the new baseball park, so we all really had a nice time. Duane and my dad were able to enjoy watching the game while my mom and I chased Sarah around inside the children's playgroud that is inside the ballpark. After the game, Sarah enjoyed a HUGE milkshake that Papa bought her, which she continued to slurp on for the entire car ride home! We returned home late Sunday evening so that we could get some household chores done on Monday before heading back to work on Tuesday. Later Monday evening, we enjoyed a cookout with several friends. The kids all enjoyed playing in their little swimming pools and playing on Noah's new swingset!

Yesterday it was back to the usual routine with work and daycare. I am really starting to wind down at Wake Forest, which is kind of a weird feeling. I don't have much to do now, so it makes for some long days at work. I need to start cleaning out my desk soon...I certainly accumulated a lot of stuff in 8 years time!

As for Duane's job situation, he has 2 upcoming interviews. One is tomorrow, and the other is next Tuesday. So we are hopeful that something good will come out of these two interviews! Next Wednesday I am taking the day to drive up to the Durham area to visit several daycares...hopefully we will be able to get Sarah into one of our top choices in the area without going completely broke (daycare costs A LOT more up there than it does here in Winston-Salem)!

We haven't had any activity as far as selling the house goes, but we have an open house scheduled for this coming Sunday, so we are hoping to at least get some activity through here and see what people think. This weekend is also my farewell party for work. My boss is hosting everyone at his house for dinner, which is awfully nice of him. So we have another busy weekend ahead!

I am home sick with the stomach flu today, which has NOT been fun. I am looking forward to feeling better soon...I HATE being sick. We'll try to update soon and let you all know how Duane's interviews work out...keep your fingers crossed for all of us!

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Happy belated Mother's Day to all the mommies out there who read this blog! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and celebrated your special day with your children.

Things are clicking along here, pretty much the same as usual. No bites on the house yet, although we have had quite a number of people tag it as a favorite on the Listingbook website. So we are hopeful that we will get some traffic through here sooner rather than later. We think things were slow this weekend due to Mother's Day and bad weather, so hopefully we will get some potential buyers in here next weekend to take a look. One positive outcome from all of this is that our house has never been cleaner than it is now! It is kinda nice!

Saturday we took a day trip down to Charlotte to visit Grammy and Paka Lehtinen for Mother's Day. We took Grammy a plant for her yard. We also got to visit with Aunt Kristin, Uncle Mike, and Sarah's cousins Madison and Brady. Sarah enjoyed playing outside on Madison's swingset...she took her first ride on the big girl swing! She also played in Madison's playhouse. When we are finally settled into a new home in the Research Triangle area, we are planning to get Sarah a nice swingset. Looks like we may be investing in a playhouse, too!

Sunday was a nice Mother's Day at home. Sarah and Duane surprised me with some Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a nice skirt and shirt for the summer. It was pretty bad weather for most of the day Sunday, so we had a low-key day at home.

This week we don't have any real exciting plans. Duane found out today that he has two phone interviews this week (with two different companies), so we are keeping our fingers crossed that these phone interviews will lead to some on-site interviews and eventually a job offer. It will be a big relief to finally know that we both have jobs in the same part of the state!

This weekend we have a few festivities to attend. Saturday morning is Noah's 2nd birthday party, so Sarah will get to have fun with her friends at the Children's Museum for the party. Then Saturday evening, we have my friend Megan's graduation dinner party.

As usual, we'll try to keep you posted on any updates or exciting news. Hope you are all doing well!

So Many Updates, So Little Time...

As is the norm for our lives lately, a lot has happened since my last post.

We completed lots of little projects around the house over the past few weeks, and we interviewed several realtors. In the end, we decided to list our house with the realtor who was our Buyer's Agent when we purchased the house. So as of yesterday, our house is officially "For Sale." All of the realtors we met with seemed to think that we will have no problem selling it, so we are hoping that we will get lots of activity over the next few weeks and that we will have it sold sooner rather than later. Keeping the house clean, tidy and decluttered at all times is going to be a task in itself...especially with a shedding dog and a busy toddler in the house! Today we officially put Mr. Winston back in his kennel, which is what we will have to do daily now that we could potentially have house showings in the middle of the day. He remembered exactly what to do, and it didn't seem to bother him at all to go back to that way of life! Sarah was also intrigued by the kennel...she spent most of her time this morning playing in the kennel before she left for daycare!

I have been busy at work trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible with papers I am writing before I start my new job at Cato. On top of that, there is lots of paperwork and red tape to go through with the NIH in order to terminate my grant early without penalty. So I have been working on that as well. Earlier this week my boss informed me that he is planning a nice "Bon Voyage" party for me, to be hosted at his home, which is extremely nice of him. So I guess that will wrap up my time here at Wake Forest.

Duane continues to actively search for positions in the Research Triangle area. He attended a career fair in Durham last week, so we will see if something comes of that. Otherwise he has been busy in the lab working on experiments and writing some papers.

Sarah continues to do well. She is officially over her separation anxiety, so we have no trouble dropping her off at daycare these days. With that finally behind us, I am dreading the transition to a new daycare...hopefully we will not have a major setback! Sarah's latest obsession is Elmo (who she calls "Eh-Mo" with the emphasis on the Mo). She thinks my laptop computer at home is strictly for Google Image of Elmo! She will drag the computer over to one of us and want someone to pull up pictures of Elmo. She will sit there and stare at them and squeal with delight for quite a while! I broke down and got her an stuffed Elmo last week, and now she pretty much won't do anything without Elmo in tow. She has also begun referring to her little blankets as "Bobbys." So every night when she goes to bed, we have to round up Eh-MO and all three Bobbys before she will even think about getting in her crib. Oh well...whatever keeps her happy at night! With her recent Elmo obsession, I decided to take her to Sesame Street Live, which we will be attending in a few weeks. This show is all about Elmo, so I figured we can't go wrong with that as long as she is not over Elmo between now and then!

Over the weekend we celebrated Duane's 33rd birthday with a cookout and cake! On Saturday we had several of our friends over, which was nice. Sarah had fun showing Noah and Jacob all of her toys...they entertained each other pretty well and allowed the adults to actually talk to each other. Duane spent Sunday afternoon helping build Noah's swingset, which will be his 2nd birthday present from his parents. Danny, Billy and Duane actually managed to get the entire swingset assembled in just one day...all of us wives were sufficiently impressed!

We have several fun trips planned over the next few weeks. We are going to Greenville over Memorial Day weekend to visit Mimi and Papa and Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Marisa. Assuming the weather is nice, we are planning to take Sarah to the zoo and enjoy some time in the nice downtown area. And Papa has ordered a new swing for Sarah, so she will get to enjoy swinging outside while we are there! In June we are heading back to the beach for a week of family vacation before I start the new job. We will be going back to Kiawah Island June 7-14. We are really looking forward to seeing Sarah enjoy the beach this year. She really liked it last year, but it will be so much more interesting this year now that she can walk and talk! We are hoping that Mimi and Papa will get to join us for a few days while we are there.

Guess those are most of the updates. We will try to keep you posted as events transpire. It is getting harder for me to post regularly with all that is going on right now, but I will do my best. Hope this post finds everyone healthy and enjoying life!