Dive in, the water's great!

For those of you who don't know, we have moved from New York to Tiffin, Ohio. Joe accepted a job at Tiffin University as the Offensive Coordinator of the Tiffin Green Dragons. As he will be coaching the QBs and the WRs again, I suspect his life will be VERY busy here in Ohio. I, on the other hand, am just happy to have new school colors that don't clash with my hair! Since we started at ISU with orange, then went to red at Cornell, the green and gold combination practically makes me giddy with joy;) But, I digress...

I learned a lot during our time in NY~the one lesson I swore to heaven that I would do better during our next move is diving in and helping to shape our lives in a new town. My job in NY didn't allow for much free time or recreation and then, after Joshie Bear was born, we didn't have the money to do much. So we learned how to have a lot of fun on a little money and we never took for granted that time together as a family cannot be purchased. As I look back through this blog, the pictures that I cherish most are from local parks, and weekends where we packed all our food and ate from a cooler, not a restaurant.

Although I miss my NY friends dearly, we are so happy here. We pulled into town just before midnight on April 23rd. Joe did a wonderful job finding a house to rent (we were home owners during the past 2 jobs, but we aren't going to jump into that here) and we have carefully made it our own. We've been conservative with our pictures on the walls, successfully finding balance between scarring up the walls too badly with holes and taking care to make it our own, so there is no doubt that our guests will be entering not a house, but our home. The red brick house is older, but has beautiful wood trim around the windows, a gas fireplace & mantle upstairs, a wood-burning stove downstairs and lots of built-ins, like the display case in the 4th picture of the first series. There is a built-in linen storage cabinet in the hallway by the full bathroom on the main floor, as well as in the half bath upstairs and I also get a built-in dresser in Joe & my bedroom. All the rooms are sufficient in size, and the dining room and Mykah's bedroom have original wood floors! It reminds us of our home in Pocatello, but is bigger inside than that house was. The yard, though, is the size of a postage stamp and since a young, childless couple rent to us, they took what little grass they had and built a patio, a fountain/pond and a firepit! There's not a lot of room to play, and we live on a somewhat busy street, but there is a nice park a block or two away, and we walk there to play every nice evening that we don't have other plans. I love to climb trees, so I scaled the one in our back yard one day because Joe & Mykah didn't think I could. I love to prove Joe wrong any chance I get, so it added fuel to the fire when Maxie wanted to "go with Mom!" It took Joe lifting and me pulling to get him up there with me, but he was so excited to be there! It's been even more fun lately because Max has seen all the squirrels running up & down the tree, so he thinks he could play with them if we went back up. "Our" driveway is a trip because it's shared with the neighbor, who rents the house next door, but from a different landlord! It's a single driveway, which then branches to a double garage, which we can use half of (weird, huh?!) As you may notice in the picture, the neighbor's house is RIGHT next door. That's new for us, as we've never been able to see into a neighbor's house, or them into ours, from practically every room. There are so many people coming and going around us that poor Bodie is going to bark himself hoarse and wag his tail right off his body!









The kids are adjusting better than we could've prayed for. Max insists that it be called "our new home" and when we are out running errands, we can't say, "Let's go home" or he screams at us with authority, "NO! we. go. to. our. new. home!" Then, on occasion, he'll wander around the house, and with his sing-song voice, say to us, "♫oooooohhh, I lovvve our newwww home♫!" I was most fearful about disrupting him~he's a child who is very set in his ways and doesn't welcome changes with open arms, so to have him so thrilled with our new digs is a blessing that we can't even describe. Mykah is also doing well. She is a phenomenal girl and although Joe & I would like to slow down the maturing process, we delight in watching her become more confident in the person she is destined to become. School ends here on June 2nd (as opposed to NY, which ends June 23rd), so she had just over a month left to finish 4th grade. She came home her 2nd day of her new school with the biggest grin I've ever seen. When we asked her what the grin was for, she replied, "All the girls asked if they could be friends with me because I'm a boy magnet!" Oh, Lord help us! That is the LAST thing Joe wanted to hear come out of her mouth. He felt better after a minute, though, because she had another story. She told us that 2 boys had already "asked her out." As Joe's face reddened, she held up her hand to him and said, "It's okay, Dad! I told them that my dad would kill me and then he'd kill them, so we'll have to just be friends." One of Joe's proudest father moments... Joshie Bear doesn't really care where we are as long as his daddy is in sight. It's a mystery to me how I can be home every day with that child for over a year, but he'll pick Joe over me for everything! (don't feel sorry for me~Maxie still wants me over Joe) Our home in NY was a split-level, with 6 steps from one level to the next, but our new home is 3-stories, with full flights of stairs between stories. Josh only mastered going up & down those 6 steps right before we left NY, so we thought he may have a little trouble figuring out how to get down 14 steps in a row. Boy, were we wrong! That little monkey turns around at the top, gets down on all fours, backs up to the first step, lifts his legs and FLIES down, pushing himself with his scrawny little arms and using his flat little tummy as a sled! I'm pretty sure that he could beat any of us in a race...

TU (as the University is called) struck a deal with the local YMCA, and provides memberships for the employees, for which the very reasonable fee comes directly out of Joe's check. We signed up the week after we got here, and we're pretty close to having our schedule developed. Joe & I work out together (he's teaching me to lift weights, then we do some form of cardio, followed by abs) while the boys go to the daycare (YAY!!) and Mykah hits the swimming pool. Then we all meet up and go to the gym and "play hoops", (according to Maxie), where we run them until they can barely breathe! We go home for dinner, and count the minutes until the kiddos crash from happy exhaustion. Max didn't even make it to his bedroom, let alone his bed!



I've never seen a Y that is as impressive as this one is~they have better equipment than any gym I've seen, and a program/lessons for every sport that a child could have interest in! Mykah is even going to try out an "Iron Kids" class! We are truly enjoying this new aspect of our lives.

Another big addition to our lives here is a church. In NY, the Cornell staff was mostly Catholic, so we were on our own to locate a church family that shared our beliefs. Joe & I never found one that became part of our lives. We went to several in our search, and we constantly felt the hole that it left in our hearts when we eventually gave up,something that we are not proud of. Our new friends, Brian & MaryBeth Ferguson, share our beliefs. Since they've lived here a while, they introduced us to their church, and we fit right in to Christ's Church at Tiffin. We visited the week after we got here, and think that it can provide our spiritual needs. We are so thrilled! In fact, Mykah & I went to a Mother's Day Tea the day before Mother's Day and got to spend time together with our new friends, no boys allowed! The next day, Mother's Day, my heart was bursting with love when Max bounced up to me after his church class with a flower "he" planted in a cup, then glued stickers on. He continues to be proud of "Mommy's flower & butterflies" as it sits on the kitchen window sill and grows. Mykah brought home a flower from school for me, but my pre-purchased present was making her jumpy with excitement. My family bought me Heely's for Mother's Day!



I've wanted a pair of these adorable "skate shoes" forever and we ran into a display in the mall 20 minutes from here. Joe & Mykah made me try some on since I had subtly sent a link to Joe for a pair I found online prior to this and because Mykah also saw the website that I was searching and couldn't believe that her old mom wanted something as juvenile as skate shoes! The more she thought about it, the more she wanted me to have them, so when we found them at the mall she insisted I try them on. We bought the perfect pair then (the week before Mother's Day), but she hid them from me when we got home so I couldn't wear them prior to her wrapping & presenting them. She glued wrapping paper, tissue paper & ribbon all over my gift, then covered it up with a blanket so I couldn't peek. I know that I'll never forget the look on her face as I unwrapped my shoes~so proud of her creativity expressed through wrapping, so excited that her mom was actually going to use Heely's, and so bummed that she had just given her own Heely's away because they were too small! I could almost see the picture in her head of she & I skating away to the park together. She was a trooper, though, and put her disappointment aside to be my support as I attempted to ride on my shoes without breaking my neck. She'd lend words of encouragement and words of advice and I'll forever hold dear the picture in my mind's eye of the two of us on the driveway, roles reversed with she the teacher and me the student. During this time, Joe was in the kitchen~a gift in itself. May is a big recruiting month, and he has been on the road the past 3 Mother's Days, so just having him home was a luxury (Division 2 recruiting is pretty local, so he won't be gone for extended periods, like he was at his other jobs). But inside the kitchen, there was magic happening!! Joe made me the most fantastic dinner~Chicken Cordon Bleu! He planned & executed the entire thing, from the shopping for the ingredients to pounding & stuffing chicken with ham & gruyere cheese and coating with Panko breadcrumb lusciousness!! Then, as if I weren't feeling spoiled enough, he made me Bananas Foster, my favorite dessert in the entire universe (and he didn't even flambe his eyebrows off)! I had the most wonderful day! Church, family, beautiful memories~what more could I ask for?!

We're all familiar with the saying that titles this entry and since I'm not a huge fan of playing in swimming pools, it's what Joe & Mykah say to me every time we're in a hotel and they are splashing around in the pool. I would much rather stay dry, avoid their splashing and take pictures, but it seems fitting to describe our move. Our chapter in NY started in the shallow end of the pool, and we tip-toed slowly from the steps toward the deep end. As we begin Chapter 3 of the Borich Family Story, we have already ran past the edge, hugged our knees to our chests with our arms, and jumped into the deep end, cannonball style! We made a big splash and guess what?! The water's great! Can't wait to share it with you...