A No-Picture Thanksgiving Update, plus Ramblings

Although very little in this life is fully guaranteed, I wanted to let all of you blog followers our big news of late (deep breath).








I bought a new winter coat.






Fascinating, right? I mean, it's a winter coat.






Oh, but it's navy blue, trench-style, and it WAS obscenely expensive before I got in on clearance from Anthropologie.







Which is an awesome store, by the way.







Super cute. Big collar, looks like something I should wear in winter in Paris.







Still with me? Good. Now ... let's think about this for a minute. WHY would someone who lives in San Diego (aka climate of paradise) buy a winter coat? Hmmmmmmmmm . . .







Have you figured it out yet?






HAVE YOU?!







OKAY, I can't keep it in any longer! Nick and I are going to be moving to Columbus, OH next summer. Nick is going to attend the Air Force Institute of Technology for his Master's Degree in Aero Engineering. I am (fingers crossed) going to land a postdoc with one of the labs I'm eyeing at OSU. So far, Nick is optimistic about commuting to Dayton every day, even though it'll be over an hour each way. We've checked out neighborhoods and are excited about living in a sweet pad in the city and being walking distance from bars, restaurants, and markets ... and hopefully the OSU medical campus. Yes, there will be scorching heat in the summer and blistering cold in the winter. Yes, the days of $40 / month power bills year-round will be history. But Nick and I are excited about this new chapter in our lives, and we knew we couldn't stay in San Diego forever!

A bonus: we will be 6 hours by car from Chicago, 5 hours from the Morrell clan in Michigan, less than 7 hours from St. Louis, and 5 hours from Champaign-Urbana. This puts us a reasonable driving distance from our nephews Braydan and Josh in the STL, our parents in Chicago, my brothers in Chicago, our soon-to-be new niece or nephew in Chicago (did I spill the beans, Randy?), the future location of my mom and dad's house in Michigan, etc etc etc. And the other good side? Cute winter clothes (reference the aforementioned winter coat).

The downside: I heard somewhere that Columbus gets 70 days of sunshine a year. Contrast this with San Diego, where we get less than 50 days of NOT sunshine a year. Ouch. I guess I'll move the sunscreen fund over to the Vitamin D supplement fund.

Now that the big news is out, on to the Thanksgiving Ramblings section of this post.

Though Nick is traveling again and will be out of town most of the remainder of the year, I'm thankful that he has been able to catch up with friends while he's been across the country. He was in the DC area last week for work, but got a chance to catch up with our friends the Kaciaks (our former next-door neighbors in Pensacola) and his college roommate Andy. His upcoming travel includes New Orleans, where I hope to meet him for a weekend, and St. Louis, where he gets to spend his birthday with his whole family!

I'm also very thankful that before this past week, Nick hadn't had to travel in a while which means he's been in town to help me deal with some health issues that have hopefully been resolved. I will leave it at that and just say I'm fine now and there's no need to worry about me! (But for anyone wondering why I've been totally MIA recently, that's why.) So we're thankful for our health and well-being!

We're so thankful for the time we've spent here in San Diego. It's been an awesome adventure, and it's actually a bit scary to think about the next big move, living in a new place, dealing with new neighbors ... we've been so lucky to find this house when we did, buy this house when we did, live in a place with such wonderful and caring neighbors, live somewhere that's close to everything but is blissfully quiet, live in a climate that lets us be outside and active 12 months a year ... we hope that Ohio brings its own wonderful things and adventures!

Of course, we're thankful for our wonderful kids - I mean, CATS! The addition of Naski to our family has made life in the Sinnokrak household more exciting, and has also created more 120-decibal reprimands (usually at Naski when he fly-tackles Natasha), 100-meter dashes (usually Naski chashing Tasha, though sometimes it's the other way around), early morning cries for food (Naski), save-me-from-the-evil-one cuddles (Natasha), and moments where we couldn't be more happy to have two cats napping in our laps in blissful silence.

And with our impending move to Ohio, we're thankful that we will be so much closer to our families. It's been difficult seeing our nephew Braydan grow up barely knowing us ... we get to see him maybe once or twice a year! Our new nephew Joshua, also in St. Louis, hasn't even met us yet (though Nick will remedy that in a couple of weeks)! And I look forward to being closer to Chicago for our new niece or nephew, due in late May.

As a consequence of the travel and the being ill, Nick and I hadn't thought much about Thanksgiving aside from thinking about how much we are missing our families right now! But the realization that it's right around the corner prompted us to want to celebrate what we're most thankful for, which is each other! I can't say I've ever prepared a Thanksgiving dinner for two, but we're happy to keep it very low-key. We're cooking a turkey breast to keep the leftovers manageable, making my mom's amazing wild rice salad, my awesome roasted garlic butternut squash soup, roasted sweet potatoes, cranberry-port wine sauce with figs, and some sort of apple pie thing for dessert (that's Nick's department). It's a bit strange to think that we're doing a whole lot of San Diego "lasts": this is our last Thanksgiving in San Digeo, our last winter in San Diego ... the last few nights have had the most spectacular sunsets and have made me realize that we don't have too many San Diego sunsets left ...

We hope you all know how thankful we are for you, our friends and family who keep us in your lives by reading the blog. We're thinking of you on this holiday and we hope you have a wonderful day and season!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!