We have really been enjoying the Fall weather here in Northern VA. As we drove through West Virginia on the way here we could tell that the leaves were gradually getting more and more colorful. The trees in our neighborhood have been gorgeous! We had a big rain last weekend and most of them are on the ground now but we still have a few sturdy trees that are holding on.The day after we arrived we went to the Cox Farm stand and got a few pumpkins, mums and apple cider. Seth has never lived anywhere with real Fall colors and tastes so we are enjoying!   Last week we made homemade applesauce and pumpkin spice muffins.

As you can see we are still catching up on our homeleave posts!

After Oregon we flew in to Ft. Worth where we visited with my parents and got to see a few friends while we were in the area. We didn’t make it to Dallas more than for 2 hours for the state fair so it was sad not to see all of our friends there.

While in Ft Worth we continued the blue bell ice cream trend and got to have Thai food made by my mom! Jackson spent lots of time with my parents dog Noah. My parents were in the middle of a move themselves so it felt a bit like we were being stalked by boxes! We were glad they still wanted us to visit even though they had a lot going on.

Jackson’s 2nd birthday gift from us was a tricycle. We bought it for him in Ft Worth so he would have it for our road trip. He amazed us with how he was able to hop on and ride with no help or training. We had no idea he could do it!

We spent a morning at the State Fair which was lots of fun! Before the fair we got to meet my sweet friend, Jenny and her baby Emma for coffee.

gazing up at Big Tex

We got to see my brother Graham and his fiance Tina one morning. They came along when Jackson went to fly a kite with PopPop.

We had dinner with a couple of my college friends one evening. Jackson was in rare form from being excited and exhausted but it was a good time! I ordered Jackson french fries and we were shocked to see the Texas size for fries. See below the bucket of fries!

After a week and a half it was time to hit the road and head to DC . We packed up every inch of the minivan and set out. Jackson was a trooper and took great naps throughout our trip. We could not have asked for a better traveler.

We drove through Nashville and got to have lunch with one of my Jr High/High School friends, Hannah. Her son’s name is Jackson too so Jackson thought it was amazing that he got to play with another Jackson! It was so fun to see Hannah and her boys as well as her mom and catch up even if it was only for a little while.

After Nashville we drove on to Louisville where we spent a few days with the O’Leary family. Jackson was in heaven with constant attention from Evan, Maddie and Gilly. It was such a fun time to take Jackson to be with them after having watched them when they were Jackson’s age.

Jackson crashing the girls slumber party

Pumpkin painting with the girls

 

Seth was like a boy on Christmas morning when we spent the morning at the Louisville Slugger Museum!

Seth and Jackson posing with Mickey Mantle’s bat. They had to wear white gloves to protect the bat.

After a great homeleave we arrived in Virginia on the 10th of Oct. We were so relieved to be done traveling and unpacked our suitcases within the first few hours! I am not sure we will ever do a month of travel again with a toddler, let alone 2 little ones! Adjusting to time zones and a zillion different beds for Jackson was a bit more of an adventure than we had warned him about. We have gotten settled into our “home” for the most part and have gotten right in to life here in VA. We are enjoying the gorgeous fall leaves and having family and friends so close by! We will post pictures of our Fall times soon. We promise to get it up before the first snow

After Houston we headed to the Northwest to see Seth’s sister Claire and her husband Donnie in Oregon. We had a great long weekend with them there enjoying the sights of Oregon!  One of the highlights was a trip to the coast. Despite the fact that the water was icy cold Jackson just LOVED it. He had no hesitation. He just held his breath and enjoyed! We got spoiled eating all of the famous blackberry sweets! It was so fun to see Claire and Donnie’s new home and Claire’s growing tummy! She is due only 3 weeks after us! The only downside of the trip was that Jackson (independent of his begging parents) decided to stay on Texas time. So we woke up for the day with him in the 4 AM hour which made for some tired parents!

Here are a few pictures!

On Sept 11th we landed in Houston, thrilled to be back in the United States!! We had a packed week visiting with Seth’s family. We ate our fill of Blue Bell ice cream and made sure to get to Lupe Tortilla!

We took Jackson to his first Astros game! He was so excited and actually payed attention more than we anticipated.

national anthem

Jackson had lots of fun time playing with his cousins.

We spent a day in Galveston….We thought Jackson might get his shorts wet but we never anticipated him wanting to dive in to the ocean! He loved it!

ready to feed the seagulls on the ferry

We visited with Seth’s grandmother, Mimi, at the nursing home.  After visiting Jackson said “Mimi, old lady”

One morning, out of the blue, Mia spotted a snake in the backyard.  Turns out it was a coral snake.  Check out the video if you don’t believe us.

At the end of our time in Houston we made our 6 month stop at MD Anderson. Another all clear check up which was an answer to prayer! Jackson was a trooper when the IV took 3 attempts.

After the MRI Jackson was groggy for maybe 20 mins and then he was ready to get moving!

Well, it is good to be able to post on this end of things having had survived our packout. It took weeks of prep with our things being divided between storage, DC short term (our things for the next 8 months), DC long term storage, Bern and giveaway! I threatened after this packout that next packout I might take Jackson and Owen away and let Seth do it! Jackson was more than enthusiastic and helpful which made things interesting. The movers were in our home for 3 full days, not because we had that much stuff but because in true Colombian style our packers were late, didn’t show up and worked like snails! We were so relieved to see the trucks drive away.

Here are a few pictures!

Jackson on his last day at school. He carried in bouquets of flowers for his teachers

saying good bye to Sonia and Santiago

saying good bye to our guards and getting the chance to hold the walkie talkie and wear the official hat

helping with the luggage.

his backpack was so heavy he fell over carrying it!

Our traveling family. USA here we come!

This drum roll has gone on obnoxiously long and we apologize. A while back we promised pictures and the name announcement for our new little guy but we have gotten WAY behind!

We have decided to name our new son Owen Seth Kolb. We chose Owen for a variety of reasons. We both really liked the name to begin with. Seth had a youth leader in junior high and high school who made a big impact on his life. His name was Owen Payne. He passed away from cancer. One of my favorite patients when I worked in Early Childhood Intervention was Owen.  So we both had an affinity for the name. Thus, Owen! And Seth of course because of his amazing daddy!

If you had seen Jackson over the past month or so he would have given away the surprise of the name. He frequently talks about his brother Owen and often checks in to ask if Owen is sleeping or playing in my tummy. When there is a really loud noise he will say “too loud for Owen!”.

Here are the most recent pictures!

19 Weeks

21 Weeks

23 Weeks

The next 4 are of Owen at 19 weeks.

As of yesterday Owen is doing great! He is moving all of the time to let us know he is doing well. He is 27 weeks old tomorrow. Time flies! Pray that he stays cozy in there for a while longer! We have had anxiety with traveling and just want to make it safely to my doctor in DC!

We lose internet in a matter of minutes.  We lose our U.S. phone at the same time.  We fly out from Bogota in a matter of hours.

Almost two years ago, we arrived in Bogota.  Married less than two years.  With a two-month old.  We leave Bogota having been married for almost four years, with a two-year old, and one on the way (around Christmas).

Due to the internet being cut off pronto, we won’t go into too many details and reflect too much.  But we’ve enjoyed our time, made a lot of memories, and met some very special people.  At the same time, we can’t wait to get back to the United States.  Where our home and family are.  Where we feel comfortable and understand the language.  And where the food is fantastic.

So with this post, we let everyone know that we’ve G.T.T. (Gone To Texas) and we’ll be posting more about our soon-to-be-born boy and the rest of our travels.

This past weekend we took a road trip to a town outside of Bogota.  It was nice to get out of the city one last time. The city is famous for their crafts and town square. To be honest there wasn’t much to see but we filled our time by going to the local Sat produce market, walking around through the cobblestone streets and just relaxing.It was probably our first trip with realistic expectations in terms of accommodations. We always like to say now that they might have a star system in Colombia for hotels but the starts just don’t shine as bright. We came home with a few bed bug bites and it was quite rustic for the price you pay but overall it was peaceful and a good time away in the fresh air.

Our funniest memory was Jackson trying to order his own food at the hotel. He would call for the waitress in Spanish and continue to tell her exactly what he wanted with a sweet “por favor” and followed up by a boisterous “gracias”. They loved it and he obviously ate up the attention. We discouraged it knowing that in the US this would be seen as super disrespectful. One of the mornings there the waitress answered his request for milk but brought warm milk. Word of warning, warm milk in a sippy cup equals and spraying geyser.  As soon as the lid was tightened it flipped on it’s side and spun around as it shot out warm milk. Luckily the hotel restaurant was almost empty at 6:45 AM so we enjoyed our own milk show without disrupting other guests!

On our way home we got behind a bike race which took forever to get around. Jackson decided not to nap and talked about the cows and animals along the road the whole way home! We are not sure if we can talk about cows from TX to DC when we do our move in Oct. Thank goodness by then we will have a car with a CD player.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend…

Our hotel had beautiful flowers

checking out the ducklings at the market

is this not the biggest zucchini you have ever seen?

this was strawberry country! we got a lb for about a dollar and they were the best we have had in a long time!

this basket was super noisy! we asked the lady to open the bag for us to peek…

it was full of little chicks!

5 mins into our walk on the cobblestone Jackson was finding places to plop down!

town square where people came out in the evenings to fly kites

poor little guy…after another good run around he plopped down again!

back at our hotel…Jackson was standing in his crib with the window open peering out

this was what we had in front of us on part of the ride home…we think it must mean that Jesus’s second coming will somehow involve a cruise ship. How exciting!

We are a little behind on getting this posted. I sat down to finally get the pictures up and announce the name and the pictures won’t load…grrrr.  So, Seth will once again have to work on them! We promise we will post some good stuff soon!

We are down to the final countdown! Sometimes it feels like our move is coming quickly and sometimes it feels like it is taking forever!We have someone coming on Monday to do a “packout assessment”- basically they determine how much stuff we have, how many boxes they need and how many days it will take. It is so nice having someone pack but truly we end up doing so much of it before they arrive because everything has to be in categories of a small air shipment to DC temp housing, Bern and storage.  When we finish the Foreign Service it will be fun to say “take it all to our home!”

Sept 1-3 we will have our pack out! Once the pack out is over we will have about a week in our apt with our suitcases of clothes and the embassy couch, beds, etc. It will be pretty empty!!!

5 weeks from yesterday (Sept 11th)  we fly to Houston, followed by Oregon, Ft Worth and then on to our cross country road trip to DC with a stop to visit our dear friends in Louisville!

On the 15th of Oct Seth will take the plunge into learning German! And we will be living close to family and friends! We will have about 10 weeks to get ready for our second little guy to arrive!

In the meantime, I have been working on big sorting projects to prevent us from making a move with so many things we don’t need. Unfortunately, I think I am using my nesting energy on this end of things. I hope I have some energy left to prepare for the baby when we arrive in DC!

You can continue to pray for the quick sale of our car. As well as health and energy as we wrap up our final weeks here. We are so anxious to be with family and friends for a time of being rejuvinated before starting yet another adventure.  Thank you for your prayers and encouragement!!

Our first move…Dallas to DC. Pregnant with Jackson. We have added Jackson and soon another. Moved from DC to Bogota, soon Bogota to DC, then DC to Bern. All in 4 yrs!