Dayton, OH: 2000 - 2002

This is third in a series. See Charleston, SC or Birmingham, AL

Dayton, OH
1102 Katy Meadow Court

If you can't see the map below, click here

2000-2002

Scott finished his degree at UAB, so we headed to Dayton, OH in March 2000. We did take a two week vacation to Germany, but that's another post for another day.

We built a house in Fairborn, a suburb of Dayton. Scott documented the four month process by taking 2,694 pictures of the house in varying stages of development. Although I made fun of him for doing that, those pictures did come in handy when we had to go to court because of a red paint incident.

In process

Finished!

Scott worked at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and I sent out about a million resumes before landing a communications position at The Dayton Art Institute. This ended up being a favorite job of mine, even though I knew nothing about art. And Scott will tell you he had to "suffer" through some artsy events, like the one below, but I think he secretly enjoyed them.

Art Ball 2001

Life in Dayton was ordinary. We hung out with neighbors and friends, ate yummy ice cream at nearby Young's Dairy, entertained out of town visitors at the Air Force Museum and The Dayton Art Institute, and took weekend trips to Cincinnati and Columbus.

The most significant event that happened in this period of time was Adam's birth. (September 11 also happened, and you can read about it here.)

So we had our first child. And I wasn't ready. I had just reduced my work hours from full-time to three days a week. My office was not cleaned out. My replacement had not been trained as we had planned. I did not have my hospital bag packed.

My due date was Sept. 4. My water broke around 2 am on August 28, and it took us two hours to actually arrive at the hospital.

After 12 hours of nothing, the doctors suggested a C-section and little Adam was born on August 29, big eyes and all. This picture always makes me laugh. 

I had left my job, so my days were filled with dirty diapers, bottles and pacifiers. Scott introduced Adam to Monday night football and I showed him the mall.

In December, we put our house up for sale and headed to Washington, D.C where Scott had accepted a job at the Department of Justice.