Chesed

Me: “Knock Knock”

The outside:

What the inside looked like when they purchased:

{Proof that grey is a *very* hard color to choose}

{the woodsmen’s grand entrance and their crazy plot to “put the fire out”}

{getting the turkeys ready for the fire}

{the little guys made it their responsibility to take care of the hot chocolate fire}

And the party night after:
 

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The first day of Thanksgiving vacation, we went ice skating about an hour from here.  Wait.  That’s not we.  That’s we went.  They skated.  I staggered for a few minutes. It was Adam and Liam’s first time on the ice.  Adam was thrilled! 

Homeschooling means you can’t stay up til 1 a.m. without getting really grouchy. Morning will be here way too soon to suit me.  Happens every time. 

Goodnight.

We kept having trouble with ants in the kitchen the first month after we moved. We put terro on the kitchen counter, but for a long time it didn’t seem to help at all. I was talking to David about the ineffectiveness and said, “I don’t think they are sweet ants.” Liam happened to be in the kitchen just then and from behind me came a little voice, “Yeah, they are mad ants.”

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Liam learned how to swim this summer, but only for very short distances so I still watch him like a mama bear. One day when his nose was again just barely above the surface of the water I went closer to talk to him. With his head bobbing up and down he said, “I’m on my tip toes, not on my normal feet.”

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Homeschooling started the middle of August and Liam is getting his little brain stretched every bit at much as Adam does. The boys were setting the table for lunch when I heard this little interchange.
Adam: “Liam are you from Maryland or Virginia?”
Liam with tremendous indignation: “I’m not f’om ‘irdinia and not f’om Mar’and. I’m f’om Norf Amewica.”

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One afternoon the boys were playing outside with Riley (the little guy who lives upstairs) when they started begging to build a fire. Like normal I started to say no, but then I stopped. It wasn’t dry so the fire wasn’t likely to get out of hand. There certainly isn’t any possibility of ruining the lawn because grass didn’t exist on the property. Why not?

They were ecstatic and quickly gathered a small pile of leaves and twigs. It smoked a bit and I handed out a few marshmallows for roasting, sure the love would wane quickly. It didn’t. Chief Jeremy happened by, saw their struggling fire and offered some assistance with getting bigger sticks propped into a tepee style fire. And then fire started happening for real. Liam and Riley tag teamed to haul in long pieces of dead wood they found in the surrounding woods. Adam found an axe and started chopping. The day was hot so I took them popsicles. Three hours later they had a blazing fire going and the love wasn’t ending. I heard “Chief Charles” calling to “Chief Mac” and “Chief Kevin” as they orchestrated their group and the fire. Only now they also wanted a hot dog roast. I was planning to go grocery shopping as soon as David got home so I went to confer with Steph only to discover she was planning to go grocery shopping as soon as Andrew got home. It didn’t take long at all to figure out this was a father / son + Aleah night in the making. I pulled out some chips, brewed tea, and called David to let him know what was up while Steph heated up some baked beans. When the dad’s got home, the boys invited them to their hot dog roast and Steph and I headed for town together.

The boys were in bed when I got home, but way too excited to sleep. “Mommy,” they said as soon as they heard me coming down the steps. And then I heard the whole story. “And Mommy,” Adam said, “we invited our dads and they were really pleased to come. They EVEN brought baked beans!”

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Driving through DC after a brief encounter with someone Adam said, “I could tell that guy wasn’t married by his voice.”

Me: “Oh? How is that?”

Adam: “Well after men get married, their voices just get all gloomy.”

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David was getting ready to pay bills when Adam walked by the table.

Adam: “Don’t do finances. Just read your Bible. Reading your Bible is way better than doing finances.

David: “Great. You can go read your Bible.”

Adam: “No. I’m not getting ready to do finances. Finances are just so politics (pronounced with emphasis on the short i as in political). No, that’s not the right word. They’re just so patriotic.”

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On the way home from the library I was doing the customary hand a book back to each boy thing when Liam refused to take a book. “Dese books just make me feel like I’m in p’ison (prison). Only the teddy bear books are otay.”

So much for books being the key to the world.

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After shooting a wedding in August, I returned to Mom’s house where Liam sat on my lap nearly smothering me with hugs and kisses. Adam kept sitting right next to me. “Mommy, I just want to be in your atmosphere.”

Me, too, buddy. Me, too.

We’re sitting in an Econo Lodge in Tennessee with fifteen minutes to spare until we leave for our next family meeting. Our sleazy dissapointment to a priceline bid still provided a very much needed respite for just the two of us. Hard as it is to arrange school to accommodate a two day interruption in the middle of the week, it is worth every minute for the hours alone on the road. We dropped off the boys with my mom in Virginia which meant hours of uninterrupted talk time. Mmmmm make me happy.

Since I don’t have time to type, I’m going to upload a few (or a lot!) of pictures and hopefully you can read between the lines.

This summer has meant:

Swimming at the Middle Ford …. actually a road that heads through a creek and creates a great little swimming hole as long as you get out of the way when a vehicle comes through!

Miss Ava sits sweetly in her car seat in the shade beside the truck while the kiddos play and Steph and I sit beside the water and talk and watch the kids play. It is one of my favorite spots. Hearing kids laugh and water run and seeing blue sky and mountains and trees …. the best kind of mom therapy.

Hours out at the lake. Sometimes just because and sometimes because we were kicked out of our house so work groups could be more efficient. 

The house is slowly and painfully nearing completion. We’ve gone from cardboard flaps to this for a few weeks

to finally having doorknobs!!

The electrician came nine weeks after we moved and gave us LIGHTS. I was all too happy to relegate the construction light stands to the storage and the flashlight to the drawer where it belonged! When he finished, the basement finally felt like a house even if it wasn’t finished.

Construction field trips for the boys, right outside our house. 

A kitchen window with ever-changing scenery:

Dealing with people doing construction in our living zone for weeks on end and cleaning up the wreckage afterward. It’s a strange feeling to leave a cleaned up house and come back hours later to furniture displaced, sawdust, insulation bits, scrap wires, and discarded cardboard boxes. Or to walk into your bedroom and find two strangers nailing trim and a power driver plopped on your bed (that has now been pulled into the middle of the room). Or to take your four year old into his bedroom for a nap when his room is pulled apart, er collided into the middle, and someone is driving nails into the trim and two more people are puttying nail holes. Ten minutes later you peek in to see him sound asleep in the middle of the chaos. Parenting on public display is for the birds, but those moments that make up about 2% of your life can feel as though somewhere along the line you’ve given your child enough security to cope in chaos. When we built our house, David and I said we’d never remodel because we wouldn’t do well with living in the mess. Ironically, we’ve ended up not only living in the middle of the mess, we aren’t even going to live here when it’s finished. Unlike homeschooling, I haven’t changed my opinion about remodeling. If I ever find a place that prints t-shirts reasonably, I am buying shirts for Steph and I that say, “I survived construction 2012.”

So, now it’s October instead of September and I’m luxuriously typing on my own computer while we are at David’s parents.  Maybe it’s time to just call it a post.  But first a few more pictures …

Cookouts with new friends:

and fun weekends with old friends:

Learning to navigate a new town and celebrating the day I could get to the UPS store without a GPS.

SNAIL MAIL!

Getting to meet my nephew, Paxton, for the first time and having a wonderful day together with my family celebrating my mom’s sixtieth birthday.

Embracing the learning curve of home schooling. I always said I would NEVER teach. My dad taught. My mom taught. Both of my sisters taught. I had zero desire. Now I’m homeschooling and loving it. Who knew?

I love that I get to see what Adam is learning and that I can incorporate life and school. The only part I don’t love is the way it consumes me. My sparse social life has evaporated to nearly zilch.  Between living in a basement, being cutoff from long distance friends by the lack of internet, and currently feeling like I can’t even socialize locally because of the enormous time commitment …. some days I feel like the people in the Old Testament who sinned and the ground opened up and swallowed them whole.  I don’t know how all those homeschooling moms who say they get done by lunch time do it, but clearly I am not on the same steroids. The good news is we’re having fun except during Math. We’re 1/4 of the way through and Adam’s GPA is excellent. And the other good news is, my brain is back to being stimulated a little.

Bike rides. Two to five miles for the boys and I. Fourteen to Twenty milers for David. As soon as nice weather and a free Saturday collide, we’re going to bike the trail from Frostburg to Cumberland.

Yellow Jackets. They are everywhere.  Adam unluckily walked into a nest and got stung six times.  He spasmed from pain literally and in spite of advil, benadryl, soda / vinegar poultices, lavender oil, and ice screamed shrilly for over an hour.  When the swelling began to subside a little we realized he had at least nine if not eleven separate sting marks. 

And the best snippet of summer: THEY’VE SIGNED A CONTRACT FOR OUR HOUSE.  Closing is on Thursday. 

The darkness this summer has been both physical and spiritual.  If you suffer from SAD in the winter, you can imagine the fog and darkness of living in a basement with few windows in a house surrounded by woods.  If you don’t, I can’t describe it for you except to say it means you cry a lot and your brain is so dysfunctional that some days you can hardly formulate a grocery list.  But more and more I am realizing the darkness isn’t all going to disappear when we get to live on ground level again.  This is a spiritual darkness we are fighting and while my brain function will return, satan isn’t going to give up in his attempt to destroy what is happening at camp. 

It’s been a good summer.  Not easy by any stretch of the imagination.  But good.  Good because it has had good moments sprinkled through it.  But mostly because in being stripped of so much, God has revealed so much truth to me.  About Himself.  About Me.  About life.  Periods of transition reveal so much of the layers of unholiness that lie within us.  There are hard questions that sometimes don’t have answers.  But more than ever, I believe that nothing in our lives happens without a purpose because of how much God longs for our holiness.  Ever since we’ve moved, I’ve felt God asking me to praise Him.  Even when it felt like blank darkness, to simply worship.  I needed to learn to praise God because of who He is, not because of what He does, or the prayers He answers, or the way I sense Him in my life. 

If it gets any later in the year, I’m going to have to change the title of this post. But hopefully this won’t happen again.  IF they sign closing, we’re moving.  And WHEN we move, we’re planning to get internet. And THEN I won’t have to miss you guys so crazy much. And maybe if I get back into writing more regularly, I’ll manage to write something a little less disjointed.

Adam was diligently counting his money, still dreaming of the black stallion.
Me: Adam if you save much more than this, maybe we should open a bank account for you.
His face lit up instantly …. Then fell almost as quickly.
Adam: But Mommy, then I’d have to pay bills.

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I think Adam’s been reading too many books. One day we were driving down the road and suddenly this dramatic little voice in the back seat says, “The trees stood tall and ghost-like…..”
Another day he stood in front of me and said, “I’m staring at you with beady eyes, Mommy.”

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It was one of those days. Crumbs littered the countertops. Whininess dominated a certain three year old’s heart. The hydrangeas wilted within two hours of being inside. But it all dissolved in smiles when Liam asked the blessing at lunch. “Fank you dat we can watch spider web (Charlottes Web).”

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Just before school let out for the summer, I took Liam to hang out with David at the office while I went shopping. I used to take Adam there frequently, but it’s so far out of the way I hardly ever take Liam. I figured if I did it before summer vacation, I could actually get a kid-free shopping trip and that’s pretty hard to pass up. My friend, Rachel, found out he was there and stopped in to see if he wanted to go to the park with her and the girls. When I asked him about it that night he said, “Yeah, it was Rachel who owns Tim. But we didn’t go to a natural park (national forest??); we went to Greenleaf.”

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My sister in law, Ro, dropped a few mint leaves into some ice water one night when we girls were there. It was so incredibly refreshing. When my brand new patch started growing, I excitedly picked a few leaves and exuberantly told the boys all about it as I fixed us some super refreshing ice water.

Liam took a drink and then looked at me quizzically, “Where is the refreshing?”

Later when he was thirsty he said very emphatically, “Oh, but I don’t want the mint tea dat has flowers in it.”

So much for that.

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Overheard:
Adam: Liam, you don’t love me as much as Mommy does.
Liam: Why?
Adam: Because Mommy loves me more than she can tell me.

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We kept having bear issues. For one thing, he dumped our big trash barrel and dragged trash to the edge of the yard until we learned to keep the trash tied to the post. The other problem was that he scared the wits right out of Goldi and she ran away every time he showed up. We always knew when he was prowling the edge of the woods because Goldi would start barking furiously. At our neighborhood cookout we were discussing bear sightings and how animal control keeps track of them. The next day Goldi started barking furiously. Liam came prancing into the house.

“Mommy, ‘tall’ animal ‘tont’ol’. ‘Tall’ animal ‘tont’ol’. Doldi hears a bear!”

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And my personal favorite:

Someone gave us cookies that contain peanut butter. Adam was about to eat one and, like usual, I issued the standard warning. “Adam, make sure you stay far away from Liam.”
Adam: “Liam, stay far away. These cookies are full of peanut butter and hemotoxic venom.”

… spontaneous cookouts because both groups are on a trip

… swimming at the lake

….running to camp to use the bathroom because a cardboard flap feels really insecure when a guy is installing ceiling tile directly outside the bathroom

… doing without power from Friday night to Thursday noon — tough anywhere, brutal when you’ve just moved and everything is already new and you live in an unfinished house

… humidity so high that your son complains of his pajama shirt being wet when he gets it out of the drawer and your sheets feel damp at night

… buying a humidifier and taking off ten gallons of water in less than 48 hours

… feeling a heartstab every time you see the woodsmen group because there is an eleven year old boy in the group who is barely bigger than Adam. That kid still needs a mom to kiss him goodnight.

… letting your boys go swimming at the aqua duct with their dad and hearing that Adam now jumps off ten foot man made cliffs into the huge swimming hole — without a life jacket

… sitting on the recliner in your pajamas with a cup of coffee at 7:15 in the morning and hearing the door open because the little guy who lives upstairs decided it was time to come play

… knowing that your house is still under construction and fair game for maintenance men between the hours of 8 and 5. All things considered, they have been extraordinarily gracious and respectful.

… cleaning up construction dirt over and over and over again

… hearing that the house camp was buying for you to live in sold to someone else

… killing an average of six half inch long segmented black ants and at least one cricket, grasshopper, huge spider, or leaf cutter per day

… the best July 4th party. A version of dodge ball, tug of war, water fight, frog catching, cherry seed spitting contest with a record setting 49 feet and 10 inches, swimming, grilled chicken and corn on the cob and homemade ice cream, and of course, fireworks

… holding the phone waiting for the caller id to show up only to remember it never will

… cleaning the house in less than two hours flat instead of struggling to get it all done in one day

… having your parenting skills stretched to the max and then stretched still more

… five windows to clean instead of twenty-five

… pulling a tick off someone else’s child’s head

… watching a chief shovel dirt with his group of boys and finding out that he is running a fever / sick and realizing very clearly that it isn’t only moms who have to keep going no matter what

… neighbors who share their four wheeler

… hanging out with camp staff and realizing that you are getting to know an incredible group of people

… needing to get out of your house on Thursday because fifteen men (five men for each floor) are coming to set as many interior doors as possible and trying to decide where to go

… missing friends

… starting to really like camp and having no idea why

Thumbs up for copy and pasting from a Word document when I hit the library. Thumbs down for old news. Pretend you are reading this on June 24th.

Having no internet is for the birds! In a hundred ways it feels as though my life has come to a grinding halt. Half of those are media issues, I think. Honestly, I’m missing the whole blogosphere and facebook land a little; but by far the worst of it is feeling as though I can’t function in anything. I think of a recipe I want only to realize it’s online. I get ready to scope out the closest town only to realize I can’t google search to see what is around or load google maps to give me even a general lay of the land. I have clients to message and photos to upload and I can’t do any of it. And when I run across the road to use the satellite internet at camp, it is slower than tractors in a mud bog and I can’t even load my email inbox. Which means I can’t even take care of book orders. I can’t pay bills. I can’t pay state taxes. I can’t order bubble wrap. I can’t order anything on Amazon. I think that it will not be long before I am on a first name basis with the local librarians. How did anyone ever live before there was internet? Someone please just tell me the secret to keeping two boys quietly occupied in a library for more than ten minutes at a time.

It’s been nine days since we’ve moved. Those five weeks between signing the lease and heading out with a truck and trailer were the next thing to insane. I flew to Oregon to shoot a wedding the day after we signed. Arrived home Sunday night around 9:30 only to head out the next morning at 7 for families day at camp. The next two weeks I went through every cabinet of the house sorting out things to sell on a massive yard sale. When you get ready to move out of 2600 finished square feet plus about half that much storage, and you know the houses in the area you are moving to average around 1300, you’d better get rid of a lot. We sold our dining room table and chairs, a treadmill, bikes, power toys, and a number of other bigger items on Craigs list. The yard sale was a huge success even if I took a jam-packed van to the donation center afterward. I thought I’d pared down. Then, I started packing. Next time I’ll know to pack first. There are a lot of things you THINK you want to keep until you have packed sixty-seven boxes and suddenly almost everything looks like something you want to throw into a giveaway box!

The last two and half weeks were full of packing and the usual social whirl that happens before you move. I had two family sessions, an engagement session, and then another wedding the weekend before we moved. It was crazy, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Doing something I loved did more for keeping my sanity than those extra hours could ever have done. I’d never plan it that way again either, because it was also incredibly exhausting.

People were so, so kind and helped out in so many ways! Friends and family came and packed. My sisters in law kept the boys while I was shooting weddings. People invited us for meals and sent food for times when we were home. My mother in law and two of my sisters in law came on Wednesday so we could clean all the kitchen cabinets, the windows and screens and wash off all the outside porches and decks. My friend, Cynthia, drove over to help me pack Thursday morning. I knew the guys were coming to load at 3 and I was quite sure we wouldn’t be finished by then. But she was a miracle. She’s moved out of state herself and not only did she just know what to do without being told, she was giving me suggestions for all those last minute odds and ends. Did you know you can pack lamps inside of hampers to keep them safe? Me neither. When she left minutes before 3, I was FINISHED except for a few loads of laundry I was still running through. That was one of the nicest things about our move. All the appliances except our chest freezer stayed there so I could wash up every stitch of laundry the day we were moving.

Tons of family and friends came to help load the truck Thursday night and most of them stayed for the pizza party (also sponsored by family and friends, bless them!) afterward. Kristina and Jo stayed afterward to help with floors and Kristina stayed until every square inch of hardwood on both upper floors had been mopped by hand. I was in the basement mopping when my mom showed up to say goodbye. She walked through the upstairs and said, “I was expecting to be depressed by the empty house, but all I can think is how nice it looks.” I said I felt the same way. A beautiful house will still be beautiful when it’s empty. David said, “You mean you came planning to be depressed and you can’t even make it happen? That’s a real problem.”

I washed off the porch again in the 10:30 darkness because the kids had dripped ice cream on it. That night Goldi put a few muddy paw prints on it so David unloaded the hose off the truck and washed it off again at 7 in the morning. The house was absolutely spotless. I grabbed a few paper towels and wiped up any last wet footprints as I backed my way out the kitchen door on my hands and knees. The pile of trash in the backyard was going to be taken care of by David’s brothers over the weekend. I took one last look at the sun streaming through the kitchen window … and then I turned around very quickly and left.

David and the boys had already left with the truck and and a 26 foot trailer. He expected the three hour trip to take five and he had to take a different route to avoid the worst of the mountains. Dwayne was pulling a second flat bed trailer with the chicken coop and chest freezer and Kristina jumped into the van with me for the ride up. It felt surreal really. Not like a last time, but just a long trip. Renting definitely made the goodbye easier.

It took us forever to get to Maryland. For one thing, we stopped to shop at Ross one last time. Then the GPS took us on the western route and brought us up through the sticks of West Virginia. Not kidding. I followed the GPS until the road just stopped in the middle of nowhere. Literally. This was the view in front of us and the road just stopped.

I backed up and on a whim took a right. Within a minute we were face to face with a utility truck. No orange signs of warning. Nothing. Just round a curve and there it is. On my side of the road facing the wrong direction. Hello????????????

We swerved around him and got to a one lane bridge. There was a car coming from the other direction and I was at least as close as he was to being there first. I had no idea what the rules were and I was sporting an attitude from the past three minutes so I stepped on it. He completely ignored the fact that I was in the bridge and kept right on coming. Had I not slammed on the brakes and thrown it into reverse, we’d have smashed in the middle. Still not at all convinced I was on the right route and gasping over the road issues of West Virginia, I came to a bridge that certainly wouldn’t pass code anywhere I’ve lived. Would you check out the lack of guard rails?

It looked like the entrance to a campground. I gingerly pulled across chanting “look straight ahead look straight ahead look straight ahead” till we got up the hill to what I thought was the entrance to a campground. I was sure we were completely lost. “Excuse me,” I said to the lady inside the little booth. “I’m looking for Oldtown and I have no idea how to get there.” She stared at me with the most quizzical look and said, “As soon as you cross the bridge, you are in Oldtown.” And out came the little cup to collect my toll. For real, it’s worth the laugh just to cross there. If there were a seven redneck wonders of the world list, this would be on it.

We still weren’t there, but at least I was back to the route we usually took. We pulled in expecting the guys to be busily unloading and hiding their feelings about our late arrival. Only they weren’t there. When I opened the door of our temporary basement apartment, I could only open it halfway because a man was firmly planted on a ladder right inside the door installing drop ceiling grids. I inched my way in and surveyed the mess. There was construction dirt EVERYWHERE. Foam insulation. Screws. Nails. Paint brush. DIRT. Tools. Guys. Ladders. And right in the middle of what should be the living room were two floor to ceiling stacks of boxes of ceiling tiles.

(after the stack was moved to the edge)

The contrast of what I’d left to be moved into compared to what I was moving into was so enormous there was nothing left to do but laugh. We killed time until the guys left at 4 and then the two chiefs who were around that weekend and Chief Brian’s son, Derrick, came over to help unload. About that time Adam pinched Liam’s fingers in the truck door and from that minute on he refused to detach from my hip. The last few days of packing had been too short on sleep, attention, and patience and I could have nicknamed the boys Obnoxious and Emotional. Bet you can’t guess which was which. This took things to an entirely deeper level. I was embarrassed on one side and feeling sorry for them on the other. They’d been through so much and Liam definitely was not understanding that we weren’t going back to Virginia in a few days or that we’d for sure packed up all his things … he was sure they had simply gone MIA.

I soon saw that my vacuum wasn’t going to cut it so I asked for a shop vac. Adam was supposed to use that to clean up the worst of it ahead of me, but co-operation was not his strong point that day. Meanwhile, the guys moved the huge stacks of ceiling tile boxes from the middle to the edge of the living room. They started carrying in our boxes and I tried to stay ahead of them as much as I could. I felt sorry for them. Instead of almost a dozen guys like there’d been the night before, there were only four of them. We got about halfway through and stopped. The mattresses were in, our clothes were in, and we could at least sleep there. The four girls who were around camp had gone shopping for the afternoon and brought back chicken for everyone so at least I didn’t have to scrounge around for food.

That night David and I cleaned and unpacked. Put sheets on the mattresses on the floor and cleaned and unpacked some more. The next day was just one of those make yourself do the next thing and the next thing. David unloaded some more boxes and I cleaned. And unpacked. And cleaned and unpacked. Mid-afternoon the guys came back and in short order unloaded the boxes that were left. By bedtime that night, we actually had a pretty good semblance of order. But oh, it was so raw. The house is so far from finished. I’ve moved into unfinished houses three times in my life before this, but this is by far the most raw.

We had no overhead lights. No closet shelving. No mirrors. No interior doors (unless you count the one cardboard flap they screwed to the bathroom opening). No phone (and remember there is no cell phone service). No internet. No blinds of any sort on the windows.

Adam started with pink eye the day we moved.

I discovered that if I went outside and found a sweet spot, I could at least text my family and let them know we’d arrived. It’s hilarious. I’ll go outside and start a text only to lose service and walk to the next spot and then about the time it’s sending I have to reach around with my phone again and hold it just right to make it go through.

I combed my hair in the reflection of the car window.

And we survived pretty well. But by the time church was over Sunday morning, my coping skills were completely depleted. David said we’re going to the lake.

On Monday we all went along to take the truck and trailer back to Harrisonburg. Honestly, I’ve never liked that town (purely personal opinion), but that day, Harrisonburg was as inviting as the Caribbean. I gulped in sunlight and warmth and media connection and told my mom I could happily just sit in the parking lot somewhere.

This basement is so dark and so COLD. I can deal with all the other inconveniences, but I cannot change the way my body reacts physiologically to cold and darkness. In two days my brain had gone from June energy to a mid-February glazed fog. In the middle of this triple digit head wave, we have not run air once and even then, it’s cold in here. My toes and fingers are often tingly and the temperature sometimes dips to 68. One night we tried to run heat, but then it froze up the air conditioner on the main floor so we haven’t done that again. It is a weird thing to wear a sweater in June and then to go outside and realize it feels like 103.

But, things improved a lot while we were gone on Monday. Chief James put in a few overhead lights in the living room and our bedroom and tacked the heating ducts up into the ceiling so we wouldn’t crash our heads on them. We have a set of construction lights to plug in for kitchen light and he brought us an old mirror to prop on the bathroom vanity. Best of all, he screwed dry wall to cover the opening leading upstairs so kids can’t just run down and join us and he gave us a cardboard flap for one of our bedroom doors. David hung a bath towel over the upper half of our bedroom window.

That night our landline got set up. By Friday noon, I was pretty sure I’d recovered from all the shocking changes and would be fine. Then we got hit with a huge storm and the power went out. We were planning to go scope out the town on Saturday anyway, but suddenly half the town was shut down. The two grocery stores that were open were local hinky dinks that were dirty and didn’t carry items I needed. When I saw flies buzzing around in the second store I’d had more than I could take and barely made it to the van before I dissolved into tears. I told David it felt like God brought me to camp in a wheelbarrow and dropped me off.

There are a few underlying dynamics I can’t go into, but I’m just going to say, “It’s been a really rough ten days.”

David prayed specifically last night that satan’s power would be broken and that we would be able to believe that God brought us here. He prayed for grace and for courage to stand in truth. And while he prayed, I felt the darkness leaving. The war isn’t over, but one battle has been won. Because of the power outage, the church service we’re expected to attend was canceled and we all attended chapel with the boys. It was the best (and hardest) thing that could have happened. We sang songs about loving when others don’t and songs with ridiculously hard words like, “I don’t have to know the why, just show me the where, “ (OUCH!) and splattered through Chief Andrew’s talk about our conscience, he reminded us that when we are living in truth and doing what is right, we don’t have to worry about what other people say.

I was reading the story of the children of Israel the other day when they grumbled not only about not having meat, but about God leading them out of Egypt in the first place. I used the story for Liam who whines and complains about every single thing right now. But it’s me who needs that story most of all. Not just about the complaining, but even more about believing God in the middle of the wilderness. And to know that when God calls us to near impossible levels of holiness, He always makes it possible. (ie Numbers 6:9) But I also sensed that in spite of my lack of connection, I need to find a way to create a small prayer support group that I can go to for specific prayer requests and for feedback and advice. You can’t give when you are on empty and one of the hardest things about this move has been leaving our church group. Over and over and over again I’ve heard God asking me, “Am I enough?” A few Sundays ago, when we were singing during praise and worship I was thinking of what was coming and the change church would be and I thought I could not say yes. Wasn’t it God who set up church in the first place? But I knew the answer in my head even if I didn’t know it in my heart. And now, to hear God saying I do need a support group …. Helps me to believe that maybe He hasn’t completely dumped me out of the wheelbarrow yet. The ride is just really bumpy.

It’s time to move the generator cord to the kitchen. We invited all the single off-duty staff to come over for supper on Friday before the storm. Power or not, somebody needs to throw some wings on the grill.

Reality wraps around me like the swaddling of a mummy. The smell of cardboard boxes permeates the air no matter how much we cleaned today. In a few days our belongings will sway along behind us as we begin the trek north.

Reality is:

Over 100 boxes packed and ready to load.

Too much stuff still waiting to be packed.

Unpacking something I’ve packed because I need it again one more time.

Packing for two moves because we’re going to be in temporary lodging.

Finding out the temporary lodging may be VERY temporary (days instead of weeks). Yeah for not unpacking so much. Gaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh for way overpacking for that short of a stay and not being efficient with finding what I’ll need.

Finding out someone is installing the drop ceiling in the basement apartment we’re moving into on the day we are moving in. That’s going to be interesting.

Private investors planning to purchase a house and rent it to Allegany Boys Camp which will then become our home away from home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No more jokes about tents.

Realizing I am going to have to wear a cape dress and a covering again in three days. I have not worn a traditional cap style covering for four years. I am not going to verbalize my thoughts on this rule except to say, it may be a good thing I did not know this was going to be part of the package back when we were making our decision about going. Let’s just say, I’m going to need a shopping trip to Lancaster, I guess. For now, I’ll be digging into the bucket I saved for the kids to play dress up.

Losing regular internet and cell phone service. I may be back to snail mail. I am hoping to have email at the house, but I’m still waiting to see how this all materializes. I do know it’s too far back in to have DSL and satellite will doubtfully fit into our new budget. Which means I don’t know what’s going to happen to this blog space and that makes me feel desperately lonely before I even get there. After six years of social networking, this feels like the internet equation of moving out of state. I will miss skype calls with my friend in Poland. Messaging friends. And especially the friends I’ve made here. I can’t talk about that anymore because I’m under a self-inflicted rule not to cry til next week. thinkhappythoughtsthinkhappythoughtsthinkhappythoughtsthinkhappythoughts
There. That’s better. I hope to take advantage of free wifi when I get to town, but we can all guess how that will work out. So this may be goodbye and this may be the beginning of ingenious ideas of networking with limits. And if you’ve got my number, you can still text me. Sometimes I have enough service to get a text through. Or, you might be texting me. David has usurped my phone several times in the past few days and sent the craziest messages back in response to texts I’ve received. If it’s wierd, or it stinks, suspect forgery. And if you need my email address send me a message.

Saying goodbye to a church family we have only known and loved for six months. Can’t talk about that either. thinkhappythoughtsthinkhappythoughts

Feeling excited about how the next few years will impact our lives. You can’t go through change without realizing things about yourself you wouldn’t have recognized otherwise. I am super excited about meeting new people and learning from them. Broadened horizons are always a good thing.

That I should be in bed.

I just wanted to say THANK YOU.

Thank you for being such great online friends. I have absolutely loved the interaction with you. Reading your comments. Reading your blogs. Watching your babies grow up. Hearing your heart. Thank you for celebrating with me when Liam was born and the days my books were published. Thank you for caring when I was swallowed up with the new diagnosis of food allergies and when I lost my babies. Thank you for laughing at Adam’s quotes and smiling with me at his boyish escapades. Thank you for being here.

I hope to be back …. I just don’t know how much. Meanwhile, I’ll be missing everyone like crazy!

Two boys.

Two instruments.

Sitting on a bench they made themselves.

If ONLY all summer moments were this innocuous.

The rental lease is signed. After two months of agonizing over no showings, we listed the house on the rental market also. Boom bang. One week later our realtor called with not one but two showings. Completely inconvenient timing. I was getting ready to fly to Oregon the next day and I needed every minute of my day at home. Two hours out for you to show the house? Groan. I called David and ranted. Really, underneath it all was a deceptively hidden layer of “I’m struggling with saying goodbye.” It helped so much to realize what was going on. To acknowledge the hard part and let it go {again}.

An hour later another realtor called. “I have someone who wants to see your house on Wednesday.” You have got to be kidding me. I hemmed and hawed and told her what was up. She said she’d see if her client could come later after I’d gone.

Tuesday she called to switch up the timing. I was scrubbing the basement within an inch of its life. You know something big is happening when you start cleaning the windows of the storage barn, the internal soap dispenser of the washer, and the crevices of an unfinished basement used for storage.

“So, the person who was going to come at three o’clock wants to come earlier and I said fine, but that he’d have to come at one o’clock because there is a second showing at two. He was very unhappy about that and said he may want to rent your house on the spot.”

We’ve been a little leery of renting. What if they default? What if they trash the house? What if….what if…. It feels vulnerable. But for me, it also feels like a much more gentle goodbye.

I really, really, REALLY wanted to meet whoever was going to rent. Even our realtor recommended it, but things got a little sticky with me leaving for the weekend. After a bit of discussion she suggested I be there for the showing instead of leaving. I was totally stoked and when she heard my level of enthusiasm, she said she’d purposely come a few minutes late to give me some one on one time with them. It’s crazy how much you can sense about people within five minutes of being with them.

1:00 arrived and so did the first potential renters. I went out to say hello not sure if they’d be friendly or feel irritated that the realtor wasn’t there. They bounced right out of the car with their two teenage boys, the youngest of whom has downs syndrome. Seeing him made me feel safe with them. In a world of people who sue their doctor’s because they would have aborted the child in their arms had they known he was handicapped, seeing a family embracing their child even in something like a house showing was strangely reassuring. I knew our values jibed at least a little. In the next five minutes, I discovered they have eleven kids (blow me away) and that almost all of them are married and scattered throughout the northwest. He told me he’s an engineer and being transferred to a plant about twenty minutes from our house. They built their own seven bedroom home soon after they were married. Since he is so close to retirement, they’re renting out their own home because they want to go back to it. Sound familiar?

We got inside the front door and I offered to give them a tour or let them look around at will. She said, “I want to see your laundry.” Great. The basement. Definitely the most unimpressive room in the house. So much for first impressions. From there he and I went to the barn to see the mower because he was worried about the grass. She went back up to the main floor. When we all met again, I offered them a glass of tea and to my surprise they accepted. No airs going on here.

I asked if she’d been upstairs and she said no. He said, “Anything up there is a bonus. I’m ready to write the check.” We were in our bedroom, the last room on our tour, when the realtor arrived. “Where’s the application,” he asked. “I’m ready to sign.” Minutes earlier, he’d literally begged me to rent the house to them. “This is our fourth trip to Virginia and they’ve all been dead ends.” His job starts June fourth. Clearly, they are getting desperate.

Instead of taking the application and returning it, he sat at the kitchen table and filled it out. Meanwhile the boys and I sat in the living room. “Hmm, I just noticed something I didn’t notice,” B said. “No TV.”

Nope, no TV.

“We don’t either,” he answered. I was in shock. The house is wired for cable access, but it surprised me to have him notice the lack of an actual set.

It wasn’t long until I was wishing David was there. I mean, we’d agreed I have a stronger intuition when reading people, but I wasn’t prepared for setting lease agreements on the spot. One year or two or three? I said two then freaked and called David who said the same thing. It makes the most sense. Our bare minimum stay at camp is two years. Knowing we have tenants for that entire time is incredibly, marvelously freeing.

On Tuesday David and I had started talking seriously about rental logistics and the possibility of leaving a few things in storage in the basement. Even before I mentioned it, they were already offering that we could leave things there.

We told them we’d probably be back one weekend a year to do annual maintenance like exterior painting. They said, “Fine, but I don’t mind helping with that.” It is huge to me that they built their own house because, like they say at camp, “You value what you work for.” I just don’t see them trashing the house.

And then I got the biggest surprise of all. As they were leaving, she leaned in and said, “I just want you to know there won’t be any smoking or drinking or partying going on here. We don’t do that kind of stuff. We want to glorify God and we want everything in our home to glorify Him, too.”

Honestly, we had no intentions of discriminating based on religion. It never even entered our thought process at any point along the way. We only wanted to know we could trust them not to rip us off. To have someone say, “We’ve been praying and praying and running into dead ends and when we saw your house, we knew this was it.” Well, that almost gives me goosebumps. Because we’ve been praying and praying, too, and not until we understood that God might want us to try renting the house instead of selling could their prayers and ours be answered.

If this were the sixtieth chapter of Genesis, we’d probably be building an altar of remembrance. “That they might remember how the Lord led them out of Virginia,” you know.

In retrospect, it feels so incredible. Yes, it was horrible to live with so much unknown and wonder if we’d read God wrong. But now that it’s over, I look back in total amazement that we only had to go through two actual showings (they’re crazy time-consuming).

They’re moving to Virginia to start his job June fourth. The earliest available date we listed was June 25th. Don’t ask me WHY I thought someone might want to start renting it about the middle of July. Perhaps it’s time to channel that little bit of adrenalin junkie hiding inside.

And while I’m running and packing, y’all can all join us in prayer some more. We need a house to live in and Brian keeps running into dead ends in Maryland. Can’t wait to see how the story gets written!

*** and this is where I thank God for three hour road trips to Maryland that let me type ***

Liam celebrated his fourth birthday! I love, love this stage with the boys. Independent. Fun play time (bat and ball beats pushing trucks on the floor any day). Easy to buckle boosters. Funny stories. The other day when I told someone (in her fifties), I love this stage she said, “I’m so glad to be done with all of that.” It was like one of those moments of clarity. I knew I enjoyed this stage of life; but hearing her say that made me realize how MUCH I am loving it. They can stay this age for two more years as far as I’m concerned.

I really wanted to invite all our family over one last time before we moved. At that point, we still didn’t know when or even IF we’d get to move; but we were moving in faith. Liam’s birthday seemed like a great time for a get together. It’s always fun to celebrate with lots of cousins!

I love that we’ve found a gluten and dairy free carnita recipe. It tastes aMAZing and no one would ever guess it’s allergy friendly. Liam was just thrilled to have cake! I made the top layer gluten free and let him cheat with cream cheese frosting. Sometime I’d like to have a frosting recipe that works like decorator frosting, but doesn’t make you gag when you eat it. Seriously, whoever came up with mixing crisco and powdered sugar together and called it frosting …………

Smooth or not … and in this case not …. at least cream cheese icing is like vacation for your taste buds.

Liam has been strumming an air guitar for months. He is so obsessed with music that if something started playing while he was eating his breakfast, he would jump off his chair and strum for a few minutes. How could we not get him a toy guitar? I wouldn’t know either. He plays and plays and plays and Adam tries to get a few minutes in whenever he can.

Love that little boy who is so little, yet so grown up.

Liam the night of his birthday: “I fink it’s birfday take dat makes you turn one year older.”

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Carnitas

Mix together:

1 cup salt
4 tbsp garlic powder
4 tbsp onion powder
2 tbsp ground thyme
2 tbsp ground bay leaves
2 tbsp black pepper
2 tbsp celery seed
2 tbsp Hungarian paprika (I used regular)

Rub onto a Boston Butt roast and let it sit for a few hours. Or if you’re like me, rub it in minutes before your husband throws it on the grill. Grill until finished.

Shred.

Put it in the crock pot with:
beans
garlic
onions
cumin
a little hot sauce
and some broth (chicken or beef, I used both) to keep it moist.

Simmer it all day.

Layer corn tortillas with meat, cabbage (or better yet, cabbage slaw, but I don’t have time to post the recipe), cilantro, avocado (cheese and sour cream, if you’re dairy free).

Inhale. Well, not literally.