My Faith and Joy… and Boys!

I love our new house.  I love the design, I love the location, but I especially love the driveway.  The FLAT driveway (or at least, flat relative to our last house.  Our current driveway has a slight incline, but the former driveway was reminiscent of a black diamond ski slope).

At our other house, the girls never could have driven their ATVs without me preparing to catch them at the bottom as they hurtled toward me at warp-speed.   

Here, they can mosey along without fear of massive bodily injury (okay, maybe THEY never feared that, but I sure did).  

Hooray for our newfound non-death-defying outdoor playtime! 

Thanks to a bunch of our friends and family over the past few days (to whom we are deeply indebted for the use of their arms, legs and backs – oh, and heads, since there were a few logistical challenges to overcome), we are now comfortably and happily moved into our new home.

The girls spent the evening romping around, goofing off for everyone and even breaking in the new house with the first stair-related injury.  Poor Susie tumbled down our back patio steps, giving herself a significant shiner in the process.  Fortunately, her injuries were still minor enough that she was instantly soothed by a handful of potato chips from our fast-thinking friend Jon.

I failed to document the moving process in pictures like I had planned (it’s tough to wield a camera while carrying boxes), but hopefully you’ll enjoy these few photographs I took at the end of the busy day.   

The girls were relieved to find we had brought their favorite TV rocker to the new house:

And they cooled off from all their new-house-running by dipping their toes in the pool:

Here’s some of the crew enjoying their hard-earned rest (well, Becky’s wasn’t really hard-earned, since all she did was show up after the heavy lifting was done):

And here I am with my dear friend Carrie, without whom I simply couldn’t have made this move with my sanity intact:

And here are the girls enjoying their delicious moving-day cake, courtesy of Alli:

What a day it has been.  We feel so blessed to have a roof over our heads and friends and family on whom we can depend.  I think I’m going to now go and collapse into our new bed and hopefully not get startled when I wake up in a new room!   

We’re moving.

It’s been in the works for a long time, but it hasn’t been official until now.  We closed on the house yesterday, and now I find myself with the daunting task of finishing the packing process with two curious toddlers underfoot.  I’ve actually been boxing up belongings for several weeks.  I expected the girls to be more unsettled by watching me slowly disassemble our home, but their only reaction thus far has been delight at having so many boxes to climb in and upon. 

I’m experiencing a multitude of emotions as our moving day approaches.  We’re moving to a house about a half an hour away from our current one, which brings us closer to church and closer to Jim’s work – both very exciting developments.  I’m also thrilled that I’ll be able to have a dedicated play area for the girls, as well as a large, relatively flat yard with a (safely fenced) pool for them to enjoy.  But it makes me so sad to think about not being next door to my in-laws, and leaving the only home these girls have ever known.  Jim and I built this house when we were married in 2004, and I can vividly remember walking around the unfinished rooms, envisioning our lives within these walls.  I have so many wonderful memories here, and so it is with a few tears that I am packing up our belongings and setting out on this new family adventure.  But I am thankful that the girls are young enough that they are simply excited about the changes.  When we visited the new house this past weekend, they joyfully ran circles around the empty rooms, giddy that they had such a large new place to explore.  And I know that once the emotional and physical upheaval of moving is over, I will join them in their excitement.  I may even run around in giddy circles! 

Vacationing with toddlers (two sets of twin toddlers, no less – ours and Jim’s sister’s) isn’t exactly relaxing, but it is lots of fun. 

There were a few moments of leisure time… 

…but mostly it was GO time!

More pictures to come!