Drowning in Boxes and Overwhelmed by Blessings: Our 3rd Home in One Year

Where do I begin?!  A year ago, I lived in a trailer in a quiet trailerhood over by the hospital.  We moved into that trailer after being married a little over a year during a Christmas break.  I remember painting without any electricity turned on, and the paint was so thick in the January cold that one coat definitely did the trick!!!  All of the rooms were 12 feet wide, but the trailer was 70 feet long.  I got my exercise for sure walking back and forth from what soon became my daughter's nursery in the back of the house (moved there in January and got pregnant in February), to the laundry room in the middle, and then our bedroom all the way in the front, facing the street.  We took many walks on "the loop" that made our little trailerhood, and we stopped often to chat with neighbors... often being able to wave at each other from our kitchen sink windows since they were about 20 feet apart :)


Then we moved, and not just to anywhere, but back into the house we first lived in when we were married.  We lost a second bathroom and about 100 sq. feet moving back into this house... We moved, went on vacation, came home, started back to school (I was a teacher, and my hubby was a recruiter for a university), and got pregnant with our second baby!  That was all within a 2-month span.

Then when our second child was 4-5 weeks old, we started moving into a home that is twice the sq. feet, but only about 3 blocks away!  Now, our son is almost 8 weeks old, and in that time I have been unloading boxes, organizing bedrooms, setting up the kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom.  I have been nursing an infant every 3 hours, and trying to pay attention to my 2 1/2 year old daughter.  I have been going to doctor's appointments, cleaning out my classroom (after 10 years of teaching), and trying to transition myself from a working mom to a stay-at-home mom.  And during this time, I haven't really seen much of my husband because he has been fixing up our old home getting it ready for closing, finishing moving all our stuff, fixing things, roofing the new house, still working full-time (actually, full and a half time because he has a part-time job as well as a college minister), and whatever projects I have needed him to do.  He also has been mowing and hauling off overgrown brush from our fences... all while helping me take pictures as we go!

Since we have moved in we have not had internet this entire time, and as a blogger... that is a little inconvenient!  We didn't have air conditioning for a week and a half.  Our fairly-new garbage disposal was broken because apparently the previous owners liked to put metal down it!  There were leaks in almost every room that had water, except one bathroom!  We had to get a completely new A/C unit and garbage disposal.  We still have a leaky dishwasher, which is supposed to get fixed next week sometime, and we got internet today!!!  Like 2 hours ago!  Woohoo!

And while I know it looks like we go searching for struggle and chaos, we really don't.  I know it looks like we don't like peace or quiet... are you kidding?!  After the last year we have had of craziness, I promise we so cherish those times of sitting on the couch watching a nerdy documentary on Prohibition (no kidding, like a 9-part series) and eating ice cream together seems like a sexy vacation to a remote island!  And for every stresser, there have been multiple moments of grace, blessing, and relief!

Had to grade papers and do parent conferences over the phone while nursing a newborn at home, but I got to miss the last month of school with paid leave, still didn't even use all my paid leave, and got paid for my missed days by short-term disability insurance!

Our new home had a ton of unknown things wrong with it, but since we got buyers' insurance we were only out-of-pocket very little compared to what we would have paid without it!

My husband and I have been working so much and so hard that we actually didn't have the typical post-baby slump in our relationship because we were both very aware we weren't getting to spend a lot of time together, so we fought for the time!  We even stayed home for both Mother's and Father's Day and the annual family reunion so we could catch up on just being us and being a family!

And yes, we moved again, but since uncluttering our previous home for showings, when we moved, we rediscovered a bunch of stuff we can be, and had been, living without... so now we get to sell it and make some money!

See, blessed.

Sure, I am sick of seeing cardboard boxes in every room, and we still have yet to be able to park a car in our new 2-car garage, but we are settling in and enjoying making this house our home!  And starting this weekend, we hope to start making it a home where people are always welcome, ministry happens, and our children grow in their knowledge of our good and loving Lord!  A wise, and what I would consider to be very wealthy, woman recently said to me about her own home that "If I don't use it to bless others, then why have it?"  I want that kind of attitude about everything I ever own... especially since anything we ever own belongs to the Lord.

I am only a steward. A happy steward!