Highlights From The Move And The Past Two Weeks

Well, we're here! And by "here" I mean living in our new house and semi-settled. We still have a long way to go before we're fully settled - we need to hang pictures on the walls, get window treatments, and just decorate in general, plus we still have a good bit of stuff in cabinets and closets in our old house. But, we have all the essentials at the new house and it's starting to feel like home. We officially moved in the Monday after Easter, so it's been a crazy almost 2 weeks. Let me see if I can briefly sum up the past 2 weeks or so of our lives...

On Good Friday, my dad and brothers helped David move a lot of furniture to our new house. They didn't rent a moving truck that day since we weren't officially moving until Monday. They used my dad's truck and our van and were able to move basically all of our big furniture besides our beds. It was weird to see our old house slowly being emptied. It made the move a little easier emotionally because that house no longer really felt like home.

The next day, on Saturday, we had our church Easter egg hunt. That was a fun time! Jude was obviously super excited about finding eggs. Hahaha!

A little time with Bop Bop cheered him up :) Oh, and a sucker ;)

We had a wonderful Easter Sunday! We were so excited to worship with our church family. We always love Sundays, but there's just something so special about Easter Sunday.

We had Easter lunch with David's parents, and that was great!

Then Monday was the big day! Moving day! This was also Aubrey's last week of school, so while she was at school, the little kids and I just got out of the house and stayed out of the way while the moving was happening. We picked Aubrey up from school, and headed "home." It was so weird going to a different house! Everything was moved, but none of the beds were set up yet, so no nap for Alaina. It made for a long day. It was 10:00 before we finally got Alaina's crib set up and got everyone to bed. Whew!

My brothers were SO helpful on moving day. They helped David move furniture for almost 10 hours that day. We appreciated them so much!

Moving everything out of our old house of course left it a huge mess. It's amazing what you find when you start moving furniture. I'll tell you one thing we found: a LOT of DUST! David came home after lunch on Tuesday, and I went and spent hours cleaning our old house to get it "show ready." While I was there cleaning, someone actually came to look at it. Talk about embarrassing! I apologized profusely for the mess and tried to just stay out of the way. Ha!

Aubrey had her last day of school on Wednesday, and I had to go back over to the old house to finish cleaning. I finally got it done, thankfully!

The next few days just consisted of trying to get unpacked and settled in a new house. We also had a lot of people in and out of our house during this time trying to get our internet set up, our security system installed, our new fence built, etc. I'll be glad when I don't have people coming and going constantly!

This is the pre fence view of our backyard from an upstairs window. It's so peaceful.

I know everything looks SO sparse in these pictures, but it's where we are right now, and it needs to be documented :)

 

Saturday was an exciting day! It was Aubrey's end of the year program at school! The whole school did a little musical/play, and it was so cute! Aubrey had a little line and her class did a ballet and tap routine. SO precious!!

Things got a little crazy at the beginning of this week. We were supposed to get really bad weather on Monday, and I was STRESSED to the max. I couldn't believe that we had had our tornado shelter at our old house for 2 years and literally NEVER had to use it, and a week after we moved out, they were predicting the worst weather we had had in years. Ugh. I didn't see any other option besides taking the kids and camping out at our old house. Let me tell you, hanging out in a semi empty house with 3 kids for most of the day isn't the most fun thing ever. Alaina napped in a pack n play, and the kids watched movies (I was thankful that we still had a TV and DVD player at our old house). David came and joined us that afternoon, and we ordered pizza for dinner and had a "picnic" on the kitchen floor. Ha! Then the weather really started to get rough, and I was so thankful that we were near our storm shelter. We did end up having to get in it for about 30 minutes.

Thankfully, we were all fine. When we got out of the shelter, our power was out. We were planning on spending the night at our old house (and sleeping on the floor - haha!), but with no power, we decided to go home. The bad weather was pretty much over for the night, and we wanted to sleep in our beds! ;)

We were supposed to get more bad weather on Tuesday, but THANK the LORD, it missed our area, so we were able to stay home :) We even got to eat dinner outside on our deck that night! We finally got our fence installed and I'm loving it! The kids are SO happy to be able to go outside again.

On Wednesday, I had to take the kids BACK to the old house to repair the damage we had done by being there all day Monday ;) I vacuumed and straightened everything up. We then had a picnic lunch at the park and enjoyed the PERFECT weather.

We had a normal Thursday at home (it's so exciting that life is starting to feel "normal" in the new house!) and then we went to tutoring. The weather has been so perfect the past couple of weeks, so I've been taking the kids to the church playground and letting them play after tutoring. We all love it!

Ok, so this last picture is actually dinner at Broadstreet one night, not the church playground. But it was a cute pic, and I couldn't leave my little Buddy out ;)

And then today has been another exciting day! Our adoption case worker came to our new house and looked around so that she could update our home study. That means that we're about ready to start the next step in this international adoption process! It's so exciting, but it's also overwhelming. There's just a LOT that goes into an international adoption, especially from a Hague country. But I keep reminding myself to take it one step at a time. I can't be thinking about what we'll need to do next week or next month. Just today. We're going to try to get our stuff done ASAP! We are READY for our baby to join our family!

So, that's where we are! Busy. But so thankful to be here in our new house and moving forward with our adoption plan. I really think moving was the right decision for our family. It's been amazing to be so close to church, and David has been able to run home from work several times to meet people at our house. Our friends have also been so sweet! One friend picked Aubrey up one day and took her to Spanish for me and then took her to play at her house for several hours and even fed her lunch. Other friends have offered to pick up the kids for playdates so that I can unpack. I love being close to friends. Part of the reason we wanted to move was for community, and I think it will be great. I can't wait to return the favors! We feel so blessed that the Lord has provided this home for us, and we pray that we can use it for His glory for years to come!