Goodbye California!

It seemed as if California wanted to hold onto us for a few more days than we had planned, but today we finally made it out. We are in Reno tonight at my mother and father in law's house.

We ate a lovely meal with them and my sister in law's family that ended with the grand finale of their Boxer nipping at our Lab under the table and their giant St. Bernard coming under the table to see what was happening. A scuttle ensued and the whole dining room table was moving around. I stood on the chair with wine glass in hand so as not to get my ankles nipped at while Hottie Husband and his mom tried to get the dogs. Dad in law's wine glass broke and cut his finger and then the St. Bernard tipped his chair over. Except for the cut, nobody got hurt. It was hilarious. Good comic relief for the last few days of stress.

Today when we were in Bishop, waiting again for the uhaul to get fixed, after letting the kids swim in the indoor pool and then taking them to the really beautiful park next door to the hotel, I looked at Hottie Husband and said, "I'm making the best of it, but I really just want to go home." But, we don't have a home. Everything we own is in the stinky uhaul. And we are on the road. And the dog has been under my feet and breathing on me the whole way. And I don't know where anything is because there was such a frenzy of packing those last few days and it all seems so unorganized. And the baby cries because he wants out of his car seat and he has a cold, rosy cheeks and the runniest nose ever. And my boys are out of sorts and arguing because they are processing leaving everything familiar to them. And I don't have any clean underwear because I only planned on being gone for three days!!!

But, then we got here and it is sort of like home. Much better than a hotel. I can wash our clothes and organize our stuff and start anew.

There is more to tell about bad uhaul people who knew our truck had faulty wiring before they rented it to us and Mister Luke having to sadly leave his 8 year old goldfish in my sister's care and losing a jacket on the freeway and then finding it and frantically giving away a bunch of our things because we ran out of room in the truck, but those will have to wait for another day because I am now exhausted and writing terrible run-on sentences.

Stuck!

After teary goodbye's to each room of our home, the basketball court, the pool and then even more teary goodbye's to our church and our amazing family and friends, we got all of an hours drive out of LA before we had to stop. Actually, as soon as we started, the UHAUL was having trouble.

So now we are in a hotel in Lancaster. Wooo Hooo! But, the kids think it is a great adventure and the dog thinks it is the most exciting thing ever and HH is super patient so all is good.

Just delayed!

Saving grace is that the hotel has a computer so I can blog. Boy, have I missed it.

I will be twittering updates on our journey as we go along if you care to check back on my sidebar.

I had a dream a few nights ago that HH and I were driving the UHAUL and it dove off a cliff. I thought this thing has so much stuff in it and it is so heavy, there is no way we will survive. It fell and fell and I woke up before it landed.

Could it be that I feel I am diving into everything unknown to me and it is very scary?
Could I have had this dream because I have no idea what our new home looks like nor have I seen the gently used new car my hero of a dad found for me in South Dakota? He's driving it to Montana for us from South Dakota. He's my hero because of my dreadful car dealership experience last week that I still need to tell you about.
Could it be that I dreamt this dream of falling with everything we own because we just left everyone and everything that is familiar and precious to us?
People keep saying to us- you are so courageous, so brave.
We don't feel brave. But, we do feel filled with faith and trust and a slight bit of trepidation.
We do feel sure that if we do fall, there is a Father right there with us, ready to catch us.

System Overload

I think I am on system overload. I don't really feel stressed at all, but when I sat down to write something tonight, I was blank and I am never blank. I usually have too many topics to choose from. There is so much going on, but nothing that my brain can work into something cleverly cohesive at this point.

Escrow closed early today... I know... unheard of!

We are... dancing and singing and moving to the groovin and... just when it hit me... I don't know how it goes here...

PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC WHITE BOY!!!!!!!! (now go back and sing that whole part)

And we get to stay through Saturday, when we will be loading up the moving truck.

We are trying to find a new suburban to buy and trying to get rid of Pig Pen! I am eager to say good riddance to Pig Pen ( I have to say that I stole that name from my friend Jen who calls her car that.) She has great names for things. She once told her children that if they didn't behave she would have to call the babysitter named Marge the Sarge who was really tough on children- you know- like a drill sergeant.

Anyway, so finding a new car alone can be exhausting. But EXCITING!

My computer is also back in the hospital. This time for a hardware problem. But, there is good news and some information I need to share with you if you happen to own a 2006 Mac core2. The logic board is going bad on many of them. It causes your computer to freeze up and the graphics to look all wacky sometimes. It is about an $800.00 part to fix and not covered by warranty. However, I took mine into our Apple store to the Genius Bar and they said they would fix it at no charge. But, they had to order the part so my mother was nice enough to loan her laptop to me so I would not be out of touch again.

We also spent about 2 hours in the Verizon store tonight switching service and getting phones. Very delightful with all four boys in tow. Very delightful I must say! Well, Mister Luke was delighted anyway. He was able to get the cell phone we had promised him for his birthday. It was really cute helping him enter the phone numbers of his Grandma, his Grandpa, his Great-Grandma and his cousins. He had to make sure that Grandma Betty's number was in his phone. So cute.

So put that all on top of all other things associated with moving out of state and that puts me on OVERLOAD. But it is ALL GOOD!

So even though I cannot write a clever cohesive post at this point, I am still

dancing... and singing.... and movin to the groovin...

Stretching

I used to be able to do the splits.

Those days are long past.

Now, when I try to do them... well... it hurts!

Those muscles are tight not looking at this point and comfortable in the way they are normally used.

They don't want to go past or further than what is required of them on a routine basis.

During a worship song at church yesterday, I looked around at all the people we will be moving away from and thought of all the comfortable places and people in this town for me and suddenly realized that I am being STRETCHED.

And tears rolled down my face because

stretching-

it hurts.

Out of the comfortable and familiar, away from my loved ones, there will be stretching

and growth

and maturity

and all those things that are good really,

but things that create discomfort in the process.

stretching!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

REST

I'm Back from Computerlessland with Halloween Pics!

I have survived my computer's long stay in the hospital with minor withdrawal symptoms including a slight twitch, some wandering aimlessly and a general missing of my connection to you all. But I have to say that it was well worth it because this baby is working like a dream. Oh, how I love cliches.

So, without further ado, here are some Halloween festivity photos. I have so much more to share with you that I can barely contain myself to this topic, but I AM GOING TO TRY because it is late and I am sleepy and it all might come out as gibberish.

We have been

doing some

pumpkin gut scooping

and carving look alike

jack o lanterns.

notice the two bottom teeth

Mister Luke carved his first pumpkin completely by himself.

He was quite proud of those teeth.

and Jackie Boy just wanted teardrop eyes and vampire teeth

and to love up on his jack-o-lantern a bit.

After all, they share a name.

Then we roasted us some pumpkin seeds which is

a tradition in our family.

They are yummy!

The boys ate them up.

We headed to the school's annual Halloween Carnival where Jackie Boy

volunteered for this job and Toots decided to throw these sponges.

This was a favorite. I mean, who doesn't like trying to grab

a bunch of money in a wind machine?

Too bad the money wasn't real because Toots got ahold of a lot of it.

But, we did win some of these-

cakes

at the

cake walk.

Guess how many cakes these boys showed up with?

FOUR!

FOUR CAKES they won at the cake walk- one for each of them.

So we took the baby out of the stroller and put the cakes in there instead.

This was the most creative one.

Luckily, my mom was having a party so we donated the cakes to the party.

whew!

Did you know that I have this adorable baby who is 7 months old tomorrow?

Did you know that his blog name was this inspiration for this year's costume?

Well, if you didn't, now you do.

I present to you my LITTLE BEAR!

He was absolutely delectable that night in his costume.

My mom's best friend who has always been like an aunt to me just loves him

and she reads my blog so I just had to share a picture of these two.

Here are all four boys dressed up together.

Little Bear just can't get over that blue guy hovering above him.

And here is our beautiful crew heading out to trick or treat. My beautiful niece is a lion tamer, Jackie Boy is a member of the Blue Man Group (he had friends that dressed up with him), my nephew is a gangster in pink, Mister Luke is a blow up sumo wrestler, then we have Jack from Jack in the Box, Little Bear as himself and a very super duper cool in his favorite color ever blue Power Ranger.

Hope you all had a fun time celebrating too.

Thanks for letting this computer deprived blogger share so belatedly.

REST