I can't decide...

I know...Long time, no blog.  WAY too much has happened since February to even start to catch up, so I am going to give you the short version.

Family, PTA, and the great travel softball team had us WAY busy in the spring and summer and in the middle of the Softball World Series, we got the news that we were getting transferred back to Ft. Worth!!  So very excited we were, the only exception was that our preacher at our congregation had just announced his resignation the Sunday before.  MAJOR letdown, but God is using them all over the place with this move and I know He is working in our congregation from their move as well. 

So...in less than one month...we found a new house (which we LOVE and hope to get to stay forever!!), sold our old house (praise!  We even got what we paid for it...and in this market...that is saying something!!) and got all moved in the Friday before school started.  People, let me tell ya...if you don't see God working in your life, you need to open your eyes!!  He moved mountains for our family in July and August and I am soo thankful.

So...now what?  Honestly....coming back isn't easy.  2 years is a long time.  People have moved on and relationships change.  I know that.  We just have to make ourselves available to our friends and hope that they remember that we are back, too. They are involved in their stuff that happened while we were gone and we aren't a part of that now.  Maybe my not being on certain committees and certain groups is good.  It will give me time to observe and reflect and what is going on around me and choose what I want to get involved in now. 

BUT....It's hard to not be SO involved at the girl's school.  I love their school.  It's great and it's tiny.  I love that EVEN more.  Grace really LOVES her new school and I am so very thankful.  Susie is good wherever we put that little one....but Grace was the big bad 5th grader and was pretty much ruling the school at Stanley.  I was really worried when we found out about the move for her.  The 5th grade teachers were all begging to have her in their class and here she was starting all over, with not a lot of time to make her mark.  But, Grace will be Grace and will bloom where she is planted.  I'm not worried now.  She loves her school.

Being up at Stanley Elementary, kept me plugged in and going all the time.  But, the new school doesn't let you bring siblings up to school, so I'm going to have to restrict my "helping days" to Tuesdays and Thursdays when Parker is up at his little school.  When I wasn't up working at school...I was eating lunch with my PTA gals.  I miss them tons.  I'm sure Aaron doesn't miss the lunch bills, but I miss the conversation. 

The past two weeks...I have been dying to have some lunch conversation.  I got to go to lunch with girlfriends a few weeks ago and I didn't want to leave...I'm sure they were sick of me, but I loved it! Hopefully things will start to get back to normal for me, soon.  Goodness, I already have a room mom's breakfast time on Monday and I'm so excited to meet some other moms at our school and get to know them!

Me and Parkerman are having a blast...I just miss all the mommy time.  I think what might just do me in is Wednesdays.  From 10am-2pm, Parker would go to our church and they had a babysitter that was paid for by the women's ministry.  It was awesome!!  All of us mom's did a Beth Moore Bible Study and had great discussion time while our kids were being taken care of by some great ladies.  Then, we all went to lunch KID FREE with each other.  It was SUCH a blessing to me and we got so many other young moms involved this way, too! Our ladies bible study here is pretty short and sweet. Maybe I will come in and stir the pot a little with Parker!! :)  We will see...our first meeting is next Wednesday!

This big house is pretty quiet on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I have to find something to do!!  Just don't tell Aaron yet....he will make me go out and get a real job! I'll post pictures of the new place as soon as I get it all clean and stuff hanging on the walls.  Until then....I'm looking for someone to go to lunch with...wanna join me??

Empty House, full heart!

I'm sitting on a blow-up mattress in our kitchen, writing from Aaron's laptop. The movers have come, packed up all of our stuff and have gone and the house is now empty. The kids spent the night with good friends and are with them today while we clean here at the house. The carpet cleaner men are here right now so I'm trying to stay out of their way...yes, I can blog!! :)

I just want to say a "Internet thank-you" to all of our friends and church family that have gone way above and beyond the call of duty the past few weeks. I KNOW we could not have done this move without them. We love ya'll so much and are so thankful for such a loving church family. We've had some wonderful send-offs from friends and our small group....tomorrow is our last day with our family at Legacy Church of Christ. Man, that is going to be a hard one.

I'm going to go and wash some windows now...the carpets guys are out of this room and I can get up!!

We may have an empty house, but our hearts are full of love for all our friends!!

Love ya'll, Mean it!

Denial....

I think that is the state that I am. Denial...not Texas.

I keep hearing people talk but I have just been putting all the "miss you" comments in the back of my head and not really hearing them because I just don't want to think about it. Really, I don't. Tomorrow the movers come to pack up the house. Today is my last day with my things in our house. Our house that we picked out to raise our kids in, the house that we picked out to have people over for dinner and pool parties (the pool was coming in next summer). And I really know it's not about the house and the things. If anyone knows that...it is us. Really, I could care less about our stuff...it's not that great in the first place....really, with 3 kids we are not into "stuff."

Goodness, I'll have all of these things when we get to Houston. I think it is all of the things that I wanted to do in this house with my kids and our family HERE. I know, I'm thinking selfish but this is about the time that I break down in the moving process and for some stinkin' reason (you FRIENDS!! :) ) it is so much incredibly harder this time than it has ever been. Watching the kids with their friends at church here is what makes it all so hard for me. I know that is what is making it so hard with this move. Our kids have never been old enough to have those "best friends" that they will actually miss. Looking at them and wanting them to have those relationships when they go to high school and college...ugh!

I know, I'm being a baby now, but it's my turn to cry and then I'll be done until we get in the car on Sunday. At that point, I think I will cry all the way out of town. I know the kids will meet other kids and life will go on. I do. I'm not a moving rookie. I've been though it before. Yadda, Yadda, Yadda.....

This time it just hurts. Plain and simple. I love our church family here so much and it just hurts to go. Our lives and relationships are centered at our church and I love that. At any given time, I can come back go to church and see everyone that I want to see here in the big city. And I love that. We will find a new church in our new city....right now it just hurts to leave here. I know God has a plan and I'm all for it. Just right now, I want to cry and be sad for a little bit.

Love ya'll....Mean it.

We're chillin

The kids and I are in Searcy at my parents house. I know, I know...I should be at home, but why?? It's summer and we are about to move a good 9 hours away from my parents in a few weeks so we are going to have a fun visit while we can. Also, I came to pick up the kids and stay for a few days while the house gets on the market. Little did we know...

Very long story made short...the 2 realtors who are hired by the relocation company to give us their "opinion" on how much the house should sell for, had numbers that were over $40,000 a part...ugg! So the relo company had to send our "case" to a third party to review and decide on what price we should put the house at. Everyday I would call and ask our relo coordinator what was going on...I'm sure she already is tired of me, but goodness...I want to get my house on the market!! Aaron's company will buy our house after 3 months on the market so they don't want it mispriced, so they get one of the final says on the house price. Anyway, all of that leads to the fact that our house is STILL not on the market and I'm a little miffed, but I'll get over it.

Tomorrow is Parker's 3rd birthday and we are going to celebrate it at my sister's house with a pool party. He keeps walking around saying, "Today I am 2, but tomorrow I will be 3!!" He is just a little excited! So, for now we are staying here at my parents house and will be home on Thursday when Aaron gets to come home too. That way we will all be at home together...I just really don't want to be there without him...it's just not home if we all aren't together!

Why my kids are excited about Houston

Everyone keeps asking how the kids are about the move. Very good question, after all they have great friends and so many fun things that they are all involved in here in Ft. Worth. Two weeks ago, Aaron was down in Houston teaching a class in the training center for another instructor (kinda convenient, if you ask me...they just sucked him in...) and he was staying in a really nice hotel in Houston.

School is out, daddy is out of town...so what do we do? We go and visit Daddy for the weekend and have a blast!! We didn't know we were moving. We had not a clue. Had we've known then what we know now....hmmm. I don't think we would have been doing all of these fun things.....

We went to the Museum of Natural Sciences. This is one of their favorite places to go when we visit Houston. Now Grace wants to get a "Museum Pass" so that she can all of the time!

There is a beautiful garden next door to the Museum and it was full of thousands of roses. You name it, it was there. The kids loved walking though all of the flowers and seeing how each rose smelled differently.

I think we spend more time in the Museum district than anywhere when we go down to Houston. I honestly think that my kids think it is a play city!

We also ate out every meal, went to see Night at the Smithsonian and UP! Yes, they haven't even thought about the impact of the move quite completely....It will hit them when we get down there and their friends are still here, but otherwise my kids think that Houston is a party city.

Yes, it is official

Aaron got the "official" letter from his company last week and he accepted the transfer to Houston. We leave on Friday morning to start our house hunting trip and Aaron starts work on Monday. His company doesn't mess around with the whole moving thing. They tell you that you are going to move and then you pretty much start very soon after. I think this move is already been the hardest and we haven't even put the house on the market or gone and looked at houses.

When we moved here, we thought this was the last move. We thought we were going to get to retire here...goodness, we've already moved 7 times in (almost) 11 years of marriage and we aren't even in the military! We picked out this house because it was in one of the top schools in a great school district. I could picture my kids hanging out with their friends in the game room upstairs as teenagers. We picked out this house with that and so many other things in mind.

But, as we have learned and I'm sure you have as well, sometimes God has other plans. Bigger and better plans that we have no idea are in store for us. I know that is the case here. As much as I dread leaving my friends who have become sisters and uprooting my kids from their wonderful friendships at church and at school....God is in control and He ALWAYS has a plan. So, over the next month, you may have to remind me of that plan and that is okay. I can look back at every single one of our moves and see so very much of God's work in our lives. When we get to Houston and can look back, I will see that God put us in a wonderful, caring and loving church home where we have made some of our closest friends, ever. That will never change and for that, I am so eternally thankful.

Grace left this morning for the Frio River for the next 6 days with a family from church. They asked her to go on vacation with them months ago and now again, God is showing his plan by making their trip the same weekend that we needed to send the kids somewhere so that we might get down to Houston and house hunt. What a blessing and she gets to have a blast with her friend, Jackson!!

Susie and Parker leave this afternoon with 2 friends that are taking their sweet daughters to Summer Experience at Harding. Again, I totally see God's work in this trip. I mean really, for them to go to Searcy, have room in their car, and want to take a 2 year old and a 5 year old with them?? If you look for God's plan...it is so there, right before your eyes so many times.

Aaron leaves for a teaching trip to Shreveport this afternoon and I will have the house to myself to finish cleaning so that we can put it on the market as soon as we get back. I'm going to be a crazy cleaning woman for the next 40 hours or so....When he gets back Thursday night, we'll figure out what we need to do and then early Friday morning we head out to Katy to look at some houses with the realtor.

So...now that you have read this long post...what can you do?? Pray, pray and pray some more...I could go through the list, but I think you know what. Pray for traveling safely for all of us, pray we find a house, pray we sell our house here....etc, etc, etc. God knows.

Love ya'll. Mean it.

Too much stuff on my mind....

Oh my word...I know I say that phrase so much but it is true for our past 24 hours.

You know us, we have lived in the far corners of the U.S. Really....Alaska, S. Texas, Florida....You name it, we have probably lived there and loved it. We have loved every part of our lives and our moving, but here is where we love being right now and it is home for us.

Aaron called yesterday morning from work, "Hey, do you want to move to Houston?" I totally thought he was kidding...you know with the whole swine flu thing going around and all and just brushed him off. I told him to call me back later when he was really serious.

He called back 10 minutes later and I was crying buckets 30 seconds into the conversation. With cutbacks and people getting fired left and right, his company is "re-shuffling" everyone around to keep their "best" players (as we were told yesterday.) They offered Aaron a position in Houston. For the first time in his career with his company, Aaron told his boss no....He told him that we love our family here, our kids are in school and we really don't want to leave. His boss told him that he respected him for the decision, but the "powers that be" may come back with a different answer.

Who knows?? I honestly don't even know what to pray for at this point. Well...that's not telling the truth because I was honestly on my knees begging God to let us stay here yesterday morning. I know what I WANT to happen, but does God have another plan? I don't know that answer.

God has opened wonderful opportunities up for us EVERYWHERE we have gone in the past 12 years. We have wonderful friends...all over the United States because he led us all of these neat and far off places.

Am I thankful???
You bet!!

Do I want to move again??
NOOO!

Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord, whatever the decision may be that comes. He loves us and He is always there.

Am I crying right now?
Yes, I love my church family here, dearly. I love my children's friends and hate the thought of uprooting my kids from them and their home.

Will we be okay? Yes. God will watch us and protect us where ever we go.... It's just a little too hard to think about right now.

Whatever Aaron's bosses come back with, whenever they come back with their answer....we will be fine....I just thought I would let ya'll know about our past 24 hours so that you don't wonder why I just might not be smiling quite so big or have some big streaks down my face.

Love ya'll....Mean it.