Big Boy Bed

Here's a good way to get your exercise in for the day.  Put your 2-year-old into a big boy bed for the first time.  Make sure his bedroom is on the second floor and that you are writing a blog post about the experience busy on the first.  Run up the stairs each time you hear his feet pitter pattering, lift his 25 pound body into your arms, walk briskly to his bed, and administer discipline of your choice.

Repeat.

And repeat.

And repeat.

Listen to the funny things that your adorable and defiant little son has to say about his first night in a big boy bed.

"I'm just going to sleep now, Mommy."
 
"Mommy, I was walking and then running."

"I need a derrink!"

"Mommy, I'm not in my bed.  I'm on my bed."

"Daddy, I'm going to get up!"

And then have a good laugh at Big Brother's speech regarding the importance of obeying Dad and Mom and staying on your bed.

Big Brother:  "Jer, if you don't want to have spankings you should just stay in your bed.  Then you can go to sleep and forget about all of the spankings you just got."

Little Brother:  "Okay."

Remember to snap a photo once he finally dozes off to sleep.

Oh, yeah...have some ice cream or chocolate ready to celebrate your success.  And to replenish your energy reserves.  ;)

Settling In

The boys are upstairs in the toy room playing with trucks.  The girls are outside riding bikes up and down the driveway.  Rachel is napping in the downstairs bedroom.  And I finally find myself without a long list of things that need to be done yesterday.

For a month now we have been moving at approximately 100 miles per hour.  Claude and I have kept very late nights trying to get through all that needed to be packed, cleaned, tied up, set up, unloaded, or put away.  In between the packing and unpacking stages we managed to drive our little family from Texas to Virginia without any major issues - not even a bout of motion sickness to report.  Praise the Lord!  :)

It has certainly been an exciting month.  And stressful.  Let's not leave that out!  I don't think I have ever felt more stress than I have during this move.

Now that the house is pretty much set up and our relocation is essentially complete, I have time to think and pray about re-establishing our routines and schedules.  Usually I love working on things like this, but today I'm not wanting to tackle the issue.  Hence the blog post.  ;)

While many things can remain the same, there is much that must change in order to fit our new normal.  The problem with making the changes is that I don't yet know what the new normal looks like.  I'm still figuring it out.  And the adjustments necessary to make a long-distance move work seem to never end.

For one thing, we find ourselves living in a semi-rural setting.  I say "semi" because we can see neighbors on both sides of us and across the street.  We are not truly isolated, but neither are we close to amenities like shopping, doctors, libraries, and the like.

We will have a lot of practice riding in the car since pretty much everything is 45 minutes from home.  I can't really complain about the driving, though, since most of it looks like this:

And once we get near to our house, it looks a little more like this:

We can drive 45 minutes and find ourselves at Walmart, Sam's Club, or church.  But we can also visit places like the Appomattox Court House National Historic Park where, just about 150 years ago, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General U.S. Grant and the Civil War came to an end.  And it's "just down the road".

Other adjustments have mainly to do with how our household runs.  Laundry is changing some because we now have two different baskets for dirty laundry - one on the main floor and one upstairs.  Chores will change since we have a different setup than our previous home.  Even sleeping arrangements, and therefore bed times, have changed.  Our upstairs bedrooms are gigantic (a good "problem" to have) so we decided to have a bedroom for all five kids and a toy room.  And with that come more and more adjustments.

The funny thing about all of these changes is that I feel like we have never lived anywhere else than here.  It's surreal to think that just a few weeks ago we were Claude was dragging a very heavy washing machine up the front steps, into a house that was cold, dusty, and full of unpacked boxes.

Is it telling that the first thing that made this house feel like home was having that washing machine and dryer hooked up and running?  You know you do a lot of laundry when...  :)

Yesterday as the kids and I drove home from taking Gramma to the airport, I felt a sense of relief as I saw the sign with the name of our little town.  It may be new.  There may be dozens of adjustments to be made, but this is home and it feels great to be settling in.

Snapshots: Visit with Gramma

I'm sure she's ready to be back in her quiet house, but we sure have enjoyed having her here!

Thanks for coming, Mom!

 

Snapshots: Sunday S'Mores

I know, I really owe you an actual post with more than two paragraphs of text excuses.  Sorry...this post will not be it.  But rest assured, I have been blogging in my head for about three weeks.  Eventually some of that will translate into some real writing.

For now, please enjoy some pictures from our backyard "camp out".  I'm not sure why we called it that because we weren't camping out at all.  But we did have a nice fire going and we enjoyed plenty of hot dogs and s'mores.  Yum!
 

Snapshots: The Big Move

There is much that I would love to write.  The past two weeks have been incredibly stressful, exciting, exhausting, and also bittersweet.  I feel like I am recovering from some major life-altering experience...wait a minute.  I am recovering from a major life-altering experience!  ;)

Anyway...I don't have the time at the moment to write all about how we packed a 20-foot truck, a minivan, and Big Red to drive 1,300 miles across the country with five children in tow.  There are things that we did that really worked.  And things that didn't.  There are thoughts about the endurance required in a move of this type and thoughts about leaving behind a group of loving friends.  And, as can be expected, the crazy stories of life with a handful of littles abound.

In place of writing I'll include some photos and (Lord willing) sometime in the near future before I die or Christ returns, there will be opportunity to write more.

Our first day driving.

Logging in driving hours while everyone was asleep.

Final day - driving through Central Virginia.

First family hike.  This trail is only 15 minutes from our house.  Amazing!

And for those who are particularly brave, here is a video from the last hour of the drive.

 

Happy 1st Birthday, Rachel!

Wow, I can't believe it's already been one year since this little girl made a very dramatic and very quick entrance into the world!

  

A few things about Rachel:

She won't go to sleep at night unless one of her sisters is in the room with her.

She wakes up with gusto - wriggling, kicking her legs, and talking up a storm.

She is incredibly independent.

She loves to be in the middle of the action, and there is plenty of that around our house!

Happy Birthday, Rachel!

Blessings Abound: Big Red

It's huge.  It's red.  And it's amazing that it is sitting on our driveway.

We, the Chew Crew, are pleased to present to you the newest member of the family.

Big Red.

After accepting a job offer at University of Virginia, Claude's and my thoughts turned toward the lack of heat in our van.  One day, as I drove past a large car dealership in our area, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be great if God just bought us a new van for our trip?"  I laughed about it then.  But I'm laughing even more now!

As some may remember, last week we came to a crisis(ish) point with our Chrysler van.  I left that post with an addendum saying that the car was going to the mechanic because the repair might be about half of the original quoted cost.  It turns out that the mechanic was hopeful but not accurate.  Once he had a good look at the van, he gave us the news we knew to expect.

Everything.  Absolutely everything, from the dashboard would have to be removed.  The HVAC needed to be taken out, and one or two small, inexpensive parts would need to be replaced.  It would take 10 hours of labor to get it all done.  The mechanic even asked Claude if he really wanted to pay for this work since the van was barely worth the price of the repair.  But we didn't have another vehicle, so what else could we consider?

The question still remained, though.  How were we going to pay for such a pricey repair?

In the midst of all of this, Claude had emailed our church community and asked them to pray.  The problem needed some big intervention from God and we needed a lot of wisdom to make appropriate decisions.  So, our church prayed and we prayed and after a couple of days we thought we came to a solution.

We would get some heated blankets for the kids, rig up a space heater to warm the inside of the car in the mornings, and wait until some funds that we hadn't considered using before would be available to purchase a different vehicle.  This seemed like a reasonable solution that would work within our means.

On Sunday evening we were about to make an online order for electric blankets for the car when we received an email.

The Lord had provided a very generous gift to us to be used for the repair or to go toward a car that would fit our needs.  We were stunned.

As we prayed to thank God for giving so abundantly through His people, we started asking how we should use the funds.  I'm not sure what happened, but something switched in both of our thinking.  We sat down, ran some quick calculations, and realized that we could probably get a new van before we left Texas.

Claude hit the ground running on Monday morning, calling a dealer where we had found a van within our price range.  By the end of the day we had put a deposit on it and were getting our Toyota Corolla ready to be traded in.

Come Monday night, I was feeling a bit nervous about the whole thing.  What if we weren't supposed to be going through with this?  What if the cost ended up being too high?  What if the wheel covers for the Corolla didn't arrive in time for the trade in?  What if...what if...what if???

We even realized that we had a gap in our moving budget.  A gap that we couldn't close on our own.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't stressed out about this!

So, we just kept praying, knowing that God would do something.

About 11:00am on Tuesday morning I got an email from Claude.  His department at work had won some award or recognition and everyone in the department could expect a bonus in their next pay check.  The amount was for nearly the exact amount of the gap in our moving budget.  I couldn't believe it!

Five minutes later the doorbell rang.  On our doorstep were the wheel covers Claude had ordered just two days prior - wheel covers we needed to put on our Corolla to help out its trade in appraisal.  Again, I was blown away by God's timing.

Then came Tuesday night.  Claude came home to tell me that more had been added to the monetary gift we received word about over the weekend.  He put down two checks and an envelope of cash.  We were amazed!

Before the week was over, God provided again and again.  Envelopes from people at church, an email saying that someone was giving toward our move/car needs, and support from family and friends.

 
Needless to say, it is incredible that just one week from writing a post about coming to the end of our resources, there is a monstrous red van on our driveway.  For a few years Claude and I have been talking about our next "move" with a car.  We would love to have more children, and if the Lord gave us more then we would need more seats in our vehicle to accommodate them.  But we never imagined that it would happen like this or at this time.

This process has reminded me of how God gave me a violin back in college.  He could have been conservative in His provision, but He wasn't.  His gift, through a very generous believer, was extravagant.  With our heater situation He could have also been conservative.  We could have been driving to VA with electric blankets and a space heater.  We would have been warm and we would have been content.  But God didn't stop at just providing a working heater.  He blessed us above and beyond our needs and our expectations.

We praise the Lord for His abundant blessings!  And we are incredibly grateful to each person who played a part in the pouring out of His provision to us.  We don't even know who most of you are, but we want to thank you for being a part of God showering His love on us.  It has been overwhelming and so amazing!

The kids are calling the new van "The Big Red Van".  Jeremiah has deemed it "The Big Red Bus".  But I have been thinking of it as "The Blessing Mobile" to remind us of this time, when receiving the Lord's blessing has been like standing at the foot of a breaking dam.

And who knows.  Maybe one day the seats will be filled with blessings.  And no, that's not an announcement of more additions to the Crew.  ;)