Three days and counting

We've now spent three full days in the basement of my sister-in-law's house, quarantined to keep her kids from getting the nasty flu. We've eaten our meals here, played down here, and rearranged to the hilt to make room for the five of us in this little space. For a basement, it is a luxurious 500 sq. feet or so, complete with a gas log fireplace...so I'm not complaining.

But being cooped up in here with the three kids is starting to wear on me so we decided to go out for a drive and see our fair city, and look for "For Rent" signs. Did you know that there are more students in this city than permanent residents? That makes for a LOT of duplexes and townhouses. After an hour of looking this morning, and an hour and a half this afternoon I'm fairly certain there is no real house out there for us. It was kind of discouraging, and so I find myself praying more for contentment than a house these days. We can't live in the basement forever (and WH's sister needs her garage, aka Our Storage Shed, back soon) so we have to go somewhere. I'm going to look at one, maybe two places tomorrow. One is a duplex I don't really like, and the other is a house that is out of our price range (but you never know...maybe they are desperate). I find myself more picky now that I have these little people to raise (yes, mom, the pictures are just for you).

the rest of the story

First of all, this little guy makes me so happy! And he slept the ENTIRE time we were in the car on moving day.

Okay, now for the rest of our little moving saga. Can I just say how grateful I am that SO many people have given their time, energy, and possibly their good health to get us where we are today? Too many to name, but many of you are reading. :)

WARNING: Most of our story has to do with having a weak stomach so if you already have a weak stomach this is not the post for you. Come back tomorrow.

So we packed up the moving truck on Thursday (I say "we" but this is not woman's work, as we all know) and everything was finished in time to have dinner with some dear friends. After a short visit we left to spend the night with some other friends from church (and I really hope all these sweet people aren't deathly ill right now). Anyway, Coop started throwing up in the middle of the night and WH (my husband) was feeling not-so-hot himself. Since we had already been through this with Sweet A (the 1 1/2 year old) on Tuesday and it was just a one-time deal we thought little of it. We had breakfast with yet another friend and Coop and WH ate little to nothing. We started out our journey tired from being up in the night with various children, I in the van (I mean, superwagon) with Little T and WH in the moving truck with the older two kids. We never would have left if we knew what was ahead of us. :::::::scary music:::::::::::

An hour and a half into our trip I noticed the moving truck pulling off at an exit. My suspiscions were confirmed when I got the call. Penske would replace the truck if it broke down, but would they give us a new truck with a vomit-free cab??? Coop had managed to finish the job in a Wal-mart bag but when's the last time you got one without a hole in the bottom? Apparently the mess was somewhat contained to the passenger's side until Coop tried to hand the hole-y bag over to his dad. We spent about 30 minutes at a gas station doing our best to clean out the truck with my little bottle of hand sanitizer and a box of wipes. Besides puking all over himself and his carseat, he managed to have perfect aim and completely douse our basket of snacks for the trip. Thanks for the little brownies, Christina, but they had to go. In God's great mercy we forgot to pack up a small bathroom trashcan so it got chucked (no pun intended) into the back of WH's truck (which he was pulling on a trailer) and I could see it out the back window. Ahh, blessed trashcan. How you have saved us from many more long and tedious stops. After we had bagged up all the contaminated clothes, carseat cover, etc. we were on our way again. I don't really remember how many times Coop threw up...I know he went through at least 3 outfits because that's all I packed and if he'd done it again he would have been in his church clothes.

The trip to our new town usually takes about 6 hours...we figured it would take longer with a moving truck. But after 6 hours we were just over half way because of all the stops and at one point WH said, "The PIONEERS went faster than this!" He was feeling miserable, too, but as usual, kept his wits about him. The low point of the trip was when I noticed the moving truck had slowed to about 45 mph. I was watching and expecting us to pull off at the next exit so Coop could put on his church clothes but the truck was not stopping. Soon the truck sped up again. Didn't really make sense, so I called WH to see what was up (no pun intended). He was the next victim, only he was so desperate to just GET THERE that he was throwing up while driving. Didn't he at least want to stop to empty the can??? We arrived after 8 hours, which shows how much time we made up in the end.

Never has one little family been so glad to have a warm welcome and a comfy bed. Everyone except me was asleep by 7:30pm.

It was a horrible, no good, very bad day for our family. But at least we weren't moving to Australia.

I've succumbed

Thanks to Moriah and a few others who have pressured me to start this public record of our everday happenings, we now have a blog. The layout will change, but I have lots to learn and not a ton of free time for blog-learning, so you may have to look at this boring layout for a while.

I have been on a quest for normalcy for several years now, and my husband finally sat me down a few weeks ago and set me straight. (That man is so wise.) He told me that I spend my life trying to figure out how to get things back to normal instead of embracing whatever the Lord sends. I'm a firstborn. I like my days to be structured and productive. Order is good, right? Instead of seeking joy and being thankful in everything I've been frustrated by lack of control. You would think that having three babies in three years would cure me of that, but it really hasn't been until our latest adventures that I've made baby steps in redefining normal.

So, before the birth of baby #3 in November I decided the only thing that would keep me from going crazy was to have a VERY CALM LIFE after he arrived. Well, here's the new norm: A week after the birth we found ourselves in the hospital for several days. (Baby T is fine now.) Three weeks after that my husband got laid off from his job. We spent three weeks with his family over Christmas (not in my house, my beloved bed, etc. but it was very restful and his mother took good care of us), he interviewed for a new job less than two weeks ago and after nine days of frenzied packing we have moved all our earthly possessions and our little family. We are living in his sister's basement until we find a place. My husband and 3 year-old are very sick with the flu (between the two of them they threw up four or five times in the moving van on the way here) and I directed the unloading of the moving van into my sister-in-law's garage while my poor husband found himself unable to get out of bed. If order and control were necessary for my sanity I would be in big trouble by now. Oh, and baby T has a severe sensitivity to all things dairy so icecream can not be my comfort in these troubled times, although there is always Soy Dream. And yet life is good, and I am happy. Weird, huh?