Friday, August 24, 2012

A Glimpse of My Crazy Beautiful Life

Well, things are buzzing around here this morning, as we're off to our old house in Illinois later today.  The company my husband works for is having a picnic at the DuQuoin State Fair tomrrow and is also providing free armbands for the kids!  I am really looking forward to this much needed family time.  Anyway, back to our buzzing house:  Breakfast eaten - check.  Laundry and dishes started - check.  Bags packed - not so much!  I always leave this until last because I am terrible at packing!  I'm usually very thorough, but I overthink the entire process and most of the time end up staring into my kids' closets as if I'm hoping all the "right" options will just jump out of the closet and into the suitcase!  Sometimes I like to make a checklist so I don't forget something important, but I still tend to worry the entire trip that I've forgotten something that someone will need.  Wow!  I'm already exhausted just thinking about the packing I need to do this morning!  Whew!

I chose to describe the title of my blog as "My Crazy Beautiful Life" because my life is kind of crazy...kind of all the time.  My son is 4 and my daughter is 1 1/2.  They keep me on my toes!  We have 3 dogs and 1 cat.  I can't seem to remember why I thought that was such a good idea...  And we just moved.  My husband took a new job that required us to move away from our home on 10 wooded acres in southern Illinois to a rental house in the bootheel of Missouri with a fenced in back yard on a busy street in the middle of town.  I always thougth it'd be nice to have a fenced in back yard with two small children, but they seem to find it awfully confining and boring... We were at our old house last weekend and I can't remember my kids spending much time inside other than to sleep and eat!  They were explorers finding pinecones and nuts, listening for owls and whippoorwills, and even catching a couple of little lizards!  My oldest and his cousin also got in a lot of tree-climbing practice!  Here in the bootheel there aren't quite as many trees.  Or hills.  Or a lot of other things.  But I never expected to move and find things exactly the same.  The people are different too.  I know we only moved a few hours away, but talk about a culture shock!  It's been interesting, to say the least, trying to settle into life here and adjust to the differences.  We've been having a hard time finding a new church home.  Jayce is too young to attend preschool here in Missouri (althought he's already been to PreK in Illinois).  There's no weekly story hour at the local library.  So everything we used to know is now what seems to be a world away.  Talk about adding to the craziness around here!  And did I mention my husband's new job keeps him very busy?  This is the company's busiest time of the year, plus he's still trying to learn how things work while managing employees who look to him to know everything.  Sigh.

Now here's the beautiful:  My son is 4 and my daughter is 1 1/2.  They keep me on my toes!  They are so full of life and such a blessing and honor to raise!  The house we're renting is bigger than our home in Illinois.  The extra space is really nice!  The kids' rooms are huge so we actually have room to play in there instead of dragging everything out into the livingroom, and I don't have to walk sideways to get to my side of the bed anymore!  I honestly haven't found the beautiful in living in town, and not seeing as many hills or trees yet, but I now live only 5 minutes away from the closest grocery store.  That's definitely more convenient that our previous 30 minute drive!  And the people are different, and I don't know many peole, but that just means I have to step out of my comfort zone.  That's a welcomed growth opportunity!  We're very anxious to find a new church home, and deeply miss our old church and church family, but we're having to step out of our comfort zone here too and how can that be bad?  We're having to do a lot of soul searching and I know we're going to come out the other end of this tunnel with a much stronger faith!  Something else that's beautiful is my kids are making new friends.  They recently started a Playgroup/Mother's Morning Out program which occurs twice a week for a few hours and they are loving it!  Plus, my son starts soccer in a few weeks and my daughter will start gymnastics around the same time.  I am so excited for a busy schedule again!  I've started to make a few friends too, and have met a beautiful group of women from a local church that I can't wait to get to know better.  Their kind words and hospitality have really been a blessing!  And one of the most beautiful things about our life right now is that my husband is happy at work.  I have wanted this for him for a very long time!  This job is pretty much everything he wanted from his last job.  I can't even explain how wonderful it is to see my husband excited about something he has to do so many hours of his days!

So that's our crazy beautiful life right now.  I hope you'll join me for the adventures to follow!  But for now, I've got to pack!  Have a great weekend, and please take the time to notice your beautiful.  God sends us reminders all the time, but the hard thing is being quiet enough to hear them :)

2 comments:

  1. This is so fun! I've tried to journal about things going on while my son grows up. You will basically have that everyday that you blog, plus I get to read it! :-) We're going to the fair tomorrow too. How fun would it be to see you there! Rita Beth

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  2. Thanks! I know, I'm really looking forward to looking back on these posts someday! Wish we would have run into you all at the fair. That would've been nice!

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