Friday, March 7, 2014

Moving week!

Well, we are here!! These past few weeks have been kind of a blur of packing boxes, tears, goodbye's, surviving the Atlanta airport, unpacking, and boxes. A massive amount of boxes.  But we made it! And we are honestly doing a lot better than I thought we would be. The last few days in Atlanta were really, really, long. Emotionally, physically, and spiritually draining, and we were a little bit of a mess.  Now that we are over the major hump of moving everything and ourselves up here, we've been able to just slow down and process what actually just happened.
I look outside and see the snow falling, and see the tired faces of the people in town, and read in the Word about the fields being white for harvest, I just have this great sense of peace that this is right where I am supposed to be. 
And of course with that my busy little self starts to get antsy to get a church started! today! and the Lord presses on my heart that the work to be done is the Spirit's work and as we yield and wait, He will do the work of bringing people to life. So we wait, we watch, and we pray - and rest in the mighty power of the indwelling Holy Spirit!


Here are some pictures from the move!

  
We had lots of amazing people helping us on moving day.  I thought I had just a "few things" left to pack inside the house, and 8 hours later, we finished. That'll bless ya.  


And there you have it. Practically all we own in the back of a truck.


It was really emotional for me to saygoodbye to our old house in Acworth.  I got terribly sappy remembering all the "firsts" that happened there, all the moments rocking my boys in the nursery, all the incredible fellowship and laughter that happened in the kitchen.  But when we did a final "walkthrough" and Levi was happily chirping "goodbye, bathroom!" "goodbye, YiYi's (Levi) room!" "goodbye, kitch-den!" it reminded me that of course it's the people that make a house a home. And so I'm incredibly beyond-grateful for the 3 people I get to do life with, no matter where we live.


This guy couldn't have been more excited when he saw the BIG YELLOW FIRETRUCK in our driveway!  These pictures of him sitting in the truck are so special to me because they document how little he was when such a big event happened in his life. 


That face!! He just melts me.  And it also melts me when he is asking for something and he tells me, "Mommy, say 'sure YiYi!'"

Ben and a team of guys drove up on Monday and Tuesday, and unloaded Wednesday and Thursday.  I enjoye staying at my mom's house for a few days and spending some quality time with her.   
And then the boys and I and our trusty traveling buddy, Steph, flew up on Thursday.  We were doing great until we barely made it inside the airport and they wanted to charge me $100 for my bag being 16 pounds overweight and I was thinking never would I ever want to spend that much money on a stinking overweight bag.  I held my already nervous nerves together and asked if there was anyone who I could speak to about that.  I think it helped that Elijah was hanging on me sound asleep and Levi started screaming when I left a 3 foot radius around his stroller and I told them, here's the thing, we are moving across the country today and the trucks have already left and this is the last of all our stuff and it's just clothes and baby stuff and I can't leave it behind. So some really kind Airport ladies helped me stuff enough of our clothes into the cheapest bag we could find (which naturally was zebra print) and Steph took it on as her purse.  So that was eventful.  

Then we stood in the elevator for a few minutes and forgot to press the button, and when we got to our console we grabbed our last meal of Chick-fil-a for a loooong time.  And we didn't even sit down, we rushed back to our gate so we would be ready when it was time to board.  But as we stumbled up to the gate literally spilling fries and about to puncture our lemonade cups (because it's not that easy to pull suitcases and push strollers and wear babies AND paper bags full of lunch all at once) everyone was standing up and about to board the plane.  We worked our way through the crowd since obviously people with children get to load first, and by this point I was shimmying around with my roller-board hanging off my shoulder and people were totally giving us the oh dear are these clowns really on our flight? look. 

The movie on the ipad that was going to be my saving grace didn't work so I just fed Levi snack after snack and tried to keep him from striking up conversations with everyone around us by explaining to him that lots of times, people like to sleep on planes.  
 

Thankfully airplanes are like giant white noise machines, or the flight attendant would have heard Levi ask in his convincingly sweet little voice as he taps the tray in front of him, "hey little man, I have some pretzels? I have some pretzels, little man?" 
He was a wiggly 2 year old, as is expected, but overall, both boys were champs.  

 
We could not have done it without our awesome friend "Fuff" (as Levi calls her)! 
And both boys finally passed out as we were exiting the plane.   


If you're still reading this incredibly long post, you get a prize.
Here are some pictures from our first few days here!





This is our driveway. I have a feeling it's going to look gorgeous in every season.


And this is the view out of the living room.


Don't worry, I'll have another incredibly long post in a few weeks with pictures of the house and the story of how this adorable little farmhouse was an answer to prayer in so many ways.


If you get our monthly email update, we have included a lot more specific details of what has been going on this past week.  The Lord is alread bringing people into our path and opening doors of opportunity! If you would like to be added to the update list, send me a message with your email address or comment below, and we will add you :)