Risen

Fabulous Easter weekend was our first full weekend in the new home. We kicked it off with our church's Good Friday service, which is a pretty ridiculously amazing night. Our parents joined us this year, and if you live in the Atlanta area and haven't been, I would so recommend marking this on your calendar for next year. It's just a beyond-words evening that is a really special way to start Easter weekend.

We decided to sort of beat the system this year and do Easter morning traditions on Saturday to ease the hurry of Sunday morning. So here we are making resurrections buns (found this link to explain it, but I originally got the idea from my friend Holly, one of those amazingly creative moms who seems to know most things- it's important to have a Holly in your life!) Here is Blythe being Blythe- leotard and tutu over PJs. Every year, Jake gives me a hard time about Jesus being the marshmallow in this little metaphor, and every year it's worth the grief for the fun these are to make while you walk through the resurrection story with your little people.
 

 

 I'm a fan of using opportunities like this to make something necessary ( like bathing suits and new flip flops) seem more fun and exciting. Though in years past, the concept of bathing suits and flip flops don't seem as far removed as they did from this 40-something degree morning!

 Easter morning, freezing the girls out with the sister pic...

 Our church combined services and met at the same outdoor amphitheater as we did for the Good Friday night. It was a fantastic morning, and really fun to share with my mom (who now goes to the same church we do) and the kiddos, who sat with us. Here they are with some dear buddies!

 Then it was up to Jake's parents' home for Easter dinner, along with my mama!

 Lucky girls with these amazing grands!

 Off to the races after naptime!

 We hid a few "big kid" eggs that required some ingenuity.

 Sweet bruiser, bless her soul!!!

 I love this picture- everything matches from their sweater to their step to their arm, to their hair flying. So sweet!

Later on in the week, Abby Jane asked if she could have an Easter egg. I said she and the twins could all have two. After a while we noticed that we hadn't seen Blythe in several minutes. I walk into the kitchen, and she's sitting in a pile of opened Easter eggs! SNEAKY little girl- she just about polished off  entire collective basket of candy! Don't be fooled by her sugar sweet innocent face- this girl's got tricks up her sleeve!

Bop Bop being Bop Bop. We sure love him!

So grateful for such a precious weekend of celebrating the most important holiday of the year, and so grateful for the grace of the Lord!!!

First week

Our first week in the house was the week before Easter, and it was friekishly cold. We had snow flurries off and on for a few days and wind chills in the teens and 20s. Having not seen a bit of snow all winter, we were all pretty excited for what we got!

 Somehow snow by the paddle board rack was funny to me.

We also had visitors come by to see the new place! Linds and Nate stopped by one morning, and the girls promptly led her to was has been dubbed the "pillow pocket"- the corner of their room filled with pillows and just right for reading or playing with babies or cramming in five kids to listen to Miss Lindsey read!

 We wasted no time getting to know the neighbors, and I trotted my babies out in 30 degree weather to deliver Easter cookies to the surrounding houses and a few doors down. This turned out to be well worth the freezing temps because we have the most lovely neighbors! The first two weeks or so of living in this house was like a parade of Southern Living's guide to housewarming gifts- people were SOO kind and gracious, and folks who live on the far end of our street were even sending along little happy's to welcome us with. It was staggering and humbling, and made us just abundantly thankful for God's abundant provision in giving us such a fabulous place to call home.

 My cute girl trying to catch snowflakes the day we went cookie delivering.

 This picture is noteworthy as a before and after shot. The next day, catastrophe hit.

It finally warmed up a bit outside, so we went for a walk to the park down the street.  Our sidewalks have a lot of what we call "character", and Miss Abby Jane caught an edge and slammed face first into the sidewalk. She hit her face so hard that her hands, elbows, and knees came out spotless. I still can't understand how she didn't break her nose or chip a tooth, but she was in seriously bad shape as we walked the half mile home with two out of three screaming at the top of their lungs, only one of whom legitimately. Joy One little sister didn't mind that her big sis was gushing blood and was only disappointed in not making it to the park. So it was a long walk back for one really hurting little girl.

 That night we fired up the new fireplace for our first family s'mores.

 Look at my sweet baby girl, just a couple of hours later. The child was swollen,and bruised for days. It was the saddest thing. I think a few tiny scars might stick around, but likely I'll be the only one who sees them.

 Life went on- here's my angel face coloring.

 We ate on our back patio for the first time, loving our new patio space!

 We met Wally the Squirrel- see him on the fence post? He gathers nuts and eats them while he watches us through our many windows. Sometimes he watches me cook dinner in the kitchen, then when we move into the dining room, he hops down a few posts and watches dinner. If we're in the living room, he often hops on patio furniture to watch through the windows. If we're eating, he gets a nut and eats. Almost every breakfast and dinner, he joins us through the windows. According to the girls, he goes with Lolly, the girl squirrel (one morning it was clear to Jake and I that indeed Wally is a boy and Lolly is a girl), and they have a friend named Molly with half a tail. They all are curious, though Wally is the most inquisitive of all.

Abby Jane has hit a new phase of immense coloring productivity. I remember my niece Katie going into this stage, and it's so fun to have a girl of an age that she loves coloring as much as she does! We are LOVING their new playroom as well- the extra space and natural light are my favorite parts. We'll do a photo tour of the house after I finish getting the blog all caught up!

Unpacking

The new house even came with an extra three year old!

Just kidding... Big Sis came down with her sweet Maggie to help me unpack while their big kids were on a trip with their dad. Jodi is not only detail oriented like me, but she is also great at taking a bull by the horns, so generally an excellent moving in or moving out buddy. I was so thankful for her coming down and being a part of our first few days of transition. I've got a great big sis.

So we put Grammy on little girl duty, which I'm sure ranked astronomically higher than the final-clean-of-old-house duty she had volunteered for the day before while we attacked boxes.

As a PS to the last post, I thought I would show Abby Jane seeing her bunk bed for the first time. YEA the girl gets a legit place to sleep with her sisters!

 I know the next question you have is... "yes, so how is it going having three girls all sleep together?" Lucky for you, since I'm way behind on my blogging, all these things happened almost two months ago, and I can answer you much more knowledgeably now than I could have then. The bottom line is that it's going great. Abby Jane no longer takes afternoon naps now, so she's ready to go to sleep at night. The twins do still nap, so they are ready for an after-party when we turn the lights out. Abby Jane has learned to tune them out for the most part. I tell her dorm room stories of how I had to go to sleep before my roommates because of clinicals for nursing school. Just like her, I slept on the top bunk, and just like her, there were people talking and laughing and lights on sometimes when I was falling asleep. But just like with her, there was also a sound machine on and it's really quite lovely and cozy to hear the voices of people you love as you're falling asleep. For the most part, she hangs in there and has adjusted beautifully to the room sharing life. A really smart mom of three young girls told me last fall that she is much more concerned about strengthening the relationships between her three daughters than she is about their relationship with Susie down the street. I love that perspective on making the sister relationship a priority, and I can testify that in this particular season of their lives, room-sharing has been a beautiful success!

Saying goodbye

 This is a strange picture for my closing picture from the old home, but it's symbolic of a few things. First of all, notice Abby Jane is on the floor between Blythe and Joy. She chose to sleep on a sleeping pad on the floor of their room every night that wasn't a school night between Christmas and our move. She loves being in with her sisters, so at the new house, the girls all share a room! But here's the last time she had to sleep on the floor to be with her best friends.

Secondly, I'm a task-oriented person. So I'm not going to spend moving day being emotional or considering the memories or smelling the roses. Sandy had taken the girls for the big move day, and I was focused on the work at hand. But after the girls' beds were broken down and my mom was getting things ready to stay behind us to do a final clean-up on the house, she asked if we were going to use the yellow base rug from the twins' room again.

I told her, "No way. Do you see that spot there? That's where Blythe threw up one time and she got half of it on the crib and the other half on the floor and the white is where I used baking soda to take care of the smell. That stain over there is where their humidifier leaked one winter when they were babies. The circle over there is where Joy randomly had an accident the other day and we were shocked because she hadn't done that in months."

It was then that I was reminded of all the life that happened in the walls of that tiny shoebox.

Our entire family history of being a family of five up to that day had been in that home... all the precious moments of learning to walk, birthdays, big parties that we squeezed into small places, Christmases, dress up, hide and seek, taking care of newborn twins, book reading, ballet shows, etc etc etc had all happened at this one tiny home that we were so excited to leave... and yet God had blessed our family richly while we were there. We will always look back on that home and our time there with great affection and thankfulness!

Last Days...

Right after we had signed our agreement for the new home, Jake came down with two strands of the big, bad flu. It was no joking matter and involved one ambulance ride and several days of the girls being shipped off to the grandparents to keep them away from the virus raging in our home.  So while I stayed home to make sure Jake stayed alive and do my best to keep our home as sterile and sanitized as feasible, I put a fresh coat of paint on our breakfast table and attempted to strip and repaint the chest below.  This chest was Jake's dresser growing up, Abby Jane's changing table and dresser as a baby in LA, and has served as my "buffet" for the last few years.

 I loved the result. However, I did not properly strip the wood, because the stain is coming through the paint now and likely we'll need to re-do the job. But you get the idea.

After Jake recovered, we got our kids back and went about the business of packing up the house and making closure happen for the girls. Here is their last evening to play in their old playroom before I packed it up. The twins were only crawling when Jake created that space for them- we spent a lot of life on that remnant of carpet !!

 

The hardest part of moving for our girlies was leaving the sweet neighbors that the girls had spent their whole remembered lives playing with. This sweet friend, Jordan, was like a big sister to them, and we have spent countless days playing with her over the years. In those last days, we soaked up all the opportunities we could have enjoying those sweet friendships!

 Practicing leaps...

One last bike ride for Abby Jane and her shadow.

The cul de sac kids. Truly probably 90% of our afternoons were spent with these sweet children, and I'm thankful for the big brother/ big sis relationships these big-hearted kids have had with our girls over the years.

 Even on moving day, the big girls came over in the rain to ask if they could help load the truck. We sure love these kids and pray God's blessing on them and their families.

Faithfulness

 NO, we didn't die and YES we're still here. The spring has just been a bit busy, and it's finally time to catch the blog up on WHY! In March, we had THIS...

 and then we had THIS! 

And now I'm going to tell you how God brought those two days to pass. Then in later blogs, I'll catch you up on life surrounding this and the rest of our spring... because it's been a doozie of a good one. But if you're only in it for the pictures, just wait for later blogs, because the rest of this is a long lovely story of God's fabulous provision and faithfulness.

Almost immediately after we returned from California and Jake's graduation, Jake and I entered into an intense phase of seeking God's plan for our family and waiting to see how He was going to provide for some pretty specific needs in our eyes, one of them being a home in a different school district.

The bottom line was that we had X amount to spend on a different home, and the area we so longed to move into cost Y.  We had friends in the area keeping their eyes out for possibilities and in the meantime I was attending orientations at the school we hoped to send Abby Jane to in faith that if the Lord wanted us there, He would make it happen in His perfect timing. However, place after place that Jake inquired about as potential homes were decidedly closed doors.

I should mention that I prayed during this time for God to provide a believer who wanted to have mercy on our little family and work with us. I also wanted a lovely fenced in back yard and a fireplace, the latter of which we hadn't had since our Auburn home.

In faith that this particular area was where we would eventually be moving, even if it wasn't in time for Abby Jane to begin kindergarten in the fall, we went ahead and toured the preschool where the twins would attend if we were to live over there. That was hard to do, because we couldn't have asked for a better experience where Abby Jane has attended preschool and have been so blessed and grateful for our time there. But it seemed that it made more sense for us to invest the twins' relationships in the geographical area where we were headed, once again, Lord-willing.

So of all the balls that were in the air, and all the unknowns and things outside of our control, enrolling the twins in this particular preschool seemed like the easiest step of all and the thing we COULD move on without any particular act of God to allow it to happen.

Not so much.

The Thursday we strolled inside to drop off our registration papers, the director told me the girls were going to be on a waiting list that they hadn't anticipated needing. There seemed only a dim chance that one spot might open up, and of course we needed two.

At that point, we felt like God wanted to remind us that there was not going to be anything about any of this that we could just walk in and do on our own accord. It was all going to have to be His choice and His direction.

The next morning, Jake was taking some time off work to go drive around and look for signs in yards maybe not listed online. Right before he and I left for the day, I got a call from the director saying that there had been so many kids on the waiting list that they had opened up a whole new class, so both the girls were in!! YEAAA!

I had called a friend who lived in the area and told her of the wait list the day before, so I called her back to tell her the good news. In the meantime, she had happened to hear of the home of a friend's sister that was going to be becoming available pretty immediately. It's basically across the street from the school that we so wanted for Abby Jane. So, we made a few phone calls and were able to go view the home that Sunday.

To say we loved it was an understatement.

By Monday, Jake was on the phone with the homeowner and because God answers prayers and nothing is too hard for Him, she was a strong believer. She said she had been blessed and wanted to bless us, and to say the very least, she absolutely did. We moved in about a month later, and that very moving-in weekend, she was in town and came by the house with a couple of friends to stand in our kitchen and pray over our house with us.

After a season of waiting on God, needing to trust him with big details of our lives, and absolutely only being able to move a step if He allowed it, we were blown away by how He blessed us with "immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine" (Eph 2:9).

And, of course, not only does our house have a lovely fenced in back yard, we have not one, but TWO fireplaces! HA! God hears us and God sees us, and He cares about the smallest desires of our hearts! We have been so humbled and our faith so strengthened by how He moved on behalf of our family.

Now stay tuned for pictures and stories from the rest of our spring!