reflecting and moving on

I guess I've been semi-absent from the blogging world--for me, 9 days with no blogging is a pretty long time. I have a pretty good excuse though: we've moved! Well, we've halfway moved I guess. We moved out of our house over the weekend and closed on Monday. At this point we are officially homeless, but thankfully for only 18 days. If all goes according to plan, we close on our new house on the 29th. In the meantime, my parents are putting a roof over our heads :) 

This pretty much sums up my life over the last few weeks

Packing, packing, packing. I have to toot my own horn and say that I packed every.single.box. all on my own. That's a lot of packing! (and no, that is NOT every box in the picture above--not even close!) We had movers come for an hour to load furniture into the Pod, because we knew that they would know best how to arrange everything, but other than that Josh loaded and hauled everything himself. But I have to give a HUUUUGE shout-out to our parents and siblings for all their help with the kids--that is the help that we really needed and they came through in a major, major way. I honestly don't know how people survive things like moving with kids when they don't have family to help. We are blessed.

When the movers showed up they immediately looked at the Pod, looked at our stuff, and announced that there was no way it would all fit. Yaaay. And that is when much of our stuff was already moved to my parents' garage for temporary storage. So now everything we own is split among a Pod in storage, a storage unit, my parents' garage, Josh's parents' house, and who knows where else. Josh worked himself to death over the weekend getting everything loaded, moved, and unloaded. He was at our house until 1:00am the day before closing, moving stuff. What a good, hardworking man. And yes, we get to do it all over again (in reverse) in a couple weeks. If you are a friend of ours, you may want to avoid our phone calls until then--I'm not sure we can do it all on our own again and may have to call in reinforcements :)

Saying goodbye to our first house was so much harder than I expected it to be. This is the room where I rocked both of our babies. I had a good cry in that chair on Saturday, sitting there thinking of all the memories we had made in that home. As cheesy and ridiculous as it sounds, I honestly had one of those movie montage moments where all these memories flashed through my mind. Bringing our babies home, cooking with Noah in the kitchen, painting the nursery, playing in the yard, eating as a family around our little dinner table every night...so very many memories. We moved into that house as a childless couple 4 years into marriage, and moved out with 2 boys and 5 more years under our belts. (actually, at the time we moved in Noah was right there growing in my belly--he was born 8 months after we moved in--but we didn't know it at the time!)

I am so thankful to the Lord for providing us with the perfect house for our family for these past 5 years--I have told Him that many, many times lately as I reflect back on the life we've lived there. I know the rooms in a house are not what make it a home, but that house was a home to us nonetheless, which makes leaving it a bittersweet moment. Bittersweet even though we chose to move and are moving on to another house that will hopefully be a home to our family for many, many, many years. We are beyond grateful that God has provided us with the perfect (for us) place for the next stage in our life as a family. We're praying for a smooth closing with no hiccups--I can't wait to start making new memories in a new home!