A Brand New Beginning
I’m sorry friends. I truly am. As I sit here to write this, I think about the last three months and see that I was trying to do my best. As a mom, as a wife, as a homeschooler, and as someone who was living through a major life change. I was trying to juggle so much. One thing I didn’t do my best at was being a blogger, a writer, and connecting with all of you.
I never dreamed it would be this long. That moment in April when I hit publish on my last blog post seems like an eternity ago. It was a crazy a week of Spring cleaning. So much was happening and our house was in a frenzy. I needed to buckle down on housework. Baby Pip was only 3.5 months old and I needed time. Time. I had so little of it to spare. It started when my husband’s quartet and my chorus both had competitions in back to back weekends. All of our kids travelling with us for two weekends in a row. Then when we got back home from that second trip, I just needed space. Space from the world. I took a break from my personal Facebook page for several weeks in that time, too. I dove head on into our Spring cleaning. There was so much I wanted to share with you and now there still is.
We started with getting rid of tons and tons of kids clothing. Clothes that were outgrown, out of season, and not loved. We had so much but it borderlined on too much. So, I took two covered bins – one of the girls and one for the boys. I began to sort by season and saved any Christmas and winter clothes that could be used next year. Someone once told me that long sleeve dresses are perfect for winter, but I didn’t realise until now, that I took that so seriously. I must have dug out 13 dresses in total, why does anyone need 13 (very similar looking) dresses. So I started throwing the excess clothes in bags to give away. We made it down to 7 casual and play clothes for all the kids 10 and up (plus a few more dressy clothes). I ended up doing 10 outfits for the kids 6 and under (plus a couple of dressy clothes for church). The rest went to people who needed it.
Next was the books. We got rid of books and curriculum that were no longer needed or loved. I ended up selling most of it to a curriculum store near where we were living. It is hard for me to say goodbye to things but it feels so good to remember that these items are just “things”. They were taking up so much space in our home.
Then as the Spring was churning away, during one of the busiest seasons of life I have ever experienced, my husband was offered a job. A job we were thrilled about. It was quickly followed by a mix of emotions because it would mean we would have to leave the city we had lived in and loved or nearly for our entire married life. But this move, this adventure, was prayed over, and we felt certain it was the answer we had been waiting for.
So over the next few months we stored some items in a storage unit, sold others, and got our house ready to show. During that time we also decided to fly to the new city to look at housing. At the same time, my daughter was in her very first musical, school and co-op were winding down, and we were trying to juggle keeping the house clean, showing the house, and finding a new place to live – STAT.
So to put it mildly, the last few months felt like a whirlwind. I feel like I haven’t had time to catch my breath. We praise God for wonderful friends who helped us through the packing of our truck, some even bringing meals over, and bathing us in prayer. Thankfully, over the past week we have gotten settled in our new home in Chicagoland. There is so much I want to share with you, dear friends. So much. Please check back soon, because before my hiatus I had begun to work on a post about motherhood, and I want to share with you about our travels this Summer, how we finished out our homeschool year (with some awesome curriculum reviews) and even more importantly some updates about our baby.
This is a brand new beginning. I can’t wait to share it all, but for now I must get back to unpacking.