Throwing Last Pictures on the Blog Before Moving

Goldie turned 19 at the beginning of the month. She's officially old enough for leaving on her mission now. (In fact, just today she received her missionary nametags in the mail! Seeing those made her upcoming departure seem far more real than it has before.)

(We'd taken our couches to the rental just before this, so we are sitting on our oldest, most beat up couches. We dragged them into the living room so we'd have something to sit on while we are still here. They won't make the move with us, and, if you saw them up close, you would agree that they shouldn't.)

Last ever pictures of everyone watching birthday-present opening in this living room.

Strawberry shortcake for Goldie as usual.

Speaking of moved couches. Here are the last few pictures on my camera roll of our house still looking ... like our house. 

And here the couches are in transit. (Or, almost in transit. We didn't let the kids actually stay on them as we drove. :))

And, a few other tiny bits of this and that:

Abe, Goldie and Jesse rock climbing. (And maybe Anders went one of the days these pictures were taken, but I don't remember, and I don't see him in the pictures to know for certain.)

Jesse and Anders at High Adventure. This is the only picture someone texted me from the week. I was worried about Anders. He is still only 11, and, like his mother before him, a fairly homesick sort. He said, afterwards, that he dreamt one night that he was back at home with his family, and then was so sad to wake up and realize he wasn't. But one good thing did come from that. He's been quite unhappy about this move, but, after High Adventure, he told me that missing his family so much helped him realize that he'll be OK wherever he goes as long as he has us with him. That was dear to hear.

Speaking of camps, Penny is at YW's camp this week. (Poor girl arrives home tomorrow ... which is also the day we are officially moving up to Logan.)

A few pictures of her.

A sweet picture I had to sneak and get during a prayer at church.

Mette discovered Summer and Starling both sound asleep in Summer's bed one afternoon:

Abe has been working for a tree cutting place. They pay him incredibly well, but, as he tells us, he definitely earns his pay. He comes home exhausted and looking like he's been off working in the mines (well, except that he's sunburnt) every day. (When Abe first got the job, Mike mentioned something about it being a bit of a dangerous job. "Is it?" I worried. "Well, he'll be up in trees ... with a chainsaw," Mike replied. So. ...)

Perhaps the tree cutting has contributed to all of these back muscles?

Starling with some rather done up lips. That girl would wear gaudily applied make up every day if I'd let her. (Usually her eyes are also surrounded in pink eyeshadow and the lipstick is half on her cheeks.)

The End.

Cabin Comfort and a Spill of Thoughts

I’m typing this blog post from my phone, and the interface is a bit wonky so we shall see if this works out. (Also … do I even actually understand what “interface” means or if I just used it correctly? No. I don’t think I do.) But! I’m here at our cabin. It’s quiet inside (only the fridge humming), and all the windows are open so that I can hear the first few crickets beginning to chirp along with the repeated shrills and chitters of several birds. It’s dusk, and I’m sitting at our little kitchen table in the chair that best allows me a view of the lake and the flickering lights of Garden City starting to turn on for the night.

We are here for a family reunion. Mike and most of the kids are still down at the lodge where Mike’s siblings and their families are staying, but I brought the youngest two back to our place for bed.

I’m feeling such an unexpected sense of peace and just happiness being in our little cabin tonight. I’m not sure what it is. I’d been stressed to come. It’s not good timing for a reunion for us. (It’s not good timing for anything for us right now.) And I assumed I would just feel anxious to be putting a week-long pause on everything needing done right now. But I haven’t been to our cabin since early April, and I must have forgotten how much I love it here. Especially in the summer. And maybe, with so much of our lives in upheaval and a bit scattered right now, coming here just feels like a reminder of what it was to feel settled and familiar. This place isn’t unknown and half set up with belongings like the rental is. And it isn’t slowly being emptied out like home is. And it’s not demanding anything from me either. No asking that we figure out new routines and friendships and places. And no asking that we repaint and clear out and fix up. It’s just here. Comfortable and known and accepting. I hadn’t anticipated feeling a relief and a reprieve here, but it seems almost like I’ve been away on an exhausting journey and I’ve just returned home. It sounds silly, but I almost feel like our little cabin just wrapped it’s arms around me in an embrace.

I seem to have, whether of necessity or as a protection of sorts, stifled much of my emotion of late. There simply hasn’t been time (or maybe it’s that there has been too much time—too long of this) to keep feeling all the emotions of endings and goodbyes and change. Goldie leaving. Ward members I love who I will no longer associate with. Teachers, and my kids’ friends, and their friends’ parents, and the places we go and the things we do. Our backyard. My running routes. All of my kids emotions. Too many things. And I feel I’ve just placed a big wall up. “Do not enter sentiment and loss! No time to think about or feel any of that now! There are things to be packed! Cupboards to be cleaned! Arrangements to be made!” Every time another person tells me how sad they are that we are leaving I respond on sort of auto mode—expressing something that I feel sounds like an appropriately similar sentiment of sadness. But I don’t feel it at all. (Which is nonsense really. Because somewhere I know I do feel all of it. And if I even think directly of any one or two small people or things I can sense that it very well could pierce me right to the heart.)

I don’t know what it is. Mike says it’s too long of a goodbye. (Though heaven knows how we could have done it any quicker than we have!) And he might be right. How does the saying go? “The best way to cut off a dog’s tail is all at once not an inch at a time.” (That’s a terrible saying by the way. I still recall the first time I heard it. Someone said it in one of my high school seminary classes. And all I could think was, “Cut off a dog’s tail???”)

But here at our cabin tonight I feel ensconced in a place where I can let whatever wall I’ve been functioning behind down without fear of anything but comfortable and safe sensations entering in.

Still, since the move (and all its associated practical and emotional complexities) are my constant reality right now, I will say a few things more about it.

1. The other day when I was lamenting to Mike that there was no way everything was going to work out and get done (I need Mike to give me rather major reassurance on those points at least once a week), he comforted, “Sure it will. Enough time and money and we’ll get everything done.” And then I asked him, “Did you just say everything would be fine with ‘enough time and money’? The two things we do not have?” And then we had a good laugh. And sometimes, I guess, that’s the best reassurance one can give. A good laugh.

2. I’ve felt, throughout this process of trying to figure what things to accomplish each day and how to organize things, a constant and rather desperate need to have daily guidance and wisdom from my Savior on how to do it and what to work on next. “O … God, … we have no might against this great company … neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.” It’s felt too daunting to figure out on my own, and I’ve plead for that help somewhat frantically and with a fair amount of anxious doubt about His concern over such spiritually insignificant details as how to go about packing up craft cupboards and teenage-girl bathrooms. (Which is silly, I know. I could reassure any of my loved ones of His help in the smallest details of their lives with absolute confidence. But in my own head and with my own details fear creeps in.) And, of course, I’ve wondered often if this all matters. If this entire MOVE really matters. If it’s significant and important to God and His plans for my family. 

Anyway, during one of my sleepless nights filled with desperate prayer, these words from the familiar hymn came to my mind. “Be still my soul, thy God doth undertake to guide the future as he has the past. Thy hope thy confidence let nothing shake …”. I knew the Spirit was telling me not to let anything shake my confidence in HIM—in his willing guidance and help. And I’ve been thinking ever since of the promise that was to me: My Heavenly Parents. Christ. Undertaking the job of guiding my future just as they have my past. Because my past! They’ve guided me to so many good things! And through so many hard things! And protected me from so many pitfalls! Israel, my college major, MIKE!, our Fruitland drive house, moving to Washington, our current house, the guidance that lead to all ten of our children. Connections and relationships. I’ve just been reciting all the specific wonders of my life up to this point. And it IS giving me confidence in what that means for my future—stated well in this great verse from Deuteronomy 2 that Penny reminded me of the other day:

“For the Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.”

And now Anders, who also came back to the cabin with me, is seeming lonesome and asking me to play a game. So with all of the above thoughts (and not a single picture!?), I will close this post out for the night.

Between Two Places

On Saturday, July 1st, we started hauling some stuff up to the rental. 

Shelves for the garage, couches, etc. 

We hauled some more things on Monday and even on the 4th of July.

Slowly home is emptying out (we currently have our outdoor picnic table in our kitchen, and most of our clothes sitting in boxes where dressers used to be), and the rental is filling in. (I've just been referring to it as "the rental". Surely it needs a more charming moniker than that if it's really going to become a home for us--temporary though it may be. Mike suggested we simply call it "the Young Ward house" to distinguish it from the home we will eventually be building in College Ward, but so far it hasn't taken. It's the two extra words, I think.)

It's sad to see home emptying out ... and simultaneously happy to see the rental (er, Young Ward house) taking shape. I fear, of course, that it will "take shape"/fill in far too quickly. After all, it only has three bedrooms and a grand total of 1,500 square feet (about 3,000 less than we've grown accustomed to)! (You can see, for example, in the photos above how our kitchen table has been reduced to its smallest size and still pretty much touches the back of the couch.)

I've already determined that the garage will need to serve as an extension of the house--an extra area for kitchen things that there's no cupboard space for, shelves for toys, etc. And nearly every day I think of something else that there is no spot for in the rental. ("Where can I put a vacuum?", "What about a laundry basket? What about laundry at all for that matter? There's no laundry room! Just a tiny, stacked washer and drier in a closet!", and "Won't we need to bring all the blankets people pull out for movies? Where can those possibly go?", "What do we do about kids' clothes since we can't fit most of their dressers?", "There's no pantry! Where does our food go? And if it goes in the cupboards, where do our dishes and pans go?", Etc. And already the kids keep clamoring for their boxed-up things--the ones I told them they would need to do without for over a year. And we haven't figured at all what to do about a piano!😪)

At times I've been on the verge of utter panic and full of sleeplessness over it all. 

On the other hand, I must admit that it's rather miraculous how well it actually will work! In some ways it feels like it was prepared with just us in mind. Had it been a bigger house, the price of rent would likely have been far too hard to justify at all (as even small rentals are charging more than our current monthly house payment). The garage at this house has a perfect room for all of our food storage. There's a "well house" out back that is much larger than any shed I've ever seen that we talked the landlord into renting us as a storage unit of sorts. (So things like Christmas decorations and boxes of kids' clothes they are growing into and out of can be nearby.) It even seems to have come with solutions to some of my minor worries like: "What do we do with all our violins? They can't just be put in a storage unit where heat and cold will ruin them!" But there's a little storage alcove over the closet in our bedroom where we can tuck them all. 

And it's pretty amazing that it came to be at all really. 

On a bit of a whim, when we still had no concrete idea of how we wanted or planned to arrange everything with selling and building, etc., Mike reached out to some of his family up there to see if any of them knew of any rentals in the area. Shortly after that Mike's uncle bumped into Chris (the guy that owns the rental ... though he wasn't renting it at all) and asked him if he'd consider renting it to his nephew with ten kids. And, for some reason, he decided yes, he would be willing. A little rental right in the area of all the correct schools for our kids. A rental that happens to be right between the houses of Mike's Aunt Sarah on one side and Mike's Uncle Jodie on the other. (Sarah stopped by two of the three days we unloaded over the 4th of July weekend; once with pizza, garbage bags, toilet paper, paper plates, and a willingness to haul loads of stuff; and again with several bags of lunch supplies, snacks and groceries. And Jodie dropped by offering his large, enclosed trailer for us to load the rest of our stuff into over the coming days. [We'd been hauling things up with our flat trailer.])

And I must admit, what it lacks in size, it really does make up for in just ... cuteness and charm! It's a really darling little place. And the view certainly isn't terrible. ...

This is the view from the backyard. (Also you can see the well house in the photo above.)

And this is the view from the front! Not the worst thing I've ever had to look at!

Anyway. We all keep having our fears and our doubts. I've had to remind myself a hundred times that things being not-ideal, and steps ahead still being unknown and not being fully clear, and good things being given up and left behind does not mean something is not the right step to make. And our kids with all their worries, and "why"s, and little losses have given me plenty of opportunity to speak that out loud--and, in the speaking it, my own anxieties and doubts seem to squish aside and make room for confidence that it’s true.

We are still a long way from done. We'll be gone all next week for a reunion. And then we will finish (hopefully!) moving up all the rest of our things over that next week. Beds. Kitchen stuff. Bathroom stuff. A ton of misc. stuff. I'm sure that final shove will bring a lot more chaos to the move than there has been in the orderly way I've tried to do things so far. And then we will still be left with this house needing everything cleaned and a thousand, million things fixed and the stress of hoping it sells quickly. (And I haven't quite worked out how any of that will happen with Mike pretty much out of vacation days and me trying to accomplish the things I can do while determining what to do with little kids.) But things are spiraling ever forward! No longer does going back even seem the smallest option. It's forward from here. That's the only direction.

And to end, a few photos from the 4th. We stopped at The Farm for awhile.

There were little frogs everywhere! It was so much fun. The sound of frogs is one of my favorite things about The Farm!

There had been some flood irrigating going on, so this is how Abe looked (even after removing his shoes) when he and his friend Kellie got a 4-wheeler stuck in (and then unstuck from) muck.

Daisy sneakily got a few pictures of Goldie--which is good because she will rarely willingly be in pictures and there is little evidence that she exists in our family at all.

And did I tell you about Mike's geese? He ordered two Toulouse Dewlap geese at the start of summer. They arrived at the post office (!) as tiny goslings, but have grown enormously in just the two months since getting them (and they are still far from grown). 

Mike assured me they were a friendly variety. So far that appears to be correct. They are so funny. They follow us around like little puppies. Truly. The minute they see any of us walking anywhere, they come padding eagerly along. I quite like them. 

The kids have named them James and Helen. Below you see the lovely wreath they made  to go around Helen's neck. 

(And then, realizing Helen might be James, they made a wreath for James' neck ... in case he is Helen.)

Although Daisy sneakily taking photos of Goldie means ... no photos of Daisy. 😪

Hans sang little songs to himself the entire time he tootled around on this 4-wheeler. Especially after we got him to quit holding onto the brake and the gas at the same time. 

Nice face in the background Anders. 

After the farm, we took a few more things to the rental. And then Mike went to pick up the trailer from Jodie and brought a bunch of the kids along to see the baby cows and horses at Jodie's place. 

I stayed back at the rental with some of the youngest ones to do some sweeping up, etc., but Daisy continued to get pictures for me. 

Look at all these young horses!

And this final picture makes me happy. When they got back from Jodie's someone mentioned how upset Summer had gotten over how bad the mosquitos were. I didn't think about it again till I saw this photo and recognized Mike's long shirt on her and knew that he'd given it to her to help with the mosquitoes. 💗