Angels and Mac & Cheese (from the box)

This is what our life looked like this week:

Macaroni and Cheese. Beautiful mac & cheese. From the box. Only from the box. (Note that Enoch hadn't had mac & cheese from the box until he married me. Really?! Really.)

This week was mac & cheese because we've had sore throats, headaches, toothaches, fevers, panic attacks, broken ribs, tears, more tears, stress, expensive asthma medications, spiders, filthy kitchen floors, piles of dirty laundry, lost shoes, slow and sometimes non-existent internet connections, ad deadlines, bad cell phone service, and frustrations of all kinds. Have I mentioned tears?

It's been one of those kind of weeks. Those kind of weeks aren't supposed to happen in December.

But Heavenly Father really does notice and care. I know this because He sent angels. Angels who didn't know about all of the above but who called to help, to bolster, to encourage and to love us. Anonymous angels who left a generous gift in our mailbox. Thank you so very much. One angel (of the mother-in-law persuasion) babysat sick kids so I could go to the Relief Society Christmas Party. Another angel (of the worried mother back home persuasion) has spent long hours on the phone bolstering, encouraging and loving from afar. We are loved. We are blessed. We are grateful for people who follow sweet sensitive promptings so that we don't feel like we are going to drown in our macaroni and cheese.

Today we didn't have mac & cheese. We had Top Ramen. Things are looking up. We even put up our Christmas tree and got out the Christmas music. My favorite Christmas CD has a scratch and it kept stalling out on a really high note, but we just skipped ahead and pretended not to notice.

So, thanks to Kraft for making good comfort food. And thanks to our angels - anonymous and otherwise - who are such a good reminder about how to treat others this Christmas season. We love you too.

Oh Savannah!

A mom has to do what a mom has to do. Even if it means barricading her office with boxes. Savannah was very mad at me. Her favorite pastime is sitting ON my keyboard or throwing the contents of my box of filing over her shoulder.... and I NEED to get something done sometimes.

It's a good thing I like her so much.

PS - She got through this barricade shortly after I took the picture...by wriggling like an determined eel through the hole. It bought me a good 10 minutes though...

If you don't get your Christmas card until February, you'll know why.

To Simplify

Just typing the word Simplify makes me feel better. It's such a pretty word. For several years Simplify has been the missing ingredient in my life. We've been too busy, had too many rental properties, too many bills, too many toys, too many late nights, too many projects, too many businesses. It's all been Too Much. But Simplify is easier typed than done sometimes. Especially when your life is a ball in motion. You can't just STOP things on a dime. You have to sell properties or phase out of businesses or change directions and those things take time. Lots of time in my case. That makes me cranky. It makes me feel like I'm not getting ANYWHERE in my quest for simplification.

On bad days, I try to just clear my counter tops. Then I can say, well that's at least clean. That's done. That's something simple in my life. (until the boys bring in their rock collection or Enoch sets his hat down)

Moving to Starr Valley this summer was a good step toward my quest to Simplify. It's quiet, peaceful, and our home is small. That was good for us. Quiet, small and peaceful. A lot of the business noise of our life hasn't quieted (yet), but we were able to Simplify our stuff in the move.

I remember packing the kids' toys. I was stressed. We had a toy room, a loft area where the kids played, their bedroom, and 2 toy cupboards in the living room. And the goal was that each boy could bring a small tote of their favorite toys with them to our smaller house. It was easier for me to box up my beloved office, my huge master closet, my kitchen, and my chest of scrapbook supplies and only bring the essentials from those areas than it was to pack my kids' toys. I am tough. I can do without a lot. But the toys!

For instance. I have a thing for Little People. (not small people, rather the brand of toys.) I love Little People. I like to set them all up in their places on the farm or the ramps around garage or in their little cars. And then stand back and look at my little village. When Isaiah was a toddler, I did my nightly Little People routine to the point of obsession when he went to bed. Enoch laughed and mocked me. And, you probably are too. Enough... I've digressed. I love Little People though and I had to box up all of my friends because there just wasn't room. How would Savannah grow up through toddlerhood without Little People though? I felt guilty and sad about Savannah not having Little People. I felt guilty and sad about Luke not having his Geo Trax train set. I felt really sad that Isaiah wouldn't have a basketball slab and that it would be a while before our trampoline and our swingset were reconstructed. I panicked a little inside when I saw all of the toy boxes being loaded on the storage trailer. When the trampoline came down and when Isaiah said goodbye to the basketball hoop, I felt like I was depriving my kids of some of the magic of childhood. It sounds stupid now. But, that's how I felt at the time.

Slowly though, I've realized. I've grown. I've learned. We don't need it. They don't need it. They don't even miss it. Kids do well with Simplify. They adapt quickly and without a glance backward. They don't need stuff. They don't need the busy-ness of sports camps or frequent trips to the dinosaur museum or the carousel. They like it simpler. It hit me the hardest this week when I sent my mom the pictures of the last few weeks. The pictures made me realize that we've adapted to Phase 1 of Simplify just fine: Isaiah and Luke made the teepee and included Savannah in a little game centered around the slide.

Kids love laundry baskets. They don't need toy cupboards. They just need a laundry basket. (finding an empty one around here is the challenge)


Isaiah is my master builder.

I found all 3 kids sitting in the bathtub (without water) the other night when they were supposed to be in their beds. They were having such a good time that I couldn't get mad. I just found the camera. Who needs a fancy jetted tub when you've got siblings to laugh with?

Isaiah made this fort out of cinder blocks left over from setting up the trailer. I couldn't believe that he hauled them across the yard in the stroller and hefted them around to make a fort. Here they are pretending to eat at their "dining room table."

Does this girl look mournful about Little People?

Luke resting on a walk.

Adding the lean-to to the fort.

This is my favorite. This is Isaiah's horse & buggy. If you look closely, you can see the ears and the face of the horse on the cinder blocks.

So, we're okay. We're good. To Simplify is good. It's worth the fight.

No More Waiting!

Savannah's little personality comes out more and more each day. She's so hilarious. The day I found out I was having a girl, I pictured a docile little angel who would come out with cute blonde pigtails and be ready to have quiet tea parties. The stage she's in right now though is making me worried that that daydream may not be in the cards for me.

She loves to climb - everything.

She has a beautiful smile, but she can also glare at you something fierce (Enoch calls it the "you owe me money look"). She gives it to everyone, including me. Often.

She's very opinionated and very easily offended.

And, she's very independent. (already??) She tries to put on her own clothes, she likes to crawl in the cupboard under the sink and just sit there, and she likes to fold the clothes with me and gets grumpy if I take her towel or sock away. When I cook, she digs in the drawer until she finds a spoon and a dish and she does her own cooking. She also doesn't like to wait.

In fact, the other night she got fed up with tugging on me for her turn in the bath. (I was checking Facebook and just needed a few more minutes...) But, she was done waiting. She walked away and then I heard a splash, shocked silence from the boys, and then laughter. I went running.

And, this is what I found:

She crawled right in with Luke and grabbed the soap. Luke was shocked at first, but then he was thrilled to have a new bathmate. He kept saying, "Mom, sister has clothes on! Silly!"

Wish me luck with this one. Can you imagine what she'll be like when she's 13?

Look Who's Walking!

Savannah's been cruising since we moved, but last week she just took off. I wasn't sure if I should cheer her on or cry a little. I did some of both. I know from experience now that once they start walking, they just don't ever slow down and the little baby stage sort of flies out the window. I'm not sure I'm ready for that... but I don't have a say.

Perks

There are definite perks to living in Starr Valley. Here are my favorites:

This is our very own swimming spot, right in our own front yard. Isaiah told me the other day, "Wow mom, we don't even have to buy a swimming pool anymore. We can just teach Savannah to swim right here." (there were never plans to buy a swimming pool in the first place, but it's funny how he thought there was.) This post is only about the perks, so I won't mention the flip side to being so close to Monk's Ditch ... the constant tracking of mud in the house, the umpteen changes of wet clothes, the worry and stress of someone drowning.... (sigh) Only the perks though!

My sister-in-law, Olivia, keeps me in good supply of zucchini. I love zucchini.

We don't get a lot of solicitors here... just some friendly early-morning visitors. (one of grandpa's horses... the boys were THRILLED to have Ann greet them on the front porch this morning)

Today I woke up with a sore throat and a touch of the flu. My mother-in-law brought me chicken soup for lunch:

And, she brought me chocolate. She's amazing. So are my sisters-in-law, the peace and quiet, and the sunsets.

You should come visit.
You'd like it.

Adventures in Moving

There really isn't a way to blog about our last few months. I've tried to condense it into a blog several times, but it just doesn't fit. It needs a novel, and even then, no one would believe all of the details. Somehow though, I just can't blog about anything else until I've captured what's happened in the last few months. So I'm gong to write a quick little synopsis and hope that's enough to help me forget and move on.

Our neighborhood moving crew came on June 26th and we loaded our household belongings into our freshly painted truck wash billboard/van trailer. I left out a suitcase for a 5-day stint with Enoch's parents while Enoch got our new place hooked up to the sewer & new well. It seemed like such a simple plan. Unfortunately that's when the plan stopped working, and we ended up on a really crazy merry-go-round that hasn't let us off since. That 5-day stint with family turned into 43. Forty three. Days.

That's a long time to live with other people and a long time to wear the same clothes over and over. Our belongings stayed untouched in the moving van, parked at our truck wash and we draped extension cords to the building to plug our freezer and refrigerator in. The kids and I spent 2 weeks of that time in Washington with my folks while Enoch continued working his guts out and beating his head against a brick wall with the mobile home inspectors. Who knew anyone would care so much about us moving into a trailer in the middle of nowhere. But, they did, and we had to play by their rules. Enoch worked so hard. We appreciated him so much. Our families were so very nice to us and put up with spilled milk, loud boys and a cruising baby girl. We appreciate them. We also appreciated the day when the inspector signed his name and LEFT US ALONE. We moved our stuff in the second week of August. I wept when I saw my bed and our things.

(I left out the part where Enoch participated in the Wells car show parade with our truck & trailer at the end of July. The people on the sidelines of the parade had no idea our belongings were looping through the parade. Not many people have their household goods make a debut in a parade.. random but interesting.)

I wish we could say that we are all settled and the nightmare of the above story is behind us. We unloaded our boxes into our cozy trailer and Enoch has worked sporadically on our storage room in the back so I have shelves to put some stuff on, but we are still living in the land of boxes. Enoch has been at the truck wash nearly every day from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. We sometimes go in for McDonald's picnics in the lounge with him. Things are going well there though. Just busy.

Isaiah started 1st Grade on Monday. That was exciting. Luke had an asthma attack on Wednesday and we ended up in the ER. That wasn't exciting. Savannah is throwing up. That's even less exciting. And I'm blogging when I should be unpacking. That's not all that surprising.

We don't know why our last few months have been such a roller coaster. We just know that we're holding on the best we can, waiting for it to be a little calmer. We're thankful for good friends and family who have helped us along and continue to do so. We're thankful for our good and patient children and their health. We know we're being stretched and tested, and we know we'll look back someday and smile at what we learned along the way.

There's a blog I've followed since last fall. It's written by the family of a little girl that I fell in love with through the blog. She passed away in June and I almost couldn't breathe when I found out she died. I've never met her or her parents, but I feel like they are my family. They've been through so much, but they have such a good attitude. In no way do my trivial moving adventures even touch the surface of what they are going through, but I can see Heavenly Father at work in their life. Somehow being able to recognize that Heavenly Father is helping them through what would be my worst nightmare helps me to recognize that Heavenly Father is at work in my life too. A very simple but powerful reminder.


Here are some pictures from the beginning of our move:

Do you remember the post I wrote last fall when Enoch brought home the ugly red trailer and parked it in our yard? Well, the week we moved, Enoch and a lot of great neighbors helped us transform THAT into THIS... our moving van and the new on-site billboard at our truck wash. Enoch said, "See dear? That was the vision." He's good with visions like that.

This was when the truck & trailer left Eagle Mountain and headed for Starr Valley. We were all in tears when it drove down the street. We've been in Nevada since the 1st of July but Luke still asks if he can go home. Moving is hard all the way around.