Simplifying for the Big Move

When we started thinking through all of the details of moving overseas early this spring, there were a LOT of questions. Sell the house? Bring the KitchenAid (yes!)? Ship our things? Where do we fly from? What can we not live without? How do we take in our host culture without sacrificing peace & rest at home? When do we sell our bed?

The questions were a little overwhelming for a while, but after making lots of lists, seeking lots of wisdom and spending a lot of time on our knees, we felt a little better about tackling all of the necessary tasks to get out of the country.

Now that we’re a few days away from moving out of our house and into the home of friends our home is nearly empty and we’ve had several weeks to consider the benefits of simplification. I recently read an article about a man who went from owning (and managing) a whole lot to owning very little. And just like this man, our experience in downsizing has been really great. We’re packing all of our things into 8 checked bags and 4 carry-ons. We are storing some handmade items & non-digitized photos with family, but other than that, we’re leaving nothing behind to haul over or pitch out later.

Having less stuff has been great. Okay, so getting rid of our organizational furniture hasn’t been stellar (not having a dresser has been interesting), but having less has meant lots of good things:

• practicing contentment with fewer forms of entertainment
• quicker home clean-up
• easier organization of the things we do have
• thoughtful purchases rather than impulse buys–we’re saving money!

Having an emptier home before we left has shown us what a joy a simpler style of life can be. Yes, having one mixing bowl is a pain in the neck, organizational items will come back in our new place and having enough chairs for everyone to sit on is a plus. But having more floor space for the kids to play? We like it. Less unread books to dust? Great! Fewer dishes to put away (though I do wash them more frequently)? Excellent idea.

If you’re going to be moving soon, take the opportunity a few months in advance to clear your home of things you don’t need or love. It’s amazing how we’ve lived quite comfortably with two garage sales less stuff over the last few months. I wish I’d done this before!

Empty Nest

No, we’re not empty nesters, but our nest does feel empty these days. I’m pretty bad about spending time with real, live people instead of yarn, food, fabric and other things I find in my house. So in preparation for our move overseas this summer, I decided a while ago to clear out our earthly possessions in record time so that I could say our farewells to people with a little less on my shoulders.

Practically speaking, that means that with just under a month left in Louisville, we have very little furniture left in our rooms and bare bones supplies in almost every other way. The kids still have toys and craft supplies, but my yarn stash has disappeared, my kitchen gadgets are packed or gone (excepting the essentials of course) and our home is starting to feel, well, empty.

Walking through now empty spaces has brought back a lot of sweet memories–rocking my babies in a glider that’s now in another mother’s home, shared meals over a dining table that has moved on, sitting with my husband after the kids are in bed on a couch that has moved on to some newlyweds.

There certainly are things I’ll miss about my home. Like this view from our picture window. Not glamorous, but look at all that green! And the view comes in handy when I send our kids out into our huge backyard to play virtually unmonitored. I’ll miss that too.

I have to admit that I’ll miss my kitchen too. After this great big space it’ll be hard to love a tiny kitchen (that hasn’t been redone with love and sweat), but a teeny kitchen is in my future, so I’m praying for a heart of joy with whatever the Lord brings us!

But we didn’t buy our house for its offerings of creature comforts. I mean, there were like zero of those when we moved in. I’m cringing just remembering how gross this place was when we bought it. We bought this home so we could love people with it. Lots of folks have crashed in our basement, our dining room has hosted countless fellowship meals, the backyard has had visits from dozens of wee ones and we’ve loved all of it. My nostalgia over good conversations in this home will hopefully spur me on to love people in our new home overseas.

As we leave this home for a new one, we remember that ultimately we belong neither here nor there. We are looking forward to a city with foundations, prepared in heaven for us!

Dirty Brown Rice

I’ve made this dish a zillion times for all kinds of occasions. It’s not a glamorous dish, but it has won over the hearts of millions…okay, so maybe a hundred at best.

I love that it’s easy, versatile, transports well and reheats into awesomeness the next day. The recipe originally came out of some magazine, but it’s morphed so much that I’d call it my own.

Dirty Brown Rice

• 1/2 lb crumbled sausage
• 2 chopped bell peppers, any color
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 c salsa
• 1 green onion, chopped
• 2 1/2 c cooked brown rice
• 1/2-1 c chopped parsley (or cilantro)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2-4 cups fresh spinach, roughly chopped
• optional–diced cooked sweet potato, fresh tomatoes, corn, etc

Brown sausage in olive oil, drain and remove from skillet. Add peppers, onion, garlic and salsa to the pan and cook over medium heat until soft, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Stir in sausage, green onion and 2 Tbsp water. Cook 2 minutes, then toss with rice and remaining ingredients. The spinach will wilt when you toss it with the rice mixture and it all turns into a festive block party in your mouth. It’s prettiest when you use red and orange peppers, in my opinion, but yummy no matter what.

 

Run baby, run!

Today I ran my second “mini” marathon. All of my friends and I agree that it’s just not mini. Half-marathon sounds better. As long as the word marathon gets to be in there, it helps to convey the length of the endeavor.

In November I ran my first mini. It was killer. And not killer in the good way. Today was easier on my body–there wasn’t icy rain, I’ve trained for over a year and the crowd was so much bigger and more fun. And I got to run most of it with sweet friends that I’ve clocked countless hours with training.

I’m going to miss these ladies when we move! I mean, who else can be ridiculous with me like this? Yes, I’m flexing those guns!

Or this?

 

I keep saying that I’ll probably never run a half-marathon again. I mean, who can I train with that’s as cool as these gals? And there’s no way I’d train for one by myself. Yuk.

Getting to participate in the Derby miniMarathon is a good way to close out this season in Louisville. Running through the Downs, hanging out for hours with some of my favorite people, these are things I can cherish forever.

Ahhg, the paperwork!

It is a truth universally acknowledged…that moving overseas means lots of paperwork. Am I right or am I right?

We’re getting ready to leave Louisville this summer, so visas have to be processed, we’re renting (and refinancing) our house, making lots of last doctors’ visits and it seems like each step has required small mountains of documentation. I never realized how much went into moving overseas besides packing your bags!

To give you a visual, Chris took a picture of me in front of one such mountain…and then I took one of him mocking me. Yes, that’s how we roll. And that face of mine, it’s saying, “You’re really making me pose for this? No, really, why are you pretending to be a photographer? Can I be done?”

By God’s grace the paperwork stage of our life is nearly complete. Then we just get to finish getting our house ready and pack our stuff. And say goodbye…yeah, not ready for that.

Spring Photos

I love family photos. Generally, I’m not the biggest fan of the process–getting everyone in the “right” outfit, clean and out the door unscathed to a location where we expect everyone to behave for an hour while looking at a camera and being their cutest selves. I’m not paid to do this (I’m paying in fact, to do this) so I’m far from a pro and usually have at least on crazy wife/mom/woman moment when I think the world will fall apart if everyone doesn’t do what’s expected for our world-stopping family photos.

But then we get the pictures back and all of that hullabaloo is forgotten. I remember that it was fun to squeeze my kids and make them giggle for the waiting photographer. I realize that I don’t stop often enough to just be with my sweet family. And of course I see how amazingly darling my children are. Cases in point:  I love how a real photographer can capture these sweet faces soooo much better than I can with my little point-and-shoot.

As we get ready to leave one adopted city for another, we decided to take pictures in the “towny” part of our town. Why get some lovely but bland park when we can get an old iron bridge or funky downtown buildings, right? Lou, we’ll miss you. Here are a few favs.

I am lame

Have you ever looked back on a period of weeks (or months) in your life and wonder what on earth you were up to that kept you from doing normal life? That’s me right now.

Maybe it was the never-ending stomach bug that attacked my family from February 4 until March 26. Maybe it was the acceptance of a teaching job in Asia for the fall that turned our world upside down. Maybe it was the end of the dreary, lonely cold months that kept me from wanting to keep up with the rest of humanity. I mean, I’ve barely even spent time on Facebook, so how could I possibly blog?

Whatever kept me at bay is all behind us now and the fluffy, dense layers of fog that make the last few months a blurry memory have lifted. Spring (or summer if you live in Louisville) is in the air and I’m throwing off the shackles of bloglessness. So be prepared. Recipes? Coming. Pictures of crazy kids? On their way. Tears over leaving Lou and all of the friends we’ve made here? Being wept daily. Hopefully I’ll live up to my own expectations for myself, but let’s be honest, if I blog once a month I’ll make progress.

Getting Our Work On!

Jonathan is in love with all things construction. Tools, vehicles, traffic cones, you name it, he loves it. I used to hate driving through construction zones, but now it’s fun thanks to my three year old. A typical car conversation might look like this:

“Hey J, there’s some construction up here.”

“Oh. Look, a cherry picker! What’re they doing, mom?”

Before I have time to answer, we’re driving by more equipment and dudes: “An excavator! What’s he digging up? Backhoe, backhoe, digging up the dirt, and putting it in the back of a dump truck!”

Yes, there are construction songs in my son’s bag of tricks. As you can imagine, construction is on our minds a lot with him around, so a party of the same theme seemed in order. Thank goodness for Pinterest or my list of ideas would have run pretty short. Let me say that having winter babies is going to forever yield birthday party challenges. I mean, some families get to plan on using their backyard or a park for their kids’ parties! Being as we live in Kentucky, we can at least plan on doing a few minutes of fun outside, but most of our shenanigans must be indoors.

Unfortunately for J, the night before his party, after we had worked and decorated and cooked and well, did everything you do for a party until way past my usual bedtime, the little man got a stomach bug. I had just laid my weary head down when from the other room I hear weeping. Poor J got it bad and his party for Saturday morning was post-poned until Sunday afternoon (no way we were canceling for real!)

The Gear

We had beautiful weather for our party. Maybe having it in the afternoon was a good idea after all.

Making “tool belt tortillas.” I had these super cute cookie cutters but really, do kids need more sugar? They got cake, ice cream, chocolate milk and Reese’s Pieces, so I think they weren’t hurting for cookies. Fresh tortilla chips though? They always rock.

I’ve never been all that good at making things pretty, so I worked really, really hard on this cake (part of the reason the party didn’t get pushed off any longer!). I got some great ideas online and lots of advice from cakey friends. It turned out yummy and I didn’t want to pull my hair out at the end!

We filled cups with Daddy’s nails and used them to hold up our little pennants. If the party had happened on Saturday morning, Spare Tire Donuts would have been added to the goodies.

Note to self–kids love digging. We could have dumped a load of rocks on our porch and stopped there.  Instead, we buried wooden truck parts in the gravel, the kids “excavated” them and we put them together.

J repeatedly asked, “Can we sing happy birthday to Jonathan now?” so we did. He loved it and loved getting to eat his long awaited cake.

This was my attempted caution tape interior of the cake…I think it would have worked a lot better on a round cake if I had stuck with that, but oh well! It was fun and worked okay. And it tasted awesome, so it doesn’t matter what it looked like, right?

Will we do another crazy party like this again soon? No. But will we continue to celebrate our sweet kids’ lives with fun shenanigans and big cakes, you betcha!

The Power of Three

They start small, but they grow up so fast! Three years ago I became a mama to the most precious boy I can imagine. His nickname as a baby was Wiggle because he was always on the go. Anyone who knows him now understands!

He’s impetuous, daring, shy (but not for long), chatty, imaginative, tender and loving, a sweet big brother, sturdy as an ox, clever and wonderful. I love this crazy boy and I’m so grateful that the Lord has given me these three years with him. To many more!

Big boy J with his block

The Mighty Thor

Though Jonathan has never seen a superhero movie and has no idea what a superhero really is, it wasn’t hard to sell him on a superhero costume. He was invited to a themed birthday and of course needed to dress up. But, as I am who I am, I couldn’t just go out and buy a costume. No, no. Mama needed to make him one.

Not much of a super-anything buff myself, I put the boy before the hero. Jonathan loves hitting things. So who should he be but the Mighty Thor? I’ve seen the Avengers, I totally know who that guy is. He hits things!

So with an unused grey turtleneck, some shiny stuff and some thread, a set of Thor armor was born. I’m sure it’s not “authentic” or whatever, but J digs it. The cape is removable thanks to the wonder of hook-and-loop, so if he’s not feeling as Mighty or as super, he can tone his look down a bit.

Now for the Hammer. I knew that if I handed anything that resembled a weapon to my son, it would be used as such. I used some 4″ foam (that I had previously cut into cubes with the intention of covering with fabric or knitting and never got around to), and hot glued a 5/8″ dowel rod between two cubes.

I cut a piece of my shiny fabric to fit around each side except the bottom (three long sides plus two short sides, sort of like a big rectangle with the corners cut out), and then cut out two bottom pieces that measured 4″x8″. I sewed the big piece to fit over the hammer, attached the bottom pieces then cut a hole out for the dowel rod. I secured the bottom silver pieces with hot glue, hoping it wouldn’t fall apart.

Showing me his hammer and the one we made for the birthday boy.

To keep the dowel rod handle from being used as a torture device on any unsuspecting bad guys, I encased it in some foam tubing (like pipe wrap) and then hot-glued some quilted brown fabric on, folding the side seam and the bottom over so no raw edges were showing. To finish I wrapped some embroidery thread (I know, leather cording would have been soooo much cooler) around the handle and secured with hot glue.

Now J can destroy bad guys or fight daddy with abandon and no one gets hurt.

Even superheroes play with pipe cleaners.