God

“Home”

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We are “home”. I use quotation marks for so many reasons, which I’ll share with you in the next paragraph. If you’ve followed our journey, we weren’t supposed to come back until early to mid-August. So why did we come home approximately 10 days early and skip Mount Rushmore and the Badlands? A most important family member needed us and that’s all I’m going to say about that for now respectfully (please keep my family in your prayers). We departed from the Grand Tetons on Sunday, August 22nd at 4:22pm and arrived home Tuesday, August 24th at 11:22pm. My husband, who drove the entire time and the entire journey, is my hero!

Ok so now for the reasons for the quotation marks: 1) Shaun going to work, 2) I miss Dani (my BFF who now lives in FL), 3) We barely lived here before we left on our journey so it’s unfamiliar, 4) Although I have lived in this, the same county, my entire life I am not super familiar with this particular town, 5) I have one friend in this town and that’s hard and scary thinking what if I don’t make friends here, 6) The girls have no friends in this town, 7) I miss living the RV life BIG TIME, 8) I don’t know where anything is in this TOO big house, 9) I HATE cleaning this TOO big house, 10) We miss exploring other places, 11) National Parks, 12), 13), 14), 15), 16), 17), 18), 19), and 20) I am TOTALLY missing having the four of us (and Gilmore) all to myself without sharing with anyone, school, life, work, etc… getting in the way!!!!!! This is by no means a whoa is me moment, I am beyond blessed for the too big house, my husband having a job, for a BFF who I love beyond words, we’ve seen and been places people dream of visiting, and I love the people I share my family with, but it’s a BIG adjustment.

On the plus side: 1) It’s the BEST being near the fam (especially when they NEED you), 2) I love having my big kitchen with all of the equipment, 3) Not rocking around in our home is kinda nice, 4) Not wearing shoes in the shower, 5) Not walking Gilmore, our pup, 6) Really great internet, Netflix and tv all of the time, 7) The deck, yard, trampoline, giant grill, etc…, 8) On hand washer, dryer and best of all, dishwasher, 9) Amazon Prime whenever I want, 10) Our library around the corner, 11) Dunkin Donuts (what’s up with the West coast’s aversion to DD?), 12) Farms with local goodness so close by, and 13) Not packing up, unpacking, and moving your home.

Not surprisingly, got home and all of the hub bub of the girls wanting their own space and rooms and…drumroll…they slept in each other’s rooms for eight days after we landed. It took us days to unpack the RV, unpack what we brought into the house, get everything cleaned up, organize the crap, get rid of a lot of what we easily lived without for six and a half months, and settle in. It was a super hero effort on my part, the girls helped best they could and we were done within a week. Not tooting my own horn, and don’t get me wrong our house is not in full order, but we are living here without any of my super anxious feelings when I walk into a room.

Living such an unbusy, limited cleaning stress, go where we want, no outside demands or plans, easy life has changed us. Our lifestyle, goals, dreams, daily to-dos are different than the average Joe around us. We don’t want to sign the kids up for a million activites/extracurriculars and they don’t want that either. We don’t want to make plans weeks in advance for anything at all. We don’t want to blast our calendar to fill our days. Having been the calendar queen (I had three) and now we are home and I haven’t changed the fridge whiteboard calendar from what it was left at in December/January. The only thing I’ve added to my Google calendar was upcoming school dates, my sister’s wedding events, and some appointments for a family member.

The life we lived before the journey is GONE and the four of us couldn’t be HAPPIER!

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Yesterday in church, God showed me how much he is present with us right now through this transition from RV to house, in our new journey to change the way we live, and in a tough emotional time in our lives. The sermon was about how enough is enough in our lives. I’m summarizing here but stockpiling things, money, and anything else is unnecessary and not in the way of trusting our Lord and Savior because He always provides. In Proverbs 30:9 states ” give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much”. Mind blown!

We had our first weekly family meeting last night. Starting with open conversation about how we are feeling, what we would like to change, and how to do better. This could involve our family, friends, or just about anything. I figure if we start this at ages 8 and 10, then down the road hopefully they’ll be more open to share in a safe environment when things are really serious. I tried to focus on how we are feeling back in NJ so far, what we miss about the RV and how we could bring it here, and how we can feel more comfortable when we are not so sure how to feel but definitely full of a lot of longing.

During our meeting I was so in awe of Natalie, and this isn’t a new feeling, but her security and confidence in finding new friends and being ok in her new school was inspiring. Finding new friends every time we moved in the RV and being so confident in approaching new, unfamiliar kids might have helped because the grade she was in at her old school had only approximately 12 girls in her entire grade and she was uber comfortable, cushy there. Her new school she’ll be in she’ll be in the elementary school for one year with Brie before entering Middle School and then multiple schools come together and a more varied pool of potential friends. I keep instillling in her that if she doesn’t click with anyone she doesn’t HAAAAAVE to be friends with anyone and can make friends with a larger pool of girls next year. It’s my job and goal to help my girls be more confident and secure in themselves, who they are deep down, allow them to speak openly to me, and share all of their life with me without fear.

Brie was the one on the journey that wanted to come home to start her new school so she could make friends in our new town. I think the reason was that she wanted Natalie to be there with her for the first year before Natalie went off to a different school. Brie was the advocate for coming home instead of continuing the journey any longer. However, now that the date of the new school year approaches and she realizes her BFF, Chi-Chi, won’t be with her as her partner in crime, the tides have shifted. It definitely helps for her to see Natalie so confident and ready to make friends, not so ready to go back to all the hours, homework and hubbub of school, but as ready as any kid is after summer break.

Four and a half weeks left until my whole world is really turned upside down. Shaun will be at work and the girls will be at school. My RV life, my happy place, and the best part of my life will be completely replaced by a semi-“normal” life.

So, this is the real of how we are adjusting so far. We have spent a lot of time with my mom and she’s our person, we’ve hiked which helped to be among nature and pretend we were on the journey again, we’ve cooked and baked up a storm and enjoyed the big kitchen and all things in it, we have visited a nursery and bought some herbs and fruit plants to start growing, a library visit was in order and we do love love our local library (which we didn’t have at our last town or on the journey), we introduced our air plants from the RV into our home and many hours have been spent on our trampoline, on our deck and enjoying our gorgeous outdoor space.

Oh what Shaun and I, and at a 60/40 ratio the girls too, would give to get back into the RV and continue our journey!

Not Settling

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Don’t let the title of this blog post confuse you. We are positively settling, but not for less, just into more. This house is so warm and already wrapping its arms around us in a way that is hard to imagine anywhere else. Although a bump in the road, the delay in closing and life in boxes longer than anticipated, has really been a blessing by pushing me into a place of contentment at closing time, which was yesterday.

Throughout the week I can’t say I felt as much complacency as I do now. After Natalie, my oldest, was born I experienced some severe postpartum. After Brie, my second, was born I had it again but was slightly more prepared. This move has made me feel like my first postpartum in some ways. The feelings that progressed were unexpected, intense, numbing, and ultimately confusing.

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Just me & my girls

After we slept in the new house for the first time I didn’t feel any different. It was a similar feeling to waking up in a vacation house. The boxes stayed packed and we were living out of luggage in the days following because the rooms weren’t painted, the closets weren’t finished, and the floors were not completed. Some great news for everyone reading, the floors are finished! The master closet is also finished! And we are working on the painting epidemic but it’ll happen along with a lot of electrical work. With a lot left to do and we are all thankfully comfortable with a slow settling, we haven’t had anyone over yet and probably won’t for a few more weeks. Just us living and melding into our new space.

In my life I have not moved a lot and so I connect myself emotionally and physically to my home. Our last house, was all our daughters knew, the place our second daughter came home to from the hospital, where our first daughter was potty trained, the place they both learned to swim, every room filled with firsts, some lasts, and a lot of in-betweens. It’s a chapter in our life that has happened and we’re supposed to move on from. Not easy! There’ll be times in the future where Shaun and I will say “remember when” referring to memories in our last home like it was yesterday but the girls, being still so young, won’t remember and these thoughts throw me. The circular motion of bleakness to excitement haven’t stopped for the past week. I hope that the girls’ best and more memorable moments are to come, in this house, and last with them forever.

Family room and kitchen floors during reno, post, and pre-cleaning but still gorg!

Tuesday I started homeschooling the girls. The one major lesson I have learned already is that we have to set boundaries during our homeschool time. Such as, I don’t answer the phone during this time. Monday we played hookie while the floors were being finished and we got errands done, like cleaning the old house and returning our snowboard equipment from last season. Tuesday after homeschooling we caught up with some friends (picture below) at a Girl Scout event at Curly’s Ice Cream. As you can see below, they had so much fun! We are now three days into homeschooling and we are loving it! The decision not to start the girls in a new school mid-year and to live out my dream to home school them seemed to just fall into our laps with our move timeline.

The girls are still involved in their regular gymnastics class, we’re checking out our local library (which we didn’t have one of before) and so much more is keeping us in tune with the rest of the world. We women in my family normally hibernate come cold weather so our slight exclusion from the world is not abnormal for this time of the year anyway. Honestly, everything couldn’t have fallen more into place thank God.

Here’s pictures of Day 2 of homeschooling…in pjs!

Brie 1st Home School Day

 

So, to summarize my chaos of feelings, it’s all bittersweet. The good memories, neighbors/neighborhood, life we had in our old house was beyond amazing and beautiful. However, our new house, home, is nuzzling us and bringing us a different kind of joy. Our family is growing in time together and different kinds of experiences with a future that is so wide open and promising!

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Our neighbors (Whitney, top left, was 9 when we moved in and now she is 16; Cole is 14 yesterday and was 6 when we moved in; Natalie, bottom left was 2 and 3/4 when we moved in and is now 10; Brie was 4 weeks from being born and is now 7+)