where are you staying now?

This seems to be the question of the month! This week we are honorary Castlemans. We joined a family with 3 girls this time, ages 14, 12, and 9. We are having a good time. This week we went to an 8th grade show choir preformance as part of their family.

Tonight some friends from church are throwing us a party! Sunday is our last time at church and to meet with our small group Bible study (I am forseeeing many tears!) Monday is the big driving day- from AL to TX! Thusrday travel to OK. Friday is closing, and Satruday is moving day again! I can not wait for this process to be over! We have been waiting for God to put it on our hearts to be ready to leave our friends here. I expected a big event that would make us sick of Birmingham and long for home! I guess instead God has prepared us for OK with a very long moving process! I just want to go "home" to a house we have never lived in yet, but it must be home! I do have to say that we have had only good experiences living with our friends in Birmingham and are very appreciative of their hospitality!

itinerant life

Well, we are in stage 1 of 3 in our moving process. We moved out of our house on Thursday. Surprisingly, there were no tears! Neil then drove to Oklahoma and loaded our stuff into storage. Thanks to the Edmond crew who helped! He then flew here to B'ham. The boys and I moved into the basement of our friend's house. We have 2 bedrooms, a living room with a big screen TV that rolls down out of the ceiling (that we have not used yet), a full bath, and a toy closet! We essentially have a home of our own under theirs. It is a great place to stay. We are very grateful to be able to stay with them. They have 2 little girls ages 7 and 4 that adore Mitchell and Mark. It makes it a little hard to have nap time, and there are many tears over who gets to sit by Mark at the dinner table, but other than that we are doing very well! Mitchell has not asked once about our old house. Praise God! He has asked who we are going to live with next before the Oklahoma house. He seems to understand and is not upset about it at all! God is walking us through this very gently and I am very appreciative! We started calling a few friends to have our last outings with them! Neil's schedule is pretty tight. We had 3 open days to do something and 3 families that were special to us on our "priority" list! So far it is working out that we all have just the right times to get together. I was pretty mad at Neil for scheduling so many work shifts and making it harder to see people, but God is working that out too!

Ok! Question of the evening! Who did you vote for? My vote is always for Chris! I really don't vote, but if I did, that is who I would vote for! I also thought Katherine did a good job tonight, but I just don't like her personality or something. I like Taylor - he is from Birmingham, did you know. I really don't like Elliot! Although he did a good job on his last song, he just does not need to be there. He is not "Idol" quality. We were watching Idol a few weeks ago and Mitchell said, "I hate her outfit!" I guess I have been stating my opinions a litle too loudly! Yikes!

last few days

We are counting the days (2 days to be exact) untill we move from our house! There is abundant stress in the air! And some sadness too, at least from me. It is interesting to see how your feelings about places change as the situation changes. Neil chose the house we are about to leave and moved into it before I even saw it! We have always viewed it as a temporary residence and were actually really ready to sell it! Now as we remove our things and go through all of the "last time to's" in the house, I am getting kind of sad! Tonight was the last bath for the boys in the house. Stupid to be sad about I know, but for some reason it was! On a funny/ironic note, I had saved some of Mitchell's bath color-fizzy things for the tub and was going to let him use them all up tonight. Well, he got in trouble for disobeying while in the bath and we had to get out with out playing tonight! I had to fight the urge to rub it in and tell him about the bath coloring and how this is our last bath in the house etc. He was already crying so I just left him to his own saddness! I think I feel sad because it is the 1st house that we began raising our family in! It is small, it leaks, it has bugs, it is by a noisy street, almost every inch of the floors squeak, it smells musty when it rains, the back yard is just a large hill good for good looks only, but for some reason I am sad about leaving it today!
It has also been challenging telling a 3 year old about moving. It sounds pretty terrible to say we are putting all of our stuff in a big yellow truck and daddy is driving it to Oklahoma! Mitchell had a few break downs when we started packing his toys a few weeks ago. He said, "But I don't want my toys to go to Oklahoma. I want them to stay here in our Alabama house!" Then I had to say, "But we are not going to stay in the Alabama house anymore." Oh, there is no telling what he was thinking. To add to the drama, Mark has been sick for over a week. 1st he had a stomach virus and I was cleaning out leaky diapers and clothes. Then he got a fever virus. He actually acts better with the fever, but he is still pretty high maintenence. The doctor says it should run about 3 days, putting us at the end of it on Thrusday which is moving day! Huh! So after we move, we begin a series of residences, 4 but who's counting, over the next 3 weeks. The part I am most worried about is driving by myself with the boys the 11 hours from Alabama to Texas. The longest I have driven by myself and one child is 3 1/2 hours. Mitchell was under one year old and I drove to Keri Tindle's in Atlanta! Driving almost 3 times that with two children will be an adventure! The next big adventure after the move is living in OK with Neil in AL for a month! OH- what is God doing to us? Speaking of God, a cool thing happened with the Gees and us. Kaden's heart surgeon is moving to Birmingham. If they go to AL for his next surgery next summer we will be able to get them in touch with our "extended family" here to take care of them! It feels really good to see good things comming from our moving! We keep wondering what God wants to do with us in Edmond, and it is really encouraging to already see ways we can bless others! Pray for us as we pack and move and live as gypsies for the next 3 weeks. Pray for God to bless the loving families who have opened their homes to us!