We're up and running...

...or crawling, at least.

Wow, what a whirlwind of a month! Despite my urge to stay hermit-like till I feel like we're finally settled, I thought I'd post an update.



Home Stuff:
Yes, we're moved in, relatively uneventfully. It worked out most excellently (for us, anyway) to have the kiddos with my parents. We were actually pretty much ready for the delightful crew that showed up Saturday morning. Can I just say that God has blessed us immensely with some pretty amazing friends and family? Okay, good-I'll say it. God has blessed us immensely with some pretty amazing friends and family. The moving part went pretty smoothly, and here's a tip for you:

If you want your moving out and subsequent moving in to go really fast, then schedule your move for January when it's -20 degrees. Why? Those movers move pretty fast when it's that cold!

We're actually getting settled in rather quickly...I just have a few more wall hangings to place, and my desk/office is, well, still a disaster. But other than that, and sewing some curtains and such, and the major projects that need to happen later, we're in, and we're loving it. It cracks me up, though, having this much space...the kids and I spend our days trying to locate each other, hollering to get a general sense of direction before finding and conversing (this is a 2000 sf house w/ a full basement. Our previous house could fit in here almost 4 times). We had about 2 weeks of -20 weather, so the boys and I were especially thrilled with the basement, as they spent much of their days riding bikes and scooters down there since it was too cold to play outside!

The huge praise is that we closed on our house!!!! Done deal, finished, dotted lines signed, money exchanged, no loose ends. God is good! I was feeling a tad melancholy about the whole thing, until a few days after our move when I was back at the house to finish up cleaning. And that's when I saw the mold growing up the wall in the corner behind where our corner china hutch had been. And the mold growing in the corner behind where my bedside table had been, even though I had bleached it and sol-u-mel'd it before. I got over being melancholy about it all pretty quickly.

So all in all, life is good in the new place, and I'll post pics...eventually.


Health:
We've made some headway with figuring out Jacob's allergy symptoms. Our chiropractor recently started using a highly sensitive blood sampling test that gets sent out to a lab. We tested Jacob on the panel of 96 foods and 16 environmental allergens. Interestingly enough, he is not allergic to mold, though we'll never know whether the presence of mold is what triggered his allergies (this link is one of them that explains the connection). Whatever the cause, this poor kid (and poor mother who has to cook for him) is allergic to wheat, dairy, eggs, tomatoes, citrus, and peanut butter. And while he is not highly allergic to them (as in, we don't need to carry an epipen around with us), his system is on overload, and we have to strictly adhere to eliminating these foods if his immune system is going to recover. Eventually he may be able to work them back in on a rotation diet, but in the meantime, potlucks are a cruel twist to life as he knows it.

Church:
Thanks for your prayers for our New Year's Eve movie event! We had about 30 adults and 15 kids show up, and the movie really hit home with a lot of people! If you haven't yet had a chance to see the movie Fireproof, we highly recommend it!
Our paperwork to constitute/incorporate has been turned in, and now we're just waiting for it all to be filed at the state level. Ha! As soon as that's done, we can close on this house/property for the church. We have some minor edits to make on our bylaws (it will be "take two" on making those edits. Another friendly tip from me to you: If you have a toddler, and your computer tower is at floor level, don't leave a zip drive plugged into the front of it, as said toddler will attempt to stand on it, snapping it off and rendering all information on said zip drive inaccessible). In general, moving right along.

Sorry to be so lengthy...at least I didn't go into details about installing and reinstalling a new dishwasher, building the goat/dog pens, car trouble for Mark, leading a special joint church service in Sol, or the almost-puking and runny noses going on here. Yeah.

If you still have our old phone # and address from before we bought our house last year, we're back to those. If you don't have them and need them, leave me a comment and I'll email you. And I promise we'll get back to pics soon....enough of this rambling with no pictures to make it worthwhile. Right?