Confession and request

Well, it's been about three months since we've moved in and I've posted anything.  It didn't take that long to unpack or paint or fix up things.  I just had a long period of discontentment and/or pity party for myself.   It wasn't the full three months, but it was a goodly portion of that time.  It was wrong.  Actually, it was sinful.  

Thankfully, God is loving and forgiving, and He enabled Chris to be that way too.  God also provided Christian women (here and elsewhere) for me to confess my sin and temptation to and ask for prayer and help.   He also provided preaching and teaching that dealt specifically with discontentment, thanksgiving, and joy.  Being discontent (aka disdaining what God has given to me at this time and place/rejecting God's plan) is a sin that will continue to be a struggle for me.  However, it is one that I must not give in to, not just for myself, but also for the souls of my children since I do not want to teach or lead them to reject God.  Please pray for me.

Basically, I just want to say that I need to be content in all things and be thankful for all that God has given to me.  No complaining or whining from me, and I encourage you to not complain or whine or wallow in discontentment (aka SIN) either.  

And  I really will post more pictures of our house, town, and surrounding areas soon. :)

The Move-in

          On Tuesday morning we woke and had our Texas-shaped waffles for our complimentary breakfast before picking up our keys and going to the water company to have the water switched to us.  I was feeling slightly pessimistic about how smoothly this day was going to go after how not smooth the previous day was at times.  I didn't feel much better when I (and the kids) drove to the house, and I found a truck in our driveway.  In fact, I kept driving past the house because I then thought that I wasn't remembering the correct house number or what it actually looked like.   Nope, it was MY house and somebody was parked in MY driveway. (Now imagine saying that in your favorite bear voice. I prefer a loud, angry Mama bear voice.)

This is MY car in MY driveway

     I got out of the car and left the kids buckled into their carseats. (They were thrilled.) I rang MY doorbell, knocked on MY door, and tried to peek in MY front window.  Nobody answered so I went ahead and unlocked the door and called out, "Hello!"  Nobody was in the house so I released my tiny but vocal horde from their seats and let them run through the house.  Chris had shown up with the U-Haul by this time and was not thrilled about the truck either.  At this point a neighbor from across the street came outside and introduced herself and told us that the truck belonged to our neighbors to the left of us.  We went over and asked them to move it.  The gladly did and everything was fine.  They thought we weren't moving in for another week, but now we ask them to park in our driveway when we are gone for several days and to keep an eye on the house for us.  They are very friendly neighbors.     

Welcome to my home.  Have a seat...

 While that part of the day ended well, it did put me behind schedule.  Math and Science professors and some of their family members where arriving, and I wasn't really ready.  I didn't have the kids in an out-of-the-way spot.  I didn't have labels on the doors or in rooms for what rooms were what.  I didn't have drinks or snacks or ice for our cooler (and don't forget that we didn't have a fridge yet in the house).  I had no idea where my box with toilet paper, hand towels, soap, paper towels and trashbags ended up. (I'm still not sure.)  

Would you like something to drink..or to eat...or...

  

Let's go to the den and chat...

or relax...oh nevermind....

            

     However, the moving in went smoothly. Everything pretty much ended up in the rooms where they belonged.  One couple went out and picked up ice, soda, toilet paper, paper towels, and snacks.  We were going to get lunch for everybody, but they treated us instead.  A couple of them closed off the water line that would have gone to an ice-maker/water thing in a fridge, but we weren't getting a fridge with that type of feature. Another professor stopped by later with a basket of fruit, snacks, and lollipops for the kids as well as some more water bottles and soda.  They were wonderful and made our first day here a very good day.

Westward we go.

Our travels actually started on Sunday after church.  This first leg only took us about six-and-a-half hours.  Granted, if we were only driving our car then that would be a bit longer than normal, but with having a U-haul truck as well, we actually made pretty good time.  The kids and I were in the car, and Chris was all alone in the U-haul. (Yeah, I felt so bad for him all alone in there.)  The kids know this drive to Mamaw and Papaw's pretty well so they were anticipating crossing over state lines.  We yelled goodbye to each state as we left and hello to the new one that we were entering.

Welcome to Illinois

Welcome to Missouri

You know, it's slightly difficult to take pictures, drive, and try to maintain a sane level of chaos in a car with a backseat that is fully loaded with children.

We made it to Missouri just fine, spent the night, and then set out for our very long day of driving the next morning.

Content for now.

This is a pre-stockyard stop photo.

We started out just fine making our way through Missouri.  However, my always oh-so-cheerful three-year-old (The one with the trademark crying/howling face.) decided that she should attempt to shatter the car windows with her screams while also trying to kick through the back of my seat.  This little experiment led to us stopping at the Joplin Stockyard for a brief disciplinary restart.

It seemed to take forrrrrreeeevvvvverrrr to get out of Missouri but finally we made it to Oklahoma where we (or rather I because I didn't turn the walkie talkie on for the entire episode) experienced another screaming fit while driving through roadwork that stuck us in one lane at reduced speed without anywhere to pull over.  However, we did see some lovely wind farms later on.  :)

Welcome to Oklahoma

 See the lovely windfarms.

Chris and I each messed up at one toll a piece along the toll roads in Oklahoma and had to pull over and go back to pay.  Yeah, that was great fun. 

 Welcome to Texas

Finally we made it to the Texas state line as the sun was starting to set.  The picture above actually grasps my end of the day mental state quite well. Dark and shaky.  We continued on to drive in the darkness to where Chris and I found visual proof that not everything is bigger in Texas.  :)  

 This is the cross in Illinois.  It is very large.

This is a similar cross in Texas.  It is not very large, comparatively

We made a stop for gas for the U-haul before we reached Amarillo. We didn't have enough gas in the U-haul to make it to Amarillo.  We were very happy to see this gas station and then we were very sad. Apparently, we were mistaken in thinking that this gas station actually wanted to conduct any business at 10 almost 11pm at night.  The pump refused our credit card (It did accept another lady's debit card while we were there.). The owners were inside the store, but they had the door closed and locked and did not want to open up so we could get some gas.  They gave us directions to another gas station down the road into whatever little town we stopped at.   All of the slasher/horror movies involving desolate areas and wrong directions flashed through my mind as we drove into this run-down little town. (Unfortunately, I have seen quite a few.)  

Obviously nothing of horror movie value happened since you are reading this blog, and the gas was actually slightly cheaper at the second gas station.  We made it back to the Interstate and continued on our way.  We finally made it into Plainview (We were on the road from 8:30am Monday morning until 1:17am Tuesday morning.) and found a hotel room for us to sleep in before moving in to our house the next morning.

That's our trip in a nutshell.  I'll share house photos and our painting projects in upcoming posts.