SEVENTEEN!
Blogging is on my mind. I keep attempting to get back to it, but our busy life continues to get in the way, and here's the latest cyclone of activity...
We're moving ~ AGAIN!
Matt brought up the idea in March. He has a client that needs more day-to-day attention and there's an opportunity to expand his company's work with them, so he asked me as only Matt can...
"How would you feel about moving to Massachusetts for the summer? I think it'd be a lot of fun."
Me: hands flying in the air, face contorting, "Whaaaaaat?!"
He might as well have asked if I'd like to take a bicycle ride around the moon.
I started pouring hours into searching for a place to live, making that monstrous list of things to do in order to prepare to leave, and figuring out how on earth we were going to maintain two households when the cost of living is nearly doubled back east.
I looked at vacation rentals, executive apartments, unfurnished homes, student housing and even RVs. The vacation rentals all had multiple weeks booked, so moving every week was impractical. The cost of moving all our belongs across the country for a couple of months was way too expensive, and no one will rent out a house for such a short period of time. All those Boston students heard we had 6 kids and somehow stopped returning my calls and email. Living in an RV for 3 months was the most expensive option and sent me into a claustrophobic panic attack. Furnished executive rentals only go up to three bedrooms, and they sent me replies like, "Massachusetts has a law that says no more than 7 people can occupy a 3 bedroom apartment." sigh.
That same week, we learned that Zach needed an operation on his nose to remove several polyps, his adenoids and to correct a deviated septum, so we scheduled the surgery for the next friday. While Zach was in surgery, I sat in the waiting room talking with another young mother who told me about losing her husband to cancer and how the time that parents and children have together is so precious. Zach's surgery went extremely well, and as we settled in for a restful weekend of General Conference, I found myself looking to the Lord for some direction about moving. Our options seemed to have run out, but the thought of the kids and I being away from Matt all summer felt tragic, especially after last summer's misery of moving, home renovations, and broken air conditioning.
We NEED a good summer of family togetherness.
Sitting through the Saturday sessions of conference, the quiet thought kept coming to my mind,
"We should go, and it will all work out."
Such a thought could only come from the Lord, because nothing in the temporal world was indicating that it would all work out.
May I just say that God is a God of miracles. They have not ceased. They happen every day.
We are going and it is all working out.
Financing... We negotiated a reimbursement plan with Matt's Partner. HUGE blessing!
Apartment... I found ONE executive-apartment company that was will work with us. The rep has been fantastic about catering to our furniture needs and actively helping me work out the details.
Tenants in our rental home... They just happened to setup a new bank account at the credit union where we bank so rent can be automatically deposited each month.
Home and Auto Repairs... Several repairs for both of our vehicles and the two houses have come to our attention and I've been working with the repairmen to get everything in order before we leave.
The Kids' Attitudes... they saw pictures of the pool at the apartment complex and their prayers suddenly changed to "THANK YOU for letting us go to Massachusetts!" :D
Chickens... My neighbor across the street came to my door and said, "I'd like to take care of your chickens while you're away this summer." I still don't know how she knew we were moving or that we even had chickens!!! Her family had chickens when she was growing up and she wants her daughters to have the experience and decide if they want to have chickens of their own.
Miracles! Miracles!
Somehow I've managed to help the kids complete several huge projects for school, like Zach's 5th grade State Fair, and Lauren's City for Sale Project. The boys all participated in the Hope of America pageant, and Lauren and Zach had their final band concert. We just had birthday parties for Lauren and Gabe last weekend and for Max this Saturday. We decided to celebrate Max's birthday early because we'll be away from all of his friends in July. Matt also spent a week in the new apartment and attended the new ward and gathered information on girl's camp and scout camp for the kids this summer. The kids and I were even spared from a probably fatal car accident by mere feet as we ran errands two weeks ago.
Miracles! Miracles!
I know why we WANT to go. We want to spend the summer as a family without Matt leaving us five days a week. We plan to take the kids on weekend excursions to Boston, Cape Cod, The Hill Cumorah Pageant, Philadelphia, Amish Country, New York City, and Washington D.C., not to mention all the places we plan to visit as we drive across the U.S.
However, in quiet moments I've wondered a bit WHY it's so important for us to go.
Was there a missionary opportunity? I hope so.
And then amid this whirlwind of planning and working and miracles, I've been introduced to a LOT of information about health and especially nutrition. Everywhere I turn, I found another clue. It seemed to be riding on the air in waves. I've debated sharing this, but I feel compelled to share it.
For several months, Matt has expressed a nagging fear about his health. Matt is inherently an optimist, but he's felt this terrible fear that his health is deteriorating and that he could die and leave the kids and I without a husband and father. He isn't getting enough sleep between the red-eye flights across the country and then working until all hours of the night. He eats out all of the time as he travels - BBQ, steaks, sushi, fried everything, and he's developed an addiction to Coke. He's under stress that I can't even imagine. He has no time for exercise, and he's gained a lot of weight over the past 12 months topping the scale at his highest weight ever. I originally dismissed Matt's fears for his health. I didn't want to take them seriously, and then those quiet thoughts seem say, "This is serious."
Truth be told, our whole family has put on weight. The kids and I probably each added 5-10 pound last summer as we hauled boxed up belongings from one house to the other, and chose fast food in the car for lunch and Sonic's Happy Hour of 1/2 priced drinks and slushes to beat the heat of the broken AC. I blame myself for it. I know better, but the damage is done and we haven't been able to shed the weight since. As I recognized that my cravings for sugar had come back with a vengeance, I started following these waves of nutritional information.
The first wave was about sugar.
The second wave has been about dairy and meat.
And this isn't merely about weight loss, in fact, weight loss seems to be the least of my worries right now. I'm more concerned about high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer. And then it hit me... perhaps the most important thing about being together as a family this summer is about getting our health back in order! And the minute I thought that, I KNEW it was true.
Now, here I type at 2 a.m. inviting you to join our family for TWO monumental journeys.
One of seeing the country in a way I've only dreamed.
~ and ~
One of transforming the health of my family by revolutionizing the way we eat.
I'm excited and nervous and eager to start.
It's one thing for me to blog about a weight loss success story from 2010, but it's very humbling and terrifying to blog about life in the thick of big changes. Some changes are things that I would have called crazy or impossible three months ago. You may very well think we're crazy too and I wouldn't hold it against you. Nevertheless, whether this turns out to be public humiliation or triumph, I'm going to document this journey.
I can only pray that both journeys will turn out to be the experiences of a lifetime.
