Big News

As all of you know, it has been an incredibly challenging 9 months for us. There was so much joy when we brought Esther home from the hospital. The joy, although it never disappeared, quickly morphed into panic when GM closed and Matt became unemployed.

We put out >75 job applications. A handful of those turned into interviews. None were in the immediate Rochester area. The best offer we received was from a company in Syracuse. We talked and talked and talked some more. We were ready to make the move. The assessor came to the house, took pictures and gave us an estimate. We were really doing it! The morning we were going to call and accept, a job offer came in from a company about an hour from home. We cried tears of joy and accepted that position immediately. We no longer had to worry about fixing up and selling the house, moving away from our families and all the stress that comes from change.

Fast forward four months. The position we accepted turned out to not exactly align with our family values. Matt spends a great deal of his time traveling and the time away from home is becoming a strain. 3a-3p night shifts coming up and more travel. Matt misses the children and the children miss their father.

Matt is the most morally upright person I have ever met. He committed to his position and was determined not to look for a new job until he had put in his time. Soooooo, when the company from Syracuse wrote an e-mail in May and asked if he was willing to talk, Matt was skeptical. Hadn't we just finished saying that we were staying here? Hadn't we started fixing up the house for ourselves? Was this a God thing? We had been talking a lot about how unhappy we were with the lack of family time...we had been praying for a solution.  Matt agreed to a phone call, and the recruiter said:

"We were sad that we lost you the first time around. And I Never Give Up on a good candidate."

A sign? Maybe.

We spoke in code for a couple of weeks. We agreed that we were not going to talk in front of the children about the possibility. We just weren't sure anyway.

So when the kids started talking to one another about growing out of our home and wanting to move a few weeks ago, it surprised me. I was in another room with Esther when I heard Joseph and Sarah talking candidly about wishing they had a new house. I came in the room and I tried to redirect them: "But Joseph, we are almost done fixing up the playroom! What makes you want to leave?" He responded by telling me that the house was too small for us and there were a lot of hornets around here. I chuckled and asked Sarah what she was thinking. She told me that she also wanted to leave because we had been here for allllllllll her life and that was a veryyyyyyyyyy long time. I asked where she wanted to go, assuming the answer was Strasburg or a grandparent's house.

"I want to move to Syracuse," said the 6 year old.

A sign? Maybe.

Projects started getting done even faster. Our house went from this...

To this...

...in just a few weeks. Not like us at all.

 

Matt says now that the house is finally looking presentable, we have to leave. It is just the way it goes...

 

So we accepted the new offer this week. Matt will start his new position in the beginning of July.

The Express is "solid in the siding." Hold on tight and pray for us as we begin our new route. We are nervous and excited, confident but cautious. We pray for peace and God's will.

The Reason I've Been Absent

There are as many reasons as there are pictures in this post. I have missed blogging so terribly, but have had absolutely NO TIME!

Here is proof.

We tore out a retaining wall for an old patio in our backyard that was causing drainage problems. The kids call the spot the "dirt pit" now. They ask permission to go play in it every single day. I had a dirt pit growing up. We were always filthy, but we had a great time and used our imaginations and worked together on building swimming pools and such.
Our dirt pit might be here to stay.
No blogging, Reason #1: Daily baths for all five children.

No blogging, Reason #2: My cling-on and exquisite pink cream puff of a nine month old.

We got this flyer in the mail the other day. It is real. Sarah said, "WOW! People have maids? I thought those were only fiction!"
No blogging, Reason #3: I don't have a maid....(p.s. it must be really nice to have a maid to complain about!)

No blogging, Reason #4: I've been working really hard with this guy. We have been trying hard to improve eye contact and to kick negative self-talk to the curb.
He is happier these days.

No blogging, Reason #5: I'm too busy writing lists. Lists of things to be done on the house. Lists of clothes to buy for these ever-growing children. Grocery lists. Schoolwork lists. I need a list to remember all the lists I need to make for the day.
It's true. I'm not kidding.
Sarah has inherited my disturbing dependence fascination with lists.

No blogging, Reason #6: Holy Moly! That is a lot of children!

No blogging, Reason #7: When I am not staring at Thomas 24/7, he draws tattoos on his body to be like Uncle Mike.
"And I'm not sorry. And if I have a chance, I will do it again."
No remorse.

No bliggity-bloggity, Reason #8: I'm taking pictures of everything.

Found this on my desk in the schoolroom. Sarah must have noticed I was having a hard day. I hung it on the fridge, and it is one of our two family mantras now.
No blogging, Reason #9:  God is helping me get other things accomplished.

This is one of Joseph's English assignments. Check out the link:  Sarah did it last year.
No blogging, Reason #10: Finishing up first and second grade with the olders.
Side Note: the answer to "What he likes" made me cry. We work so hard with Joseph to help him understand how dearly he is loved. This was a moment of reassurance for me. It's getting through. The message isn't getting lost.

Yes, this is my laptop that I do all my blogging on.
No blogging, Reason #11: Broken Lappy.

No blogging, Reason #12: When I leave Nate alone, things like this happen.

I am constantly finding Lego guys set up in the funniest ways throughout the day. Some of them, I cannot even post on the blog. We call this one "Vader with a jackhammer".
No blogging, Reason #13: I'm taking pictures of Legos.



No blogging, Reason #14: I've been doing some serious bonding with my first born.

No blogging, Reason #15: This is the playroom. The boys are holding crowbars. Enough said.

No blogging, Reason #16: These moments totally paralyze me...in a good way.

The second of our family mantras is Never Give Up. Joseph started it a while back and it kind of stuck for all of us.
The reason I am getting back into blogging: I Never Give Up.



The shirt was a gift from my Dad to Joseph. Before Papa ran his most recent marathon, he and Joseph had a lot of talks about never giving up. Joseph would tell Papa about his tricky math pages and Papa would tell Joseph about how hard it was getting to train for his race. They use one another as inspiration and sing this song. Before the marathon, they went out to the store and bought matching shirts and had Never Give Up printed on them. Joseph picked the color and the text. Papa had Joseph sign his shirt and he wore it to his marathon. He said people at the marathon cheered him on using the text from his shirt, calling him Never Give Up. He finished in under 4 hours.

Sarah and the missing tooth mystery.

Thomas has been learning to tell time. He carries this clock around with him and refuses to throw away the box. After he is done using the clock, he packages it back up very carefully. He sleeps with the clock at night.
Disturbing or Sweet?

Helping Dad with the playroom.

Esther is wearing a sundress that Sarah wore when she was small.
It is the sweetest little thing with matching bloomers. Call me a sap for loving on baby clothes.

Not one of my proudest moments: Pancakes for dinner and cucmbers for a vegetable.
My brother Matt says that Nate's face says it all.

You know you have a large family when a family membership for a year costs less than buying individual tickets for a day.

Memorial Day Parade.
Joseph kept yelling aloud (because he has almost no control over the volume of his voice): "Hey Mom! There are soldiers with blaster rifles!"
When I corrected him and told him that it was the colorguard and the rifles were pretend, he yelled aloud, "Hey Mom! There are the pretend soldiers with the broken blaster rifles!"

This is a daily occurence in our home. Nate will cross someone. They will tell him no. He will come to me and tell me that they are "BAAAAAAAAAD". And then I hear the real story.

"Sisters! Sisters!"

"Never were there such devoted sisters!"

That is my bathrobe hanging out of Esther's crib. It is her new mangie and the only thing that helps her not-sleeping self get sort of drowsy.
 

Sarah Ellen is so wonderful. She is getting taller and more beautiful every day. Losing her teeth has been a little bit of a traumatic experience for her. (Nate just looks at her crying and says  "Draaaaaaaamaaaaa!") But she has always been very sensitive and we love her for it. She is so helpful and always ready for the next project/party/chore/subject in school. She prays frequently and her faith is innocent and unfaltering. She inspires us. She has a silly and quirky sense of humor. If she discovers something that makes you laugh, she will repeat it 100 times just to make you happy. She loves God, bubble baths, babies, salad, playing piano, dressing up, all things sparkly and feminine, movie nights, sleepovers in the front room, ice cream, reading, playing spa and writing books. Sarah is finishing up second grade through the Seton Home Study program and is reading books that I read in highschool. She will be seven in just 2 weeks, which floors me!  Our Bean is such a blessing.

Esther Katherine...sigh. I love our little Mess. She brings so much joy and love to our family. Every single child already has a special relationship with Esther. She can make Joseph smile like no other. Tom can get her to giggle uncontrollably. Nathan is her fierce protector. And Sarah has a real, live baby doll at her fingertips. Es is starting to eat food: oatmeal, applesauce, bananas, sweet potatoes. She loves to be at the dinner table with the family and joins in the conversation by shrieking at the top of her lungs. A gal has GOT to be heard! She still sleeps very poorly. I can count on one hand the number of nights she has slept through since she started drawing breath. There is nothing wrong with her, she is just stubborn and strong-willed and demanding and ohhhhh-so-intelligent and all those words that you never want to hear from the pediatrician. "Don't worry," he says, "the real problems won't begin until she turns two!" However, Esther is charming and catches me off-guard with her sweetness. She is squishy and snuggly and dotes on her Daddy which is intoxicating. She prefers very few people, but I can see her becoming slightly more flexible about who is holding her. She loves zero baby toys and adores micro-machines and anything else she can pop in her mouth when I blink my eyes. She is crawling officially now and can get from one side of the room to the other as quick as I can...well, I can't really do anything. She is too fast.  We are so grateful for our Es.

I am so glad our girls have one another.

Equal Parts Hodge and Podge

I started writing this post over a month ago. Esther no longer looks like this...

...and Thomas no longer feels the need to practice his alphabet on our walls and furniture.


"Tom! Why did you do this?"
"I wanted to surprise you!"

The intellectuals playing Boggle.

 There has been a great deal of construction in and around our home over the past month (7 years).

 Most recently, the sidewalk and road were repaired by the town. The children spent the better part of two days staring out our front window.

All five were positively mesmorized.

 Thomas will be my stand-up comedian someday. He will do ANYTHING for a laugh.

Matt is putting the finishing touched on our schoolroom. I have to make a point to do before and after pictures of all our home repairs, but here is a sampling of the almost finished project.

 Still trying to figure out our fifth born and her crazy sleep problemo.

 Sarah and Joseph are working hard in school. Now that they are both reading so well, I have been encouraging them to help me out in the kitchen with following directions. It is so awesome and I love these moments of cooperation and bonding.

 Wayyyyyyy back, before Nate's haircut, Pete and Emily met us at the playground for some pizza and play.