happenings

I was away from here for a couple of months last fall. Let me fill you in.

Our busy September was interrupted with a call bringing horrific news that MIchael's mother had passed away. So we packed up and got on the road to Iowa within three hours. The week was filled with family and grief and busyness of preparations. And then, because we were already in Des Moines, we traveled up to Sioux City for the weekend to look at houses, with the hopes of finding one to purchase on a very short deadline. We found it - the second to the last house we looked at, in fact. We traveled back through Des Moines and arrived in Pennsylvania with one and a half weeks left until we left permanently.

The next ten days were filled with getting in last minute time with friends and packing, packing, and more packing. My dad flew out on the Sunday that we were loading the truck, and the next morning helped us drive away from the town we called home for six years.

We made our way back across the country. Amazingly, and I'm sure not coincidentally, we drove on the EXACT SAME DAYS that we drove to Pennsylvania just six years earlier. We stayed in Des Moines for a couple days, then made the rest of the trip to Sioux City to stay with my parents until our house closed. Just a couple days later we had our first Hopesprings Sioux City gathering.

The next day Michael started his full-time job doing construction and landscaping. Two days later we closed on our house (the fastest closing our realtor and lender had ever experienced - just three weeks!), and the next day we moved in.

It was insanity.

Since then, I've been getting used to being with the kids 12 straight hours a day with no break. I do so miss Michael's flexible schedule in Pennsylvania! Michael has been getting used to long days of waking up early to do Hopesprings work, then going in to his full-time job to do construction for 8 hours, only to come home and work on Hopesprings stuff for an additional 3 hours.

We had a busy holiday season celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas multiple times with both sides of the family. It was fantastic to be able to do that so easily this year since we now live so close!

Michael left us in Iowa for 5 days to travel to Pennsylvania to officiate a wedding over New Year's Eve. That was rough, to say the least. I don't want to do that again anytime soon. Let's just say it's been a trying time with a certain 3 year old boy's attitude and 8 month old's sleeping patterns.

But now we're in a new year. And we have new goals. And we are excited to see God do big things in our lives and this city.