A Little Catching Up...(Laborious Part One)

Before we moved I started a post that was a timeline of 72 hours leading up to the move. Clever idea, but that was two weeks ago now, and I never got around to finishing it.

Truly it has been a very eventful couple of weeks, packed with a high dose of chaos. Though it's not a detailed version, here's the week leading up to the move:

Monday-Drive (6 hrs) to Houston (Katy) that evening to stay with family

Tuesday-Drive around Houston all day long (6 hrs) with realtor and children. Find house. Put application on said house. Take very exhausted family to see Shrek movie in 3D.

Wednesday-Wait around for the realtor to call and tell us we got the house. Called and said maybe we got the house. Make the drive back to Abilene (6 hrs) to pack pretending like we got the house. Get there that night. Got the house.

Thursday-Finish boxing up stuff and running last minute errands all day long. Lots of awesome people show up at 5:30 to pack a huge U-haul with our stuff. Frantically throwing remainder of stuff in boxes. There is not an inch left in the U-haul. We also load three cars stuffed full. Fall into pallet on the floor about 1:00am to get up at 5:30 and get ready to hit the road.

Friday-Get on the road about 8:30 ish with U-haul and four car caravan. Houston here we come. With family and friend in tow. Get in town about 3:15. Leave everyone at the house to unload because we have to open a checking acct there to be able to access our money. Come back and our amazing help had everything unloaded. Unpack, unpack, unpack, etc. House full of completely toasted people (including 5 kids) crash.

Saturday- Amazing family and friend hit the road back to Abilene. Leave the house full of boxes to go to meeting with our new leadership team. Running on fumes but glad to see everyone. No more unpacking that day.

Sunday-First official service as pastors of CLC. Thank goodness it was a special "setting in" service and we had a guest speaker, because we were probably walking zombies at best. But very happy, grateful, and expectant walking zombies :) It was a great service.

And Monday started another week. And the day we added to our family and the craziness by bringing home 8wk old Mac. Yes, most of you are probably thinking we've lost our minds to get a new puppy in the middle of everything. I think that too at times- it was mostly a decision to help ease the transition for our kids and give them something to look forward to. I'd be lying if I said it's been easy- it's another full time job for us! But it's also been a lot of fun and he's about the cutest thing you'll ever see. More on him later.

This week has been the longest week and the shortest week. It's all a blur now, a mesh of setting up utilities, new accounts, trips (and more trips) to the store, meeting with people, unpacking, buying stuff for the house, etc, new landlord over three separate times fixing stuff, trying to get work done, and the constant pressure and reality of all the other work to be done continually taunting us. All of which was accompanied by more frustration and delay than anticipated or wanted. It seems as though we've had to labor over the smallest and most nonsignificant of details, which can really drain a person! Oh well- C'est la vie to some of it, and BOO to the opposition part of it coming against our souls, trying to get us distracted and discouraged. Comes with the calling.

So now that I'm done with all of that, I'm going to break this up into two posts. This is already longer than you wanted it to be and you're probably tired of the whining. But it felt good to lift the load off into cyberspace for a moment and share it. Thanks. The post after this will be of a completely different nature and not so laborious part one, sharing a few pics of the new casa (though probably the outside cause the inside is not done yet!), the new dog, and just some pure loveliness we've found in our new city. A city that I loved before I was here and love more every minute I'm here. (Positivity being my #1 Strength according to Strengths Finder I could not have laborious part one ending so laborious sounding...)

Peace out from the Pate house.