Under construction.

Poor little Pate Family Chronicles. The blank pages and readied fonts waiting to chronicle our adventures.  Not so much the blog under construction, but rather our life at the moment, just to clarify the title. So please accept my most humble apologies and regrets- I know, I know I say that a lot around here.  Guess that reflects the fact that I'm doing a poor job making this blog what I intend it to be in my mind. But I still have hope.  Hope with me, people.  Hope with me that one day this will be a place flourishing with heart warming and hilarious stories, with thoughts drawn out of the deep caverns of my mind, with challenging spiritual dialog, and spectacular, vivid color documentations and media all along the way. Wow, that sure sounds nice.  I had a happy moment there for a second.

Okay, so let me tell you what's really been going on.

So pretty much since the last post transpired (and mind you this wasn't even a full month ago), we heard from our current landlord that she wanted to put this house back on the market, we started looking for another place to live, found a house, got the house, set a move in date almost three weeks from the approval, found out our landlord put the house on the market as soon as we found a place, worked our tails off getting the current house ready to show while trying to pack and get out, got into new house the past two weeks and began painting, painted five bedrooms and the beginning of a living area, since we had access to new house began taking loads of stuff over there to keep the current house show-ready, and now we move in for good Monday morning, in two days. All while our two children are hanging in there along for the ride, small tasks like still running an entire church and ramping up into the most important Sunday of the year, the AC goes out in the current house and is dripping from the ceiling, garage door breaks and stops working, and trying desperately to cling to what little sanity we currently have, knowing that this is almost over.  And I'm six months pregnant, just in case you forgot.

(I like to use ridiculously long run-on sentences sometimes to exaggerate my point.  Because somehow it  comes across really exhausting and it seems to insert a tiny glimpse of the emotion and chaos that our reality is.)

Now that I'm done being dramatic, let me bring some balance here lest you think we're wallowing in self pity and have lost all perspective in this process.  We are actually very excited about all of this.  God has really been blessing us through this, and we got more than what we thought we would/could get in this new house.  I will share some details (and pics) with you when this all settles down a bit. It's just been a really intense and exhausting couple of weeks.  And as crazy as it's been, we're so glad it happened quickly and before it got really hot (for my sake), because drawing out this process while trying to continue our already pretty busy life as usual would have been, um, bad.  So while we're trying to stay afloat we are also very grateful, and extremely thankful for the grace of God that never fails to carry us through whatever is thrown our way. He is good and He does good.  

Hopefully I'll have a moment soon to post some old pics that haven't made their way here yet.  There's been sprinklings of fun throughout the past couple of months, too :)  We have had some great friends come to visit and went to some fun places such as Downtown Aquarium, Miller Outdoor Theater, and the Museum of Natural Science.  I don't even think those pics are on my computer yet!  

The irony in this is that this all sounds eerily familiar, as in about this time last year our life was in upheaval as we prepared to move here.  Can't believe it's almost been a year.  What a year!  So we are looking very forward to settling into the new digs so we can get that old friend routine back in the picture and move forward into the next season!  It's gonna be a good one- it always is. :)  And just because I can't leave you hanging too much, here's a few pics of the outside of the new house, front and back.

It's quite long, so this is a series of pics to span the front. It's a corner lot, so it's nice and roomy :)

The back is the same way, long.  This is one end of the yard, with a lovely deck for entertaining and hanging out. The next picture is looking from the deck down towards the other end.

Then there's a skinny pathway going to the other end of the yard with lots of nice landscaping.

 and BAM! The piece de resistance, at least for my kids. You can just say my heart immediately turned to mush when we were looking at this house for the first time and they ran outside and began playing on this right away. And you can't see very well, but there are three swings, two big kid swings and a baby swing. Uh, you can't get much more perfect than that for us :) It was meant to be.

Peace out from the Pate house.