Up at 5 with Coffee

Ok, so it has been way too long since I have posted anything here. We're talking nothing yet in 2011 at all! So it is the way things are going around this place. I've always been busy and it isn't as if there is nothing to say.

So, I'm going to start anew, sort of, or at least continue onward and try to catch up. I have realized that I miss journaling here and with everything going on in our lives, I want to have a place to keep track.

It is 5am and I'm awake. With coffee. Although I am a morning person, I do not normally relish these early mornings when I am only awake because I can't sleep. It reminds me too much of my years as a nurse when I was only awake because it was my work shift. Instead of having my first cup of coffee for the day, it was my 10th, and instead of just waking up because my dog is snoring next to my bed, I would have been awake all night. I don't miss those days (nights) much at all.

I'm a stay at home mom and have been now for over 1 1/2 years. My kids are 4 and 2, soon to be 5 and 3. They both have birthdays coming up and they keep me really busy. They both are Chinese and were both born with cleft lip and palate. We adopted them two years apart and have been home with Asher since March 2010. This is how time flies. When we came home with Ash, we both thought, that is it, we are done. We have two wonderful boys and we are blessed. We were happy and truly very busy. I spend a lot of time caring for them, taking them to speech therapy and other lessons and I work from home as a writer. So sometimes I do find myself awake at 5 am and it's not always a bad thing--it's peace and quiet.

Up until 3 weeks ago, we lived in a small, 2-bedroom home--our first house that we loved. Ok, I loved it when we first bought it and for many years of living there, but then it became cramped. Perhaps it is because it used to be just Russ and I. Then, we added Owen, our dog, who really doesn't take up too much room. We brought Caleb home to that house in 2008 and then, two years later, Asher. Even before we adopted Asher, we thought of moving but decided against it because it just didn't seem like the right time. Then, once we were home from China, we didn't realize how close of quarters it would be with two kids. But we didn't feel we could move yet, what with just returning from traveling across the world and managing a new 18 month old in the family.

Once we decided to move, we were so excited to think about a new house but we also realized how difficult it would be. We had waited a year past the first-time home buyer stimulus that may have brought a buyer in for us. Instead, we waited for it to sell but we sometimes weren't sure that it would because it seemed, well, small. Once, after an unsuccessful open house, our realtors mentioned that there was one retired couple who was looking at it and who they thought might be interested. The couple instead said they were retiring and moving to the area, but no, the house was too small. Our realtors asked them about what line of work they were retiring from. They were overseas missionaries! So, even for someone retiring from a career of living in a developing country, our house was suddenly too small. We wondered if it would sell.

As the end of our contract grew closer, we started to think that maybe we were meant to stay. Maybe we should wait and sell it ourselves next year? We thought we could save on paying real estate fees and although we were squeezed, we could try again later. After several months of getting a last-minute call for a showing and then running around trying to clean and get everyone out of the house for 1/2 hour so someone could see it along with 10 other houses in the area, we were getting tired. So, we resigned ourselves to that. And it wasn't all that bad. I had been praying about it all as the months went by and I had gotten to the point that either God wanted me to give up thinking so much about this house and its trials or that we were really just supposed to stay for a while longer.

The last weekend of our contract, Memorial Day weekend, we decided to go camping. We knew that once we got back, we could take a break from trying to sell. The Friday before the holiday weekend, we got a call that someone wanted to see the place. Fine. A lot of people had seen it, it didn't mean much to us. The next day, as we were leaving town for our camping trip, we got a call from our agent that the person who had seen the house wanted to see it again. We would be out of town anyway, so why not? We weren't too sure about any of it at all and we knew that once we got back from our trip, the whole thing would probably be over for a while. Instead, we came home to an offer on the house. Suddenly, we were selling! We had to quickly change our mindsets--for so long living while wondering if we were staying or if we were going, and we were going!

I did wonder, for a brief time, what it all meant. I was trying to find some meaning in it, maybe that is foolish, but that is how I am wired. Why get to the point where we knew we would be OK to stay in our house for another year only to have it sell so quickly? I didn't quite understand. But then, three days after our sale, we got a phone call from our adoption agency with some news.....and then, it started to make some sense to me. But I'll leave that for another post.

Suffice it to say that I love living in our new house. We actually bought it quickly after our other had sold. We took six weeks to close and we moved in the middle of July. Oh, how I love it here! There is so much more room, a wonderful backyard, an upstairs, a master bathroom (!) and even floors that do not creak so that when I get up at 5am and head downstairs, I don't wake anyone up. That's a feat that wasn't possible one short month ago. Yes, I'm so thankful for this house. It is a perfect fit for us and we love it. I can totally see us raising our boys and our soon-to-be-home daughter, living here.