in the south

as of yesterday, we are official residents of the state of south carolina. it took two trips to the DMV, crying kids, and lots of snacks, but it finally happened.

i have yet to say the word y'all, but we did try the southern delicacy of boiled peanuts at the farmer's market on saturday. we thought they were interesting...probably not something we would eat again, but they were a good thing to experience anyway.

when jeremy's dad was here we also went to a local restaurant and tried okra, sweet potato pie, pickled beets, and some other southern foods.

in the midst of transition and feeling disoriented, it is fun to experience a new place. we have also experienced and appreciated lots of southern hospitality...that makes it a bit easier as well.

june 21.

from our anniversary.

root beer floats with silly straws, just like at our wedding,

and fun with a new sprinkler in the backyard.

getaway in may

it was so wonderful to escape to ludington, mi for a few days in may. we left on monday, came back on wednesday, and enjoyed our free hotel stay, thanks to airmiles. they even upgraded us to the whirlpool suite for free!

we picnicked and hiked in the state park, played board games, watched movies, enjoyed uninterrupted dinners out, went to a couple thrift shops, and slept in until 7:30 (that's sleeping in for us these days!). both mornings, jeremy brought me coffee and breakfast in bed. what a treat.

it was so good to have time away with just the two of us. (and so nice that my mom and sister watched the kids for us!)

ludington state park... our favorite michigan destination. we've made lots of good memories here over the years!

the bugs

oh the bugs!

living in the south has given me a whole new perspective on bugs. thanks to the mild winter and the muggy weather conditions, the bugs here are enormous, and they are everywhere! i don't think i have ever seen bugs this big. seriously...bugs in the midwest are like the little puny cousins of the bugs down here.

there isn't a single trip to the outdoors (even walking from the back door to the van) when love does not find some sort of bug. it makes me happy to see her so excited about the them. the world is truly her classroom as she holds and examines bugs. it is fun to watch.

 a (dead) eyed click beetle we found on a walk

there are tons of cicadas here, so we can always find exoskeletons outside. we have also found several live cicadas, and some dead ones too.

 cicada

hardwood stump borer beetle, i think

one afternoon love and i went out to water the plants on the front porch, and there were two HUGE beetles on the porch. thanks to a google search, i believe they were hardwood stump borer beetles. love immediately went over and picked one up and was thrilled to have it crawling on her hand. if i would have looked more closely, i would have seen that it had large pinchers, but i didn't, and it pinched her finger. she shrieked and waved her hand around and it let go. i thought she would be traumatized, but she recovered quickly and it has not dampened her enthusiasm for bugs one bit.

discovering the beetles

and seconds before the pinch... :(

i don't mind most of the bugs very much...the beetles, ladybugs, cicadas, and various insects. i share love's excitement when we find a bug, even if i really find it gross, because that's what mamas do (although i mostly leave it up to love to pick them up and hold them). i also think it's so cool that she loves bugs so much, and i don't want to influence her or dampen her enthusiasm for them. for the most part, she is really gentle in handling bugs, and we talk a lot about how to treat them kindly and respectfully.

...but the cockroaches. oh, those really get me. since living here, i have {unfortunately} learned all kinds of interesting (?) facts about cockroaches. i now know that they can run 3 mph, live without their heads for three weeks, and even survive for a while by only eating the glue off of postage stamps (can you believe someone actually wasted moments of their life figuring that out?). it's more than i ever wanted to know about cockroaches. we have encountered a few of them in our house and now i am paranoid about them. every time i walk into a room i do a quick cockroach scan, i wear shoes in the house at all times because i am terrified i will step on one with bare feet, and i have all our food carefully stored in hopes to deter them from wanting to make our house their home.

i have fears that one will crawl on me while i am sleeping...fears that were only made worse when i found one laying on it's back twitching RIGHT NEXT TO my side of the bed.

i think what really gets me about cockroaches is that they can run so fast, and the sound of their little feet running across the wood floor...ew, just ew!

i think we have had seven(?) cockroach encounters since we moved in. three were right after we moved in, so i figured they probably came in while we were moving in.

then there was the evening we were sitting on the couch watching a movie. jeremy was rubbing my back and we were relaxed. and then jeremy stopped rubbing my back, sat up a bit, and said he had to "take care of something a minute". i immediately knew it was a cockroach. sure enough...just on the other side of the room. jeremy stood up to get a big shoe, and before we knew it, the roach ran right under the couch i was still sitting on. i jumped up immediately, and i will even admit that i ran across the room and jumped on a chair. jeremy moved the couch, the furniture around the couch, and the couch cushions, but we never found the roach (it must have gone in the vent that is right behind the couch). seeing a cockroach and killing it? slightly traumatizing. seeing a cockroach, not killing it, and knowing that it is inside your house somewhere? ten times worse. ew, ew, ew. and then several days later it happened again (maybe the same one?). now we ALWAYS sit with a big shoe just within reach, just in case.

since moving here, i have learned that there is something here even worse than just a plain old cockroach...there is the palmetto bug. it's like a gigantic cockroach that can fly. thankfully, we have not encountered any of these in our house (i don't know if i would survive such an encounter!), but we have seen them flying around our lights outside. the first week we were here, jeremy was doing laundry (which involves going out our back door and walking under the carport to the storage closet) and a huge bug was flying around out there. huge, as in, the size of a small mouse. jeremy walked back and forth with a big piece of cardboard ready to swat the thing if it attacked him (i giggled, but only because i was inside looking out the window!). since then, we have both decided that it is not worth it to do laundry after dark. anyway, once we learned about palmetto bugs, we knew that's what it was.

i don't have any photos of cockroaches, and never will. i also should really stop doing online searches to identify the bugs we find because then i have to look at photos of tons of giant bugs that we haven't even seen yet! eek!

how we found our house

let's see..where to start.

originally, jeremy and i planned to take a whirlwind trip to our new city to find a house to rent, about two weeks before we were scheduled to move. though it wasn't glamorous and was mostly going to be filled with business-y details, we had decided to also call that trip our 5th anniversary trip.

due to a variety of factors beyond our control, about a week before we were going to leave it became clear that the trip was not going to happen. this was sad (we were really looking forward to getting away together!) and stressful (how would we find a place to live? and how would jeremy get the things done at the hospital that were required before his program starts?).

the day after we officially cancelled our trip, i woke up with weird, excruciating back pain which i have never had before. seriously...it was terrible. i told jeremy that it was some of the worst pain i have ever experienced...and i have given birth naturally to a 10 pound 10 ounce baby in our dining room, so that is saying quite a lot!

anyway...jeremy ended up staying home from work that day because there was no way i could take care of the kids. while he was home, i came across a house for rent online that was exactly what we were looking for. jeremy immediately called, and after many phone calls back and forth, verifying through a variety of means that it was not a scam (and that it didn't smell like cats), and wondering if we were crazy to be renting a house that we had only seen photos of, we secured the home as our own. (and maybe we were crazy...but we were really out of options at this point). it just all felt right and we were very thankful to have this major detail taken care of.

and oddly enough, the back pain gradually lessened and was pretty much gone a few days later.

the house has all the things we wanted/needed in a home plus more. our must-haves were: rent that equaled or was below what we budgeted for, 3 bedrooms, central air conditioning, and a backyard. things we preferred/wanted but were willing to compromise on were: a dishwasher (we've never had one!), within walking distance of a park, a ranch style, and close to the hospital where jeremy will be working (in our weeks of looking, we only came across one house that was close to the hospital - the hospital is downtown and there's just not much housing available there - so we were willing to compromise on that one). anyway...the house has all of those things! it is exactly what we had budgeted for, has three bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, central ac, a fenced in backyard, a dishwasher, it's all one level, it's within walking distance to two parks, is in a great neighborhood, and is only two miles from the hospital! it also has a fireplace, an ice maker, a garbage disposal, wood floors, and a front porch.

the house also has some great neighbors. our retired neighbor next door is a very sweet lady. she bought us dinner our first night here, often comes out to talk to me over the fence in the backyard, and has several cats that like to sleep in our front yard and keep our kiddos entertained during the day. our neighbors across the street are becoming our friends. they have a four year old boy and will be having a baby in july. we met them the day we moved in and they invited us to their church several times. after visiting three other churches, we visited theirs and loved it and have decided to attend there. they came over the other night and we sat on the front porch and talked with them until it got dark. it all felt so neighborly to me, and i appreciated it so much, especially since that would never have happened in our old neighborhood.

so...it seems that God planned for us to live in this house all along, and really has blessed us with more than we had hoped for or imagined. it's really amazing to me when i look at how it all came together.

(oh, and p.s. jeremy and i still ended up getting a 5th anniversary trip to ludington, mi...and it was even better than our original plan of coming to south carolina. we didn't have to find a house or deal with moving details, so we could relax and just enjoy getting away together!)

five years...better and better.

it's our fifth anniversary today.

i have such clear memories of our wedding day, and our dreams for our future. on that day, i imagined where we would be five, ten, thirty years into our marriage. now, here we are, five years in. things look so incredibly different than my dreams on that day five years ago.

i didn't picture some of the challenges we would face as we established a home together, the difficult days in the transition of becoming husband and wife, or the pain we could cause each other in our selfishness and anger.  i didn't look ahead and see that sometimes it would feel like too much...that we would want to give up on the covenant we made with God and each other.

i certainly didn't imagine that two of the dearest people at our wedding that day - my dad, and jeremy's mom - would have gone to be with Jesus. i didn't imagine the depths of grief that we have gone through separately and together...the day i kicked in all of the lower cupboard doors in our kitchen shortly after my dad passed away, the hole jeremy punched in his dad's garage after his mom died, some of the screaming fights we had when we forgot we were really on the same side because we were both blinded by the excruciating pain of grief.

i didn't picture us feeling forsaken, lost, depressed or lonely.

i didn't imagine the struggles jeremy would face in his pursuit of a career. i didn't imagine that we would still be on the educational track five years later. i never imagined jeremy working at a gas station, or more recently, a cabelas store. i didn't imagine him losing a job in an unfair/unjust way. i didn't look ahead and see all the tears and anxiety we would encounter as we searched for our purpose and place in this world.

the reality is...those things all happened. we have been through all of that and our marriage has faced some very difficult days and seasons.

and yet, there are other things that i never dreamed as well...

i didn't picture all the beauty that could come out of the challenges in our marriage. by God's grace, those times when we have wanted to give up on our marriage have become refining moments where we look our sinful selves in the face and realize how badly we need the grace of God in our lives.

i never imagined the closeness we would find in the grief we share for our parents, or the nights we would lay in bed weeping together. the day i kicked in all the kitchen cupboards...jeremy took me in his arms and held me while i cried, because he knew. and when he punched a hole in his dad's garage...i did the same for him, because i knew. and those screaming fights we had often eventually ended with both of us in tears, on the same side, aching together for the people we lost.

i didn't picture that we would find so much comfort in just having each other during lonely times, or that we would find community in sometimes seemingly strange places. i didn't picture jeremy willingly and cheerfully going to a job he wasn't excited about just so he could provide for our family. i didn't realize how proud of him i would be and how happy i would feel when he found a job that was a great fit.

i never, ever pictured us moving to south carolina.

i didn't picture times when we would look at our bank account and wonder how in the world we were going to make it...and then we would literally see God provide for our needs in surprising ways.

i certainly didn't picture these two little kiddos we have brought into the world. what amazing little combinations of the two of us. and parenting together is a whole other experience.

so...here we are, five years later. the honeymoon is long gone. we have been living real, raw life for quite a while now. this is what it's all about...the day in, day out, life together, committed through the good and the bad, the better, and the worse. we've been tested, and we still have lots to learn, but we are in a good spot.

it's been five years, and our love is deeper, truer, and more real. the honeymoon might be over, but i can still catch jeremy's eye across a busy hospital cafeteria and get butterflies in my stomach when he winks at me. and now, five years later, behind the wink and the butterflies, is love that has been strengthened and deepened. i wouldn't trade that for the honeymoon any day.

this marriage thing? it is so, incredibly difficult, and yet, so beautiful, wonderful, and amazing all at the same time. it is such a gift from God...a way to be refined and made more like him while loving and being deeply loved by someone who represents his love for us.

it gets better every year. it really does, and i am excited for our future. i hope we have at least fifty-five more years together...but even that wouldn't be enough. jeremy, i love you with all my heart.

the big 3.0.

i turned 30 on sunday! of course, it also happened to be father's day and jeremy's dad was visiting, so we had quite the weekend of celebrating over here!

and wow...30. my 20s are over. they were quite a decade. in the past ten years, i've graduated from college, bought a house, met and married jeremy, worked full-time nights as an RN, said goodbye to two parents, given birth to two kids, become a full time mom, and moved across the country. whew! i entered my 20s as a single college student and left them as a wife and mom. i hardly recognize the twenty-year-old me as i look at myself now. what a lot of change.

this last one, 29, was a hard year. lots of tears, questions, anxieties, and trying desperately to trust God's plan for our lives. on my birthday this year, i think i was mostly celebrating the fact that i survived this past year and hoping that this next one is better. even so, as hard as it is to say, i wouldn't trade this past year of life for an easier one. we have learned valuable lessons, seen God's faithfulness, testified to God's work in our lives, and grown closer to each other. at the same time, i do hope this next year will involve fewer tears and more laughter. so far, it's looking good.

after visiting a church on sunday, we came home for coffee, nap-time, cards, and a couple of gifts. after jobot woke up, we headed downtown for a father's day/birthday lunch. the dads shared a steak-for-two dinner.

we spent the rest of the afternoon at the zoo, with plans to come home for homemade birthday cheesecake. unfortunately, just before we left the zoo, jobot dislocated his elbow. the whole event involved lots of tears (not only from jobot), concerned parents, and a poor boy who couldn't use his arm.

we brought love and dad home and spent the evening in the ER. it was our first trip to the ER with one of our kids. (funny timing, as i was just saying the other day that we are probably going to be taking jobot to the ER quite often...such a rough and tumble, daring, climber that he is). before we went, i had already diagnosed him with a dislocated elbow (i just knew), but he was officially diagnosed after a med student and resident looked at him. some arm manipulations and screaming later, it was popped back into place and jobot was immediately back to himself again. we had taken him to the hospital where jeremy works, so we even got a visit from the on-call chaplain (a friend and colleague of jeremy's). ha!

sad little boy.

 all fixed and back to his old self! happy boy and happy mama!

jeremy works in the children's hospital and sees very sick kids every day. already this summer, we have both realized how easy it is for us to take our children's health for granted, and how it could just as easily be us sitting in those hospital rooms, wringing our hands and pleading for our child's healing. it is always hard to see your child in pain, even if it is something as simple as a dislocated elbow, and it gave us a tiny bit of perspective about what some people face every day under far more serious circumstances.

i ended the weekend thankful for good medical care and healthy children, and thankful for a fresh start on a new year.

here's to 30!