Our New Home

With the anticipated arrival of a new baby came the need to expand our living quarters. It was kind of a hard decision to make, since we loved the apartment complex we lived in and everything that came with it (close neighbors, swimming pool, maintenance guys, etc), and we loved the part of town that we lived in. But alas, we love our babies even more and we needed more room to add another one. So we began a search to purchase our first home at the beginning of the summertime. I don't know if I could really even call it a "search" -- we met with the realtor once, she told us that what we were looking for pretty much did not exist in our price range, and the market was so competitive that we would likely have to make offers on several places before finding anything. So I quit looking. Seth would browse things occasionally, but not me! Finally one day he sent some listings from the realtor to me (this was in July), I got irritated with the kind of places I was seeing, and got on the computer myself to see what I could find. And behold, I found an adorably remodeled house right in our price range, still in San Diego! We called the realtor, said we wanted to go see the house (which had been on the market for five days), we met her at the open house, put together an offer that same afternoon, submitted it on Monday, and voila! we got our house!!!!

The way everything just happened to work out, against all the odds, was amazing. And it wasn't just that we got the first (and only!) house we ever looked at. It was other little things, like Seth suddenly and without warning getting released from his calling as Elders' Quorum President the week before we closed on our house. Like our apartment contract expiring at the exact same time we closed. Everything just fell into place, and we could not deny that this was where the Lord wanted us to be.

It was a good thing we had that reassurance, because life changed in a lot of ways when we moved. A lot of very, very, very difficult and challenging ways. Not all necessarily bad, but all lumped together, it was very discouraging, exhausting, burdensome, and depressing. We should have known things were not going to be easy when the moving truck Seth was driving by himself broke down on the freeway at 8:00 at night and he was stranded for a couple hours waiting for someone to come fix the problem, while I was trapped inside an absolute sweatbox of a house (it was the middle of a heat wave and approximately 95 degrees inside, no exaggeration) packed to the rafters with boxes and tired children, and I was 4 or so months pregnant.

We moved about 20 miles from school and work, and before we got the traffic timing nailed down, it sometimes took Seth and the kids 1.5 hours to get to school. Unbelievable. it also takes him a long time to get home, so he was rarely here when the kids were awake. He was called to be YM President the second week we were here (that was also a miracle, the bishop knew someone was coming to fill that position and recognized Seth as the one as soon as he met him!) Add to Seth's schedule a new volunteer position as the First Lego League Coach at the kids' school, and what do you get? A man who was NEVER HOME. It was exhausting for him, exhausting for me, and I don't know how we lived through those first several months.

The change in locale was also a difficult adjustment. Hannah and Joshua did great. They thrive on change and were perfectly happy going to a new ward and living in a new place. (It was helpful that our friends the Mullens had moved out here just a few months before we did, and Keenan and Joshie are great friends!) Eli had (and still has to some extent) a more difficult time adjusting to the new ward and church building even, and it was also really, really hard on me. Moving to our new neighborhood was unexpectedly like moving back to Ridgecrest - a hot, dry, cockroach-infested desert! not at all like the lovely San Diego coastal area we were used to. It was so hard to be so close to where we had been, and yet feeling worlds away from it. And the busy-ness! For months Seth and I did not have even one night when we could just relax together and watch a movie. We had SO MUCH WORK TO DO. And he had so much work to do. And I was so lonely and disillusioned and so stressed out. There were many many sleepless nights and nights full of tears. I seriously worried over the health of my baby because of all the stress I was under, and that concern brought even more stress!

Thankfully, I was blessed with an awesome visiting teacher, Carmen Walker, who showed so much love to me and my family. She was there to help so many times. She has definitely been an inspired servant of the Lord in regard to what she has done for our family! We were also so thankful for the offers of help we received as we got to know the ward members and they anticipated the arrival of our baby.

In spite of the unbearable heat and the other challenges, we loved our house itself. One of the first things we did was buy ice cream from the ice cream truck and sit outside enjoying it together in our very own front yard. Simple, but it's a treasured memory we all share. One of the main reasons I wanted this house was for the play structure in the back. My dad built a playhouse and swing set for us when I was a child, and when I saw a playhouse and swing set in this yard, I knew I had to have this place for my kids! Despite the difficulties of life during those first many months, I am so thankful to have a family, to have a home, and to just be able to experience life with the ones I love most. And we do the best we can to make the most of each experience and keep trying to achieve all that we have in mind for our family.