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The reason for the large gap in blogging for me has been our amazing schedule the past week. We are always busy, but I guess this past week has been a different busy. Like, not at a computer busy. (I don’t prefer that kind of busy…) 🙂

Here’s a quick recap:

Starting last Thursday (well, a week ago Thursday), we prepped the attic and the house for my Dad & Grandparents to arrive and finish the trim work in the attic. So we worked most of the day on that (and other various things) until my family arrived later that night. When they got there, we shared a meal and had a little celebration of Alex’s birthday two days previous.

Friday we started early and worked ALL DAY in the attic… but we finished it! (Well, enough to start moving things in). Saturday we moved stuff all day. Sunday we did manage to go to Cross Creek in the morning, but the rest of the day was moving stuff… sorting stuff… organizing stuff.

You should have seen our front porch and front yard! HA! 🙂

Monday you can guess what we did… MORE SORTING MOVING AND ORGANIZING!!!! AHHHHH!!!!

There are 38 steps from the basement to the attic. 33 steps from the outside to the attic. There is approximately 2 TONS of STUFF in our house that got moved over those 38 steps. Some of it a few times both ways.

My muscles are STILL tired. 🙂

But we got everything in its place and were able to actually have a somewhat clean house before we left!

Tuesday was just spent packing stuff up, cleaning etc. I got to do a few things in my new office. That was nice.

Wednesday I got up at 6:00am EDT and began packing. (Well, also wrote a newsletter to our mailing list…) I had hoped to leave the area by 9:00… with some errand to do, if we were on the road by 11:00, we’d be doing well.

We left at 2:00pm.

That made for a long day, and a kinda messed up one, cause our kids are usually on a pretty good schedule, but not that day! So, travels were a bit rougher than normal… a great start! 🙂

We arrived at my parents house (that evening’s destination) at 12:30am. My parents live in a really cool house, a little bungalow in the woods at the top of a winding driveway up a nice big hill. As we pulled in, I joked with Jen about the time that we were at their house and they had snow during the night and we were leaving early in the morning, and even with only a few inches on the ground, their driveway was so steep that with a trailer behind us we slid down and off the road. (That is not a pleasant thing if you have seen their driveway… )

JUST as I mentioned that, our wheels spun. And again. They had leaves all over the driveway, and there was a light mist all night, making the driveway too slick for our poor van to pull such a heavy load. I stopped midway up, trying to think what to do, and to not slide off the edge again… we started rolling backwards… and ended up jack-knifing the trailer. 🙁

So, we walked up the 100 yds or so to my parents house… luggage and kids in tow. I was not so happy. 🙂

My dad got up and broke out the power garden tools (his super-power leaf blower and the John Deere) We were waging war on the fall foliage that covered the driveway before us. Shock and Awe, baby! 🙂

Well, we got it cleared, and my dad towed our van and trailer up off the edge of the driveway and up the hill and we finally got to sleep around 1:45 or so.

Ugh.

Thursday we spent trying to recover from all that I have just told you about, and preparing for the rest of the weekend to come! We went down to visit my sister and her newest family member (Zoe Eliza). Then from there, drove about 2 hours to our gig that evening.

That went great… LOTS of family was there, a couple aunts and uncles, cousins, my parents and my grandma. Nice. And, it seemed the music was quite well-received, and they asked us to please come back again next time we are in town. That was fun. We sang at the church where my Grandparents were married some 60 years ago almost, and it was just fun in general to sing in my birth-town. Very cool.

But we were still tired.

Went out to dinner with a bunch of family that night, and then stayed with my Grandma. Even though we were leaving early in the morning, we were enjoying time with family, so we did not hit the sack till at least midnight.

Friday morning we got up early for our trip to Arkansas… the alarm went off at 6:00am EDT. Took a shower, and got ready, and then my awesome Grandma (who was also awake till midnight) said, let’s go get some DONUTS! Now, for those of you not from Springfield OH, you may THINK you have had a good donut… but you have NOT until you have had Schuler’s donuts. 🙂

So, with traffic (cars and people) we didnt’ get back till 7am… didn’t leave till 7:30 and didn’t leave the area till like 8:30 because we stopped by another aunt and uncle’s house to pick up some chairs to deliver to their daughter (with whom we are staying next week in Phoenix)

With our late start, the day was again slightly messed up, and really really long! So, we ended up staying at at hotel in Springfield, MO that night (about 2 hours short of our intended destination). Jen couldn’t go any further! It was a really nice hotel, and our 4th try at that exit due to the big Soccer and Swimming tournament in town that weekend. 🙂

So we finally made it to Arkansas yesterday and barely made it up my cousin’s driveway!!! (What is it with these country bumpkin driveways?!?) 🙂 It’s a long, steep, gravel driveway and our tires kept slipping as the van tried hard to pull the load up the hill. Crazy!

We settled in real quick, and got ready for the evening’s gig, and the next morning’s gig… and tried to figure out plans for the weekend… it was going to be busy!

We headed out for the coffee house gig. It was a really cool place. Kennedy Coffee was a cool looking coffee shop, with probably 15-20 folks inside when we got there. We set up and were expecting a normal coffee house night (fairly low-key, casual, intimate, interactive, fun, laid back, sparse… fun) BUT, we ended up having WAY over 100 people there! This place was rockin’! It was AMAZING!

So, a great night. Ian came with us and helped set up and was fun to have around. 🙂 The other two got to stay with my cousin’s family.

Well, are you tired of details yet?

This morning we led worship at my cousin’s church. That seemed to be well received, and was good to be there. Now everyone is sleeping, getting ready for some more singing tonight, at a church back in Bentonville, home of Wal-Mart. 🙂

(Did you know Wal-Mart is not a word in my spell checker? Probably will be soon…) 🙂

Well… I need to wrap this up… we just finished here at The Portico with our friend Shack. Using a bit of high speed internet to pay bills and check on some things online… (and post this blog)

Will update you on some more stuff soon…

But for now, I must sign off as tomorrow is our 7th anniversary! 🙂 Happy Anniversary Jen!

Whoa! Talk about Random & Wandering….

🙂