We Moved!

We moved

By choice

With a newborn

And 2 little girls

It was crazy

And exhausting!

But it is over and we are so happy to be back in the place we started our Illinois/Podiatry journey.  We are back in our original ward (church congregation) and living just 2 miles up the road from the tiny basement duplex we were in when Emily and Claire were born.  I can't quite explain it, but it just feels so great to be back here, knowing we will finish this phase of our lives in the same and with the same great people we started it with 5 years ago.  

Not to say we didn't enjoy Lombard (west of Chicago) because we certainly did.  Lombard was a great place to have a family, and our girls grew so much in the short year we lived there.  Emily had her first preschool experience and LOVED her teacher.  She blossomed socially, and I fully credit the Lombard park district.  She was in preschool, dance, gymnastics and swim lessons over the course of the year and truly her teachers and the other kids/moms were so great.  Claire went from being my baby to being my active toddler.  She went from crawling to walking.  From babbling to talking full on sentences.  And she was always along for the ride.  She was my sidekick and buddy as we shuffled Emily around to her activities.  She ran errands with me while Emily was at preschool, and I loved our one on one time.  

On Sunday August 31st, we loaded our material life into the big Uhaul truck.  The plan was to pick up the truck on Sunday morning, load what Devin and I could load together that day and then Tom would drive down Monday morning to load the big furniture pieces.  Instead, we did it all in one, extremely long and exhausting day!  Devin and I loaded everything we possibly could in the morning, and then I took the 3 kids to church in the afternoon to give them a break from watching movies as well as give Tom and Devin space to haul the furniture out.  When I got back from church around 4:30, everything was loaded and the house needed some TLC in the cleaning department.  Tom took our van and the girls back to his house for Sydney to watch the rest of the night.  Devin drove the truck to our new house, and James and I stayed at the Lombard house while I did the final cleaning.  Once the place was swept and wiped down, I walked through it one last time to and became emotional and nostalgic.  I wasn't expecting to have that reaction, but as I surveyed the rooms of that little 2 bedroom house, I was flooded with all of the memories we made in that house.  It was the first year that we were all together, every single month.  The last 2 years of Devin's Podiatry school, he rotated in a different place each month.  Some months were spent with us, and several months he was gone.  Claire was born during that time, and then we temporarily moved in with Devin's parents while he finished his rotations and graduated school.  Moving to Lombard and starting residency was the first time we were together permanently with Devin home every night.  It was the first stand alone home we have lived in together, with an attached garage and fenced back yard.  It was where we spent our first Christmas alone, just our little family...the first time we had our own Christmas tree and started our own traditions.  In a big way, our house and time in Lombard signified us becoming an established family.  And then I got pregnant with James, and nine of those months was spent anticipating the dynamics of a 3rd child in our family.  And then I had James!  I am thankful for all that we learned during that year and for the growth we all experienced.  

Tom and Sydney were rock star friends and helped us tremendously.  We literally could not have done this move without them.  Not just on the actual moving day, but our whole first week in our new house, they fed us several meals and Sydney watched the girls while I unpacked essential things needed to live normally.

First night in our last Illinois residence

Dev and I slept on our pull out couch in the living room , with James in the pack n play next to us, the first week in our house.  Our landlord was replacing the windows in our room.

That moving day/night and the next day following, was overwhelming.  So many things to unpack and get in order, but only after meeting the needs of our 3 small kids.

Our first morning, all of us piled on the pull out bed.

We are thrilled to be right where we want to be.