Upon our return to Indiana, after a luxurious Thanksgiving break with Chelsi and her family in Philadelphia and a wonderful reunification with Aaron, we hit the ground running. The time together gave us a chance to parse through and pick a pathway to travel on--but we were behind! We spent December scrambling to catch up. Luckily, there were unexpected blessing awaiting us.
On our night alone together, Aaron and I had taken some time to talk through and write down a list of what we were looking for/hoping for in a rental house in California. The first day we were back, a rental meeting those exact specifications popped up! I called Aaron as soon as I saw it and told him to go take a look. He brushed it off at first, but because he was in the area that morning anyway, he drove past. Shocked by how perfectly it met our specifications, he called the property management company and begged them to let him see it even though they weren't planning to have anyone through until the following week. As soon as he'd seen it, he started on the paperwork to get it, and had them run us before anyone else had a shot at it. Amazingly, we are now the proud owners of a 1-year lease for a 5-bedroom house that is walking distance to an excellent elementary school, 6 miles from the beach, and has a gorgeous, large backyard. It is so perfect for us that it's actually starting to get me a little excited about moving.
A few days later, as Aaron and I were talking about holding an open house to rent out our Indiana house, a family from Boston showed up on our doorstep with a realtor. They had seen my rental listing (to which I had added pictures at this point), and even though there was no address listed, they had figured out where it was and really wanted to see it. I showed them through, and they were thrilled with it. Though it took some convincing to get Aaron to go along with our first offer, we decided to go with the unexpected blessing, and managed to get a wonderful family to rent the home without even having to endure the stress and annoyance of holding an open house.
After that, the work began. I finished teaching my last regular classes, scheduled a recital with a teacher who will be continuing to teach some classes, and started packing everything up. Of course, I also had to finish up preparations for Christmas, which was no mean feat either. Luckily, several times I had my visiting teachers and some of the sister missionaries show up on my doorstep and offer to pack boxes with me. One way or another, we managed to get most everything packed up.
Between packing and taping up boxes, I took the girls to a performance of
Messiah, and the kids played in their last school concerts, with Addy singing with her school choir at several retirement homes, Asher playing in his final band and orchestra concerts, and Emerson singing in his final school musical at Whispering Meadows. That was the kicker. Here are the lyrics to one of the songs his class sang: "Indiana! Indiana's my home. Indiana! Indiana's my home. Go north, south, east, west, I think that my state's the best. Indiana! Indiana's my home." It went on to list a bunch of the funny town names in Indiana, and you better believe that I was all choked up listening to it. There is something so homey about Indiana, and I'm glad that we haven't cut all ties yet. In my opinion, there aren't many better places to raise kids than in the heartland of America. I'm going to miss so much about Indiana, its wonderful people, and the great schools that I know are molding my kids into better humans. I certainly can't rule out a return one of these days. In an attempt at a proper farewell, I planned one last "going away" party for the kids, which gave us a last chance to say goodbye to some of the people who have made it so incredibly difficult to leave this wonderful state.
On Christmas Eve, when all the presents were wrapped and we were ready for a break from the stress of our preparations, I packed the kids into the car in their Christmas best, and we went to our first Catholic mass. I have always wanted to attend a real Catholic mass, and we have a gorgeous cathedral in downtown Fort Wayne, so I figured why not? On the way down, I told the kids a bit about my own visit to Bethlehem when I was in college. The older kids had heard me mention it before, but apparently it was all news to Sera, who kept breaking in to ask questions: "so you saw Jesus being born?" she asked. Then as we arrived "so this is Bethlehem?" Hopefully we managed to answer her questions properly between explosions of laughter. The mass itself ended up being considerably less interesting than I had expected--since it was listed as the "family mass" I had hoped for a children's program or choir at the very least, and considerably more incense. Still, it was very interesting to see the original Christmas mass, or as near to it as can be had in modern times. The next morning, the kids woke up to a tree with presents beneath it, and got to enjoy their stockings for many hours while we waited for Aaron to arrive. His flight was delayed and delayed again, but finally, at around 8 pm he landed and we picked him up at the airport. We waited until the next morning to open gifts, but really, the greatest gift was to be together again.
After another day packing up odds and ends and all the packages, our moving truck showed up. It was a few days earlier than we had wished, because that was the way it worked into the moving schedule, so we were scrambling to get everything together as the movers loaded the truck. They weren't the most competent movers in the world, and when the truck wasn't done being loaded late that night, I was pretty shocked and annoyed that rather than taking a break and coming back in the morning, they kept packing things into the night. Aaron and I took turns falling asleep, first on our bed, and then when they packed that up, on an inflatable mattress. Finally at around 4 am, they drove away--only the next morning did we notice that they had forgotten several things which we then had to find homes for. It ended up taking an additional two days beyond that to really wrap everything up and make sure it was clean before we hit the road, but somehow we finally did it.
California, here we come!
