Welcome Home, Caswell Family!

After the movers left, after putting my kids in their beds, I wearily trudged down the stairs thinking to myself (in the voice of Ty Pennington), “Welcome home, Caswell, Family, welcome home.” For seven months, as one little boy in a sermon illustration said, we’ve had “a home without a house to put it in.”

For that seven months, very few of our belongings were in our possession. Even some of the things I brought in our suitcases, we didn’t use. Now I am looking at endless piles of boxes and wondering where to begin. I plan to get rid of quite a bit before the next time we relocate, even if that is only a smaller move across town or an eventual move to a home of our own rather than a rental. We collect so much stuff over time, yet so little of it that we actually use. I’m not sure where to begin in the Great Purge of 2015.

Dietrich is thrilled to have all of his trains and track again! I can hardly wait to post new train pictures for you and tell you of the new train adventures he creates. Madilynn, however, is increasingly clingy and not yet sure we live here. She keeps asking about Grandpa’s house. Even now, as I write, she will not leave my lap.

After searching ALL AFTERNOON, finally, at 11:45 last night, I found my Keurig. I do believe it is my favorite appliance. It does, after all, make the coffee.

My sister came to sit on… um, entertain, the kids because Peter has mandatory training for his new job for the next several weeks, leaving me responsible for all the signing of moving related paperwork. We can’t afford to miss any important information. So far, we have a couple of big damages – big as in the glass top of an antique German dresser and a door of a storage cabinet – and two broken dishes. Some of the hardware was mislabeled. Part of our sleep number bed pump/plug was in two separate boxes. The remote was in yet another. While having movers is good because you don’t do the work, it’s not good because no one else organizes things as you would.

While the wait is over, a new transition is just beginning. While we were in the military, because of the advice of a teacher many years ago when I was a preacher’s kid and not an army wife, I looked at each new experience as an adventure. I look forward to what God has in store for us with this new adventure.