Nomadic Reflections on My New Place

So much to blog about . . .

We are slowly settling in. Slowly because, of course, I decided that the whole house needed to be repainted after we had all of our stuff in. This project is going at a snail's pace. Pictures will be forthcoming when the boxes are all at least HIDDEN if not unpacked.

The weather here is paradise. I almost hate to write it because I know how many of you are in such hot places right now. Maybe next April, after having endured five months of rain, I will change my tune, but right now it is like springtime every day. We're headed to the beach on Saturday.

The boys are doing great. The baby, with no additional time-to-cry-it-out-training, is sleeping through the night: About nine to six-thirty. Bliss.

I think our budget is going to be highly manageable with one income for the first time in our married life.

Any good times I've had in the past few years feel like the momentary calm between storms. This time, the contentment I feel is more like the calm AFTER the storm. I think we are going to get a break on the trials for a while. I am planning to use the extra energy this gives me in to looking outside myself to see if I can help my neighbors more than I have in the past six months. It won't be hard. Our ward has a very high rate of inactivity and I've heard that I may have as many as six sisters to visit on my VT route. The Elders are assigned up to ten families each.

Many of you know that we thought we had a job all sewn up in Colorado early in the Spring. They had interviewed Plantboy twice and had all but given him an offer in writing. Then, things changed and someone else was hired for the position that he really wanted. When this news came at the end of March, we were fairly devastated. Not long after, our current job opened and Plantboy applied. After his first interview he was flown to Eugene for a second.

Between the two interviews we went to the temple. I felt very calm, though I had few impressions about anything. Plantboy on the other hand, said, "I think the church in Oregon needs us."

He may be right. Even my whole time in Texas I never felt such a need among the members. Lots of people were out of town our first week in church and I hadn't been in a ward so small since serving part of my mission in a little town called Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. I'm actually a little bit scared about how living here is going to seriously disrupt my comfort zone. I guess that means it was time for a change!

Plantboy really seems to like his job and we aren't going to make any decisions for a long time about whether or not this is the right place to say. But so far, so good.