This year brings fresh beginnings of all sorts for us! In early November of last year Nick was offered a job with a company in York, Nebraska! So on November 15th we signed a lease on an apartment here, and on the 18th we officially moved in! I am so thankful for these new beginnings for our family, but they were not without heartache and growing pains.
Our home in Plattsburg (which we have sold and are closing on in 8 days!) was such a comfortable and homey place, and it was extremely hard to move out, especially since we were moving into a 2 bedroom, 900 square foot apartment. On the flipside, it is much quicker cleaning up around the apartment than it was the house since there is less space! Also, I feel like with less space we are spending more quality family time together since we can't all spread out in our own spaces as easily. The girls have done remarkably well with the move and transition and sharing of a bedroom. It has been tricky for them when they DO need to have some space from each other and don't have a bedroom of their own to retreat to, but we have found solutions that work for us!
Leaving one of our next-door neighbors in Plattsburg was another tough change. The girls played with the neighbor kids frequently, and their folks were amazing, godly people! Emma learned a lot about football (how to play, what different fouls are, rules) and she learned that doing something she loves in more important that doing what someone might expect of her since she is a girl! Olivia was able to nurture her caretaker tendencies with their youngest and loved having someone her speed to play with and keep up with! I think this part of move was the hardest on all of us. I pray that the person who has purchased our home has children of her own for them to play with!
It was also difficult leaving the dance studio where the girls had taken lesson from and performed with for the past several years. Meri's Dance Studio in Cameron is top notch, and we highly recommend them if you're considering enrolling your kiddo in dance! They are knowledgeable, kind, loving, patient, and understanding and I am so grateful that the girls were able to have a solid foundation of dancing techniques, skill, and confidence built by Meri, Julia, and Wendy. The girls both had made some good friends there over the years, and so saying goodbye was hard there as well. However, Tuesday we are beginning dance at a studio in York called the York Dance Center, and the girls are sooooo ready and excited! The past month and a half since moving have felt and been extremely chaotic, and so we are all ready for things to settle down and settle into a familiar rhythm. I am hoping dance can give us that.
Finally, since the move my healthy lifestyle plans have all but gone out the window :( I have maintained an average weight of 171 pounds, which is 22 pounds down since I began in August. With the move we were eating out more because we were up late packing, and I didn't want to waste that precious time cooking. Then Thanksgiving came and Christmas, and my will power was ground down even further. However, I am thankful that I didn't regain all of the weight I had been working so hard to lose (though I had gotten down to about 167 just before Nick got the job offer, I still count 171 as a win through all of the chaos.) So now as I sit here, gazing out our patio door at a snow-covered field, and eating a brownie, I am also making a menu and a plan to get back on the healthy lifestyle plan I began a little over 4 months ago. And boy, am I ready for that! After having been doing so good for a few months, then going off the tracks for a few months I can definitely see how sugar affects my body through my energy levels, my skin breaking out and being red, and my mental clarity! It's okay if you fall off the horse, just get back on!
I didn't realize until writing this how much we have grown in the past two months as opposed to the past two years! I remember when Nick was talking about how much he wanted this job (did I mention that we live only an hour from his family?!) how I did not want to move because I knew all of the heartaches and headaches that it would bring. And all of these feelings were borne out of selfishness. I didn't want to move because of the hassle it would bring ME. I didn't want to leave our friends because making friends is hard as an adult for ME. I didn't want to find new doctors for Olivia because I was comfortable with her current ones and didn't want the headache of taking MY time to find new ones. But when God revealed to me that I was looking at things all wrong, I began to have a change of heart. I prayed, instead, that the Lord would give Nick this opportunity to put all of his hard-earned skills and certifications to use, and that He would allow me to sacrifice for Nick and he has sacrificed for us.
And that, my friends, is what has made the whole process easier than I ever dreamed it would be! Submitting to God's will and authority and knowing that He knows what we need before we even need it, this has been my new mindset and is serving me well. Am I ready to get out of the apartment and into a home of our own? You bet! But instead of praying for us to find a home, now I pray for patience as we wait, because right now we are exactly where God wants us. And where He wants us is where I want to be.
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