Waiting

I'm sitting in my mother-in-law's playroom with my two youngest daughters, waiting.  I left my house in immaculate condition at 9:30 this morning, candles lit, soft music playing, fresh flowers in every corner.  We started showing our house on Tuesday.  67 realtors came that day along with 6 individual showings.  Three showings yesterday, 4 today - all spread out in conveniently inconvenient gaps that don't really allow us to go home until 7pm tonight.  I'm exhausted.  The effort required to get my house in hotel-like condition was pretty fierce.  I didn't realize what pigs we were until I started thinking "immaculate".  And you can imagine what it's like maintaining this kind of totally unrealistic facade with a living, breathing, family of six.  I hope this sucker sells FAST!

And THAT, along with trying to prepare and teach a series of 6 one hour classes to a bunch of amazing mothers every Thursday morning as "practice" for the real thing this July at BYU Idaho, is why I have been totally AWOL on my blog.  Which is really too bad, because I have some great pictures and memories that desperately need recording -  not the least of which is William's 9th and Elizabeth's 6th birthday.

So yes, along with trying to get everyone out the door and the house looking perfect, I was getting ready for today's class.  Not the most stellar class to be honest - I just haven't had the time to prepare this week.  Luckily, these are my practice runs, but I really want to give the mom's here the best I've got, so I was a little disappointed I didn't have it more together today.

I'm running on fumes.

More later on the story of why we are leaving paradise, where we are going, and how it all came to be.

For memory sake, the"artichoke incident" set off a series of equally dreamy events I want to remember.  It was one of those rare, nearly perfect nights.  As I stood at the kitchen window washing dishes, I watched all my children play happily in the backyard with a single, tiny bouncy ball for over an hour.  Maybe it was just the music playing, or the way the sun was setting, but I felt so happy seeing them all  together like that.  Then Brandon put "the baby" to bed and the other three climbed up on my bed with me as I read a chapter aloud from "A Wrinkle in Time".  Doesn't get much better than that.

I keep thinking, "this is it", in terms of this golden age when they are all still young.  Kate is twelve and just weeks away from "graduating" from grade school, so I've been feeling anxiously sentimental about her growing up and how that could potentially change the dynamic in our family and push all of us into a new stage in our family's life.

I'm going through a bit of a mourning phase these days.  Mourning the loss of our would-be life in southern California, mourning the loss of my child-bearing years (tho' I really am sure I am DONE), and mourning the impending loss of my oldest daughter's childhood.  (Lucky for me, she is very young at heart and not very interested in growing up fast, but I've been through jr. high so I know what's coming.)  So many changes!

For the most part, I'm pretty much done mourning southern California and starting to feel excited about the move and this next phase in our life.  We feel certain it's the right thing for our family, so that brings a good sense of peace.

But I will undoubtedly do an "ode to southern California" post at some point with pictures galore.

A couple of pics from that dreamy Sunday night: