Monologuin'

So I was standing in the bathroom with Kylie while she did her thing, and the following monologue ensued, while a longish zip tie served as her prop.

"Mommy, my daddy died."

I shook my head with a confused look on my face.

"No, Mom, I'm pretending my dad died.

But he's going to come back to life.

[She holds the zip tie up, fashioned into a rough oval shape.]

I'm going to bring him back to life with this.

But Dylan is my dad.

Yeah, Dylan is the dad

and Keilana is the mom

and I am the son.

I am the good son.

But I am not a boy.

I am Michelle.

I am going to be a turtle.

But I'm not a turtle,

I'm just Michelle,

I'm the daughter.

Keira, you are the boy, you are going to be the son

you can't be a turtle,

you are too big to be a turtle.

Mom, I'm going to walk to my house,

yeah, I'm going to walk to the house because I'm the son.

Ok, Mommy, lets go walk to your house."

Up she jumped and scampered off in her pigeon-toed, drunken sailor run.

She really doesn't need anyone to have a conversation with, she just sort of talks and talks and talks regardless of whether or not anyone actually responds.

Busy

We're making good progress, but packing a whole house is a lot of work. The kids are being pretty good, but they've been mostly locked up inside with orders to "Don't touch that!" "Get out of that room!", etc. I didn't realize that perhaps we'd been a bit too occupied with all these decidedly non-fun tasks until yesterday afternoon. I had busted up an old piece of junk dresser into small pieces to haul to the dumpster, and we let each of the kids carry a small chunk out as we carried the bulk of it, and as we were walking back to the house, Dylan happily exclaimed, "We went together as a family!"

You know life's gotten a bit funky when walking trash to the dumpster together is the extent of your family activities.

Starting Over

We're headed to Montana in about two weeks. I don't know where we'll end up in the long run, but I'm almost positive it won't be California.

I have such terribly conflicting emotions about all this. Obviously, I'm excited. I love western Montana and I'm grateful that we'll be able to be close to all of my family, at least for a time. I'll get to let my kid regularly go wild outside, and we'll go sledding and cut our own Christmas tree and have Sunday dinners with the family. Hopefully this summer we'll go hiking and go to powwow and Good Ol' Days. I am bursting with excitement over that.

And I'm tremendously sad. The other night, just after we put the kids to bed, we heard a strange noise, so Doug walked into their room and asked Keilana what it was. She got very quiet and was sort of turned away from him, so he said, "Keilana, I'm talking to you, so talk to me. What was that?" She turned to face him and said, in a sad, shaky little voice, "I'm excited to go to Montana and see Yaya and my cousins, I'm just going to miss my friends." Doug assured it that it was OK to be sad, because we were really going to miss our friends, too. On Sunday, I kept thinking there must be some way to take our ward with us. The kids are all having a bit of a hard time, as the house gets emptier and moving day gets closer. Their whole lives are about to change completely.

So are mine and Doug's. I'll have to figure out how to fit our family into the already established routines and relationships of the extended family. It will probably affect the dynamics of my kids' relationships with each other, as they are so used to spending so much time with just each other, just the three of them. We have to develop whole new routines and habits. We'll be so very, very far away from Mimi and Papa. We'll probably miss them most of all. The four of us have grown quite close over the course of the last five years, and even with all the wonderful family we'll have up in Montana, it will certainly feel like there's a hole in our hearts at having them so far away. I wish that our families lived a little closer so that my kids (and I) could spend a lot of time with both sets of grandparents.

If I think about it too long, I just get sick. So instead, I'm trying to focus on all the work I have to get done (anyone who wants to help is more than welcome to come pack and paint), and on all the good stuff: best friends who are cousins, a white Christmas, that whole hazy line between backyard and wilderness thing, spending a lot of time with my mom, soaking up time with my grandma.

In the mean time, I'm trying not to think too much about how much I'll miss the Meiks, Ashcrafts, Hunters and Cregors, or how much we'll miss our family here, or about not being able to take a weekend trip to Monterey or Disneyland or Sacramento. Having a lot of people in your life to love is wonderful, but it also makes some decisions a lot harder,

Conundrum

People don't realize that they sometimes love me for the things I don't say,

until I don't not say them.

Making Plans

Doug is waiting to hear on a job he applied for in Visalia. He should know by the end of the week whether or not he gets an interview, but at this point the statistics aren't in his favor. As of last night, there were 44 applicants for the position, many with way more experience.

So, if it doesn't come through, we're headed to Montana. In many ways, headed home, at least for me. As we've talked about leaving and tried to help the kids understand what that means, it finally really sank in for me that this is very much home for my children. Keilana is the only one who has spent any time anywhere else, and at an age where she was far too young to remember. Lindsay is the only home they've known. And its been a good home for them. Keilana has wonderful friends, including two other little redheads she pals around with, Dylan will miss Grant and Lulu terribly, and I will miss seeing Kylie light up when she knows she's getting a chance to see Ava and Ronnie. My 2-year-old has real friends, for Pete's sake.

Lindsay has been good to Doug and I, too. We stayed up til almost four last night talking about everything we need to get done in the next three weeks (we're leaving November 1st), and everything we're leaving behind. Doug and I both feel like we struggle to make friends, for various reasons, or at least to feel close to people, and we have such a solid, wonderful group of loving, understanding, supportive friends here. People we trust, are at ease with, and enjoy being around. People who we feel will miss us as much as we'll miss them. That makes me terribly sad--there are so many people we hate to leave.

But I'm also tired. Our experience in Lindsay has been fun and exciting and enriching, but its also been exhausting and trying and overwhelming. I'm ready to start fresh. I'm tired of being cumbered, at times, by other people's baggage, or having my reputation tarnished by the foolish decisions of others. I'm tired of living right in the middle of everything, surrounded by people and pavement. I'm tired of all that nonsense, and maybe being broke and turning to my parents for help for a while is the Lord's way of providing that fresh start for us, challenging as it will be. Maybe things here didn't go the way we'd hoped in the end, but I will not regret having come here and been a part of all this--I will certainly never regret knowing and spending time with the people its brought into our lives. I will always be tremendously grateful for the opportunity to be a little piece of some amazing things, and for all the people that have shaped us during our time here. And I still have hope that, though our part in this story is over for now, it will still work out for the best in the long run--that all things we've worked for, invested in, will not be in vain. There is still time for things to go right.

In the mean time, I'm trying not to focus on being completely broke, with no solid job prospects of any kind, living in two bedrooms with four kids and all the packing and cleaning and selling and organizing we have to do in the next few weeks. I'm focusing on family Christmas tree trips to the Stump Ranch and a snowy Christmas and so many cousins to play with and spending a lot of time with my grandma and my sisters and everybody else--all 30 of them:) I'm looking forward to helping my children know a little better a place that was such a magical part of my childhood. Wish us luck.

Silver Lining

Chuck didn't have any work for Doug today, and its still chilly and breezy outside (and we leave the windows open this time of year). It was perfect weather for snuggling cozily under a comforter in a warm, soft bed. And since the other kids were off to school, Kylie got her daddy all to herself.

Even unemployment has its advantages.

Scatter Sunshine

The other day, I was watching Keilana scooter home from school in her Roxy jeans, with Kylie running after her in her cute little Gymboree skirt and bright yellow Doc Martens, I thought to myself, "Their hand-me-downs are so much cooler than mine were." Then, when I was walking the kids to the car today, all of them dressed so cute in nice clothing, I realized that, head-to-toe on all four kids, I had only purchased Keira's pants and Keilana's shoes. That's it. All the rest of the clothing came to us from cousins and friends. What a wonderful blessing.

Today a friend came over to visit and see how we're doing. Thanks to her sneaky thoughtfulness, we often have so much food that its hard fitting it all in our cupboards--not a challenge that a family generally faces while unemployed.

Our life is absolutely full of people like that. You wouldn't believe how often I get a random email, text message or Facebook comment from someone who loves us and is just checking in to see how we're doing and if they can help at all. A few weeks ago, some friends took us out on a double date, their treat, just to enjoy our company and give us a break. For my birthday, a friend declared he was sending us out on a date, and showed up at the house to babysit and gave us some cash to go have some fun.

Yesterday, I was feeling terribly homesick. My dad's birthday was this past weekend, and so all my siblings got together with all their kids at my parents' house to make cider with my grandma's cider press, from all the apples in my parents' orchards. I haven't been home in 15 months (no one but my mom has even met Keira), and fall is my favorite season in Montana. One of the things that I struggle with in my more homesick moments is feeling forgotten. I look at all these pictures of piles of grandkids and aunts and uncles and part of me thinks, "How could it ever possibly feel as though anyone is missing?" I'm the only one not there, and I've been gone my entire adult life, so I've never really been a part of the life they have now, so I feel like it'd be easy to just sort of forget me and my family. I know better, but that's how I feel when I get bummed about being so far away. So, just when I was feeling disconnected and forgotten, a card showed up in my mailbox from my sweet big sister. Just wanted to let me know that we're loved and missed and that they're thinking about us and hope things turn around soon so that we can come home. That would've been enough to make my entire month, but on top of that she included a generous gift.

All at once, I felt ridiculous for feeling so sorry for myself. The only reason I feel so sad is because I have a marvelous family that is worth missing. And I have family here that loves me, too. So this afternoon, we finally ran some errands this afternoon that we've been putting off, and since we were in Visalia, we decided to stop in and visit Grandpa Barnes. It was strange not having Grandma there with him, but it was a nice visit. Kylie told him that she was gonna come pick his oranges for her birthday and have birthday cake, and he seemed to get a kick out of that idea.

Then we decided to stop in and see Mimi and Papa, too, and spent a couple of hours visiting with them. I love seeing my kids enjoy time with their grandparents and aunts and uncles.

I don't know what life has in store for us in the next few months and years, only that changes and adjustments will probably be demanded of us. I am grateful that one thing remains certain: wherever we go, near or far, there will be plenty of people who happily brighten the way for us. We are so well-loved by so many, and I'm grateful to be reminded of that so frequently.