So I’ve been talking a little bit about our big move… things have been extremely nuts the past several weeks, so I haven’t posted too much.  And when I say extremely nuts, I mean I have so many stories I could tell about all the times things were getting so bizarre that I was waiting for someone to jump out with their video camera to tell me I had just been Punk’d… or something… The kids and I have been living without my main man since the end of January, and lately we have just been so excited to be living together as a family again, that we have just been getting through everything else.  My husband is coming to meet us in just a few short hours and I have butterflies in my stomach like when I was in high school getting ready for a big date, or a little girl the night before Christmas… actually neither of those things compare to how I’m feeling… but I don’t know how else to explain it!

We will be heading out Monday morning.  Driving with our little trailer through the western US to the mid-west.  Taking our time over a week to sightsee along the way.  Meeting up with some family, who will now only be 2 hours away as opposed to over 2,000 miles away.  Then we will drive to our tiny, super cute little house in Downers Grove — a western suburb of Chicago.  Though we sadly leave friends and beautiful scenery in the Central Valley of California (and gorgeous winter weather…!), we are excited for the new journey in so many ways.  But we also know what its like starting over in a new community… making new friends, finding a new church, starting new schools, marketing to new clients, finding new doctors (UGH)… But we know that God’s hand has been so obvious through all of this and we are excited to see what He has in store…

This is a photo from when we first moved to California, almost exactly 5 years ago.  We first lived in southern Cali, about an hour and a half north of LA.  We loved going down to Laguna Beach — we were told about this gorgeous little, quiet cove, and it has been our favorite beach spot ever since.  This was our first little family photo shoot in CA — 5 years doesn’t sound like so terribly long ago, but kids sure do change a ton in 5 years… and so do photography skills … Crazy to look back on what life was like when we took this photo — before my strokes and brain stem surgery (right before, actually), before we lost my mom, before all the drama of 2011… Here’s to looking back on our first photos in Downers Grove and saying that was just before we made a huge impact in the community around us, before God moved in mighty ways through our family, before we knew all the amazing things that were about to happen…