We Haven't QUITE Dropped Off the Face of the Earth!!!

Wow! Has it really been almost FOUR MONTHS since I last posted? And, even now, I don't have time to post in great detail...but, let me at least say we have not totally dropped off the face of the earth!

Grant has settled in well to his job teaching at SBU. Darcy has adjusted beautifully transitioning from a home-schooler to public school. She loves school and her teachers and was one of the first students chosen from the student body of 600 students to be "student of the week". All three kids are thriving living in town. It has been a bit more of an adjustment for me, after so many years of living in a very secluded area. The first week we moved into town, our normally very quiet dogs became quite agitated in the middle of the night. Going out to see what was causing all the commotion, I found a nasty possum perched atop our privacy fence. All three dogs were in a wild frenzy to kill this intruder and they were jumping so high, that I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before one of them was able to actually snatch the possum off its perch. Thinking of how inconvenient it would be to dispose of a dead possum in TOWN, I was very much against the dogs getting ahold of the nasty little creature. Grabbing up a fallen tree branch, I began pushing at the possum trying to knock it into the adjoining yard (out of reach of my dogs). The stinkin' possum was determined NOT to be pushed off the fence to safety and just kept leaning down, out of sight onto the other side of the fence, but still tenaciously GRIPPING the fence with its little claws and then popping back up like some demented punching bag each time my branch lost contact with it. Furious, I started yelling, "Get OUT OF HERE!!! Don't you know my dogs will KILL you!!!" It was at that point that my pajama clad husband ran out of the house to quiet his lunatic wife. And as my sanity returned, I realized with embarassment that EVERYONE in the neighborhood probably heard me...out there in the dark yelling crazily about my dogs killing someone! Like, I said, it has been an adjustment for me learning to live in town! One thing I have adjusted effortlessly, too, though, is the fact that everything is so close at hand! I can get to work in less than five minutes and Grant could WALK to his work (less than a mile!). Not commuting an hour each direction has been one change in our lives that both of us really like.

Each of our kids goes to a different school. Rayna attends the Primary School which has a student body of around 600 children. Rayna loves kindergarten. Unfortunately she has returned home with paint on her clothes nearly every day. I thought THAT was frustrating until last week when she returned home with a fashionable new haircut. It seems, she found a new use for her scissors during a slow moment in art class! Doug has had a harder ajustment to the new town and school than anyone else. He attends the Intermediate school which also has a student body of about 600 chilren. Before he had gone to a tiny grade school where everyone knew him well and he had many friends. With his verbal disabilities and poor sense of "personal space"/social skills, he has met with some rejection that we never experienced in his old school. It was really bad in the beginning, but recently, I have seen him finding his own way here, too. He has had a very good experience from the beginning in the Sunday School class we have been going to and he is beginning to find acceptance, now, at school and in the neighborhood, too. That is a relief. He is such a gregarious, sociable, outgoing little boy that it was heartbreaking to see him go through a period of being ostracized when his sisters were both fitting in so well, so naturally. But, I see other kids warming up to him now and I think it will be as good for him here, in time, as it was at the smaller school that he used to go to.

We had expected to have to hunt for a church for a while before finding a place to settle...but, the church we visited our first Sunday evening in town has been where we have gone ever since. We plan to join it next Sunday. It has been the first church we have ever gone to that has fit all THREE of our children perfectly. Grant and I really like our Sunday School class, too...and have felt more connected into it than we have any Sunday School class in years. We have gone camping with the Sunday School class (to the kids' delight) down at Table Rock Lake and Monica went to a Women's Retreat in Branson and Darcy went to the Youth Group Retreat in Oklahoma.

We still haven't sold our home in Peculiar...anyone out there want to buy it???!!! But, our new home in Bolivar is working out well. It is a lot smaller than our former home, but the bedroom situation is much better than it was in our old home (built when we thought we would never have more than one child). Doug has an actual BEDROOM now! For the first time since joining our family, he has FOUR walls, and a CLOSET, and a DOOR. He loves his new room and I have to admit, he keeps his room in better order than anyone else in the house! The girls still share a room, but, the room they share now is a lot bigger than what they had before. And the master-bedroom is much better for Grant and I, too, than the set-up we had in our old home. Grant misses having the bedrooms on the second floor. I guess I do, too. It was nice having that buffering space between the bedrooms and the more public areas of the home. And we both REALLY miss having a basement. There just isn't anywhere near the storage space in our new home as there was in our former home. But, it isn't all bad having a smaller house...there is so much less to have to keep clean!!! And, now we have a wood-burning fireplace and hardwood floors throughout. Our yard is large and full of mature trees. The back is fenced for the dogs and the previous owners left a nice wooden swingset/fortress back there that the kids play on all the time. The best part, though, is that the mortgage payments will be SO MUCH LOWER. We really were living above our means in our old home. When we get the old home sold off, we will actually be mortgage-free, because the home we are living in now costs less than the principle we have built up in our former home. Then we will be able to live on Grant's salary alone. Until then, though, I have been working full time in home health. It has been a big career change...and has turned out to be the best job I've ever had. I love my work, here...but there is too much of it! There has been a LOT of mandatory overtime, so, what should be a 40 hour work-week, more often than not, turns into a 60 hour work week. It seems to me it will always be this way as long as I hold onto a "full time" position. My boss keeps assuring me that it will ease back into normal 40 hour work weeks at some point in the future, but I am skeptical. I really, really, really like the work. If I was single, it would be easy to let this job become my life. But, I'm not single and there is a lot more to my life than my job...so, no matter how much I love this job, it cannot be allowed to fill up my life. It does amaze me, though, as I spend hours a day traveling over the twisting roads draped over the wooded, hilly landscape that I am being PAID to be out in the sunshine, driving along through the countryside...finding different roads with each new assignment. The home visits are more like VISITS than nursing. It is like popping in on a friend and helping them get their medication schedule sorted out, or trouble shooting for them over the phone with their doctor or explaining/teaching them things about their medical care that they didn't have time to absorb while they were still in the hospital. It is the kind of stuff, that as a nurse you might find yourself doing for your own family...but, now you are doing it for others out in the community. I have met so many wonderful folks over the last few months. It truly is a joy going from home to home...and the fact that I might have to drive 45 minutes between homes, is icing on the cake. I wouldn't like driving 45 minutes in an urban setting...but when it is all rural and such beautiful landscape where-ever I go...well, I can't help but enjoy my time between stops! In a lot of ways, what we do in the seven counties our small office covers is a lot like what a country doctor would have done in the old days...going from home to home helping folks to take care of their medical needs in their own homes...except we have MOUNDS of paperwork to complete on each and every client. I don't mind the paperwork, though, now that I am finally getting pretty familiar with it.

I will try and get photos posted SOON!