Moving Forward

It has been a busy past week and a half with much work on the house, looking for a new house in Ames, and dealing with a back injury. I have been extremely blessed by some wonderful friends who have come over to help. Thursday and Friday 3 friends painted my foyer, living room and dining with marginal help from me as I was dealing with extreme back pain and very bad reactions to pain meds. Tomorrow more friends are coming to continue helping us get the house fixed up. It's humbling and heart touching to see the love of Christ lived out in others lives as they minister to us through offering help.

Monday Seth and I started some homeschooling lessons and he completely blew me away. He was excited to get to the computer to do his computer-based reading program and I thought I'd see how much he could do independently. We used the same curriculum last year, but I had to help him with operating the mouse to complete the lessons. Monday he did 5 lessons independently with minimal assistance from me when the mouse was being difficult. He is clearly reading and was so proud of himself for being able to do this on his own. It's wonderful to see him growing in independence and knowledge.

Since the big kids started school Seth has shown sadness at their leaving each morning. The first couple mornings he actually put his shoes on when they were getting to ready to leave and I had to console him that he didn't get to go along. Since then he watches them go and stands at the door looking sadly out the window. I take this as another sign that our decision to move over to Ames and get him into a classroom setting is a step he's ready for. His home-based program over the past 5 years has been a great building block for him, but I think at this point he needs more than we can offer at home. We believe that a new setting will challenge him both socially and educationally; a challenge we are seeing he is ready to face.

So we continue with preparations for moving. Our house went on the market, for sale by owner, yesterday. We plan to market it privately for 3 weeks while finishing up house projects and then list with the same realtor we bought the house with 7 years ago. We are praying God brings us a private buyer so we can save the commission money, but put a limit on the amount of time we will market it without a realtor. Tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday Mike plans to work on house projects with help from friends from church - with a crazy fast trip to Nebraska Friday and Saturday for his brother's wedding.

Last night we toured some homes in Ames and found a couple options that would work for our family. We are trying not to get our hopes set on a certain house as we are not sure what will still be on the market once our house sells. But we are encouraged that there will be some good options for us there. My greatest challenge at this point is waiting on the Lord for the right timing - I'm so impatient and just want this all to happen right now. But I desire to trust that God's timing will be perfect.