Hello Homemaking

Believe it or not, two months have passed since my last post. What a difference time makes. Shortly after that last post I loaded up the kids and moved home to Pennsylvania where life has rapidly turned into a peaceful kingdom. How interesting because my life generally thrives on chaos. To sum up...here's how the last two months have gone down.

The boys, all three of them, and I are now homeowners. We have moved in with my awesome, gracious, funny father-in-law. After almost ten years being part of the family I assumed I knew the man. Gruff, rough, tough... a quiet man with a mysterious past. We lived together for nine months in 07 and I think we barely exchanged more than ten words to each other the entire time. I bonded strongly with my mother-in-law during this time, but he was still a question mark to me.

About three days after moving to PA I started getting messages from him asking when was I thinking about coming to live with him. The thing was, I really wasn't. I thought the commotion of the kids etc. was too much for him, especially since he was still grieving the loss of his wife. But I steadily received messages from him here and there, and about a month after getting to Pennsylvania I decided to take a shot at living with the Old Man.

Surprisingly, my husband is way more like the Old Man than I realized. They both are funny and outgoing (under optimum conditions), thoughtful and intelligent, and they both lack a certain amount of tact. But that's ok. In the beginning, I couldn't have understood this language or would have taken it personally, but ten years of marriage to The Dude has prepared me quite well. Old Man and the Dude have a very unique way of communicating. To the untrained person, this could at times come off as rude. When you get below the surface you realize it's almost an initiation. If they are picking on you they like you, or they're testing you to see if your communication is as intelligent as theirs. Not that they'd ever admit this.
At any rate... Old Man and The Dude are a lot alike. Even down to the way they hum absentmindedly, or beginning each morning singing at the top of their lungs. Both claim to know the solution to any situation, but it doesn't come from a place of arrogance and they are more than willing to hear anyone out.

Old Man and I had several weeks of living together before The Dude arrived. Surprisingly we did very well, and I came to understand that we have similar opinions on religion, family and upbringing. It's been a huge blessing to get to know him better, and I really value having him around. He's out-of-town this week and it's pretty dull around the homestead without him.

The Dude and I are taking over his parent's home, beginning to remodel and clean everything out. We filled a gigantic dumpster full of things I'm not sure his mother even realized she was keeping. Things like four 45-gallon trash bags full of Gladware, Tupperware and Ziploc Containers. (It wasn't a hoarding situation...because I'm not sure you can be a hoarder if you don't realize you are keeping things). We also found boxes upon boxes full of pictures, mementos, school projects and papers, toys, keepsakes, curiosities, you name it we found it. And we're still not done. We need to order another dumpster to get rid of things in the attic, kitchen, basement and some closets we didn't get to.

We have a whole list of renovations and remodels to get to... kitchen, baths, floors, foundation, septic, heating, water, siding and shutters, doors, paint, paint and more paint. But we've already come a long way.

On the job front nothing much is happening, but that's ok. The Dude and I are financially ready to handle that, and it's sort of nice to have time as a family day in and day out after years of moving here and there for jobs and never enjoying a substantial amount of time off.

I'm enrolled in school and working my butt off, and my husband starts his program in June. I'm enjoying it, but finding going back to school after years of not exercising those academic muscles is incredibly challenging.

The boys are adjusting well to life on the east coast. They got to see their first snowstorm (which was pretty minor considering what we're used to seeing out here) and are adapting to the colder conditions. Although my oldest did ask me, Mom why does it rain so much here??

My oldest started school at our old alma mater, and it is incredibly cool. It's awesome to be part of small town life, living off the same rural road that The Dude grew up on. Things have changed some, but really, everything's the same. We can see the covered bridge where he proposed to me from the yard, and his family is all a stone's throw away.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, God is good, and life is quiet.