The Great (Around the USA) Adventure Has Come to an End

and now The Great SUBURBAN Adventure starts!

Oh ya'll... my dogs are barkin' and my heart is full!  Today was FILLED to the brim with fellowship, friends, fun, and WORK! 

We moved in to our new house, sort of...

When you're doing something with the Audirsches you KNOW it's going to be an adventure.  Well, due to unforeseen circumstances, we ended up without power in our new house until Monday.  So although the house was air-conditioned in the morning, the power was turned off about 10am.  We worked for the remainder of the hot, humid, Houston day without A/C or fans.

I have the most amazing friends in the world... seriously.  First off, none of them left when they found out there was no A/C!

Secondly, My kitchen is UNPACKED and ready to be used.  Amazingly, my friend Jen Johnson and her daughter Joy washed every dish that was wrapped in newspaper (and that was almost everything) and found a LOGICAL home for it in my cupboard or pantry. She was the brains in the kitchen and kept us going.

My friends Kristen Coovrey, Michelle, Mandy, and Meg Bosquez, unloaded box after box.

We had an ARMY of help!  Travis called his airsoft buddies last week and I'm proud to say
Greg and Adam Carman, David Salisbury and Jake Fontz, showed up to do the heavy lifting and lift they did!  Thanks Guys!

And Hannah asked her friend Olivia Salisbury who also came and was a BIG help!

Michael Rivera  and Jason Bosquez were the Tetris Packers Extraordinaire helping put everything on the trailer from the storage unit to go to the house. 

Ken, Claudia and Natalie Hope loaded their car up multiple times and even drove one of our vehicles for us loaded up with more stuff. 

My friend Kelly Sakal, loaned us her sixteen year old son, Bryce for the day. 

Tonight, we have a full on turkey dinner with all the trimmings prepared by my dear friend Anne Trapani,  And I have a bottle of yummy wine from my friend (whose identity I'll protect, see sistah, I gotcher back!)

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! to all of you who helped!

Earlier this week we moved our beloved RV from it's spot at the Rock'n E RV park in Cold Spring where we have stayed for the last five months to a storage facility less than one mile from our new house in Kingwood.

If you talked to us when we first arrived back in Houston we would have told you we were looking for a house very different from the one we ended up buying.  I keep telling people this house is like BATMAN! "It's not the hero we want, but it's the hero we need."  And it really is a beautiful house!

Trusting that God knows our needs better than we do, we know God has been with us each step of the way and although His direction for us may not be clear our hearts are turned toward Him desiring His glory in our lives, in our journey as individuals and as a family.

So as we bring to a close our epic 10,000 mile, sixteen month, 22 state, 'round the USA adventure which has included amazing sights of God's creation, fantastic experiences of natural and man-made wonders, and pain and joy and despair and hope we look to the author and finisher of our faith for the next chapter.

He is writing our story and we are so blessed to have you be part of it. 

In the next year, if the Lord wills, our family will expand by one Chinese daughter which really is the focus of the next few months.  Well, that and moving into a new house and getting nine kids back to homeschool and routine.

We are so blessed that you have come along for the ride and we hope that you will stay with us as we journey together into the coming year.

Day 1 - Whew!

Oh my goodness... I don't even know where to start, my friends. 

It seems like a lifetime ago I wrote the previous post, and yet, we are still in the same 24 hour day.

When I awoke this morning my precious two year old was throwing up.  I cleaned her up, tucked her back in her pack-n-play and went back to bed, that was 5:30AM.  Caleb was STILL sleeping (amazingly enough) and so I slept a bit until 7AM.  

By 8:30 I was off to "the house" (funny how our home of ten years became "the house" when we moved out...) to clean with three of my girlies.  We stopped at McD's for breakfast sandwiches and showed up at the house only to realize I'd already given my keys to our Real Estate Agent, Patrick Poteet.  I called him and he arranged for keys to be brought to me.  My dear friend Anne Trapani was coming to help me clean so she was part of the key exchange.  

By 10AM we had just opened the doors and started to clean.  Emily tackled the last straggling junk which she mostly threw away. (She's very good at purging stuff, if you ever need to organize, give her a call.) Natalie mopped and Abigail spot cleaned floors, doors, and walls.  What a blessing these girlies are.  

I got on the phone with several businesses to change service or cancel it and set all the trash out to the street fretting about if they would REALLY take all of it!  (They did... why do I worry?!)  

About 10:30AM I realized I didn't have the key to our storage unit, in which we needed to fit in a few last minute items.  So Doug's brother David, came to our rescue, going to the RV park, getting the key, and bringing it to me at the house.  

We cleaned until noon, then it was time to say goodbye "so long" to Anne (wahhhhh!) and load up the van.  Our friends took several large items we just could not fit in storage.  

We got to storage about 1PM, stashed, stuffed, and stowed the remaining items and headed back to the RV park to meet up with the rest of the family who was packing the trailer, getting it ready to be hitched up. 

We finally headed out of town about 2PM. We had to make several stops.  One was at The Escapees Club where we will maintain an address and of course Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, TX.  (Fruitcake... yes, we really stopped for fruitcake.)

Drive, Drive, Drive.  I don't like 18 wheelers on the road with us.  

The kids traveled well.  We ate at Subway then Arby's... fast food three times in a day... I need to watch Super Size Me... or Super Size my WALLET!  Moving is expensive.  Just sayin'

At about 8:50pm, the sun had set, getting to the campground with any daylight was no longer a possibility, Doug and I were feeling a bit under the gun and we look back to see RED AND BLUE LIGHTS!  Really, could we get any later to camp?  Apparently the power cord for the Trailer lights came undone and we had no lights on it.  Mr. Officer was kind enough to "let us off" with a verbal warning.  Back on the road with tail lights, we finally arrived at the campsite about 10pm.  

But alas... we are here!  It's late. I'm tired.  But it's a good tired, an excited tired. A I-am-ready-to-start-our-adventure tired.  

As I listen to my babies breathe as they sleep and put a few words on the screen, I realize how blessed I truly am.  God's got this.  He's got good in store.