Yardwork

The first thing I noticed about the new house when we got here was that the yard was a lot shadier than I remembered.

Of course, the first time I saw it, I had seen seven houses already that day, and I went on to see four more, and I had just defended a dissertation and survived a car breakdown en route and . . . well, it's amazing that I was sentient at all.

So, here's the back yard, from the deck, left to right.

A lot of work to be done.

Fortunately, most of the trees that will need to be taken out are on our side of the property.  The trees on the east side of the house are not, though, and we'll just say nice things about them when we grumble about our air conditioning bill.

("Geez, this is high." "Yeah.  Thank goodness for our neighbors' shade trees, though.  It'd be even worse without them.")

So, for one more summer, we've got to limp along with the container garden.  Happily, the one spot in the back yard that gets full sun is just in front of the deck.

So, there we are.  We've gotten a few things started.  Will keep you updated.

The Move

Well, the move went fairly well, all things considered.

We thought we were mostly ready.

 So we got the truck.

And we got doughnuts and coffee. 

People from Stephen's church had volunteered to come help us load, so . . . coffee and doughnuts.  (It almost killed Theo, as you can imagine, to hear, "They're not for us; they're for the movers," seventeen times before 8am.)

So, it turned out we were not quite so almost-ready as we thought we were.  People who arrived thinking that they'd spend an hour or two throwing boxes on the truck instead packed and loaded and packed some more.  All day.

They were sweet about it, though . . .

. . . and left very kind messages, instead of the things they were really thinking, for us to find when we started unpacking.

Several of them worked on the parsonage grounds, too, making it nice for the next pastor and his family.

Amos helped.

Theo was very, very helpful, too!

(We actually did ask him to take that one off so we could put in something else first.  He's not going the wrong way.)

We got it all packed and on the truck by the end of the day Saturday.

Pop-pop came down Sunday night to help.

No, really--he came to drive the truck.

And we rolled out Monday morning!  It was a very long drive.

We tried to keep our happy faces on as much as we could.

And we stopped along the way to visit with people.

We stopped at Grandma Jackie's for lunch the first day.

She was glad that Amos was such a good eater.  (She always worries about babies not getting enough to eat.)

We stopped at The Lake to spend the night.

We stopped at Chipotle and Chick-Fil-A and our other favorite places for meals.

We enjoyed the drive as much as we could (in Tennessee, for example) and put our game faces on for the rest.  (Virginia is a lot longer than you think, especially when you're traveling on 81.)

And finally, late in the evening on Tuesday, we arrived!

Our new home, waiting for us.  Yay!

Are We There Yet?

New job, new city, new house, new church: why not a new blog, too?

Well, here we are, then.

This will be mostly like the old blog, except without all of xanga's :ahem: idiosyncrasies.

You'll notice that we're still unpacking here, as well as in the house, so . . . you know, ignore the mess, try not to make too many "helpful" suggestions, and bring pie, if you can.

True story: this pie was just brought to us by the "Food Ministry" team from the church we visited this past Sunday.  As far as bribes to come back go, it's pretty solid.  We'll have to check out all the other churches, though.

Another true story: when we first moved back to North Carolina after our time in Paris, we visited all the United Methodist churches in our town.

The first week, we visited a church that was having Stewardship Sunday, where they collect all the pledge cards (if you don't already know, don't ask) and have a little celebration after church.  This was a relatively new thing at the time, just like the Chimes of the Trinity (also don't ask), and you could see people looking around and asking themselves, "Is this how we should be doing this?"

Well, they looked at us visitors and said, "Well, why don't you join us?  It's a free lunch and all!"

And we, being grad students, said, "Gosh, that would be lovely."  At it was.  A lovely fried chicken catered dinner.

So the next week, we went to the church down the road, and that was the week it was having its Stewardship Sunday!  And they were having their celebration after church, and it was partly catered and partly potluck, but they said, "Hey, why don't you join us?  Don't worry about not having anything for the potluck--just come enjoy a free lunch!"

And we, being grad students, said, "Gosh, that would be lovely."  And so we ate more fried chicken, and all the traditional North Carolina potluck items, like cole slaw and potato salad and banana pudding and thoroughly boiled green beans with fatback.

The next week?  Guess.  (You'll never guess.)  The big UMC church downtown that we visited?  Stewardship Sunday.

I swear, I am not making this up: we hit five Stewardship Sunday celebrations the first two months.

We also took advantage of at least four churches' VBS weeks, but that's another story for another time.

Well, we've hit two UMC churches so far here in [our town], Alabama.  We've got three more to visit (I think).  I'll let you know about the rest.