Week two wrap up

Our second week here was busy much like the first week was.  The unpacking was completed but many chores were waiting in a queue to be accomplished.  We were grateful that our home sold in just three days on the market and we closed on it just before leaving but we still had plenty of unfinished details to wrap up with other moving related items.  We had a vehicle for sale that did sell last week so were able to remove that from our car insurance policy.  We are still in the middle of working out cancelling our cobra coverage that extended Jonathan's health insurance coverage until our Tennessee policy took effect.  We have been paying off final bills for things and closing Virginia accounts and finally got Jonathan's IRA set up to roll his 401K...all of this around the kids and his school work.  Things have been crazy with paperwork and phone calls to be sure.  (It is not all finished yet...we still have to change our licenses and tags and title on our van).

Our washing machine wasn't working properly either so we got a new one this past week...before that we were taking our laundry upstairs to a vacant apartment unit to do.  We are thankful to have the ability to do our laundry right here in the kitchen...with four children there is plenty of it to do.  Our oven was a pretty big mess so I cleaned it once but actually it needs further attention tomorrow.  The chores are coming to an end though as far as special ones due to moving in.

We visited Costco and purchased an annual membership and stocked up on a few things.  The kids really loved the free samples and our grocery trip was quite pleasant.  Our pantry is full and I have been experimenting with a few meatless meals to help budget well.  We also enjoyed a few old favorites this past week.  Having a kitchen again is so nice.

Much of my homeschool curriculum arrived this past week and I spent several hours organizing it on our shelves.  I always place book titles in week order and that takes quite a while.  I still have math curriculum arriving that will be time consuming to organize but every other subject has arrived.  I am so excited about this school year and all the things that we will be studying.  I have also been writing out lesson plans and reading the first of our books that we will read aloud.

Jonathan's logic class ended last Friday.  He made an A in the class.  It was 60 hours in the classroom,  many hours of reading and studying, and pages of problems worked out.  He enjoyed the first class very much but it is definitely a lot of work.  He was up early to slip in an hour of studying, often fitting a couple of hours in during nap/rest time, and then a couple more after the children go to bed each evening.  He is quickly getting to know the other students and today he began his next course that will last for two weeks.

Like last week, this week was not without difficult moments.  The 4th of July was a little hard because rain cancelled a cookout we had been invited to attend and we ended up having sandwiches instead.  The kids were pretty bummed because we always get together with family back home and they were talking about missing people.  Our cookout was postponed though and the day after we enjoyed good food and fellowship...the kids had a blast playing outside with friends.

I was really missing the mountains of home this week.  Rain really cooled things off back home and friends kept posting misty mountain photos.  Here rain seems steamy rather than misty and seems to occur right during events we want to be at but no other time.  We have found a lot of beauty here though.  We visited a pond with lily pads and a greenway attached and really enjoyed our walk there. We also visited the botanical gardens here this past Saturdy and they were amazing.

All in all, it was a good second week and we are looking forward to our third week.

A busy first week

Our first week at the Memphis School of Preaching had a rough beginning.  The drive from our home in southwestern Virginia to our new home in western Tennessee is supposed to take eleven hours (according to mapquest :)))  Our journey with all four children took seventeen hours.  We were only three hours into our trip when Jonathan's parents vehicle broke down on the side of the interstate.  (With two of our kiddos inside!)  We had stowed the backseat of our Kia Sedona so that we could fit overflow belongings that we didn't want in the back of the moving truck.  Because of that only four people at a time could fit into our vehicle.  Jonathan took the two children who were riding with us and myself to Target as soon as we came up with a game plan for how to handle our situation.  Then he went back and got our other two children and his mother and brought them on to Target as well.  We had called for a tow truck and figured out where to tow the vehicle for repairs and he got back and managed to shift all of the luggage from the broken down vehicle into the Kia just before the tow truck arrived.  Then they headed off to the rental car company so that we could get a vehicle to continue our drive.  They left their car to be worked on during the week that they were out with us helping to unpack.  (Trust me, at this point we were tired already and all of that took around three hours or so to accomplish).  We managed the rest of the drive with no other interruptions but it was around 10:30 at night by the time that we arrived at our hotel. 

Our move in day occurred on Saturday and that went extremely smoothly.  We had a number of preaching school students to help us unload the moving truck (which had been driven here by my dad with my sister along for company).  We filled our apartment to the brim with boxes and furniture.  Everything was basically a cluttered mess but with my trusty box cutter in hand I set out ripping open boxes and slowly brought order to the apartment. 

In six days, thanks to the help from my in-laws, I managed to have every single box unpacked and the entire apartment clean and feeling like home.  It might not have taken that long but we had quite a few errands that needed to be accomplished as well.  We had to sign our papers for the apartment and get our keys, we had to pick up Jonathan's books from the library here, we had a big Target trip to make for things we needed (like lots of command strips to hang pictures on our walls!), we had to go and open a bank account here for Jonathan's direct deposit to go into, and a few other things.  Around unpacking we were also ordering our homeschool curriculum for the next school and of course taking care of the four children.  Also in the midst of our unpacking Jonathan was in class from 7am to 1pm each day.  I was so glad to have Jonathan's parents along helping to unpack or I might still be unpacking well into the end of the year!  Jonathan was getting out of class early in the afternoon but he had a lot of reading and homework assignments to contend with in his afternoon and evening hours.  We are pleased with the apartment though and all of our neighbors are wonderful. 

Jonathan's first class is "Logic" and it will last for two weeks.  Sixty hours of class in two weeks is pretty intense but he is enjoying the class and his instructor very much.  It is good to see him so happy each day...there is no question that our decision to come here has been a good one for our family.  He had his first exam on Friday and we are looking forward to see the test score this week.  Before their exam on Friday the entire class went to eat at Chick-fil-a for breakfast and Jonathan really enjoyed that time of fellowship. 

Not everything about the week was easy or wonderful.  There were tears shed this week as goodbyes had to be made to family.  It has been hard to the children to get to sleep each evening in the new apartment (although that is getting better).  There were plenty of stressful moments as we tried to unpack with so many little people underfoot.  It was strange this week for me because Jonathan was meeting all of the other students in class and the kids were meeting friends from the building as they played outside with their poppy but being stuck inside unpacking I was meeting no one.  It was nice last night to serve food at a banquet for teenagers and meet other wives and students. 

All in all, we can consider our first week a huge success and we ended it today with a trip to the Memphis Zoo.