Getting a room settled

Well, of course, the kids are asking for their rooms to be setup.  So - Mom to the rescue.

I consider it a blessing to them that I love to arrange (and rearrange) furniture and it matters to me that their room reflects who they are.

I think a clean room encourages play and creativity more than a pile of clothes, a pile of toys and a continually stinky, unmake bed.

So - since Katherine's room was leaning towards the latter room I described, today was set aside to fix it up.

She has the biggest room of all 3 girls and after only having tiny rooms all these years, this was a bit challenging for me.

With this arrangement she has her bed and other furniture on one end.  I also hung up a blue painting that Matt painted several years back.  She will be so excited that her Daddy's picture is hanging in her room.  I also hung up a cute painting that was in my room when I was little.  I can't wait to show my Mom when she's here tomorrow!  The hardest part of her room was finding a cute way to arrange all her "stuff".  Some of it is cute and decorative and some of it is just scraps of paper.  Hopefully she'll appreciate it! (I know she will.  The look on the kids' faces is half the reason I do this!)

This is the other side of Katherine's room.  We didn't bring desks with us to this house and she was pretty heartbroken.  So - we found a way to make her storage cubes into a desk.  This looked like a war zone before I tackled it today.  Now she has some cute fairy pictures and a picture she made at school.  It's a drawing of herself and says "I like me!".  I thought that was perfect.  In addition she has some spaces for toys, decorations and all her "office supplies".  And it just looks so darn cute.

Letting things go - specifically our piano

We have moved a lot.

8 times in all.  And I purge a lot.  So, we don't have a lot of things that have stuck with us.

But, this one has.

It's a beautiful piano.  Built in 1910 and made to last.  The style is completely us - clean lines, no frills.  I picked out this piano from a shop in Fort Collins, Colorado right before we moved into our new, large-enough-for-a-piano house.  I greeted it with visions of kids someday, kids who would first bang and then actually play the keys.

When we moved out to Chicago, the piano stayed behind.  A friend agreed to keep it for us at their house.  I still think they were pretty surprised when, 3.5 years later, we asked to take it back and we moved it to Chicago.

I was so thankful to have it - it is huge, heavy and loud but you could just as easily say it's grandiose, substantial and vociferous.  This year our 9 yr old, Claire, decided to start lessons.  It's been amazing to hear her play daily.  

But, as we prepare to move back to Colorado, we decided to not bring it with us.

This has been hard for me and for Claire. But we must say farewell.  On to new adventures without the weight of a 100 yr old piano.

 On a separate note, the cats' puffer balls have all been found.

How do you say goodbye?

I am trying to figure out how to process the events of the last few weeks.  In some ways they were planned out long in advance and in other ways they seemed to appear suddenly.  Matt accepted a job in Colorado so we find ourselves putting our house on the market, finishing out summer camps quickly and planning to move there in just a few short months.

We came to live in Chicago when Anna was 2 and Claire was just 4 months old.  We uprooted from suburban life and settled ourselves into a busy, crazy city.  We sometimes lived on ramen noodles and canned carrots, but we were just so happy.  Happy to be on our own, away from our home state for the first time and excited for whatever the future held.  Matt was just starting his graduate degree in Philosophy and all doors seemed open wide.

Fast forward several years to the surprise pregnancy that would become Katherine.  This took us a bit off guard and we decided to head back "home" to Colorado and try to sort out our new life as a family of 5.  It became obvious pretty quickly that Matt wouldn't be able to finish his degree and establish his new consulting business.  So, we found ourselves back in Chicagoland - this time we settled in our favorite, close to Chicago suburb.

Our home in Evanston was beautiful and the neighborhood was almost too perfect to believe.  Our littlest one learned to walk just a few months after we moved in and we felt it was a perfect place to be. A couple of years later things changed dramatically and we ended up deciding to buy our first home since Anna was a baby.

When we arrived in Glenview back in 2011, we hoped and prayed for good neighbors and a quick adjustment.  Wow, were we surprised!  This home has felt the most "home" to me so far, the neighbors have been truly family and being so close to our church we have put down deep roots there - helping out weekly and hosting several different groups at our home.

We will be leaving close friends - friends who would drop everything to help out, friends whom our kids play with every single day.  Friends who have shared hurts and their hearts with us.  While we leave with anticipation of being close enough to see our family more than once a year, we also leave knowing it will be harder to keep in touch with those here.

During this time of transition we are thankful for:
1.  God's clear direction
2.  Our kid's resilience and adaptability
3.  Encouragement
4.  Each other
5.  Family