Queen of my Castle, so to speak.

**This post was also written more than a year ago.  I am leaving it as is, because housekeeping perfection is so rare, it would be a shame to ignore it's brief occurrence.   Though I find it equally entertaining that I apparently didn't have time to write more...

Queen of my castle.
I am a rockstar today.  Let me tell you why.

My house is picked up.
The laundry is caught up and in good rhythm.
We have groceries in the fridge and pantry including food for planned meals and school lunches.

This is a big deal to a Mom.  Huge.  It's like the trifecta of perfection of homemaking-dom.  Order brings me peace.  Order allows me to progress through the other things on my "to do" lists, the things that I don't normally get to do.  Things that are more fun, and creative.

Spiritually.  I feel changed.  It has been a long time waiting and trying and waiting.  I mean years of waiting and being still and trying to listen.  I've had beautiful moments of clarity and insight but then down into the mire of change and fogginess.  I feel changed.  Fresh.

Hello...is this thing on?

**A post actually composed more than a year ago, around April 2016.

In recent years my blog is looking more and more like my journal from my childhood.  Each entry began with, "so, I guess it's been a while. Let me catch up - my dog died, my sister went to college, she graduated, we moved and I have a niece."  I would sum up months in a matter of sentences.  Which kind of defeats the purpose of a journal.  I have loved my blog and I still love my blog.  I could look at this as either a dry season (nothing to write about) but really I think its more an issue of so much, so little time for such things.  I can skip over some of the big things because I think I actually did document that I had a baby last year. Baby, check.  However I'm going to have to skip right over the whole bit about how three years ago we left the Navy for more "stagnant waters" (aka being together as a family and stuff) for a solid career with Chevron thus giving us a chance to sink some roots in Texas, in really good soil, surrounded by family and great ward and schools.  Fast forward to this Spring when we were thrown into the big Chevron game of musical chairs where almost a third of his division were going to lose their jobs.  We were faced with a choice - not just a choice about how we were going to go about reapplying for jobs withing the company, but a bigger picture choice: was this the pattern we wanted to repeat every 5-8 years within the oil and gas companies or was it an opportune time to make another career choice?  I hate hard decisions! They are so...hard.  In my personal journal (which I am just as sporadic about, though much more detailed and nitty gritty) I go into depth about this wrestle we had to stay where we really want to be, or go where we knew things would be good, our family could be just as happy and it would be a very good career move for Clark.  Did I mention this was a hard decision?  So much about it felt wrong because its the first time (besides our choice to leave the Navy) that we were CHOOSING to move.  We could've stayed with Chevron but it would've meant adding multiple weeks of travel a month, in addition to an already very heavy load that Clark was carrying between family, work and his calling as Bishop.  But in the end, we took a leap.  And since some leaps take lots of months to execute, it has felt a little like a freefall for some time - landing will be a relief but scary too.  We currently have a house under contract in Virginia, a beautiful new build that is my tender mercy waiting for us on the other side.  That, and good friends that feel like family.  But it means we also have a house on the market here, right now, while living here with eight people and a dog.  So it wasn't just the decision making part that was hard, its the months leading up to it.  Months of "lasts" and preparation, and keeping the house clean...

**I have to leave this entry as is, in order to move forward, you see.