Hannah's many birthdays...

Aug 9
The night before our moving day, Hollye was surprised when our neighbors Sat and Donna said they and their boys would come over about five the next evening for the party. Hollye tried hard not to act like she did not know what was going on but she did have to ask something! It turned out that Hannah, who's birthday is August 23, had invited a few people over for an early celebration, and hadn't bothered to inform (or invite) us. The next day, Nancy Bernstein called to let us know that she and Fred were coming over for the party and that she had a gift for Hannah and what kind of cake would Hannah like?! The next day the Bernsteins, Chinapens and later the Khalids came over and had ice cream and cake and Hannah got some nice presents. She was pretty pleased with herself, I think.




Aug 19
We were in Texas at the time, staying with the Berry's. We celebrated both James' and Hannah's birthday by going to a Mexican restaurant. They let them wear a big sombrero and sang them a silly song. Then we all walked to the Berry's shop to open presents. The whole Berry clan came and James and Hannah had lots of presents to open. The girls favorite thing though was their cousin Steven. He nick-named them Randy (Hannah), Michael (Alena) and Hank (Erilynn). They were so pleased with their new names, they gave him one too: Silly Billy Barbie boy.


Aug 23
Since the 23rd was Hannah's real birthday, we had to celebrate it yet again. Apparently, only twice was not enough! Her aunt Margie bought her an ice cream cake. Yummy! If the other children figure out how to swing 3 birthday parties, I'm in big trouble. Let's see 3 x 5 =15 plus Hollye will want a whole week...

Moving Days (Aug 9 - Sep 2)

We worked like crazy to load the Pod, trailer and van. The girls were so good and helped clean out the garage. I would pick up one thing after another, hand it to one of the girls and say "Pod", "trailer" or "trash" and they would put the thing wherever it belonged. They helped so much! By evening we ran out of room so Paul gave away a lot of things that would not fit to our neighbors the Chinapens and Kahlids. We pulled out of the drive about 8:30 p.m. with friends waving goodbye.

Drove all night to Tennessee and looked for a few days at houses with our realtor Sonja Scales. She was super nice and helpful. Erilynn kept referring to her as "my friend". Tried to start working remotely on Monday, but could not get my computer to recognize my work's internal computers. Tried a different hotel and even at Sonja's place, but had no luck. So, we hopped in the van and drove all the way down to Texas over night. We got there in the morning and I was able to start work from Glenn and Margie's house. Thank the Lord!

We stayed there a couple days, then went to try to work at the Berry's. Could not get a connection through their satellite hookup, so we stayed the weekend and drove back to Glenn and Margie's. Spent about a week and a half there working and buying our new house that we found in Tennessee. It was extremely stressing.

We scheduled to close on the 31st of August, so I stopped work at 1600 on Wednesday and we drove all night back to Tennessee. At about 2300 on a deserted stretch of highway, in the middle of Arkansas, our rear van tire blew. I spent about an hour putting on the spare, with tractor trailer trucks wizzing by about 2 feet from my head. The wind from them would buffet the van and trailer, making them rock (the children slept through it all). All that and the tire turned out to be almost flat!!! We were pulling our small trailer absolutely loaded, which made it even harder. We drove on the side of the road for about 2 miles, pulled off on the first exit and found a gas station with an air pump! We thanked God for hearing our prayers.

We were praying the whole time from then on that the spare tire would make it all the way to TN. We were supposed to do an inspection of our house at 830 and we got there at 833. The closing went pretty smoothly, except I kept falling asleep. We were so happy to get into our new house. It is awesome. My dad and brother John and his wife Amanda came and helped us unload the pod over the weekend. Oww, my back!

Count Down to Moving Day (Aug1-8)

August 1 - The packing began
August 2 - The Pod arrived
August 3 - We picked up our mini trailer
August 4 - William and Christian climbed up all the stairs and keep trying to eat the boxes
August 5 - We had a garage sale, at which the girls asked for donations for pot holders and purses they had spent hours and hours making. They are saving to buy Bibles for neighbor children.
August 6 - Our friends from church had a going away celebration for us
August 7 - Paul and Sat, our wonderful neighbor, loaded the heavy furniture into the Pod
August 8 - Nearly everything inside is packed and all the large items have been loaded with much thanks to our neighbors, Sat and Donna