Harry's epic day of adventure

So, a few days ago, Harry told us all that he had an epic surprise planned for us this Saturday.  He dutifully kept it a secret until today at 11:40 (after he got back from Impact Day at church).  Then he told us we'd be going for a drive.  We packed some sandwiches and water bottles for lunch in the car and away we went.

First stop Marianne's Ice Cream Shop in Santa Cruz.  Marianne's is a cash-only, 55 year old, hole-in-the-wall ice cream place that just so happens to be FANTASTIC.  Harry had a double scoop of butter pecan, I had a single of blueberry cheesecake, the girls had bubblegum ice cream on cake cones, and Q had good old-fashioned vanilla bean.  : )

After ice cream, we hopped on over to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.  Now that was an experience!  I have never seen a carnival at the beach- because that is what it looked like to me!  The Boardwalk comes complete with roller coaster, funnel cakes, sno-cones, roll-a-rama, annual chili cook-off, lots and lots of sandy beach, and ocean for miles.  We walked around for an hour or so and took some photos.

THEN, we took a drive up the gorgeous, gorgeous coast.  And who knew that on the coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean is miles and miles of farmland?  So we stopped at a farm and bought some seriously good strawberries-- which we ate immediately. : )  Actually, Q ate most of them...


From the coast, we cut over on hwy 84 through a winding, twisting wooded area full of redwoods.  These things are huge!  It was pretty neat to see so many redwoods.  Now, these are not the famous redwoods found north of here, but they are still really tall!

And since we live across the San Francisco Bay just off of hwy 84, we took the Dumbarton Bridge over the Bay and back home.


It really was pretty epic.  : )

                  Santa Cruz Boardwalk                                      Marianne's Ice Cream (and one happy boy)

Beautiful ache

A beautiful ache.

That's my life right now.

I spent the weekend with my daughter who had a stomach virus...for the second time this month.

I got to talk to my best friend for the first time in six weeks.  That was beautiful.   But I cried like a baby afterwards because I miss her and her family so much!  My sick little daughter lay weakly on the bed next to me, wiped away the tears that were streaming down my face, and stroked my hair.

Beautiful ache.  

The Cardinals lost and it felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.  Not because I'm that attached to the Cards.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I love 'em.  But the thing is, when the Giants clobbered us it felt like my life in St. Louis was being clobbered to death.

Ache.

But God has been so generous to us!  In just weeks, not only did He provide us with a place to live, but He also filled it up with furniture.  The people of Bridges Community Church have reached out to us-they've brought us meals, cleaning supplies, and presents for the kids.  Harry has really enjoyed his new  job and has discovered that he's been waiting and preparing for this his whole life.

Beautiful.

And me?  Well, I'm just trying to hold on.  It's been a wild ride.  I'm learning to walk in trust.  To lean heavily on a God who loves me; to love and to smile even when it hurts.  

And I'm so grateful to those who are walking with me.


May the Lord bless you and keep you tonight.

Eva

Leave It to the Cards...

So as I think of the many California-ish things I could blog about, tonight I'm just thinking about St. Louis.  : (

I've spent the last month incredibly focused on settling our things in our rental house, acquiring furniture (as most of you know we sold all of our furniture before we left), and getting school started for our lovely children.  I've been too busy to notice how much I miss the life we left!  But leave it to the Cardinals to remind me!

Coming from a girl who never watched (or cared about) sports, let me just say that marrying a man who lives and breathes sports has kind of sort of changed me... a little bit.  : )  I now know when the Superbowl is, how various professional sports leagues are divided, and how play offs work.  I too now hate the BCS and look forward to post-season baseball.  I'm not a die-hard fan, but I know a thing or two about a sport or two.   And call me crazy, but I actually just sat and watched an ENTIRE baseball game all by myself tonight.

The Cards lost, and I was sad.  And I missed living in Shaw.  I recalled the electricity in the air when we won the World Series last year.  I could almost feel the cold, crisp air, and smell the fall leaves.  And I wished desperately for something familiar.  Everything here is new, and the Cardinals nostalgia was to strong to deny.

Leave it to the Cards....

Starting Over

Hello from California!

I haven't blogged in about six months, and I actually have a pretty good excuse!  Not a great reason, but it's pretty good for an excuse...as excuses go!  : )  But first let me give my excuse a good back story...

On June 7, 2011 as I was driving across Texas with my kiddos, I had a little prayer time with the Lord.  The kids were asleep, and I was stuck in traffic with nothing to do but think and pray.  I felt the Lord tell me very clearly, "You're moving out of St. Louis next summer.  It's going to be far away- out of state.  It's going to happen very fast, so you are going to need to be ready."

I was incredulous.  "There is no way I'm hearing this right!" I thought to myself.  I just knew I had to be hearing voices.  Of course, the Lord reminded me that He knows the future, and that He is perfectly able to give me a heads up if He wants too.

"But still, God, You have got to be kidding me! My family is ROOTED in St. Louis. Harry JUST started in a new job.  I have found the PERFECT school for the girls.  My closest friends in the world are in St. Louis!"

I went on and on.  But somewhere, deep down in my heart I just knew.  I knew that God had spoken to me.  And I knew that as crazy as it all sounded, I needed to trust Him.

Well, this was kind of a big deal.  It was so much of a big deal that I didn't tell Harry about it for a month!  When I did finally get up the nerve to tell him, he took it quietly and said that we should be patient and wait to see what the Lord did.

So, for the next thirteen months we waited to see where the Lord would direct us.  While we waited, we prepared ourselves for the move.  I donated truckloads of items to Goodwill, painted and scrubbed, replaced all our appliances and packed all of our things that weren't in daily use.  It took every ounce of courage I had to step out in faith and pack my things when I had no earthly reason to believe that I would be moving.  There were so many countless times that I thought I must be crazy to walk so blindly in the direction I felt God was pointing me.

And this brings me to my point.  At the end of February of this year, I felt the Lord really urging me to finish getting our things packed and our home ready to sell.  I felt so foolish, but I was DRIVEN to continue.  I didn't know a thing, and yet I just knew.   But I wasn't confident enough to declare over the Internet that I was packing up my house because my family would be moving very far away to an undisclosed location in the not too distant future.  And I really and truly couldn't think of anything else to write about. Really and truly.

And then, the Lord started to work on Harry.  He shared with me that the Lord had told him that he didn't get the luxury of waiting anymore.  It was time to move in the direction the Lord was pointing.  But let me tell you one tiny detail.  We still didn't know where the Lord was calling us.  So Harry resigned from his position at The Word at Shaw in May of this year effective July 15th.  

And THEN (deep breath), right around the beginning of July things really got cooking.  Harry had sent out a bunch of resumes around the country, and had only received negative replies.  ONE church in
California responded that they were interested.  That was THE church.  Bridges Community Church in Fremont, Ca. The rest is history.

Harry had his first of many interviews on July 26th.  They offered him the job on September 2nd.  Harry flew out to California on Sept 12th and the kids I followed on the 14th.  We moved into our rental house on September 21st--the LAST day of summer.

And now we're starting over. And it's hard at times.  But I can say with conviction:

God is so good!  And I'm happy because I'm in His will.  I've got a smile on my face because I'm where He wants me to be.  Even if that means starting over...

This photo was taken Sept 22nd, the day after we moved.