Rainy Monday

Some afternoon tea, a good book and knitting project...a perfect way to spend a rainy afternoon while the kiddos nap. We're getting the effects of Fay here today and tomorrow and it's nice to see rain again. We've had no rain for about 3 weeks so we really needed it.
Today ^J^'s orientation continues with a CREDO workshop for seminarians. CREDO is typically something the church pension fund sponsors for priests, a holistic wellness program, but they are doing a pilot program for seminarians and Sewanee is one of the 4 seminaries they chose to participate. Spouses are encouraged to attend and they are providing childcare. Today's session is all day, until 8:30 p.m., so I opted to attend the morning session and then get the kids for naps and be home the rest of the evening.
We're going to go meet Daddy for dinner at the hogwarts-ish dining hall for dinner. I'll go to the final part of the workshop tomorrow morning too. After tomorrow, he registers and classes begin Wednesday! Our school-year schedule is busy but good. We have lots of events to keep us busy and we'll probably get to see ^J^ more once he's in a regular class schedule. O.k., I'm off to enjoy the rain and a few free moments.

A Quick Hello!

We're here! We have very slow dial-up access for the time being, so I'm not going to write a lot. I just wanted to give everyone a quick hello and say that we're loving it so far. Our house is even better than we thought, we have so much room (except for the closets) and the porch, view, and quiet are amazing. We've eaten most of our meals on the screened in porch and saw a deer or two in our backyard while eating. We're slowly unpacking, but most rooms are set-up and livable. We discovered the university library and it's small children's section but huge video collection, I don't think we'll be needing Netflix. We went hiking this morning and it was breath-taking. The kids loved it, (H) in the backpack and *A* was a champ going up and down the trail. She hiked out to this ledge of rock as my knees were knocking together and looked at the view proclaiming "Beauuuuutiful!". We discovered the school's fitness center: Olympic pool, indoor track, etc. *A* ran 3 laps around the track and thought she was an Olympic track star, ^J^ gets in free and I got a family membership for 5 bucks...nice. O.k., I really should keep this short since I'm not sure how long it's going to take to upload.
We are having a great time, but we really do miss everyone. It's hard to meet new people. *A*, the social butterfly that she is, has made some new friends and we went to a playdate this morning with other seminarian babies and preschoolers. But she had a hard time the first few days not having anyone to play with, and I think she still thinks we're on vacation. As for adult friends, I just want to get over the "hey, how are you?" phase and have a real conversation. I know it'll come. We met some really great people on move-in day. There were about 12 seminarians waiting for us when we pulled in and they had our huge truck unloaded in less than an hour. Some of the spouses and kids came by to meet us or help as well. There's a cookout every Friday night, so we'll be able to see everyone again then and get to know people a little better. Everyone knows each other so well and I know once school starts we'll all be together constantly, but for now we are sort of outsiders looking in and trying to figure out where we fit. It's a really strange feeling, kind of nice, yet kind of unnerving too.

Packin' up

Here's why we're so motivated...


Our new backyard and huge screened-in back porch.
This part of the yard is fenced in and there is a lot more that isn't, and a quick walk through the woods leads to a small lake!

So, we're planning on moving in 3 weeks or so. We've been packing boxes like crazy and I finally found the floor of the closet in the study/junk room. There were things in there we moved from Decatur and haven't touched in 3 1/2 years! Sad. Speaking of sad, I've been getting kind of nostalgic about this house the past few days, it is a really good house and we've loved being here. We are outgrowing it though so even if we weren't embarking on this adventure, it would be time to move on. I just hope someone who sees what we see in it can find it soon and buy it! We're meeting with a realtor tomorrow, she seems pretty cool. Most realtors we've encountered have been snooty bee-ot-ches so we're hoping the one isn't. We just want someone to market our house like crazy and give us a fair deal, we know we're not going to make any money off it and that's o.k., we just don't want a mortgage payment while in seminary.
We're going to a dinner tonight at the bishop's house. Kind of scary. It's for upcoming seminarians and their spouses/partners. We had to get a babysitter, we aren't sure how we're going to pay her, maybe she takes partially used Starbuck's gift cards? Anyway, it should be interesting. ^J^ knows two other seminarians from his discernment group and there are some people from the diocese and maybe a few more seminarians from DYVE coming. O.K., the kitchen floor is starting to crawl away so I'd better go sweep.

Time to change

I've updated this blog a little and changed the name. I'm trying to focus it on our journey to seminary and what we do/encounter while we're there. I've been keeping up with many new blogs and I'm always so impressed with their writing, family life, homeschooling, craftiness, etc. I hope to create a similar blog people can come to a get a little slice of our life On the Mountain.

Last week, J finally found out he was accepted to his seminary of choice and we're ready to move on. We actually called about housing even before he got his "official" acceptance letter! They told us they would be choosing housing for us using the application we sent but that they were pretty sure we'd be getting "one of the larger houses". I was slightly irked at first by this, I thought we'd have more of a choice in the matter, but I'm coping. This is not a choice I need to be worried about: it's only for 3 years and we'll make do with whatever we're given. Most of the houses are bigger than our current house anyway, so nothing would really be a bad choice. Our main focus now will be to get our house sold. I'm done with school and not going back until we get settled. We've painted, pressure washed, planted and pruned and the FSBO sign is in the yard. I'm not sure how we'll do by ourselves, it seems so daunting, but I think once we've gotten it listed online and in some papers we might get some action on it. We've listed it a lot lower than all the other houses in our neighborhood so I'm hoping that will help. Now to keep it clean and "showable", that's the challenge!