Home Sweet Home

Well, we're home. Its been about two weeks since the A/C escapades began. And today... the whole unit was replaced. We tried to wait out the last of the summer days... but it got hot. We tried to replace some parts and patch the problem... but it kinda blew up. And in the end, we replaced the whole unit.

And while it was being repaired and replaced, we had to pack it up and head to a friends house until it was fixed. And by "it" I mean 5 kids, all their backpacks, lunch boxes, pillows, blankets, pajamas, sound machine, clothes (for the little ones), uniforms (for the girls), underwear, socks, shoes, ballet leotards, tights, ballet shoes, toothbrushes, diapers, pull-ups, wipes, detangle spray, brushes, hair bands, baby wash, lotion, diaper cream, formula, bottles, baby food, sippy cups, water bottles........ not to mention FOOD or anything at all for Jake and I!! Three times I did this. The first time to Jake's parents' house because they were out of town. Then we went back home thinking it was fine. The second time we thought it might be a while so we went to a friends' house. Then we went home because we were really sure the problem was fixed but after two days we headed back to the same friends' house for a second time. Each time it looked like this:

Packing up to go:




So why must we leave? Why couldn't we just open the windows and turn on some fans? Well... we couldn't open the windows because we have no screens and, for one thing, Micah and Abby would try to climb out of the windows. We even tried putting baby gates on the windows, but any baby gate that isn't "installed" is kind of a joke to Micah. So he'd tear it down and THEN climb out. For another thing, Micah and Abby would throw launch toys out of the windows. If you drive by our house you'll notice a lovely pile of toys still in front of the living room window. I'm still debating rather or not I'm bringing these in. I've told them, "if you want to play with that toy, you probably shouldn't throw it out the window, huh?" Lastly, every mosquito, moth and housefly in middle Tennessee took it as an open invitation (literally) into our house. We filled up 3 fly strips in 1 week. If you've ever seen the fly strips I'm talking about, you understand how disgusting that is. And the mosquito's feasted on my children and it looked as if they had chicken pox. (Abby's still haven't gone down.) We had to send poor Patrick home totally covered!!! I'm sorry Lyndi!

We couldn't open the doors for the same reasons we couldn't open the windows. And we could only put fans in rooms where the children were not, you can imagine why. Which was fine during the day when we could point them from behind our -installed- gates :) but at night, we couldn't leave them in their bedrooms with them, so they'd just sweat to death, poor things. :(

And because hot, sweaty, itchy, irritable children don't get much sleep for school, nor do they do anything but whine all day... its been a tough couple of weeks.

BUT. We have some incredible friends who opened their home to all 7 of us. They shared their beds, their food and their time. They've been friends of ours for a lot of years now. She and I were pregnant with our first babies together, born 4 weeks apart. And now, seven years later, we have a combined 9 children: ages 7, 7, 5, 5, 4, 3, 1, 1, and 11 months. :) I'm so glad to be doing life with these people.

Our greeting:


Going to school:

A typical meal:

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

This week, we had a few crazy "situations" but all in all, it went really well. We made lots more memories. :) And I'm so thankful that they were there for us when we (as dramatic as this might sound) didn't know where to go!! :)

Lastly, can I boast on my husband for a second? Jake has been incredible this week. Every second he's not at work he's been running kids to and from school (keep in mind we have two in one school and two in another, 20 minutes away, and they all start/stop at the same time), running to the house to grab things we forgot or realized we need, helping with the kids... one day he even had 6 of the kids (which included Micah, Abby, Mabry, and the 1 year old twins) by himself for the afternoon while the rest of us had stuff we had to be at. On top of all of this, Jake is putting on a huge Worship Workshop for our youth group tomorrow!! He's been preparing for this for a while but has been SO busy at work this week getting ready for it. And of course, he's the one talking with the different people we had working on the A/C and dealing with all of that. I don't know how he does it. Really.

Oh and did I mention that in the midst of all this, Abby broke her arm and has a hot pink full-arm cast? Yeah. But thats another post. :) (In the video above, it had just happened but we didn't know for sure that it was a fracture until the next morning. I'll be posting pictures of that too.)

But we're home. Long story but God TOTALLY has provided the money to replace the unit as ONLY He could do... and all my kids are sleeping in their own beds, under the covers, with the windows locked and the air is cool.... aaahhh peace. :)