Birthday Celebrations!

Phoebe and I have birthdays 6 days apart, so we celebrated our birthdays together. Liz came up from college (only a 5ish hour drive instead of 10), and Mimi and Papa came over too.

Our table is being painted, so we're using the garage table and household chairs. 

Phoebe turns 15. 

She and Jon share a lot of activities together since they're close in age. So she's been going to lots of youth get-togethers since we got here. It makes me happy. She's also started volunteering in nursery at church already. She can't wait to hold some babies! She'll start practicing driving as soon as we have time to get on it.

Mimi made me lemon cake and Phoebe just wanted a pound cake with whipped cream and strawberries.

The girls and I went to Mexico, MO to get our nails done. It had been a while, and it was fun!

Phoebe's nails.

While Liz was here she painted flowers onto Phoebe's bedroom window. 

That girl really knows how to bring beauty into the world. 

Phoebe and Harrison made Gooey Butter Cake for Missouri State History. I wanted them to pick out a MO dish to prepare and they picked this one. The recipe's history has several possible origins, but all have them starting in St. Louis. It was very rich, but we ate it up within the week.

Phoebe is working her way up to the cat allowing itself to be petted.

Jon got a job at the local grocery store. He had applied to four different places in San Antonio before we moved. But it was pretty hard to get a foot in the door. Maybe it was Covid. Maybe it's the city. Anyway, he's got a job now and I'm glad for him.

Harrison and I will be leaving in a couple weeks to fly to Washington to be with my sister. She is having a not-uncommon heart surgery next week, and we will be there to help her when she gets back home. 

Would you pray for her and for us? We're not sure what to expect pain-wise, and I really want to be a good help to her. And of course we want the surgery to go off without a hitch. Thank you!

 

Settling In

We are slowly but surely getting things into place. 

Phillip has a list in his head of all the things he'd like to do, and every day we work on something.

The kids and I have been doing school. We have five weeks of school left, and we're counting them down.

Everyone loves this book nook. 

Phillip calls it the Theology Spot since his Bible commentaries are on the shelf. 

And we have a kitty! It's black like our San Antonio Nina. She looked very skinny. We noticed her a few days after we'd moved in. Phoebe has been feeding her and ingratiating herself. We haven't gotten close enough to pet her though. We heard there was a whole feline family (mom and kittens) when the last people moved out, but we've only seen this one. Something had died under the house before we moved in (it is smelling better now!) and it was quite possibly the rest of the cats.

Hopefully she's a mouser since we live out in the country. Phoebe thinks we'll call her Abigail (after Abigail Adams). Phillip calls her Sequel.

We are thrilled to be able to watch tractors out in the fields surrounding us! This one was tilling the ground right before we had several days of rain. I don't know what that means for the field. Maybe he'll have to till again? 

You can see a patch of dug-up yard where they had to dig up the septic tank because we had some backup. There were a bunch of roots growing in it. They cleared it out, and we'll be treating the septic with root killer. But yay for bathroom usage!

Jon and Harrison burned the boxes out on the gravel drive. That's one way to do it. The cardboard all burns up and the ash flies away.

At night I lay in bed reading, and I see through the kitchen door our plaid curtains and vintage oven. Mimi figured out that they probably got this oven in 1971. 

I. Love. It. 

We are still waiting on one more bookshelf that we ordered before all the books are put away. 

We had a leaky bathtub faucet, so Phillip watched some YouTube and bought some parts and after a couple of tries, he fixed it! 

No more leaks and we have nice new handles.

The boys' and girls' bedrooms share a closet between them. The closet used to be the porch to the original house. But Phillip wanted to separate the closet just so the kids could feel they had privacy, and no one would be sneaking into bedrooms to surprise each other.

So he built a wall. 

This is Phoebe's closet all finished. You can see he put shelves along the wall he built.

And Phoebe's room is all done now except we need to figure out why the heater won't work and also get her a mirror and table. We have one bathroom, so hair and fixing has to be done in the bedrooms so as to keep the bathroom free. We were the most worried about there being only one bathroom. But it really hasn't been an issue. We are sharing it quite nicely.

 

We've Arrived in Vandalia, MO

We left a week ago, driving North. That seems like months ago!!

Phoebe left some sidewalk art near our house in San Antonio. 

Beautiful and striking.

Thursday was Loading the U-Haul day. 

Phillip packed every box! 

He and Jonathan loaded and unloaded everything from the U-Haul. 

Adrian stopped by to say goodbye.

The boys had to really Tetris the goods to get everything to fit.

But by using the back of the pickup for some of the stuff, we got everything on board.

Closed!

Liz stayed the night on the floor with the rest of us.

Friday was cleaning the place. We got done by lunch. Phillip was taking a different route and left before we did. He didn't want to take the U-Haul down I-35 where everyone's going a zillion miles an hour.

Our neighbors put this out for us Friday morning! It was so thoughtful and sweet. 

We will miss all of you too.

Don and Julie (roommate from college) kept us for the night in Dallas. She and I had a nice walk when I got there; I was so happy to stretch my legs!

Driving down the road. 

This was probably in Oklahoma. We had clear weather all the way (thank you, Lord! We had furniture in the back of the pickup).

I have to do a little bit of school. 

I've always wanted to stop by this George Washington Carver memorial when we've traveled to Vandalia, but we were always in a hurry to get there. But this time we stopped! There was a recording of him speaking. We've read in his biography of his high, squeaky voice, but we were startled when he started speaking!

They also had the foundations of the home he spent his childhood in. I just read the biography to Harrison this year, so it was enjoyable to see exactly where he grew up.

Jon took over the driving for a bit.

I got a picture of this house because it's maybe a mile from our home, and it originally was the one-room schoolhouse that Phillip's dad attended. It was called the Nadine school and we live on Nadine Lane. I need to find out who Nadine was.

This is one reason I'm so glad to move here -- Vandalia and the surrounding area has a sense of Place for us. The Gores and Fergusons have lived here almost since the town was founded. (Maybe since then; I forget the details.) We get to live (I can hardly believe this; those who've read Wendell Berry will understand) in the house Phillip grew up. The house his parents started out in at marriage. The house his Grandma lived in before Paul and Elayne came here. 

The first night we spent here Phillip announced, "I haven't slept in this house since December 16, 1983!"

We arrived and got to attend church Sunday morning. What a relief to be here and meet with believers.

 Phillip was driving slower than us because of pulling the pickup truck on a trailer, so he arrived Sunday late morning. (Anybody else think the past tense of arrive should be arrove?)

Our home.

The first area we completed as we were unpacking.

This chair is from Phillip's grandma. Paul and Elayne had it here in this house while Phillip was growing up. He remembers his dad holding him in this chair as a little kid and singing "Me and Bobby Magee."