You Can Take It With You!

We’re celebrating two years by looking back on some of our favorite posts.

My very first post on Full of Graces was “Here”.

This is part of what I said:

And now…I know this: my life is not a highway anymore. Once I slowed down, I noticed that I had arrived. I was Here.

This is not about being a stay at home mom. That’s not what I mean by Here.

Here is a place for which my husband and I hoped, prayed and worked.

Here is a destination to be savored and explored.

Here there are graces and blessings and peace.

Here is what I wanted; I need to stand still, right Here and live it.

The journey is important. The journey pushes and strengthens us. But every journey needs a destination, or it’s just wandering.

When I wrote those lines, I was more hoping they were true than knowing for sure. But that’s kind of how I roll. I think about how life would be if and then I set out to make it happen.

Sometimes, I succeed. Sometimes, I don’t. And sometimes, a better truth comes from all that effort.

When I made my life still and calm and prayerful, into the stillness came a loud awareness that we needed to make a change.

Let me tell you, it wasn’t very long either. Makes me wonder what other stuff I missed in my loud and busy previous life.

So we made a journey. And the journey taught me a lesson about Here.

Here is a lot like Truth. Static AND dynamic. Here is more about heart and people than it is about place. My Here is here, same as it was there. The same graces and blessings and peace. Same God. Same gratitude.

We just picked it up and moved it 750 miles.

But if I had never learned to stand quietly and still, I wouldn’t have recognized my Here. And then either we wouldn’t have moved or I would have left my Here behind.

Then there would be no Here here.

Or there.

Holy Dr. Seuss.

My point is that first we have to learn to stand still and quiet in our Here, filled with graces and blessings and peace. And then it doesn’t matter what happens next because the Here is portable.

We can take it with us.

Redwood Highway

We’re beach people. Even more than that, we’re So Cal beach people. With a big dose of Maui thrown in the mix.

So when we decided to move to Oregon, a state in which there is one major freeway in the entire state, and only about three highways that turn left towards the beach from that freeway, it was a big gulp moment.

Saturday, we drove the first of the left turn highways.

Yeah, it’s January. So? You can take the girl out of So Cal, but you can’t take the So Cal out of the girl. Or her kids. They packed bathing suits.

We took the Redwood Highway, which is the 199, from Grants Pass to Crescent City, CA.

(Oregon fact: Oregonians do not say “the” in front of the highway name; when I do, it instantly identifies me as a California girl. I want my Oregon readers to know that I know that. But if I go south for a visit and say I’m taking 710 to 91 to 15, people are going to want to know why I’m talking like a caveman.)

The beauty of this drive was remarkable. I thought I’d share. I took all of these pics with my HTC smart phone and only some of them are filtered with Instagram. That’s when you know it’s good, right?

Take a look:

This is the Smith River at Madrona Beach. We pulled over because we could not believe how clear the water was.

There was no way the kids were not going in the water. It was a balmy 55 degrees, so why not.

Annie got a little excited and went a step too far. No worries. We stripped her down to her chones.

The last twenty miles before the coast wind through a California Redwood forest. Trees as wide as my car. It's breath-taking. — The last twenty miles before the coast wind through a California Redwood forest. Trees as wide as my car. It’s breath-taking.

We hit Crescent City and took 9th street until we hit this wonderful rocky beach with tide pools.

Luna is Annie's special friend. She wanted me to take this picture. — Luna is Annie’s special friend. She wanted me to take this picture.

On our way to dinner, a nice old lady stopped and gave my kids these sand dollars she had found on the walk.

This was our view for dinner: harbor sea lions!

Oregon Trail, Part 2: The First Six Weeks

The first morning we were here, Shea went outside to get something from the trailer. Since we arrived before the moving truck, and all he had were flip-flops, that’s what he wore.

Icy sidewalk + flip flops = We’re not in California anymore.

That was only the first lesson Oregon taught us. Since then we’ve learned…

…that there’s something to the old wives tale that if you don’t wear a coat, you’ll catch cold.

…to keep the dogs’ water bowls in the house, or they’ll drink out of the toilets—either because they’re too lazy to go out in the cold or the water has frozen over.

…while living on the hill overlooking town will be cool 90% of the time, the other 10% we’ll be in danger of sliding down the hill on the way to school.

Among other things.

But we’ve also been here long enough for the kids to make new friends in the neighborhood, new friends at school and be invited to four birthday parties.

(However, not long enough for this mama to find a gym. Ahem.)

It’s hard for me to explain the way people are friendly here, because California is an awfully friendly place. But when folks in So Cal are friendly, it’s more like an “I’m going to be friendly next to you” vibe. It has solid personal space.

And up here, the friendly reaches out and grabs you, includes you. Kate’s new teacher wrapped her in a great big old bear hug on the first day they went to school. The director of ministries at our new church wrapped me in a great big old bear hug the first time she met me in person. It’s like that.

I am not a hugger. I have big personal space. BIG. Even after four years in New York, I never got used to how people hugged and kissed each other hello. Hugging is a joke between me and Amy because Amy hugs everyone and it took me months to hug her back without feeling awkward.

But I once I realized that hugging could happen in Oregon, I decided we have to be open to our new life.

So I am open to hugging.

In California, it’s common for folks to head bob a stranger or offer a “Hey, what’s up?”. In New York, I had to adjust to the expectation that less words are better and no words are best. That stuff doesn’t fly here. When people ask how you are, they’re prepared to listen to the answer. There may be follow-up questions. It’s a small town and there’s nowhere that anyone has to be fast. This is part of the slowing down.

Gabriel has the run of the neighborhood with some other boys, including right on up the hill into the trees if he so desires. There’s lots of open land and not a lot of fences. I was scared for poison oak, and then someone told me “Honey, it’s not if he gets poison oak, but when” and I shook it off.

We’ve eaten at all the restaurants we came to love on our trips up here to see my husband’s folks, and discovered some new ones. We’ve been to museums, a working water-powered mill from 1872 and I even went on a Mom’s night out with the first grade moms. You never know what you’re getting into with a group of first grade moms, but I shouldn’t have worried. These are Catholic school moms, after all. Half went home at ten and the other half went upstairs to dance.

It’s quiet now that the holidays have ended. We’re settling into the dark peace of winter. But then, oh my goodness. There will be so many festivals and fairs and markets that it almost stresses me out when I look at the community calendar.

We can’t wait to explore our new home state. The trailer will come out of hiding in the Spring and off we’ll go to the coast and over the Cascades and north to Eugene. Everything is new: new stores, new parks, new museums, new towns. And all of it is beautiful.

My kids are content here, even though they do miss their friends. My husband, who really thrives when he’s helping people, is content in his new job. And I am content. My mama’s heart is quiet and thankful that this prayer was answered.

Some pictures of our new life:

Here's another one. The sunsets over the mountains look different every day. — Here’s another one. The sunsets over the mountains look different every day.

This is Butte Creek, home of the Butte Creek Mill — Butte Creek, home of the Butte Creek Mill

Dutch Bros is the local drive-through coffee joint. We love them, not the least because of their awesome coffee lids.

Oregon Trail Part 1: Campgrounds and Football Games

They said they were coming at 7 am, and the big truck rolled down the street at 6:45. Shea put flip-flops on to take the kids to school and when he came back, every single other pair of shoes was packed. I got distracted while moving the kitchen supplies into the trailer and when I went back at 9:30 am, all the pots and pans were packed.

I had a pile of laundry because I thought they weren’t unhooking the appliances until the next day. “Good news!” Dan the Moving Man told me at noon that first day. “You don’t have as much stuff as we thought! We are ahead of schedule so I am wrapping up the appliances.”

I texted JFK Amy: Can we come over tonight to say goodbye? And stay for dinner? And baths? Can I borrow some pots and pans? And can I do some laundry?

We planned to leave by 1:30 pm on Friday and by 1, there was a crowd of friends to see us off.

I will never forget that.

We drove 180 miles across LA on a Friday afternoon and made it to Bakersfield in four hours. I was feeling pretty good about that. We didn’t have to sedate the dogs. The kids were calm. And we pulled the trailer over the Grapevine with nary a shudder from the engine.

This is our sweet old girl Sugar, cuddled up with Kate in the backseat.

The only thing was, it was dark. And every person with an RV knows that you should never set up your brand new RV for the first time in the dark. This trailer has a side pop out. That’s new for us. We learned that you have to place the trailer carefully so the pop-out doesn’t pop into the water spicket or the power pole.

In our case, it took two tries to learn that lesson.

The next morning we were up and off pretty early. It was the Day of a Thousand Stops. In our hurry to leave Bakersfield, we forgot to send the kids to the bathroom one more time, but we did make sure they had full water bottles.

Why can’t everyone have to pee at the same time?

We were trying to get to Merced by 1 pm, since there was a very important football game that needed watching and I had picked a campground with cable hook-ups for this very reason.

There is no shame in this game. Every new trailer comes with this kind of outdoor tv hookup. — Even Lizzy likes the Tide!

It was a little slice of river heaven.

The next day was our long day, 250 miles to Redding. It was colder, and the landscape was changing from the flat farmland of California’s Central Valley to the rolling ranchland of Northern California. We started to see more water, although I can tell you that California’s drought is real. The lakes and rivers were disturbingly below their normal levels, with sometimes hundreds of feet of exposed bottom. At Lake Shasta, we drove past a houseboat marina that had dropped more than a football field below the dock, left dangling on the hillside.

Redding looks more like Southern Oregon, and it was the first time we were cold during the day. We huddled up in the trailer with the TV on and had a movie night with Maleficent.

We arrived home the next day, ahead of the furniture. We slept on the floor in the master, all seven of us, and woke up to frosted sidewalks.

In the first week, we unpacked all the boxes that came into the house. Which doesn’t mean that we found all our things, only that we unpacked all the boxes that came into the house.

I don’t want to sugar coat something that was hard for us. The sound of Gabe wailing as we drove away from the best friends he has ever known left a wound on my heart. Sometimes when Kate feels lonely, she says “Mom, remember the day we left California and all my classmates gave me a hug and a goodbye card?” Overall, I think they were a great age to make a move like this, and they have adjusted well in Oregon. But Shea and I knew that we needed to get the trip part–in-between the old life and the new–right. It had to be a fun adventure, a special time for us to be together as a family. The kids needed to know that while lots of things were changing, this part, the family part, was not. It was still the same mom and dad, same way of doing things, same crazy dogs.

Things they can count on, things that don’t ever change.

Friday: Oregon Trail Part 2: The First Six Weeks

We found one! ~ Jen

I do not believe in the jinx, but Shea does, so I couldn’t update the house-hunting story until escrow closed. And it just did so, woohoo! We have a house!

The house-hunting trip to Oregon in July was grueling.

It was the hottest week of the year, over 100 degrees each day. The sun goes down later up there, so the heat lasted strong into the 7 pm hour. And it was humid, that nasty humid where by all rights it should rain and provide blessed relief for twenty minutes. But it didn’t. Not once.

We usually stay in a two bedroom hotel suite with a kitchen and free breakfast buffet and dinner/slash happy hour. This time we stayed in a lovely, local hotel, in a regular hotel room, and a continental breakfast. All five of us.

The first day we looked at 8 homes, including our top five. My dreams of downsizing crashed into the reality of small square footage. I know my parents’ generation all grew up in 1200 square foot saltboxes, and bully for them, but I just can’t do it. I need to be able to close the bathroom door without straddling the toilet.

The really big and top of our price range homes were a conundrum. Not one of them was turn-key. And not one of them had one of two things that we required: a guest room and/or a shower on the main floor. So you can take your 3700 square foot French Country re-imagined floorplan and stuff it.

One house was so big that I panicked. It was normal on the main floor, but the basement was big enough to create a mother-in-law suite and a two bedroom rental unit. And the place was crammed with stuff. Leading me to wonder if it’s true that we grow into our homes, accumulating things we don’t need just because we can.

Which came first, the hoarder, or the giant house with all the empty space just begging to be filled?

Other homes were poorly located for a family with small kids: the corner of a busy highway, at the top of a driveway so steep I had to climb the steps like a ladder, tucked away on the side of the mountain with barely a neighbor in sight.

By the end of day 1, we were discouraged. None of the homes spoke to us or the kids, even the three with pools.

The next morning, we stopped by a new construction home that was not quite finished. It was lovely, on 1/3 of an acre. The builder toured us through the home, filling in the missing details, while the guy installing the floor showed Gabe and Kate how to use a nail gun. The backyard was huge, with a stream on one side and a view of the valley. This house moved into the #1 spot, which it held for ten full minutes.

Around the corner and up the street was a home I had been watching for months. Also new construction, at first it had been too expensive and then when the price finally fell into our range, it sold.

Two days before we flew up, it fell out of escrow.

Boom, baby. New construction and two story, but Oregon style—main floor and then daylight basement. Two bedrooms up and two down, which means the kids will be contained to their own floor, complete with a kitchenette and full bath. We all loved it.

The backyard is not landscaped, which I swore I would never do again. I am not looking forward to baby trees and coaxing grass to grow, now that I know Southern Oregon does a fair impression of the Inland Empire in the months of July and August. It’s going to be a long five years waiting for those trees to throw shade.

But we are close to a park, up on the hill where the breeze blows cooler in the summer, and ten minutes from school. It’s not small and short, it’s not old and moldy and it’s not haunted.

Plus, the perfect house is not out there. It doesn’t exist. But there are plenty of houses that are enough.

What makes a house a perfect home is the family who lives in it.

I hope this house is ready for us!

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