Since we left NY, Katriel has been asking me to make a cake.  Since we got to SC, Tab has been asking me to make a cake.  They worked together and made us this delicious “Demona” cake.  Demona is a character from Disney’s television cartoon, Gargoyles.

It was so good.

The house is developing a few more open spaces.  There are just literally dozens and dozens of tote and boxes we don’t have any room for the contents.  Losing a basement has been horrible.  We easily had 1000 sq ft in the old basement, and while the upstairs family room here will accommodate much of the furnishings, nothing from the back room (including our massive exercise set up) has a new space.

John is working hard to develop some storage solutions.  They all take time, tools and money.  We had to unpack some boxes to find tools.  And building supplies cost more than usual now because of interrupted supply chains. 

So we just walk around the messes. 

We came up with a shoe solution.  (I use the term solution in the broadest sense of the word.)

The garage is still decidedly impenetrable. 

We unpacked all day long.

And swam a little too.

I’ve comically referred to the last few weeks as Blursdays… that didn’t change just because we got into the new house.

Those days were filled with sleeping on air mattresses and lining drawers and meeting neighbors and going swimming.  And assembling the loft beds that we ordered for Marie and Tabitha.  Since Tab was going to need a new mattress anyway, she was the only one sleeping on a normal mattress.

At 8AM on Thursday, things changed…

I ran an errand and got back in time to see this:

The movers were nice.  They were also asking Hard Questions, like “Where should we put this.”
And since no one had any idea where to put things from a basement in a house without a basement, or in a house without a giant laundry room, or in a house with four bedrooms and not five… we just put stuff, you know, everywhere.

dining room – I think

kitchen

living room

another angle of the dining room

the den

the master bathroom (yup)

Tab’s job was to dig into the kitchen. The directions were to unbox as much as possible, don’t worry much about organizing.

By bedtime I had found my lamp shade, but not the lamp itself…

by close of day we did have a table and a large portion of the kitchen unpacked

tomorrow would be another day

Sunday mornings are weird.
We know where we are supposed to be… but we are 800 miles away from our home at Perinton Community Church.

We packed up from our rental and moved everything over to the new house.  We bought air mattresses to sleep on and then we watched God get to work.

Our belongings weren’t to come until Thursday.  While we were in and out of the new house on Saturday, different neighbors were introducing themselves to John.  He said everyone seemed really nice and some had said things like, “Let me know if you need anything.”  So I suggested to John that if anyone asks if we need anything to ask about borrowing a few tables or chairs so we wouldn’t have to eat on the floor all the time.  (We had some plastic ware and pots and pans and paper plates, and bought a few bowls, so we knew we could eat here.)

Before John left Saturday evening, the next door neighbor introduced himself, and sure enough, told John to let him know if we needed anything.  John mentioned that as a matter of fact, we’d love to borrow a card table if he had one.  He said he didn’t think he had anything, but he’d take care of it.  A short time later, he was back with a table from the neighbor on the other side of him.

Sunday after we got our stuff in, we decided we’d go out to eat.  On the way to The Coach House, John spun to the home of the HOA director, Kristen, to ask about a key to the community pool.  As he came back to the car, he was carrying TWO FOLDING CHAIRS!   It was incredible!  She and I swapped cell numbers and chatted for a minute.

We went to dinner and I got catfish.

I LOVE catfish.

As we were driving back from dinner, we entered the track and took the turn onto our street.  At the house on the corner there was a man in his driveway wiping down folding chairs… and there was a card table leaning up against his truck.  I blurted out, “John, those must be for us!” and John slowed down, backed up and not only did the man help load the four chairs and the table, he asked how many people in our family and John told him 8 and his wife ran back into the house and brought out two of their kitchen chairs and popsicles. 

I don’t know how long it will take before this weird empty house feels like home.  But God does.  And we are leaning deeply into Him. 
And if we serve a God that cares about chairs, how can we wonder about tomorrow?

It’s all too much.  My brain has done way more mental gymnastics than I thought possible.

Even a month later I fail to process all the ups and downs.

We were to close at 3:30PM… or so.
And we barely had a chance to do a walk through at 1:30PM.
Our initial impression was – what have we done?  It’s too small!!!

But what can we do now?  We need a place to live.

So we closed.  And I didn’t cry, though I had to work hard at it. 

On the way back, we picked up the cats from the vet and then we took the kids to see the house.

There were a LOT of tears and concern.  It seemed so small…

(Oh – and just to be sure this was a total Butler experience… Stewart had a job interview, but no dress shoes.  So John let Stewart wear his dress shoes, and he wore Stewart’s sneakers….)

Our house in NY closed on 7/19 and our house in SC would not close til 7/29.  We needed somewhere to live and God provided a very reasonably priced 5 bedroom house 15 minutes north of where we would be living.  The rental was across the street from the neighborhood Jeff and Marguerite lived in, to boot.

The house was cheap and five bedrooms.

The house had weird artwork and more books (I’d never let my kids read) then you can shake a stick at.
The beds were super lumpy.
There was animal hair on the couches despite a stern no-pet policy (ours were boarded).
The drive way was almost a 40 degree angle.
The house was filthy.

It was part of the adventure.

We found fun things to do.  We enjoyed the community pool.  We did some shopping.  We made the best of it.

We got to visit the Hoyt’s new house.