First World Problems

I've been mulling over how to put these last few weeks into words. I think I'll put a lot of pictures into this post because I'm still not sure I have all the right words.

In late August, just before Labor Day weekend, we went on vacation with some friends. Before we left we had one issue with an upstairs bathroom. No big deal. We still had another full bathroom upstairs and another half bath downstairs. We were leaving town for a few days so by the time we got back the bathroom in need of repairs would mostly be taken care of. The place we went to was amazingly beautiful. Breathtaking. We had a great time swimming, hiking, sitting around the campfire and just relaxing.

To find a place like this you have to be pretty much in the middle of nowhere. And in the middle of nowhere there is no cell service. For our vacation it was so nice to be "unplugged". For the coming home, it was a whole different story entirely.

Once we were within cell service again my phone and Tyler's started going off like crazy. It was text after text and voicemail after voicemail. And guess what? While we were gone our other upstairs toilet decided to break. Yep. The water ran and ran until our neighbors saw water coming out of our front porch ceiling. When we got home this is how we found our house:

Down to the studs in half our living room, part of our master bedroom and now our master bathroom. So we tried to make the best of it. That's Logan on the subfloor. He colored a race track and was playing with his matchbox cars.

Oh! And in the midst of all this, I must share, school started! Now Haley is in 2nd grade, Logan is in Kindergarten and Penny is in Preschool.

For our first week of living in the midst of a remodel we held it together pretty well. The kids managed to get to school with all their supplies, they started soccer and we had our third home study visit! Our sweet social worker came to our house while it was all torn apart. I guess it was a good thing she saw our home before! 

THEN that same afternoon we rented an RV to move into for a week or so. Just living the dream right? :) Our home had become so stressful to live in that we needed a peaceful place to retreat to. Friends of ours let us park the RV on their property. It was really fun to be neighbors for awhile! 

We plugged along with trying to get our home study training done, but the long days were turning into long nights and we knew we had to push pause on something. We are just a few small steps from completing our home study. But for the next week or two we are setting it aside. It makes me sad. It really does. To know I could be working on something to help the process along but am not. But as I am reminded and reminding myself, God knows when our kids are supposed to come home. And all this is in His time.

And so now we are back in our home. It is nowhere near finished, but the work that needs to be done now requires us to be at our house so much more working on it. As I stand at the kitchen counter writing this here is what my house looks like:

If you know me at all you will know that I thrive when there is structure and order. My life has none of that right now. It's a struggle, it's stressful and I'm tired. There are moments when I can laugh at all this and moments when I just want to cry. I am way out of my comfort zone and element. But in all reality I know God can work this for His good. I know that as I learn to move past my pride and allow people to help me or to ask for help that God is growing me. And truly, this is all just a first world problem. I still have plenty of food to eat and a roof over my head. 

One day, instead of the rest of the house, I hope to be painting the kids bedroom in preparation for their siblings to come home.