For Thanksgiving I made one roast turkey, two turkey breasts, candied yams, orange-cranberry sauce, sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes, drippings gravy, yeast rolls, two pumpkin pies, two pecan pies, one deep-dish french apple pie, and vanilla whipped cream. And we had seventeen family members around the table to eat it all. Happy, happy.

Today is the best day of the year.

1. If you have a spare $10 or $20, consider Miss Lydia, who is eleven, and trying to raise $20,000 by tomorrow so that her family can bring home a baby sister with Down Syndrome from a children’s home in Eastern Europe. My friend Renee is part of her family’s Down Syndrome support network.  This is one super cool eleven-year-old.

2. Please pray for Micah today. It’s his second Thanksgiving in the hospital. Last year he was fighting a collapsed lung and was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. This year he’s fighting to breathe again, for reasons the doctors haven’t quite figured out yet. We love the Marshall’s, and lots of hearts are hurting and praying with them.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to just run away and say no goodbyes whatsoever.

At least there’s Facebook.

We’re going to Ojai TOMORROW. As in NOT TUESDAY. As in I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO TODAY.

And the move date is officially December 11th, and it looks like we will, indeed, be renting a truck and taking everything with us. Well, not everything everything. You know. So as of December 14th, Jason should be in Austin, and the kids and I should be in Lufkin. Hopefully he will have a job lined up by then. Or at least an interview. Jason rocks interviews. Pray for us, please!

The kids are making animals out of bananas, pretzel sticks, and peanut butter. Totally accidental combination on my part! Meanwhile, I am working in peace. Love it.

The kids just couldn’t wait for the deep powder. They named him Messy Bob:

This is the purple batik sling I made for a friend in town, who just became a grandma. She asked specifically for purple, which was so fun to shop for, escpecially in batiks, and gave me an excuse to order online rather than rely on the little stash at the fabric shop. It’s my favorite sling fabric yet– just the right weight and strength when you double it up. I’m partial to batiks anyway, but this is so yummy. It’s made by Avlyn. Good stuff.

This is Anna (8) reading to Ella (1). Gets me every time.

This is another new grandma sling from earlier in the fall. I had to stick to the fabric shop, so I ended up with babyish prints, which I wasn’t thrilled with. It was the best I could do in a sky blue scheme, given the circumstances. Whodathunk Grandmas would be slinging? Although now that I think of it, that was EVERY grandma we ever saw in China. I guess we’re just catching up! Someday I will join the worldwide ranks of Babywearing Grandmas, should I tarry, and should my daughters ever leave home and marry and reproduce. That’s a nice thought.

After four years of snowy, small-town fun and adventure, it looks like we’re really leaving the Sierra Nevadas. For reals. Actually. Truly.

We’re leaving California and Ojai and Westwood, and moving to Austin, Texas. Or thereabouts.

It’s not terribly shocking news. We’ve been toying with the idea for a couple of years now, since it’s Jason’s beloved hometown, and a good place to home school and maybe buy a house someday, and it’s where he’d like to plant a church. Plus, if there were any place outside of California I’d feel comfortable being my liberal-loving, conservative, semi-bohemian self, it would be in Austin with all its Ojai-reminiscent weirdos. (KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD!! See? I’m already practicing.) But one of the biggest reasons is that Jason’s mom, Pearl, still lives there. We’d like to be close to her and give the kids lots of opportunity to get to know her, the way they’ve known my parents. So yeah, Austin was kind of on the table for a long time.

The sort-of-shocking news is that we’re going now. Like right now. As in weeks. And not many weeks either. I had it in my head that when it finally happened it would happen fast, and it did. Or is. Or will. It’s still a crazy quick mystery. But it’s better fast, like ripping off a band-aid. And it needs to be now, because Pearl is already starting treatments for cancer (and could use some prayers), and we definitely want to be there for her through it all. So Jason is tying up loose ends at work, putting out resumes, contacting friends and allies, etc. We’re going as soon as he has at least part time work, even if it means the kids and I stay in Lufkin for a few weeks while we wait for a house and full-time job arrangement. We expect to be there before Christmas. It’s weird to think of having Christmas in limbo, but maybe we’ll be moved in somewhere by then. Maybe. We’ll make do in any event.

Right now the questions we’re trying to answer are The Work Question. . . How much and where and when? Storage here or in Austin? Rent a truck now or after we have a house? What to keep/give? Homeschool in between? Finding a home to rent? Hasdrmebnrem? It’s leaking out my ears, I think.

Also, I’m stoked. I always get a little giddy when it’s time for a big move. But this one feels different. A lot of my excitement this time centers on the fact that Austin seems like a place where we could actually live, like for a good long while. I’ve never wanted to stay anywhere before. But the kids are older, and so am I. Anna keeps crying when I mention leaving here. I remember that feeling of driving away from the most beautiful place in the world and all the friends you’ve ever had to go to some unknown state with new people and new rules. I’m hoping that this is a place where they can finish growing up, like I did in Ojai, without being pulled up and re-planted every few years. Once you get past a certain age, that just isn’t so fun anymore. And it hurts your back!

So that’s the deal. We’ll have a brief trip to Ojai next week where we hope to say goodbye to lots of our friends. My parents are leaving there too, in a few months, after eighteen years! So it’s a pretty big good-bye. The week after that we hope to be loading up a truck and heading down the 10. And yes, I’m already packing. It’s last minute enough without my tendency to procrastinate. 

It took two hours to make it happen, but Ella slept for her EEG for the full twenty minutes that they needed. She looked like a cyborg with all the multi-colored wires bandaged to her head. And she did not appreciate having to lie still on her back all that time. But it’s done.

It takes a week for the results to be read and interpreted, and then the pediatric neurologist will have instant access to all the information, and hopefully we can get an appointment with her before we move, but there are no guarantees. I’m having the clinic send me the results in the mail as well so that we can take them with us to a new doc in Austin, if need be.

The move is coming up faster and faster. It’s looking like a matter of weeks now, rather than months. I’m SOOOOO not ready, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s coming. It will be an adventure, to say the least. I’m just looking forward to being done with it in a month or two.

I meant to put these up last week, before Halloween, but I didn’t, in all the candy and hubbub. Perhaps now I can finally get to the costume pics!