August has been quite an interesting month for us. We spent the majority of it on the road, travelling from Arkansas to Wisconsin to Arkansas to Texas to Louisiana to Arkansas to Virginia to West Virginia to Texas. We have seen extended family and friends and done a bit of a work/pleasure travelling besides. It’s not a stretch to say that I am SO OVER restaurant food. It doesn’t even sound appealing to me anymore (though that might be also related to the fact that the baby is taking over most of my belly and so I get full a lot faster and most food doesn’t seem appealing… until an hour later, when I’m hungry again).

We finally arrived at our Pennsylvania home late-late-late one evening last week. The little old lady neighbors welcomed us with waves and neighborhood news. We stumbled into our little home absolutely exhausted and noted the evidences of partying-spiders throughout. Falling into our own bed was wonderful…. until I was too excited about being home to sleep! Eventually sleep came and in the morning, the real work began.

Four full days of intense cleaning. I scrubbed and washed and dusted and vacuumed and mopped every single room in our house. Who knew that inactivity could yield such dirt? My inner angry thoughts included; This disproves evolution! and also, next time I’m doing the British thing and draping everything in old sheets!

There were lots of notable discoveries in my cleaning extravaganza.
1. That funny little red-and-black snake that hurried away while I was hanging towels on the clothesline (yay for my clothesline!).

2. The obnoxious wasp nest outside our back door. The presence of said wasps was discovered Friday, but not truly experienced until Saturday when one wasp decided to take up residence inside my shirt. And sting me. #andsobeganamostpainfulfewdaysofmylife

3. House guests (of the human variety) are the best motivation in cleaning. We had folks coming in the first weekend after we were home and so I couldn’t NOT clean. What probably would have taken me weeks to do had to be done in a few days. It was the perfect scenario because Brandon had a few days of part-time work before classes began (this week) and so he helped as much as possible --- moving furniture, carrying the vacuum cleaner upstairs and downstairs, throwing away clutter, giving me hugs when I cried (from tiredness + pregnancy) and “making dinner” for me on the last night of the cleaning extravaganza. He makes dinner by buying me pizza…. and it was awesome! :D

4. I guess food is good motivation (or reward) for me these days. Like this amazing homemade chocolate coconut frappucino. Ingredients include: milk, coconut oil, cocoa, sugar, vanilla, dark chocolate and ice. Blend and drink immediately – especially when you’re hot and sweaty and tired from cleaning. It tastes like heaven in a glass!



I guess to sum up: I am very, very, VERY glad to be home. I’m also very glad to be truly at-home, being a homemaker, for the first time in my life. Our time in Arkansas felt a bit like an extended vacation to me. I did cleaning and reading and walking and some computer work, but always felt a little out of place. Now I’m having revelations of homemaker-life every single day. Like when I realize that I need to make a call about some utility bill and I can take care of it right then instead of doing it on my lunch break and getting a voicemail and having to play phone tag a million times. Or when I open a cupboard and see disorganized pans and realize that I can reorganize them soon, instead of waiting for an evening that will never come because I’m too busy working at my job to really put time into taking care of the extra home tasks that pile up.

Life is different now… really different… and I love it.


Note: Caspian-the-kitty is really glad to be home, too… though he’s not sure what is happening with my lap these days. ;)

 
We are nearing the end of our Arkansas sojourn. While it’s been fun (fun = interesting, busy, and definitely an adventure), we are both wanting to come home. We have one more stop on our travel extravaganza --- our third anniversary to New Orleans --- yay! so excited about eating good food! And then it’s a little more work for Brandon’s internship, a little packing-up, a few stops along the way…. and HOME SWEET HOME.

So here are a couple things that I miss from our Pennsylvania home:

Mountains on the horizon.


My mom’s salsa. Because of COURSE, I didn’t pack jars of salsa to trek them across the country for summer consumption. But perhaps I should have!

Strawberry Picking (it's a June family tradition)

Joking with the worship team on Sunday mornings / Also singing worship songs in a normal key. I never realized how spoiled I was by being able to basically pick what key we’re singing worship songs in. For some reason, no matter what church we go to, there’s usually a man leading worship and the keys are completely WACK. No offense intended though – I usually love the songs; it’s just so hard to sing them!

Caspianthekitty 's snuggling. Yup, we miss our kitty. He’s a nice kitty.



Not having to GPS everywhere I wanna go. Going places here in Arkansas takes time and thought and googling addresses… getting lost (a little bit) and planning ahead (a lot). That being said --- our new GPS is pretty awesome. Our old one was like five years old, maybe, and half of the time, we assumed that it was wrong because it didn’t know about new roads and new places!

Knowing everybody at church. It’s nice. It’s comfortable. A word about introverts (which I am, but rarely exhibit introvert-ey qualities at our home church because I have been there for *gasp* nearly 17 years + am very comfortable). In general, I dislike going to new churches. It’s hard. And even though we’ve been at our new/temporary summer home church for two months-ish, I still fight the urge to hide in the bathroom during ‘greeting’ time. It’s just: so many people, so many handshakes, so much smalltalk. SO exhausting.

My pretty china - I just wanna have a tea party.

The view outside my kitchen window. Also, my kitchen!


Sheetz. Sheetz is iconically Pennsylvanian. Sheetz is the best possible convenience store/gas station ever. Everywhere else, gas stations make me cringe. They’re weird, a little creepy, dirty and THEY DON’T HAVE SHEETZ FOOD. The idea of ordering custom food without actually talking to someone (I’m looking at you, Subway) is perfect. Sheetz needs to take over the world, or I’m never leaving Pennsylvania again. Thank you, all.

Little children’s conversations. Children make me laugh and smile and ‘awwwww.’ I miss talking to children, because one cannot talk to random children that one does not know. At home, there are children everywhere. Friends’ children, children in the church nursery, conversations with little nieces (and let’s not forget the NEW NEPHEW THAT WE HAVEN’T MET YET). I miss listening to little voices.
And this, my friends, is why I have a baby in my belly… so I can have my own little ones to ramble on in their cute little voices, with their grubby little kid fingers, without having to borrow other folks’ kids. Borrowing is just so darn inconvenient!

Canyon Pizza. It’s a little bit sketchy-looking, but ya can’t beat the two pieces of pizza + breadsticks and soda for $4. It’s our normal Friday night tradition… makes me hungry just thinking about it.

The beautiful summer months when Penn State campus is blissfully empty and we spend date nights wandering around and ending up with Creamery ice cream without the 1-hour-long wait. College students are so annoying. ;)


Pennsylvania, we will see you soon!

Today is August 6th, 2014. Three years ago on this day, I made a covenant. I offered sacred, spoken vows. I made promises to love this man more than any other, to stand by him always, ‘til death do us part.

I do not wonder anymore why God established marriage before any other relationship. The progression of creation in Genesis went something like this: land, earth, animals, man… and woman. No crowds, no churches, no spiritual leadership, no mission… just marriage. It all makes sense to me now. God knew what we sometimes forget – that marriage IS how one lives out their Christianity. Marriage can be the fleshing-out of salvation, the obedience to God in action, the love that He gives in abundance --- from a husband to a wife, from a wife to a husband. People like to super-spiritualize things, when in this case, the most practical thing is the most spiritual. Marital love – marital loyalty – marital sacrifice – marital commitment – it is all God’s simple way of letting us live out unselfishness.

I understand the importance, the necessity, the incredible blessing of a man and a woman leaving all others and cleaving to each other. I grasp the multiplication of power – of influence – of good that comes from having that one person always in your corner, always loyal, always encouraging, always holding you up.

I comprehend the sacredness of vows – these marital vows that transcend all other earthly bonds, all other spoken promises. I understand that on a hot August day, when I stood before witnesses, I was renouncing loyalty to every other person on the planet – that I made a choice, a rock-solid unshakeable choice, to throw myself whole-heartedly into the life of another. That no person, no organization, no church, no pastor, no family member, nothing shall ever have the right to stand between my husband and I. That friends may become enemies, and time may be a thief, that busy-ness threatens our relationship, and jobs and careers and responsibilities will attempt to come between us, but without fail – my loyalty is always to him. I know that love must be brutal in its stand against its detractors – that love must be tough – that love is the weapon in a world that desires division. True love, true committed marital love, is fierce in its defense of itself. Love is ultimate loyalty, because that’s what marriage means.

And that’s why we take marriage seriously. We hold to each other completely. And yet… we rejoice in marriage utterly. I cannot even begin to describe the bliss of the last three years of our life together. And don’t get me wrong – our lives are not without difficulty. There are seasons of turmoil, trouble, hardships, hurt, darkness, struggle… and yet, through it all, there is this beautiful marriage. We are building a life together – through the framework of our simple loyalty to Christ and loyalty to each other. We are becoming better, happier, holier, healthier, more loving, more giving, more mature versions of ourselves. That is the glory of marriage.

Perhaps it is not necessarily the institution of marriage that is so wonderful --- but the person to whom one is married to. God did an amazing thing when He orchestrated our love story. I cannot imagine being married to another. While I won’t go on and on about all the exceptional attributes of my husband (I prefer to tell those to him directly), I will say that in one specific instance just a month or so before we started dating, I remember praying through Psalms 1 for him, and in particular, this verse:

“He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.” Psalm 1:3

God has answered that prayer, and my husband is truly the best person I know. 

So on this day, I’ll turn to the words of a better poet than myself.

To My Dear and Loving Husband
by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

 
I told you we were going on a travel extravaganza. In the last three days, we have travelled for over 34 hours of driving time. It was a little unexpected. My grandfather’s health is failing and he is now at home receiving hospice care. We left early on Saturday morning to be able to spend a little bit of time with him on Saturday night and Sunday morning. We travelled north from our temporary Arkansas home through Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin, through waving fields of corn and flat lands to pretty green fields in Wisconsin. In spite of sober circumstances of our visit, we did enjoy seeing various family members for a few short hours and then we were back on the road towards Arkansas.

Today was Arkansas and Texas travelling. Brandon has his end-of-internship presentation this week, so we drove to Houston and will be here for a couple days as he does work-type things.

Driving through East Texas was especially fun for me…. because I was born here and spent the first five years of my life here! I spent the hours of drive time searching my early memories for pictures of eastern Texas. I remember the pebbly roads and the rolling hills and the city names. I remember the green vegetation (not stereotypical Texas at all – no tumbleweed and cactuses) and the moving oil derricks. I remember lots of fried catfish and a few cowboy hats and the more unpleasant things like fire ants and cockroaches (though we called them “waterbugs”). I remember the beginning of my kindergarten year at Christian school in a basement classroom --- though we ended up moving to Pennsylvania and I was homeschooled for the rest of the year. I remember homegroups (like Bible studies) on hot Texas nights where people sang worship choruses and that was my favorite part.
 
Through the years of my childhood & young adulthood, our family always did road trips together. It became a bit of an art form to travel as the Thull family. I’ve noticed that these “tips” are ingrained within the brains of my siblings and I, even though we’re all grown up and travelling with our own families. So I’m gonna share them with you!

My Family Travel Tips!
- Pack efficiently and quickly. It takes skill to fit everything in where it ought to be!
- Leave on time / get on the road as quickly as possible.
- Go to the bathroom every time we stop. No excuses, no exceptions.
- Be quick about it / you can relax on the road.
- Pack a good cooler : bottled water, good drinks and a Monster energy drink for the tough times.
- Always throw trash away when you stop - so the car stays clean.
- Road trips are the best for good conversation.
- Wear sunglasses.
- Bible CDs. They rock.

- Check the map often enough to know where you are, even if you have a GPS. (This is the job of the passenger, aka navigator). The driver drives. The person riding shotgun navigates.
- Don't talk/listen to music/be crazy or distract the driver in any way while navigating through busy traffic in large cities. Let the driver concentrate!
-When it comes to hotels, you get what you pay for... Or a little bit less.... Get a good hotel, so you can get a GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP. Sleep is essential for alert driving.
Or you could be like me and be most excited about the full-length mirror! Baby Bump Photo Time!! (26 weeks along and Baby Boy Schwartz loves travelling, i.e. I think he sleeps the whole time, because he only started kicking again when we got to the hotel!).



-If breakfast is included, fill up now cuz we're not stopping for awhile.
- When you’re tired, get a Monster. Or pull over and sleep. Or both. This is not a contest.
- And if I could add the Schwartz tips of travelling, there must be COFFEE involved. (just a little bit of decaf for me, but Brandon drives better after two cups of coffee). :D

And that, my friends, is how we travel. I was surprised that all the horror stories of pregnant-while-travelling didn’t really come to pass. I just made sure to request frequent bathroom breaks and stay hydrated and wiggle my toes around with my feet up on the dashboard every once in awhile (something about preventing blood clots?!).

We aren’t quite done with our travel extravaganza… stay tuned!

I borrowed these little writing prompts from another blogger, because I love the idea of writing prompts. I’m trying to make my way back to simple blogging. To me, simple blogging is just writing… maybe a photo splashed on the page, too… but mostly just words, without the bother of sharing links on instagram or facebook, because that takes up time and makes me feel a great pressure to have a GREAT blog entry. Really, I just wanna write and share my life. If you’re interested, then that’s wonderful. I’ll keep writing. :)
 


|making| piles of laundry because I need to laundry things before packing things for our travel extravaganza starting tomorrow.
|cooking| everything with zucchini. Lasagna, quiche and if I hadn’t used my last eggs this morning – zucchini bread pancakes (so delicious!).
|drinking| buckets of water.
|reading| The Birth Partner and Les Miserables. I’m diverse like that.
|wanting| a bagel. Probably an everything bagel with cream cheese. I love those things, and I can walk to Panera in ten minutes, and it’s Friday, and our groceries are running low, so why not?
|looking| out at the cloudy day, and wondering where the sun is hiding.
|playing| at being a homemaker. It still feels like I’m on an extended vacation --- or a bit of a “holding pattern.” Maybe I’ll wake up one day in PA and realize that this wonderful thing of staying home & keeping house is not a dream – and I never have to go back to an office again! {rejoicing at the blessing}
|wasting| maybe one last zucchini because I don’t know what to do with it. :(
|sewing| haha. I don’t sew, but I left this little prompt up because I have been gathering a little stack of mending and alterations that need to be done when I return to Pennsylvania (MOM! I NEED YOU!!!!)
|wishing| I could learn to not worry about other people’s decisions so much. Sometimes it keeps me awake at night, and I have to consciously make an effort to count my own blessings --- instead of laboring over things I can’t control.
|enjoying| travel-planning our babymoon/third wedding anniversary trip!
|waiting| for the time when I get to hold our little baby for the first time. I actually got a little teary the other day while reading about childbirth…. when I got to the moment of the baby being born. It shocked me, because I’m not a teary person in general.
|liking| BABIES, BABIES, BABIES. My facebook/instagram feeds are filled-to-the-brim with people having babies and taking photos of their babies and it’s awesome.
|wondering| if I will actually use the jogging stroller that wonderful family folks are buying for me, if the cost is justified, or if I will carry the baby in a carrier and use the stroller for cargo. Hmmmm.
|loving| that ridiculously amazing man that I married. Words can’t even describe how much I love him.
|hoping| for peaceful travels as we go to see my ailing grandfather, then go on a business trip, then go on an anniversary trip (I told you it was a travel extravaganza). And then…. go HOME.
|marveling| at the miracle of life and the nearness of death.
|needing| hugs. or kisses. Especially the chocolate variety. ;)
|smelling| blooming trees and flowers.
|wearing| maternity clothes. I like to tell my sister when I’m wearing her clothes. It’s fun. :)
|noticing| my fingernail polish is chipped, as usual. This is why I usually only do toenails.
|knowing| God is good. God is big. God is more than enough in every circumstance.
|thinking| a lot about marriage and purpose and how to please God daily in what I do and how I love my husband.
|feeling| so happy that Brandon got another department scholarship! Scholarships really help the process when one pays for college tuition oneself.
|bookmarking| hotel deals and restaurant recommendations and cute little baby shoes.
|opening| the walk-in closet door. It’s probably the only thing I’ll really miss from this apartment. {because Sunnyside Cottage does not have good closets. #oldhouseproblems}
|giggling| at myself when I make jokes. ALL the time. At least someone is amused.