Support and Encouragement

I will try to pick up where I left off in telling our story when I have nothing else to offer.  So…

My wife’s continued story to our children:

Friday July 24th 2009 Burgers and Friends
We enjoyed grilling hamburgers and watching a show with our good friends. When I got there she had pulled up a trailer that she had been looking at on the internet. They were genuinely excited for us. It might not be something that everyone would do themselves, but the support has been refreshing.

Some weeks later, while compiling this story she wrote:

When I read this journal out loud to Daddy, I looked up and he was crying, he said “I soooo want to do this!”

Is this really where God is leading us? We will keep praying. I’ve prayed that if this is not God’s will, our house will not be able to be rented out, even at the lower rent.

And did we ever begin to pray.  We were very excited and looking forward to this life, but we still had the apprehension that any person may as they seek to embark on such a major paradigm shift.  We were moving from the comfortable, normal and predictable life of which we were accustomed and beginning a life very different from anything we or anyone in our immediate circle of influence had ever known.  We are now going to be very, very different and it will be on purpose.

Thankfully, though, we had support from our friends.  Not only was it the kind of support that said, “Sure, drive off that cliff.  I have always wondered what that would be like, so, go for it.”  It was genuine excitement of people who would love to do what we were going to do, but lacked the motivation, courage or even true desire to make this leap.  Nevertheless, we could feel the warmth of their prayers and encouragement.

So, here goes nothing!

One last hurrah!!

We have found something wonderful during the last several months…Sushi!  We have slowly been introduced to it by some of our friends and have now become amazed by the new creations we have recently found.  My wife is currently trying to follow Weight Watchers and has found it to be quite compliant to her diet.  This has also contributed to our enjoyment of this delicacy.  The only problem we have found is that it, like most food, costs money.

We have recently been trying to realign our spending and put ourselves on a budget.  Therefore, we have needed to limit our spending on hamburgers, pizza, sporting events, and raw fish.  This change has taken a lot of prayer and thought, but more difficultly, it has taken much intestinal fortitude (and intestinal want for finer things).  We frequently lack self-control in spending our money and easily find ourselves in a restaurant for dinner just because we had no plan.  So now, we have a plan.

One last hurrah.  We will enjoy one last evening eating sushi at the great little place we just found, but then we will limit our expenditures.  There will only be eating out as our pre-planned budget allows.  This is the line in the sand!

The boys were enjoying the miso soup, California Rolls and tuna rolls.  My wife and I just finished our spicy salmon roll and began on the Chef’s special.  It was a masterpiece, beautifully arranged and quite tasty.  Then, my pocket vibrated, it was my phone.  A call from someone surely trying to interrupt our wonderful meal…no, it was my mother-in-law (same thing, right).

“Your cousin is trying to call you, there is a leak in your trailer.” She said slightly panicked.  I tried to dismiss it because it seems things quite frequently get blown out of proportion.  Then it happened again…my pocket vibrated.  It was the end of our meal.

“Is your trailer unlocked?  There is water pouring out of it!"

All I could imagine was water pouring out the front door and seeping through every seam possible!  As my wife said, “I truly felt homeless!”

What do we do?  I rushed out of the restaurant and left my family there to enjoy what was left of our meal.  The whole way ho,e I was replaying what could have happened.  I left the grey water tank closed and the water pipe had frozen.  Someone left the water on and it filled up.  When full it backed into the bathtub and all over the floor.  That was plausible and I felt very likely.  Our cousin called and my heart sank.

“So, is it bad?”

“Well, they shut the water off and your floors seem dry.”

What?  How could that be?  That was not one of the possibilities.  There must be a mistake.  I am sure they just did not see the water.  I will make a better estimation when I get there.  When I get there, I am nervous and scared as the door opens…dry, dry, dry.  How could that be?  The floor is dry.

A quick inspection of the trailer revealed that the grey water holding tank had actually froze and ruptured.  We accidently left the kitchen sink running while the water lines were frozen and when they thawed, the weight of the filling tank ripped an eighteen inch slit in the bottom of the tank.  Great, now what?  No washing hands, brushing teeth, or washing dishes until that gets fixed!!

I did fix it the next weekend.  Let me just say, working with fiberglass and rosin upside-down, under a trailer with a four and six year old is quite difficult.  However, we can now run the water without all of our neighbors knowing!

Do we have water?

“Our water froze last night.”

I say that to many of my coworkers and they become deeply concerned about the state of my hose and burst pipes.  Little do they know, this has recently become a regular occurrence.  Our trailer’s water supply is fed by a hose from a nearby spigot.  Left exposed to the elements, the hose will easily freeze when the temperature dips only slightly below freezing (like 31.9 degrees).  We have regularly woke to find that the toilet will not flush (solids will fall, but it is not rinsed.  I will tell you more later about the workings of a trailer toilet, very interesting!) and it stinks until the sun rises and thaws our water.

These little nuances of trailer life have been fun, mostly avoidable, but interesting to learn about.  I have everything I need to insulate and protect our water, but why do that when I have kids to raise and there is fun to be had?  That is why we left our house wasn’t it…to get away from the need to be slaves to our home.  Well, I guess no reasonable person can actually shirk all responsibility, throw caution into the wind and let their home fall apart around them.  I will get to it soon.

It’s a Griswold Christmas!!

Well I have been very silent, but this was a great Christmas holiday.  Our Christmas morning was the most relaxed holiday ever!  We opened presents and enjoyed our traditional Christmas morning dose of biscuits and gravy.  Then we walked all of thirty feet to Nana and Pop’s house and leisurely opened presents, cooked a little, opened more present and cooked a little more and so on until we had a delightful dinner.

The best part of the day was seeing the delight and excitement in our older boys eyes as they saw their siblings open the gifts they chose and paid for all on their own.  Our oldest son had even wrapped his change and given it to one of our sons because, “he likes spending money.”  We thought it was about three dollars, but upon opening it, we found it was fifteen dollars.  He was quite happy to give his brother such a generous gift.  Similarly, he spent about ten dollars more on earrings for my wife than I thought he should.  He reason was, “but she will love these.”

This great holiday was preceded though by a wonderful holiday tradition.  The annual tree slaughter.  Although, we wait several months to kill our tree.  We like to dig it up, take it home, nurture it, plant it in a beautiful spot and let it have a slow death as it is withers and dies from neglect.  Not this year.  This year is going to be different.

We found a beautiful fir tree and though it would be lovely to keep it a pot next to our trailer.  It was about five feet tall and was perfect, but not for my oldest son.  “NO.  That one is too small.”  No amount of convincing was going to sway him.  Nevertheless, we dug it up anyway.  My wife’s sister needed a tree.  We searched high and low for the perfect big tree(you may wonder “Why a big tree?  They live in a travel trailer.” Well, it will go outside).  Finally, when we, and our friends were just about to give up and accept the perfect little tree, we found it.  It was like out of that seen in “Christmas Vacation”, as the sun was setting, it broke through the trees and lit up the one we were to have.  Heaven opened, pointed us to the tree and angels were singing, leading us the entire way.

That was a slight exaggeration, but we found it!  It was about nine or ten feet (or twelve) tall and a perfect specimen.  Ponderosa Pine do not usually make a good Christmas tree, but this was going to be the exception.  It’s shape was great and it’s height was perfect.  We were set to take it home, decorate it with edible ornaments and let the birds enjoy it.  Well, when I finally got it stood up and next to our trailer, it was about three feet taller than the trailer and too large for us to decorate effectively.  However, it did have popcorn and cranberry strings, popcorn balls and about eight strands of lights.  Really, it was beautiful and surely would have made Clark proud!