New Digs

As many of you blog-readers know, the group of athletes here is now training at the Port of Stockton, under a local non-profit called Tri-Valley Athletics (you can check out their developing website at www.trivalleyathletics.com) The move has been stressful, but good. We spent all of February making the nearly one-hour commute from our RV park to Stockton...and trying to figure out where we could park the RV closer to the training facility.

When it was clear that we could not find a free place to park the RV...we became open to other living situations. A group of athletes had been living together in Oakley (near the old training facility), and were also looking to be closer to Stockton. So we had two options: pay $600 a month at an RV park and stay in the RV, or pay $400 a month to live in a big house with these athletes.

We decided to move into a house---and last week we officially moved into a 5-bedroom, 3-bath house about 12 minutes from the Port of Stockton. We're living with 4 other athletes---all pole vaulters. Two of them only train here part-time....so some of the time, there will only be two other athletes living with us. Joe, Rowan, and I have the master bedroom (and our own bathroom with a huge tub!)---complete with 2 big walk-in closets, one of which became Rowan's room. It's far bigger than her space in the RV...but it still feels strange to say her room is a closet!

So this is quite a change of direction for us. Honestly, it was a very hard decision for me (easier for Joe because it was clearly the better financial choice). I love the idea of living in an RV, and have truly enjoyed it these last months. I was in no way “eager” to get out of the RV. I like the hard-coreness of it, the thought that we can live on so little, in such a little amount of space. There has been something very simple about life, about cooking, about cleaning, about being together as a family in the RV. I feel like if we could live in an RV for a year with a toddler, we could do just about anything.

But that wasn't in the cards for us. I've always loved living with other people (we often had roommates in Jonesboro) and the idea of community. So I guess this is God's way of putting that back into my life. Already in the week that we've been living here, I've found joy in communal meals, carpooling to church, watching Rowan wrestle with Bubba and play hard with Uncle Yoo (we're going to have to put boundaries on how much Rowan bothers Uncle Yoo—for his sake!), and spontaneous conversations over lunch in the sunny backyard.

Not that the week wasn't stressful for me. I always hate moving; hate being “in-between” and not having a routine down yet. It makes me feel insecure, on edge, and out of sorts. Joe was long-suffering with me, and has been going out of his way to make the place feel like “home” for me. Rowan, on the other hand, has been full of energy and excitement about the new house. The day we were moving in, she said “It's been awhile since we lived in a stuck house!” She loves her new room, and wants to show anyone who comes over where her toys and books are. It also doesn't hurt that Yoo has a new puppy that Rowan has been playing with endlessly!

So now we begin the process of developing new routines: where to grocery shop, which library to visit, what parks to play at. I think that it was also in God's plan for me not to find a pre-school for Rowan—she would have just begun, then we would have had to pull her out! I managed to find a pre-school in a nearby town (Lodi) that had an opening--so Rowan will start pre-school next week and go every Tues and Thurs morning.

I promise to post some pictures soon--of the new house, and the new training facility. I'm hoping that life slows down a bit in the next weeks--the Trials are only 4 months away....time to focus!