Howdy!

Well I hope you all had ample opportunity to reflect on Christmas and it’s true meaning.  I so loved this year’s Christmas program from Lakeside Community Chapel, especially the comparison on how different people see Christmas.  It’s been something I keep returning to over and over again in my mind.

We have been (perhaps a bit unexpectedly) enjoying  Lubbock, Texas these last three weeks.  From day one it’s been a pleasant shock to find that everything in Lubbock is nearby.  Nothing is more than 15 minutes away due to the several well constructed highways in town.  But also our RV park is super close to many key stores (read: Target and the Starbucks drive-thru).  Lubbock also has like 75 neighborhood playgrounds to choose from, which is super nice. Plus also, it’s been so nice to have family live in town.  It’s been at least a decade since either of us have lived in the same town as our parent or sibling.  This, as it so happens, it s a very game changing fact.  Both Geoff and I started to wonder what staying in Lubbock for much longer than we planned, might look like.  We would have to figure out a new birth plan, think through our housing options, consider the weather and finances, and most of all a new church home.  So we went to a new church, toured a birth center, realized we could stay in the RV almost as long as we felt comfortable without the threat of deadly winter troubles like those we’d been considering in Colorado, (well, maybe we might have more to say about that once we make it through the freak winter storm we are currently hunkered down in 🙂 ) and hey as it turns out Lubbock is pretty affordable in most ways!

Exploring a park

Mimi indulging Levi in some cranberry juice

So we’ve decided to stay.

Just like that we have a new church home.  We are looking toward membership in the next month and are happily pondering ways we might serve.  I also signed Levi and I up for BSF and are awaiting the coming of January 6th with much anticipation!

I am fairly certain no one from the RV community is a frequent reader of this blog, but let me just comment briefly on what it’s like to find out you are pregnant on the road.  Practitioners are not a big fan of being anything less than your provider from day one till the day the baby pops out.  I’ve found this to be true both of OBGYNs as well as midwives (once you get to a certain point).  It has been tough to make appointments in new cities, transferring records from multiple providers and not feeling like a crazy loon for living in an RV and saying we’d only be in a place for a certain number of weeks.  It’s much more complicated than just popping in to a walk-in-clinic everywhere we go.  Practitioners refuse to see you for all kinds of reasons that I never realized before.  And if you have something that needs followup care, boy, that gets complicated.  So when I started to try to make a 16 week appointment in Lubbock and even the midwife said she’d prefer not to see me if I wasn’t staying, I knew we were in a tough spot.  But God went before us and redeemed our situation, as usual.  Back at 8 weeks, an OB tested my thyroid which gave us a bit of a scare because it was a bit low.  Without knowing anything about the common nature of a low TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) in the first trimester, things got a bit dicey as we tried to piece together prenatal care and specialists in various cities.  Thankfully, now that we are in the second trimester all has returned to normal!  So I’m very glad to have a plan and provider for the remainder of the pregnancy.

I also feel like being an RVer has been working on a (slightly hidden) area of pride- that of where I live or even what I call what I live in.  When we bought the RV, I tried to school my family and friends to call it an RV or a fifth wheel or a Rig or really anything but a trailer, because well that sounded bad.  And when I am choosing which RV park to stay at we’ve been avoiding certain types of places because well, they are considered less desirable.  But in the course of travels you eventually succumb to the fact that you do live in a trailer and you do end up staying in trailer parks, with legit mobile homes.  And you know what, it’s really not so bad.  I’ve had some distinct opinions about living in traditional apartments or what style of kitchen I can live with or lots of other things I think I “need”.  And really those things aren’t inherent in happiness or my needs.  Right now, for example we are living in an RV park I was the least excited about visiting, because it has no real attractions- no sweet bridges off the port bow or waterways out my windows or mountain views or playgrounds on site, etc, etc.  But it does have a sweet price point and Levi always manages to find something he loves at every site.  He loves driving his elephant and scooter all over the place, which has been definitely easier since this park has mostly cement.  I should be a lot more like Levi than having such preconceived notions and high expectations.  It just makes me realize how much I’ve taken to looking good in the eyes of others.  Jesus doesn’t call me to live in elaborate kitchens with lovely furnishings and well manicured lawns (I’m not saying he forbids it either).  Those things can become idols, like I’ve realized they’ve been in my mind, if we are not careful.  It’s just sometimes staggering the pressure I’ve realized I feel about how others see me or my situation.  And yet how little I’ve been wondering what God thinks of my situation (and he’s probably not spending too much time judging me for what color kitchen cabinets I might have in the future); He’s much more likely concerned with whether I’m spending time making room for Him in my life.  I say all this to confess it as I know I’ve expressed shades of these things in past posts but also because I think it’s very common among younger generations, something almost engrained.

So I realize this has been a bit of a mind dump but it’s been a while since I’v blogged so it’s all been up there in my brain waiting for an opportunity to come out.  So, you’re welcome.

Some other timely FAQ’s are:

Do you know what gender baby you are having?  No we don’t.  But probably in the next several weeks that will come to light.

Are you alive, given the weather forecast for Texas? Yes we are.  We bought our first snow shovel as a married couple this week.  We readied our RV for the winter as best we could on short-ish notice.  And we got the DVD’s out from our basement storage for hunkering down with a toddler who loves the outdoors.  So we still have power and while our city water connection did freeze up about 10 minutes into the storm we filled our fresh water tank so we still have water for showering and dishes and we got several jugs of water for drinking.  So 24 hours in, all is status quo.  Geoff has the week off, so we are getting lots of quality family time and generous gift givers gave us lots of new toys to play with (Levi’s).  The storm started with several hours of very large hail, thunder snow, more hail/sleet, and now has rounded out into a more normal snow fall.  The wind is obviously the best with gusts up to 50+ miles per hour.  That makes for some rocking conditions in the RV but nothing too difficult to bear.  We were ‘itchy for adventures’, after all 🙂

Levi enjoying alternative uses for his new toys

Alright I’ll leave you to whatever you were doing before you started reading this book of a post.  But I hope you are well and if you were hoping for a Christmas card from us, well we got those out mid-day on Christmas Eve, so you might get them before the New Year. 🙂

This was a clear reject from our Christmas card photo shoot.

Farewell from snowy Texas,

Big Rig Rose