This move was not an easy one for us.

There were complications on various levels, the first being the logistics of the thing. We had two vehicles plus a camper to get back to Virginia. And then there was all that STUFF. No matter how much I think we've decluttered and purged and streamlined, there is always so much JUNK coming out of the woodwork.

We decided to go with ABF U-pack instead of U-Haul (which we did coming to Montana). We would pack the truck, but someone ELSE would drive it. While it was a little more costly than U-Haul, I feel this was definitely one expense that was worth it. Otherwise, Ethan was going to have to drive the little van back to Virginia, fly back to Montana, and then drive a U-Haul while I drove the larger van towing the camper and the six kids.

Then God took care of another problem for us: a family in our church agreed to take the little van. Hurrah! Having a second vehicle was not worth the hassle and stress of having to get that van back to Virginia.

The next obstacle was perhaps the most visually dramatic of all: our driveway. Our driveway in Montana was steep and narrow and curvy. We tried to explain this to the driver of the ABF truck, but I guess he thought we were exaggerating.

We were not.

And he got stuck.

But -- oh, glory! -- he did get unstuck.

And we packed and threw away and packed and threw away and packed and threw away.

And we said our goodbyes. This was hard for everyone. It was hard saying goodbye to the neighbor dogs, who would routinely come visiting around suppertime. It was hard saying goodbye to the neighbor children, whose builder father and interior decorator mother (with a British accent, even!) had built the coolest house ever and did awesome things like painting faces and playing guitar.

And it was hard saying goodbye to the church group. Benjamin (7) especially struggled. He tends to take after his mother when it comes to saying goodbye, and he tried really hard to hold back his emotions. When he said goodbye to Claire, his 12-year old friend from church, he mustered a quick, painful, "Bye-bye forever!" and hastily thrust a 10-dollar bill into her hand.

And if you can't feel the strength of those emotions - a 7-yr. old giving a $10 bill! - be assured that that pretty much ranks a 10 on the emotive scale.

(some of the children with Claire)

 (the children with our nature-loving logging friends)

Saying goodbye to our logger family was no picnic, either. The children (and we!) were mesmerized by Haley's impressive butterfly collection. Jeff (the father) identified a skull Ben found on their property as a red fox skull (Ben kept a tooth). And no one wanted to leave Brenda (the mother), whom everyone thinks is the PERFECT surrogate mother (even more perfect than their real mother - imagine that!).

**sigh** These things were hard. They are still hard. But as I tried to tell Benjamin, ten months ago we did not think we would be back in Virginia with Virginia friends - and here we are. Who knows where we will end up, and where they will end up, and whether we will be brought back together before ... "forever"?

We may not meet in this building:

or in this state (although we'd all love that!):

But we WILL meet again.

Because really, how can you be 30 miles away and NOT stop to see it?

We did debate going, wondering if it would be worth it for the youngers. But everyone was excited by the Faces in the Rocks ("Isn't that one guy on the dollar bill?") and the gift shop. Abraham (4) surprised both Ethan and me when he spotted the faces from the van, said, "I gotta find that book!" and then whipped out a tourist brochure from last night's hotel. He quickly turned to a picture of Mount Rushmore in an ad and said, "I knew I saw that before!"

Then back into the van. We made the necessary Wall Drug stop (what's not to love about South Dakota?) and then drove drove drove. Tonight we are packed into a Days Inn room (6 kids, 2 cats, and a dog and if you open your eyes any wider your eyeballs just might fall out, Miss Desk Clerk Nazi), still in South Dakota but closer to Iowa than we were this morning.

AND we passed into Central Time Zone. I say we made progress!

There are some sights I never saw before moving to Montana.

Signs to keep your cows and your camping separate, for one.

Open range cows by the side of the road, for another.

There is no fence encircling these bovines. The only thing separating them from us is a general sense of lethargy and ennui ... on their part.

We are moving back to Virginia for a while.

That is the short version.

The longer short version is that this church in which Ethan has been laboring for ten months no longer has the funds it needs nor the numbers it needs to provide those funds. So, in God's providence and timing, the work has decided to close.

The time we have spent here has been invaluable on so many levels. We have grown as a couple and as a family (and not just literally). We have LOVED Montana and her many, many mountains and the way the seasons change them. We have met a small yet powerful group of people that has impacted our lives tremendously.

But it's time to move on.

Truth be told, we're not sure exactly where we're going. For the meantime, we're heading back east. The hospital system there is much friendlier for birthing twins.  The hospital here does not allow VBACs and will not admit you if you go into labor before 35 weeks. My first set of twins ended up being a C-section, and they came at 33 weeks. In the event that we do have premature babies and have to split time between the children at home and the children in the hospital, there is a large support group to help us in Virginia.

And in the intervening time, Ethan is again going through the "candidating" process with various churches with vacant pulpits.

So here we go again. It's honestly exciting, although not easy to leave newly forged friendships here. But we know Who holds the future, and we feel our time here has been very profitable for our family and our spiritual walk. Now it is time to move on. We're packing boxes, throwing away bags and bags and bags of trash, and restocking the thrift store shelves.

We've finished with the boys' and girls' rooms. They are sleeping on their mattresses on the floor with a suitcase each of clothes. Nothing else, save a hamper, is in their rooms.

And they love it. The boys emphatically explained to me this morning that they sleep SO MUCH BETTER this way. And when I told the girls to "clean your room," they pulled their covers up and were done.

(Last week. Our welcome back to Montana, after traveling home from Oregon.)

The Oregon Coast needs no introduction.

Strong sunshine and stronger breezes roughhouse on the shore. We join in the fun, unsure of the rules but engaging wholeheartedly nonetheless.

We play until the wind wins, and our toes curl their surrender.

Fresh seafood and fresh clothing refresh. And so does the evening's excursion.

Is it any wonder that Jesus often withdrew to the sea?

I almost don't know where to start. With the update? And then: the short version or the long one?

The short one, I think.

• We are moving.

Far. Far back to the place from whence we came. In 18 days. For an undetermined amount of time. But this is getting to sound like the long version, so I'll stop there, unless anyone asks. I don't mind telling, it's just ... wordy.

• Last week, we took a trip to Oregon.

It was an extended "business"/vacation trip, as Ethan's presbytery meeting was in Corvallis. Our first two nights were spent in our camper at the fairgrounds just outside of Corvallis.

    

Somebody told me it was frightening how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.  ~Jack Handey

  

I was easily grumpified. The bathrooms were too far. The camping was in little more than a parking spot. The neighbor dogs were unfriendly and noisy. The Internet was spotty (I know, I know...). Because of the check-out time, we would have to have everything packed and pulled out before Ethan's morning presbytery meeting.

But the children looked beyond ... or perhaps deeper, closer. When all I could see was a sign warning not to disturb the fragile oak roots, when all I could hear was the sound of acorns being plunked unceremoniously and LOUDLY on the roof of our camper by a pesky squirrel or the persistent wind, the children found TREASURES.

(Do oak leaves shoved in a watergun count as treasures? You betcha.)

   

I struggled with a fifteen-month old during his father's ETERNAL shower and then raced off to oh-so-quickly take mine (ahem...don't ask my husband's take on this). When I came back, this is what I saw:

  

Confirming, once again, that Papa is Just. So. Cool. and Mama is ... NOT.

   

I was irritated with myself. I always enjoy the journey more than the destination. Why is this? Why do I insist on being upset at the amount of laundry to do, even on "vacation," by the mental prowess it takes to figure out how to do normal things like take showers and take kids to the bathroom and brush teeth at a campground? Why can't I just RELAX?

  

Methinks, quite honestly, it is that pesky sinful nature grasping at *some* legitimate reason to complain. "I'm pregnant...with twins...I have to crawl over kids to get into bed...I have to find my way out at 3 AM to walk forever away to the bathroom...how am I supposed to do anything and watch a wandering 15-mo. old (and 2-yr. old and 4 yr. old and 4 yr. old and...). Yes, this scenario is quite wretched. I should surely be upset."

  

BUT. By the end of our short 2 1/2 day stay, even I was relaxing and finding wonder.

  

It was in the river...

  

in the trees...

 

in the colorful leaves...

  

in the way tendrils frame too-old-for-this "sucker summer" faces (as Miriam calls it when her twin sucks his thumb - "sucker thumber" is what she's going for)...

  

I even found it in the campground, when I allowed myself to look.

  

1-2-3-4-5-6-counting-the-dog...Who's missing? Oh, yeah...

And then, post-presbytery-meeting, we headed for the coast.

But THAT will have to wait for another post. Because this short update is getting suspiciously long.

What started out as a hike

soon turned into a run

that ended in a fall.

Papa came to the rescue, stopping the tears.

But it was a sister that brought out the smile.

One of our good friends here is a logger.

He's the manly, rugged, old-school kind of logger that uses Clydesdales to pull the logs once he's felled them.

His method of logging is extremely low-impact. After he finishes his logging, he goes back over the skid row trail with a pick-axe, creating places for the water (and melting snow) to run so that it doesn't take over the fresh trail and create a river or wider trail of its own. And within thirty days, grass is growing in the trail and the impact is minimal.

Quite unlike the huge logging operations that create permanent roads with their machinery.

And we happen to think his machinery is absolutely magnificent:

Pat and Bonnie were from different teams originally, but Pat was on the right in his old team and Bonnie was on the left in her old team. They work very well together.

They are hitched up to a harness that is then hitched to a log. The logs can be heavy or light (depending on if the tree was alive or dead), and there is always an element of danger. The horses could get spooked and take off, the log could break free, the logger could get entangled in the line. Before he begins skidding, the logger sets up a line of logs along the downhill side of the trail. This ensures that the log that is being dragged doesn't get caught on a tree or pull the horses downhill.

The work is grueling.

And the logger? He runs along behind them, holding the reins and yelling out instructions, like, "Cross-over" (letting them know he is crossing from one side to the other behind them) and the most important of directions, "BREAK!"

Regular breaks are given (2-4 times per log on this trail). The horses and the logger use this time to catch their breaths.

We used this time to ask questions and love on the horses.

Our friend is a wellspring of knowledge of all things related to nature. He even told us that the line separating the fields in the background of these pictures is a direct result of animal grazing -- grazed fields are greener. The "line" is the fence.

And he's one of the best storytellers I've met. We enjoyed hearing about his early days of logging, and how the establishment of trust was the most important factor determining his success with his team.

The day left quite an impression on Benjamin (7):

Ugh. This post is so overdue it's hard to know where to start.

Or, as Ethan would (and just did) say, it's so overdue it's retarded.

Ahem.

The Saturday before Mother's Day, Ethan told me I could pick anywhere I wanted for lunch on Sunday. I knew I didn't want to "go out" to eat. I wanted to GO OUT. Eating in a nice restaurant with six children post-church but pre-nap is, well, a flagrant waste. So I took to the googling and decided that I wanted a nice drive somewhere we could take the dog and the kids could run and have fun or not have fun and nobody could hear their fussing.

The York-Nelson-Hogback Lookout sounded perfect. So we planned to come home from church, grab some comfy clothes and the dog, and head out.

But even before we left for church in the morning, everyone gathered around to give their way-overboard presents: a serene "Fresh Outdoors" candle, some sandalwood potpourri balls in an ultra-chic wooden holder, chocolate (which quickly disappeared) and a new camera. A new camera!!

And after church, we headed out.

The drive there was amazing, one of those hold-your-breath-and-pretend-there's-a-guard-rail kind of drives. One thing I love about Montana is that you can drive thirty minutes away and see drastically different scenery. But most all of it involves narrow dirt roads and does not involve guard rails. It just heightens the whole "flirting with death" factor. (I'm just kidding. Not about the roads and rails, but about flirting with death. Ethan is a very capable driver, and we were nowhere near death. Relax, Mom.)

The Internet page said to "watch for mountain goats and mule deer" along the way. Mule deer are no biggee for us (we see 20-50 deer anytime we go into town and often have a few in the backyard -- we have even more when we remember to stock the deerbirdfeeder). But I had only seen mountain goats one time, and that was in Alaska. The children had never seen them. I even caught myself selfishly praying a "please oh please let there be some oh please" prayer. But we didn't see any on the way, no matter how hard I squinted.

We couldn't make it all the way to the top because of the snow blocking the road (and I mean mushy, 2-feet deep snow that a four-wheel drive truck barely managed, much less our 12-passenger van), so we stopped in the meadow just before the road to the top and played for a while.

I am absolutely sure this one will get me in trouble when he's sixteen (or maybe even before then), but I love it:

Some of us slept:

After we had exhausted ourselves in the field, finishing up brownies left over from the fellowship time at church, we headed back down the mountain and decided to stop at Refrigerator Canyon. We didn't hike the entire 9 miles of the trail, but we hiked enough to understand why it is named after a cold appliance and enough to marvel at the beauty. And it looks nothing like a refrigerator.

I'm going to take a little detour from my sightseeing story here to tell you about a time when I was young and we went hiking with my grandparents, cousins, and aunt. My father told everyone we would go hiking and to a store. I guess Grandma and Aunt Cheryl thought he said, "Hiking to a store" because they both carried their rather large purses the entire way down the trail. My dad waited until we were a fair piece from the head of the trail before he asked, "Why are you carrying your purses?"

"For the store, of course," they answered.

For some reason, this picture always reminds me of that.

Anyone who knows Miriam knows that this is so HER. Shoes on the wrong feet, pink sunglasses, and pants pulled up to her thighs. Even though the water is about 2 inches deep.

But still no mountain goats.

We piled back in the van, tired and happy and hungry. We were just beginning to round a corner when I yelled,

"STOP THE VAN! STOP STOP STOP STOP!! I SEE ONE!"

And high up on a ridge,

was the silhouette of a mountain goat. I took umpteen pictures, trying to get a clear shot. We pointed and explained and pulled forward and reversed, trying to help the kids see it (only Benjamin could). I hoped my macro-zoom worked and we gave up trying to show the children. Ethan rounded the corner.

Where SEVEN more mountain goats (including a kid) stood in plain view.

Yeah! We lingered awhile, intrigued by their uncanny ability to find the smallest of footholds and scale the rocks effortlessly.

And then we headed for home, tired, happy, hungry, and fulfilled.

Thank you, family! And thank You, Lord.