A crazy beautiful life!: Ch, ch, changes...

Back in May a whole lot of upheaval started in our family and the pieces are still falling into place. It all started with conversations about school. Bethany will be starting school in 1 1/2 years and we knew that if we wanted her to go to a Christian school we should've already had her name down, where did we want her to go, did we want her in prep? These were the questions we were pondering. The easy choice would've been to send her to Bethel where Jaden was, but crunching numbers put that idea out of reach. A private school was already stretching the budget with 1 child and with an impending 3 year overlap of having all 3 children at school the scales were tipped to public school for the girls. This decision then prompted discussion of the local schools where we were living and that I wasn't happy with them and so began the idea of moving.

The plan was to move by the end of this year but God seemed to have a whirlwind in mind instead. We decided on the area we would like to go, which is the suburb where Brett grew up, and so I started browsing the rentals there just to get an idea of price range. I saw an ad for a house, thought it sounded way too good for the price and must have something really wrong with it, and so I didn't enquire about it. But it niggled at me for a couple of days till I finally rang up and the inspection was an hour later, so I decided it was worth a look and got the kids organised for a house inspection right at dinner time. When we were looking at moving last year we went to inspections where 30 families would show up, but this time there was just me and 1 other family and I loved the house. I walked in and thought 'wow I can see us living here'. I went home, told Brett I loved it and had butterflies in my stomach as we decided to apply for it cause I had not planned on moving for months but we prayed and both felt it was the right thing to do, so we applied, got approved (we got knocked back for several house applications last year) and moved a week and a half later. For someone like me who likes to be planned and organised that was way out of my comfort zone, but within a week of moving this place was feeling like home and we love it here. That week also just happened to be when the local public school started taking applications for their pre-school next year and so because we were now local Bethy's paperwork went in for their 2 1/2 day a week year before school program for next year.

Moving house though was just the first change. It became evident quite quickly that more change was needed as I was doing a lot of driving, using a lot of petrol, mornings were crazy because we had to leave earlier due to the distance and we realised that we are surrounded here by closer options and perhaps we should look at those. So I made enquiries and things just fell into place. The girls got a space at a lovely pre-school that is just around the corner from our house, and even though they were very happy at their old pre-school we made the change and they have adjusted well and their new pre-school is lovely. The next step was school for Jaden. That one was a very heart wrenching decision as he was very happy at Bethel, but the logistics of distance were wearing on the family and so I made an appointment to meet with the principal, counsellor and head of learning support at our local public high school and came away quite peaceful that the school knew what they were doing with aspergers and that he would be ok there.

So last week Jaden changed schools and so far it has gone well. It is less then 5 minutes drive so mornings are much less stressful, the uniform is more comfortable and less fiddly (no itchy pants, button up shirts or ties and no ironing for mummy yay) so Jaden is not struggling as much to get ready. He loves their big library, he loves that it has a canteen, he loves the independence factor as he is going to start walking home next week. I love the fact that the yearly contribution is less than I was paying a fortnight in fees at his old school and we have hardly gone through any petrol in a week. He said the workload is easier, he has found lots of people who love minecraft like he does, and best of all he has found a couple of friends in his class. We were also blown away by the subject choices for his electives for next year, he has chosen mythbusters, forensic science, film making and unsolved mysteries of history, they all sound awesome, the benefits of a bigger school.

We also made another change today inside the house by separating the girls into their own bedrooms. We didn't do it when we moved because although the house has 4 bedrooms 2 of them are actually joined together and we weren't sure how it would work, so we had kept the girls in a big room together and the 2 joined rooms became our room and a study. We decided to try shifting though because Bethany really needs some space to be able to sit and do the imaginative play she loves without a 2 year old demolishing it all. So the study got dismantled today, bookshelves got crammed into our bedroom, my desk couldn't fit in the house so it has gone down to the garage, my stationery got organised into my wardrobe instead, and Elora is now in the room that is joined to ours. It means we have to sneak through Elora's room to get to our bedroom and will take some getting used to, but she slept in our room as a baby so it will just be a bit of deja vu.

And so there has been a lot of change for our family in recent weeks but each time we have chosen a new path we have had a peace that it is God leading us. There have been times when it's been stressful and very emotional but there is also a contentment at knowing we are right where we are meant to be and that it has all been orchestrated by someone who knows what's best for each member of our family.