One Down, One Left

Aren’t the kids so cute? That’s Maya and Elly with the neighbor kids. They totally lined up that way all by themselves, and the neighbor mom thought to snap a pic with her cell phone. I love it.

Tonight was our first of two planned move nights. With God’s grace, much more work was accomplished than we expected. There’s still a lot for me to do, and I can’t do it tonight, because the packing tape was accidentally left in the locked truck behind lots of stuff. So, providentially or not, I will be going to bed sooner than the 4 a.m. that I anticipated.

This does mean, however, that all of my eleventh hour packing will have to be done in the morning, with three energetic kids on full blast.

Thanks to all who helped today. Thanks be to God for good friends with strong backs, and even those with less-strong backs who came anyway. Thanks to the mom who left her baby sleeping in the back of her station wagon (in full view of lots of watchful adults) so she could keep helping. Thanks to the unwitting middle school-aged helper who came along with his friend, who came along with his parents. They were so helpful, and I never heard or saw any complaining from them (so different from so many in that awkward age of life).

Thanks especially to Jason, who always does more work than I ever imagine he’ll be able to. I wrastle the kids, you pack the truck. What a team.

Come swiftly, elusive sleep. This perpetual insomniac needs a rest.

Succession Planting

Good article on succession planting over at The Cutting Edge (the e-newsletter put out by organic seed company Seeds of Change).

As we look forward to a mid-summer move (next week!), we know that things will be a little nuts with renovations, unpacking, and settling in. But we hope to try some easy late summer plantings, such as carrots, lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale, swiss chard, collards, peas, and beets. If I work really fast, I might even try my hand at cucumbers and Chinese cabbage.

But I won’t feel bad if it doesn’t work out as planned this year. The Big Garden comes next year!

2 Days Left

Today:

• Asher got his foot stuck between the bottom of the dishwasher and the top of the toe kick. The kid sniffs out hazards we didn’t even know existed.
• I broke my grandmother’s square glass baking dish. I was trying to pack “just one more thing” before Asher freaked out, and I was too hasty. I loved that dish, not just because it was my only square baking dish, but also because it was my grandmother’s. It produced many lovely cakes.
• [Understatement Ahead] It is difficult to pack up your house with three young children afoot.

AirTap

Our new house has an older electric tank hot water heater. We are considering options for increasing the efficiency of the house, since most everything is run largely by electric power. We are considering the following:

• Electric tankless (also referred to as on demand) hot water heater
• Propane tankless hot water heater (if we decide to replace our oil furnace with a high efficiency propane one)
• AirTap - this is essentially a heat pump for your hot water heater. It works with your existing tank.

Has anyone heard of the AirTap, or known anyone who’s used it? It’s a very new product, but it seems like a great find. It will be more efficient than any other hot water heating option. A quote from their website:

Imagine a water heater that heats its water–not by gas, nor by electricity–but simply by the air surrounding it. Your power or gas bills would be significantly lower, and you would be doing the environment a service by conserving a considerable amount of energy.

The AirTap™ does just this. Once connected to your existing water heater, the AirTap™ unit acts as a conventional heat pump, using a compressor (powered by a low-wattage electric current) to extract heat from the surrounding air, and then sending this heat through long copper tubes into an adaptor where it is dispersed in your water tank. This, in turn, heats the water to the same degree as would a gas burner or electric heating component, distributing the hot water throughout your home safely and efficiently…[click to read more]

Here is an article on the AirTap:

• Building Green

Any thoughts? Experiences? Recommendations?

children move

I’m realizing that Elly will be moving (next Tuesday!) out of the only home she has ever remembered living in.

Maya did the same thing when she was only two, and she doesn’t remember that house. Will Elly, at three, remember our 1929 bungalow on Graff Avenue? Will she remember her first bed, the room she shares with Maya, the bench in the kitchen, all the nooks and crannies in which she hid?

Maya is so excited about moving to “Our Farm.” She wants to ride her bike (that she doesn’t yet own) up and down the long drive way, and have her own garden (with cucumbers and strawberries and cabbage), and help feed the chickens someday. I wonder if she will miss our cozy city backyard, the window above the table where we did phonics, helping me clean the pine floor in the kitchen. Will she remember seeing the kitchen transform, the walls change color, the cedar fencing erected?

Thus far, both girls express great excitement about Moving Week. It seems like the next big and fun thing to do. But I have to consider the stress that moving will cause them, and all of the upheaval that we are all going through. My stress (which is considerable at this point) may transfer to them, and I want to guard heavily against that. I’m praying for Jason and I to provide Home and security to the kids, no matter where we live, so that transitions like these are not so traumatic.

Will Asher miss the flavor of the dust bunnies here?

memories light the corners of my mind

Hi, I’m Serina, and I’m a packrat.

What’s that, you say? Why, then, do I call my blog, “Simply Serina?”

That’s easy. Because the simple thing to do is pack all of my assorted memories and keepsakes into boxes, move them from house to house, and ignore them until I want to take a walk down Memory Lane.

Problem is? I’m tired of these boxes, folks. It’s getting ridiculous. I have at least half a dozen boxes of assorted papers and pictures and keepsakes to sort through. When we first moved to PA, we lived off of what we could fit into a minivan. For six months! It taught me a great deal about what’s important in life (and what’s not all that essential). Thus, I embraced the simple, and realized that simplicity was already a big part of many facets of my life. So, when we finally got our truckload of boxes out of storage, most stuff went directly into the basement. (It overwhelmed me, the un-simplicity of it.) And there it has stayed for three years. And before that? Many of these “stuff” boxes sat untouched in our old basement, having been moved directly from my parents’ home into our newlywed apartment the year we got married.

We have already donated several van loads of things to the local thrift store, in addition to have the veterans pick of a porch full of donated things yesterday. But the big problem? Is my “stuff” boxes from my childhood through college years.

Here is a small sampling of what I, in the past week, have read/sorted/recycled/filed/torn into shreds/laughed about/cried over:

• Creative writing assignments from ninth grade
• College English papers
• Music from junior high choir
• A sweet poem my sister (uncharacteristically) wrote for me when I didn’t make the choir I wanted to in ninth grade
• Pictures from the last day of classes in eight grade (oh, the fashion horrors!)
• Notes of what to pack in our hospital bags in preparation for Maya
• Journal entries from when I was trying to decide between Rob and Dan in college
• Mostly empty journals from various times in my life (I never keep them going)
• Love notes from Sappy Chris (whose romantic prose was every teen girl’s dream), who I met while working at BK
• Millions of “Serina loves [Insert Crush of the Moment Here]” doodles in various colors, bubble letters, and fonts, spanning sixth grade through high school
• The “Serina & Dana” sign + pictures that we hung on our dorm room door (6th Eldridge Rocks!)
• Congratulatory cards after Elly’s birth
• First drafts of notes I wrote to Scott (my high school sweetheart) when we dabbled with the idea of getting back together senior year
• Notes from the weekly Bible study I led with Andy, one of my best college buds
• An invitation to my first slumber party in second grade!
• Notes about my home visits by my midwives in my second pregnancy
• Honeymoon pictures (who were those thin, beautiful, young folks?)
• Birthday cards from the surprise party Jason threw for me on my golden birthday (20 on the 20th!)

I mean, really, I could go on and on, but you get the gist. (A few observations as I ponder my junk: I was boy crazy. I wrote so many notes to my girlfriends that I don’t know how I did so well in school. I started way too many journals. And? I was a decent writer in high school.) It’s amazing how much stuff I just threw into boxes because I couldn’t bear the thought of actually sorting through it. But neither could I just recycle/trash it all, because there might be something worth keeping, right?

I’m proud to say I’ve recycled, donated, and trashed a ton of stuff. But it takes me too long, so some of it will have to get trucked to the next house. But I’m determined to make it all disappear, so I’m going to make myself sort through old boxes and pictures before I let myself do a bunch of other projects.

There, I’ve said it, and you can hold me to it.

D*S

I just found Design*Sponge. Why has no one told me about this before? The DIY projects! The Befores & After! The Under $100 category!

If anyone loses me, they now where to find me.

Must. Exercise. Self. Control.
Must. Pack. Boxes.

Happy Fourth!

inspiration

I found two gorgeous mid-century before-and-after sets on Flickr:

supershoppertoo’s House Tour (I just adore the colorful kitchen!)
This Young House’s Before & After Set (also see their blog)

Both houses are 50s era, I believe, and were re-done by energetic young couples.
So, I’m not feeling as negative about the modern elements of our house.

However, I have not found any befores-and-afters of a 70s split entry (or any split level). If I could find an inspiring one, I’d feel a lot better.

new header pic

I changed the header pictures. Whaddya think?

The fence is the edge of our pasture. If you look closely, you can see the neighbor’s deer blind nestled in the trees beyond the fence, on the right side of the picture.

house siding

Do you think I can make this:

Look like this?

*sigh*
I love cottages.
I especially love red ones. And yellow ones.

I do not, however, love the look of 1978 split entry houses with white brick columns and blue painted, woodpecker-holed, carpenter ant-infested plywood siding.

I’m so grateful to God for the beautiful land and serviceable house. But said house is certainly not pretty!