The title of this post is a simple description of the speed at which life is taking place these days.  It seems like I just wrote about preparing to move and we have now been in the new house for nearly two weeks.  Let me first tell you about the house.  We didn’t really want to move, but we were in a leased house and the owner decided that he wanted to move back in.  That left us frantically searching for a house in the same school district just before school started.  The house we are in seemed perfect when we found it and to be honest, we were just relieved to know we had a place to move to that would not uproot our kids from the local schools.   Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great house and I think that we will be very comfortable here.  But, there are quite a few kinks to work out before the comfort can begin.  The whole house has wiring issues and we keep having power outages in different areas.  When the power is working, we have no phone, cable or internet.  We have had contractors here for all of the past 10 days and it hasn’t gotten much better.  If you’re praying for us.  We need the wiring straightened out.  I am rather fond of modern conveniences like, oh say, electricity.

On the adoption front, we have changed home-study agencies and we could not be happier with that decision.  It was taking Catholic Charities 10-14 days to return our phone calls and the final straw was when the director said, “Oh, don’t worry.  There’s no hurries.  It’s okay if it takes a couple of months to get through this.”  No!  It’s not okay!  There is a hurry!  We have a daughter in Belgrade, Serbia that we would like to bring home as soon as possible.  We are now using the Datz Foundation and the people there are amazingly positive and seem to be working just for us at the moment.  They came with a great recommendation from our friends who have adopted internationally 3 times and they are so excited to be working with a family that is adopting independently.  Within a week of contacting the Datz Foundation, our contact in Serbia asked if we thought we would be able to complete the adoption by the end of the year.  We don’t see how it could possibly happen, but “With God, ALL things are possible.” (Matt 19:26).

The two other big happenings in the Calvaresi household are Chad’s promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and Chase’s surgery (more on that in a second).  After 20 years of protecting freedom and complaining about “The Man”, he became a part of that so called man on Nov. 1st.  I am so proud of the amazing Godly husband and father that he is and I am so impressed with his unwavering strength and focus.  I met him more than 20 years ago and he told me that he would be right where he is today…married to me, fathering my children, and serving as an LTC at the age of 38.  Pretty impressive, if you ask me!

Tomorrow we are celebrating his accomplishments with about 50 of our friends at our new place (Hope the power stays on!)

Chase is our 12 year old son.  He will be 13 in March and he is a great blend of Chad and myself.  He has that same unwavering focus that his Dad has and he has my big soft heart and loud mouth.  About a year ago, he started complaining about a knot on the back of his neck.  We thought it was just a cyst.  Well, it’s gotten bigger and it started bothering him when he turns his head.  It is right on top of his spine.  Long story short, we ended up at Walter Reed this week, he had his pre-op today, and they are removing whatever it is on Monday morning.  We have to be in north DC at 5am (yuck!)  They want to do general anesthesia because they think it is embedded and it feels pretty solid, so it can’t be a cyst.

Please just pray for God to guide the hands of the surgeons, for him to do okay with the anesthesia, and for our entire family to have peace until it’s over.

In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. Psalm 5:3

I’m off to bed.  I have A LOT of mouths to feed tomorrow.