Coming Out of the Closets

Hello, we are the Tse family and we have a problem. We are a family of pack rats. Ugh! As we sort through the boxes and boxes of stuff we have accumulated in the past 7 years, we are becoming more and more disgusted with ourselves.

How did this happen? We only had a 3 bedroom house in Texas, but somehow we managed to keep all of our extra stuff. We had it stuffed in closets, in the attic, in the garage, everywhere! Then we moved to Michigan. We had such a huge house there and an incredible amount of storage space, so we kept everything. People offered to help us get rid of things. "No thanks, we have enough room", we said. What were we thinking?

In hindsight, we can see how this happened. We have never packed ourselves and we have always moved to houses with ample storage, so we simply kept a lot of things packed away. We haven't had everything we own right in front of us, until now. See, most homes in Europe don't have closets. This house is no exception. There is ONE closet and honestly, it smells a little funky so we aren't exactly thrilled about that one. There is an attic space, but it has no light and the same funky smell so we are not using it for storage. So here we are, in a house that is completely adequate for 5 people. It is around 2700 square feet and has 4 bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms and 5 toilets. We are stumped with exactly how to organize our American furniture and impossible amount of American stuff into this house. We have wardrobes as replacements for closets, but unlike closets, they take up part of the house. There all also wall heaters in every room, which limits where furniture can be placed. The setup we have so far is growing on us. We are shooting for practical, not beautiful at this point. We are also getting rid of a lot of stuff. This is out of necessity. We ended up bringing entirely too many things that we could have stored. We blame that on the chaos of adding a new family member immediately before we took on this big move. We didn't have time to get as organized as we needed to. So now, we are trying our best to get organized and down sized.

Getting organized is something I actually enjoy doing, but it is not something I enjoy doing with billions of interruptions and that is just part of life while taking care of 3 little ones. They don't exactly sit down and wait while, we organize or clean. So we are working until the wee hours of the morning while the kids are sleeping. It has caught up with us and all of us are feeling a little bit under the weather right now.

I don't want to take pictures of the madness and chaos of the house because, frankly, this is not a memory we'll treasure. I'm trying to remember to be anxious about nothing and in all things give thanks, but it is a struggle right now. God did send me a little message through Hannah last night. Daddy was out of town so she and Nathan were sleeping in our bed. I went to bed around midnight and at about 3 AM I woke up to her little voice asking for some water. I didn't fully wake up because I remember thinking, Should I go downstairs or would tap water be fine? The next thing I heard was the familiar sound of Hannah throwing up in our bed. So as before, I got her up quickly, got the sheets off quickly, got Nathan into his bed, got Hannah into the tub and cleaned up the whole mess in about an hour. Hannah and I were back in our bed and we were both laying there quietly, when she said, "Momma, what about thank you God?" (She always says her prayers before going to sleep, so I guess she figured it was time). I smiled and thought about how God continues to send me little reminders to set me back on the right path and we began her little prayer..."Thank you God for the world so sweet..."

We are all going through some difficult times with culture shock right now. We find ourselves feeling a little sad and homesick. It is hard watching everyone we have met pack up and head back to make a homeland visit, whether it be the US, the UK, or New Zealand. It seems like everyone is going back "home" and it is hard that we aren't going. Nathan is really missing school and apparently the sports camp at his school this week is not a great replacement. It is hard to watch him feel sad. He can't exactly explain why he feels sad, but we can understand because we keep going through the same emotions. Hannah seems to be doing fine, other than the tummy issues, but I guess we were due for another fun stomach virus. Sarah's sleep patterns are constantly changing, but she is still sleeping at night and taking good naps. All three of them were so good this past weekend considering we completely overextended them. Daddy's company had a family day and we were literally gone all day and didn't get home until almost 10 PM. During the day we visited a zoo and then a large church with a tower that we climbed. 513 steps! Then we had a loooong dinner. It was a fun day, but exhausting.

The pictures are from Nathan's last day at school and our family fun day in Mechelen and Plankendael.