#67 - Is this home?

Sunday, March 11

Today I am thankful for old kids.  Christian turned 10 today, our second kid in 2 years to hit double digits.  And now things start happening on an even cadence.  Every even year will be our year for advancements, ordinations, and milestones.  Every odd year will be a little less odd than an even year.  Our kids were all born on even years, so 12 and 10 and 8 this year.  Then 14, 12, 10, and 8.  You see the pattern.

Today I got up early to check my work email like I need to do when I'm covering the operational stuff for the weekend.  And I found out that the team had fixed the last problem overnight, and I was off the hook except for monitoring.  Church was nice today.  I need to write a completely different post on how the church is different here.

There is a huge social/political component to church membership.  We tend to make moral judgments in line with our religious beliefs,  and like-minded people flock together.  Our feeling in our Oregon ward was that it was not only in poor taste to dissent from the social/political rhetoric, but that it was unhealthy/unholy/sinful.  Here, the discussion is more open.  Sunday School today was a primer on hot social and political issues of the day - racism and the priesthood, voting for Mitt Romney because of his religion, same sex marriage, and polygamy.  Good, meaty topics.  If covered in my old ward, it would be an hour of platitudes and preachiness. I would sit back and grind my teeth and wait for it to be over.

The people saying the platitudes are wonderful people, I do not think ill of them at all.  But I have good reason to doubt that the rest of the room would be as tolerant of me.  In the room today, we had lots of different ways of looking at it.  Even the teacher (who is the stake PR chair) brought up a contradiction in the church's stance on one issue vs another.  I have to sit back a bit more and learn how to couch my opinions in a way that meshes here.  I just don't have any experience being able to speak my political/social mind in an adult church setting without being swatted down and belittled.  I am finally ideologically/politically comfortable in church.  Someone even mentioned maybe not voting for Mitt (gasp!) if she felt he wasn't best able to represent the direction she wanted the country to go.  And nobody said anything to contradict her.

I'm going to like it here.  I also spoke with the clerk today, and our records are going to be transferred.  All of the houses we're interested in are in the Poughkeepsie First ward, so there is no use in waiting any more.

And - today I got to go to an open house for a home we're really interested in.  We're planning on putting in an offer on Thursday afternoon for one of the houses we see Thursday morning.  And this one would be great.  Move in ready, great lot (3 acres of forest!), 20 minutes from work, 13 minutes from the church.  Best school district in the area. And well within our price range.  I spent over 2 hours talking about it with Katrina and Aria.  It could easily work.

When we mention to people that we're moving to New York, the reaction as almost always, "Life in the big city!"  It is a little-known fact, however, that New York is also a state!  You can check it out on Snopes even.  (You can't, actually, but New York is still a state.  But maybe Snopes should check it out.)  So this picture is the New York we're moving to. This is a little town about 30 minutes from where we're likely to live.  Because where we're likely to live is in the middle of a forest.  Looks dangerous, eh?  To the left is Peter Parker's house, and to the right is Bruce Wayne's summer cottage.  So it's actually safe enough, though prone to property damage.  Also bad news if you're a cute young woman, because they tend to get kidnapped if Peter or Bruce are around.

Also - this picture is not a neighborhood street.  It is a highway.  For reals.