I'm not stressed...

It's been a crazy month. This is our last night at our seasonal camper that we are planning on. We have it up for sale. Yep, that's what I said. It's for sale. We're hoping it sells really soon. Three weeks ago as I was sitting in the same chair I am now on our seasonal deck, I wrote up a list of pros and cons of continuing to own this versus a lake home. Not a cabin...a lake home. I proceeded to show my hubby the list. He looked at it pretty seriously and said "let's do it". I was stunned. I had had the same plea since well before we even considered purchasing this place.  I am not sure why he finally changed his mind, but I was super thrilled! Fast forward to today, we are waiting for Monday to come so that we can contact the inspector to go and check out the home that we signed a purchase agreement on in a town 20 minutes from where we live now. It's on a nice lake with 2.75 acres of our own property. I am still sitting here stunned that this has taken place. We looked at a total of 12 homes. Some of them were nasty for the price they were asking. One had absolutely gorgeous views, but the house was too small and there was no way to add on. The particular house we have chosen is not as big as I had hoped, but there is room for improvement. If all goes well with the inspection and appraisal from the bank, it will be ours by the end of July. I'm already dreaming and posting pins of what I want to do to the house to make it "ours".  We're praying it will be so.

In between now and then we have so much other stuff going on. On Tuesday of this week I start training for a new position at our church. I've been volunteering twice a week in the office since November, and one of the assistants is cutting back immensely on her hours so she can babysit her grandchild, so I'm taking over some of her responsibilities. I am looking forward to learning something new, but wishing it all wasn't happening right now! 

One week from today we are renewing our vows. It is 20 years this year, and we are celebrating on a tour boat in Duluth, MN. It has been exciting (and frustrating at times!) to prepare for this event. It will be so much fun, though! After the weekend is over with, we head home to prepare for the following weekend...hubby and I are going on an 8-day cruise in the Southern Caribbean. I cannot wait - after the craziness of everything going on over the last several months I am praying I can just relax and not think too much about everything back at home, especially since there's going to be so much to do when we return. The kids are spending the time with Grandma, so it will truly be a vacation. 

When we get back, even more craziness begins. We're hoping that all the paperwork will be ready to sign on the house, and we should be preparing our move. Then we get our old house ready to put on the market. Our daughter will start PSEO/homeschool mid- August, and our son will start preparing to head back to a private school for another year neat the end. The MIL wants to visit one weekend, hubby has two concerts to perform at, and we're also hoping to fit a rummage sale in there somewhere and get rid of stuff we don't want to move. 

I am praying nothing else comes up that will be added to our list of things to do, as we're feeling the stress already - at least I am. My health has not been doing very well over the last month, either, and it's been hard to keep up with everything most days.

All in all, we're truly excited for everything going on, and it's all good. I just never expected to have to prepare for so much all at once! But God is good, and He's watching over us. :-)

Three Long Years

Today I had a bit of time to myself while I'm sitting here at our camper. Hubby, the kids, and a friend decided to go into town for a movie because they were tired of the rain. I read for a while, but got restless. Then I sanded our deck floor a little bit until my knees got sore. Then I tried reading some more but couldn't get into it very well. My mind started wandering....it's actually been wandering a lot lately. Then I remembered my blog and thought I would check it out and see what kind of crazy things I used to write about. Yep. Crazy. I will probably write more non-sensical stuff, but I feel like writing today.

Life has changed drastically since the last time I wrote. First, my mom ended up with cancer. Squamous cell lymphona of the tongue. During her surgery and treatment, I basically lived in the cities taking care of her while we 'lived' at the Hope Lodge. Then we got her well enough to go home. A year later hell broke loose again. My oldest brother was diagnosed with colon cancer, and my dad had a heart attack with triple bypass surgery. My brother went in for surgery and my dad was on the road to healing, only to find out months later that he had cancer. AMML (acute myeloid leukemia). Non-curable. Again, for a month at a time I stayed with my dad in the cities while he went through treatment, going into remission twice, but not staying there for long either time. This last November we discovered that the leukemia had come back for the second time, and even though we tried searching for other options in vain, there was nothing we could do. The horrible, hateful cancer took him away from us on a beautiful Saturday afternoon less than a month ago on April 18th. I started grieving for him the moment I got the call from my sister a year ago February telling us the diagnosis. I hurt for him; I ached. I cried; I became angry. During his last couple of days with us I couldn't even stop crying. I would cry in front of him, I would cry with others, I would cry by myself. Now that he's gone, I don't know what to think or feel. Most of the time I feel like I'm making it through, that I'm handling things well, then something reminds me of him and I re-live those last few days with him. Then it all becomes so fresh and raw again, and I have to try so hard to think about something else. I keep trying to tell myself that I am not the only one to ever lose their dad and that they have been able to continue on. My father-in-law passed away only two years after we married, so I know my husband has gone through it. It's a fact of life. But it just doesn't make sense.

My mom is doing well now, health-wise. She is missing my dad and posts things to his Facebook wall often. I know it's her way of dealing with losing her husband and I'm okay with that. His months away from home going through treatment taught her well on how to live alone, but it's still a hard adjustment for her. She says that she wants to FaceTime with him often and then remembers he's not in the cities.

I know The Lord will help my family through this and the pain of losing my dad will fade, but the memories thankfully will always be there. He was a special guy and always made me smile.

Wow....over a year?

Well, today was the first snowfall of the season. We were out in it, but I didn't think to take any pictures. I am not one to remember to take pictures, and I need to get better at that because I regret it later on. We spent much of the morning and early afternoon doing errands out in town. Our daughter was at babysitting training, so it was just our son with us. We stopped at the post office first to get the package to our orphan girls in Kenya sent out so hopefully they'll get it by Christmas. We were later this year than I had hoped so I'm praying it will get there on time and not be missing any items!

After that we headed over to Menards to get the laminate flooring for the main floor. It was snowing so hard when we got home with all 35 cases (almost 500 sq. ft. worth!) that we left them in the truck for a warmer, unsnowy day. We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed back out in our other vehicle to go to Best Buy and pick up our microwave. When we got home, my hubby took a bit of a nap before heading out early for a Husky hockey game in the cities. The roads were so bad it almost took him double the time to get there! Our daughter got home from her babysitting class shortly after he left.

This evening I have been getting a lot accomplished, too! I finished up my laundry in the new washer and dryer (we had them installed yesterday), and I showed our daughter how to wash clothes in the new machine. I am so thrilled with our new washer and dryer! They are working very well so far and I just love them. After that I made up some craft clay to make little buttons for the backing of our new chore system we will be implementing as soon as I get it all prepared. This is the idea I am working off from, and the only thing I need now is mod podge to affix the chores to the buttons and the metal magnetic panels for them to hang on. I expanded a bit more and am using color coding for different days and types of chores. If I remember when I'm finished I'll post the final product!

Now I am off to make some special cookies for our family meeting and fun night tomorrow night and get some stevia sweetened cranberries made. After that I'll hang out with the kids for a little bit before they head off to bed and then maybe spend some time on pinterest figuring out all my ideas for my dad's 70th birthday party coming up in December. Or crochet. Or do some reading. Or just go to bed....it's been a crazy day!

Amen.

I just noticed that I haven't written anything here in a month, so I started thinking back through May to realize that I cannot put into words all the changes that have happened in me during that time.

My writing interests were very dry over the last weeks. I didn't even write any articles for Examiner.com (I hope that I am still 'employed' there!), but I can see now that my focus on life has changed and again the good Lord has been working on my heart as I strive to be ever more like Him. Almost every morning over the last 5 months I have eagerly gone to Him and spent time with Him learning how to pray and learning from His Word more and more about Him. On Sunday mornings my heart yearns to worship Him at church (although health issues cause me to feel absolutely terrible while there) and to sit under the teaching of my pastor who has a fiery love for God that encourages my heart and makes me want to spend even more time with the Father.

As I have shared in previous posts that I have been reading more, I am finding my thirst for Christian books to be insatiable. I want to become more and more like Christ, and the more I read and the more I spend time with Him, the more I want! I find my hunger for the Lord to be so strange, yet so wonderful that I just can't describe it. I pray that my love for the Lord will be seen by all and that others will be encouraged to want the same thing, too. Break my heart, Father, for what breaks yours... Everything I am for your kingdom's cause...show me how to love like you have loved me. Amen.

Life...something to be thankful for....

It's been pretty quiet around here as of late. We had a very nice spring, and a lot of nice days to sit outside and read some great books. We even started digging a spot for our new vegetable garden, and it's coming along. We are about half-way done digging, but the weather has now turned rainy, cold, and windy, so we've had to put the rest on hold while we wait for it to warm up a bit.

The kids are doing well in their school work. We just finished the longest time span of five weeks before a break and the week off went very fast. We're now on our normal four-week stretch but after this we'll go down to three weeks for the summer months. In mid-August, we'll take three weeks off before we move up to the next grade for both of them. It will be interesting to see how that goes since we have only taken off three weeks once before and we were extremely busy during that time helping friends move, but this should be a little more relaxing so we'll have more time to get in each other's hair!

One of my favorite books that I just finished reading from the last grouping is The Forgotten God by Francis Chan. If you have not read this book, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy and make sure you have a nitch of time set aside every day to read it until you're done. It's a book I intend to read at least, oh....a dozen more times. I am still in the process of reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Captivating by John and Stasi Eldridge. I have about 52 books in my wish list right now, so I think I'm going to need to get motivated if I'm going to read them all before I add a whole bunch more. It's kinda funny, but I used to hate reading. It was very difficult for me because I have a learning disability in reading comprehension and retention, but I have learned over the last several years how to work beyond it all and reading has now become one of my pastimes I really enjoy. I just thank God for that because without Him being in control of that I doubt if I would have ever picked up another book after college.

I am still writing for Examiner.com, but not as often as I'd like. I did pick up another examiner title, too, so now I am also the Minneapolis Natural Health Examiner. They've gotten very picky about articles being local, however, which makes it a bit difficult to always keep natural health local as well as debt examiner(my other title). My writing "well" as dried up a little because of that, and I don't write as much as I should be.

Well, I am off to spend an evening watching a movie with the kiddos. It's rainy outside and only 40 degrees, so not much else to do tonight!

More exciting news...

Yes, more exciting news! My daughter, who accepted Christ as her Savior back in January, has chosen to get baptized, and it will happen this Sunday! We are all very excited around here...not only will she get baptized, but a dear friend and her whole family as well! This friend has also asked me to help our pastor baptize her, and I feel so honored. I cried the day she asked me if I would, and I'll probably cry all of Sunday morning -- tears of happiness and joy. My hubby will help baptize our daughter, and we have invited many friends and family to come and be witness to her public profession of faith. It is going to be one awesome morning is all I can say! God is good!

My pastor's blog

Today I'd like to highlight my pastor's blog. His insight has always been encouraging if not convicting, and I enjoy checking in there often. You'll also find it over to the left and in my first grouping of blogs. It has been a joy to be under his teaching over the last year and a half, and I must say I have learned more in that time from him than I have during my whole Christian walk. Pastor Matthew deeply loves the Lord and he does not keep it hidden for anything! He also posts his weekly sermons on his blog. I guarantee you'll be blessed if you watch them.