Quick Update

Bill has finished putting poly on the wood floor in the living room!  This wood floor turned out to be more work than we originally thought but it turned out beautiful thanks to the many talents of my husband!

 

 

 

As I was downsizing, I realized that I REALLY like sheets and blankets...and this was kind of a surprise to me!  We have 2 beds and I had about 10 sets of sheets and way too many blankets and quilts.  I have taken like 6 garbage bags of bedding to Goodwill and I still have plenty.  I am happy to have kept the quilts that have meaning, several of which were made by my talented mother. :-)

 

The packing up is starting to get real as the stack of boxes in my house grows.  Very handy to work at Wolters Kluwer where there are usually nice paper boxes to grab on my way out of work.  I am hoping that we can pack, take over, unpack, and reuse many of these boxes but we will see how this goes.

I would like to get the bedroom floor painted this weekend and am hoping we can start moving some of the furniture for the living room over if the floor is ready/dry.  We have to decide which furniture is going and which is not so we will see what fits well in the new smaller house...although this could meaning moving furniture and then finding out it does not work out there.

Bill is excited to have a garden again and is making good progress on getting this planted.  We have discovered that raised beds need to be watered pretty much every day so we will see how that goes since we sometimes start stuff but struggle to keep up with maintenance (like watering every day). 

Off on a New Adventure

Well, it has been 5 years since Bill and I had our big adventure helping at the resort in Northern Minnesota and while that was challenging, we learned a lot and are thankful we had that opportunity.  We are now on to a new adventure with downsizing and starting a new ministry.  We have an opportunity to partner with Central Minnesota Youth For Christ on this adventure.  We have been thinking for some time that our house is too large now that the kids are all gone and, as most of you know, we love cooking and serving food! 

YFC happens to own a house next to their building that was vacant and is the perfect size for 2 empty nesters!  We are current rehabbing the house as we have been documenting on Facebook.  We have found that this work takes more of a toll on our bodies than it did 18 years ago when we rehabbed our current house but we love doing these types of projects together.  They just go a little slower these days!!

We had a great opportunity to sell our house to our next door neighbors who love our neighborhood but need a bigger house for themselves and their 3 kids.  They are working on getting their house ready to sell and we ask for positive thoughts and prayers of support that this venture in selling and moving continues to go well for all of us.

We are hoping to get moved in the next couple of weeks and keep moving on this next stage in our life journey.  I am doing better at downsizing than Bill is but he also is less of a planner and more of a fly by the seat of your pants person than I am.  His downsizing will happen when it needs to happen...right when we are moving!  After all of these years together, I am learning to let things happen at a different pace than I prefer but one that works for both of us.

We are working out the details of what a food ministry will look like at YFC and we believe it will involve helping kids learn food from seed to serving.  We are planting a small garden this year but have options to expand that in future years into possibly a community garden...we will see where we are lead on that! 

Bill has been working with YFC for a while now to build a small café in the YFC building and he will continue to work on that and we hope to have the ministry and possibly the café launched by later this year. We are leaving the timing in God's hands...with some encouragement from me as that is what I do even as I learn a new pace. :-)

Not sure how often I will be updating this blog but since I am awake at 3:00 am this morning, this seemed like a good time to get started since I have been thinking about the blog for a  while now but struggle to find time.  I hope that the updates do not continue to occur in the middle of the night!!