A WillowBridge Thanksgiving

I know. I know.

Thanksgiving was so last month and I debated about whether or not to even recap the WillowBridge Thanksgiving on here. But I had a few things I wanted to say about it, so here you go!

One thing we've learned since coming to work here in July is that for the most part, this building baffles everyone we interact with. No one seems to quite grasp what we do, because it's so different from any other place. 

Yes, this is an apartment building. Yes, we are teaching our tenants to be independent. That means we don't spoon feed them. That means we require them to work on adulting. 

But this is not just an apartment building. This isn't just an address where our tenants receive mail and a series of rooms where they keep their stuff. This is a collective home, where we interact with each other and do life together, even while we do life independently.

We weren't all together on Thanksgiving Day this year. Some of us were here in the building and some were with family. But we wanted to acknowledge a day of thanksgiving together as a community, because we are thankful for the community we have. 

We are thankful for friendships that have been forged inside these walls.

We have become framily - all of us, team and tenants alike. 

And so we wanted to be thankful together.

In true family fashion, the evening was a little on the chaotic side. Some were just coming back from being away. We were preparing to leave the next day for our anniversary trip. It kind of felt like we were coming in from a scattering so we could turn around and scatter again, but we all showed up and sat around the table together.

We decided as a team that we would cook this meal for the tenants. (Our current tenants actually enjoy cooking and are good at it, but we wanted to treat them this time.) Ryan and I cooked a ham in our slow cooker (turkey is not a crowd favorite at WillowBridge) and then Ryan also made the mashed potatoes and gravy and the green beans! I made a candy shop pizza for dessert, and Justine made macaroni and cheese, rolls, and this amazing buckeye pie that I could have eaten singlehandedly - but instead just had a tiny sliver.

We gathered and told stories and then scattered again...some staying to play games. (Ryan and I had to pack, so we headed out early from this one.) 

We really are thankful for this building and our tenants. I told them when we came back from our anniversary trip that we really had missed them all so much while we were gone. It's true! We love our breaks and the chance to be together - just the two of us - but much like I imagine parents do, we spend half our time away talking about our tenants and things we hope to do to assist them. We miss them when we're gone and look forward to seeing them when we come back.

Thankful indeed. 

What's Up at WillowBridge??

 Whew!! Time for another life-at-WillowBridge update, and I seriously feel like I JUST did one of these! 

* I do have some really exciting news since my last update! The tenant that had been working so hard to get her driving permit...passed her test! We were so very, very proud of her for persevering! (Also, in quizzing her, I learned that I don't know the technical terms for most of the signs on the road.. Maybe I need to sign up for Ryan's driving classes myself!)

* We finished up our month-long "Attitude of Gratitude" devo challenge, and we even shared our daily challenges on Facebook and Instagram. Ryan and I shared devos in the November staff meeting for Gateway Woods, so we used one of our daily readings to share with the staff, too!

* Justine, Isla, and I went shopping for Christmas decor so we could have a proper WillowBridge Christmas! We had the best time! Girls' Day Out!

* The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we had our official Thanksgiving dinner with the whole WillowBridge crew. The team did the cooking (and if we're honest, Ryan did most of it) and we were able to share an evening together. (I haven't officially told you about our Thanksgiving, but I will, I promise.)

* This last Friday was the Gateway Woods staff Christmas party, which was done entirely through Zoom and party kits and was SO COOL! I have to tell you about that soon, too! 

* And the next day, we decorated WillowBridge for Christmas! It was such a fun day for everyone - and I'll tell you more about that later, too. (I basically have stories for you for the rest of December.)

So as you can see, it has indeed been a full month here at WillowBridge! Though these are the highlights of successes and celebrations, there have also been hard days, tough conversations, and daily life that can have its difficult moments. When I share these updates with you, my goal is to celebrate the goodness that God is doing here, but I never want to misrepresent and make you think every single day is easy or uncomplicated. NO ONE on this earth has an uncomplicated life, and we're no exception. 

But I can tell you this: we have learned in fresh ways this month how dearly and fiercely we love our tenants. We have advocated for them, brainstormed ways to help them succeed, and prayed hard for them. For those of us who work here, the days are long and busy, but the work is worth it, even on the hard days. 

How can you pray?

* We're in the process of potentially bringing in a couple more tenants, and there is much that goes into this process. Continue to pray for wisdom for us as we seek God's will for our community and those who may join us here!

* We're doing our very best to stay healthy here at WillowBridge, and so far, we have been. We've had a few quarantines here and there, but so far all of them have turned out to be non-events. (Potential exposures that turned out to be false exposures.) Having said that, we have learned that quarantining, even if it's not for a positive test or true exposure, radically alters the dynamic of how we function as a building. We'll do our best to continue living wisely, safely, and in the most disinfected way possible, but we would welcome your prayers for health and for the ability to function to our best even if we do have to navigate these waters at some point.

* Our churches around here have gone back online entirely as we lead up to the holidays, so we're having church together (watching an online service) in our community room each week. We're striving to find better ways to help our tenants understand about the Lord, and we'd love your prayers for wisdom as we do that!

8th Anniversary Fun!

It's been almost a week since our 8th anniversary, and I've been so busy telling you about our scavenger hunts and chocolate trails and amazing Airbnb that I've neglected telling you about the day itself! So here you go!

Our anniversary was actually the ONLY day that week we saw the sun. It was cold, but we praised the Lord for blessings like sunshine!!

The morning of our anniversary, we got up and opened our gifts first thing. (Kind of like our wedding day!) We were both super excited about what we'd gotten each other. I got Ryan a couple of coffee related gifts for Abby the RV! We decided to get a kettle and stainless steel French press for our travels, rather than a regular coffee pot or a Keurig. So...I got those for him!

And I was MELTING over the gift he gave me: he made a book of his favorite things about me and our life together. (It included photos!) It is perfect.

We went downstairs to get our free breakfast and lattes for the day. We saved our breakfast to eat later and drank lattes because...of course!

We spent the morning making some stops on both the chocolate trail and the scavenger hunt, and after we went to Abbott's Candies, we went around the corner to Willie and Red's, which is actually a buffet. I wasn't sure buffets still exited in pandemic days, but they do, and it was interesting how they did it. We walked along the front of the buffet and pointed to what we wanted, and the server behind the buffet dished it out for us and handed us our plate at the end. The food was good, though my salad did swim in dressing a bit more than I would have chosen. I just tried to shake out the veggies to minimize excess. I don't think the lady serving me could hear me through my mask and over the double glass buffet barrier. 

We continued our scavenger hunting and our chocolate trailing in the afternoon and ended our day out with a stop at Thistlethwaite Falls. According to the sign at the trailhead of the falls, back in the mid-1850s, a man named Timothy Thistlethwaite and his brother-in-law created a dam in the river. They used farm teams to place large boulders in the river channel to change the course of the river so it would flow into a new channel and over a rocky ledge...creating the falls. And it still stands. There used to be a saw mill associated with the falls, but it no longer exists. The falls sure are pretty, though! 

It took us a while to find it - because we expected it to be deep on a trail. We eventually found it RIGHT BESIDE THE ROAD. Facepalm. We used this as our backdrop for our annual recreation pictures!

I'll show you the recreation pictures at the end!

After we left here, we headed back to the Airbnb, where we warmed up the food we'd gotten for breakfast and ate it for dinner!

We had our sparkling grape juice, watched our wedding video, enjoyed our chocolate trail freebie chocolate chip muffins, and read the letters we wrote each other last year before writing new ones for next year!

It was the perfect day of fun - without being too full! Tons of reminiscing and enjoying our memories - while making new ones!

And here are our recreated pictures...I love getting to see how they change from year to year.