Celebrating 100 Months!

Happy Monday, my friends!!

Thank you so much for your kind words and monthiversary love this past weekend! We really did have the best day together. 

Since Allen's death, Ryan has spent hours upon hours working on paperwork and sitting on the phone to begin the process of working through all that needs to be done from this point forward. Pretty much every spare, non-working moment he's had since February has been devoted to that, and one of the biggest gifts we had on Friday was that his phone did not ring one time with an estate question. It had to be a God-blessing, and we gratefully received it.

We slept in that morning and went to Cosmos for lunch. We learned about Cosmos last fall when we went there for breakfast after we got up early to vote! I decided I like their breakfast food better than their lunch food, but it was still yummy. I even tried something I've never had (or even heard of) before: lemon rice soup!

After that, we headed to a place I've always wanted to go - dating back to my station days when I was in Fort Wayne all the time. There's a botanical conservatory downtown, and it's attached to the hotel that hosted the marriage retreat we went to a couple of times when we were first married. We decided we'd check it out, and apparently we picked a great day, because they even had some bunnies and chicks in the house! They had it all set up to be socially distanced nicely, with the paths roped off for one way traffic, and there were weren't a ton of people there when we went. It was really fun! One of the workers took our picture at the photo opp place:

And we really enjoyed our trip through the  buildings. (Tamar, I thought of you several times while we were there!) 

I took a ton of pictures, but I'll just share a few.

It was really fun to visit there, and we heard that their butterfly exhibit is coming up, so we think we'll have to visit again in a little while!

It was SUCH a pretty day, even if it was a little bit chilly, so we decided to head to the beautiful park downtown. There weren't many people there either, so we walked all around and got some great pictures! 

We never did have dinner that night, but we did stop for some dessert and coffee at the little shop just down from the station. I loved that place when I worked there!

And then we rounded out the day with a Good Friday service. Our friends Jon and Julie had a service at their church that was beautifully put together. The song and painting presentation at the end was powerful!!

It was a great day together - just the two of us - with conversations for hours and some great car karaoke, too! 

Love you, Ryan! Thanks for a great monthiversary!

Sunday Sentiments

I was two weeks old when my parents dedicated my life to the Lord. Obviously I don't remember much about the day (okay, anything), but I did have an awfully cute dress to wear. 

From reading about that day, I know that our pastor led my parents in dedicating me to the Lord. He wasn't at our church long after that, so I don't have any memories of him, but I do have this photo of that day. 

And I know the church choir sang Because He Lives.

I've always loved that song, and I'm sure its' in part because I know it was part of a day that set me apart for the Lord, even though I don't remember the day.

And on this Easter Sunday, I am reminded of that song and how it so beautifully represents what Jesus did on this day so many years ago.

He lived and died to buy my pardon...An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives!

I'm so very grateful He chose to live and die to buy my pardon, and on THIS day, I am grateful for that empty grave.

Part of the verse of this song used at my dedication says But greater still the calm assurance, this child can face uncertain days because He lives!

I've hung onto those very phrases through multiple seasons of my life. It's true for me and it's true for you, too!

Happy Easter, my friends! So thankful to celebrate a risen Savior today and all that we can enjoy because He lives! 

The Saturday Six

 

One.

We love living in a town with a proper cute little coffee shop! More often than not, we get ours to go as we're passing through to the post office or something, but when we get to go sit for a while, we love that too! Love this article about the shop! (The baristas are amazing!)

Two.

A little twist on puppy chow...with some pastel Easter highlights. (Maybe I shouldn't write the Saturday Six while hungry??) 

Three.

Is this your year for a garden? Or to work on your flowers and landscaping? If so, check out this post. It has a lot of great advice in it. Even if you only try one or two of the steps she suggests, I think you'll find some gems in there! 

Four.

KariAnne did a whole post this week about easy ideas for weekend projects. She linked to this previous post of hers where she added tile to the inside of a bookcase. I've never tried doing anything with tile, so I guarantee you it would be way more than a weekend project for me. Anything involving grout is beyond me, I'm pretty sure. But I probably could do something with peel and stick tile! Either way, I have to say I love the way it looks. 

Five.

Looking for some ideas for screen-free activities for your kids or those around you? (I'm always looking ideas for when the WillowBridge kids visit.) This post has ideas for a variety of age groups!

Six.

I know many extended families may still not be getting together for Easter this year, but even if  you're home with your immediate family, this is a cute, quick, and inexpensive idea for a photo backdrop. A tripod and timer - and you can get some great family photos! 

Easter Lunch Musings

 

Last Easter was my first time to ever make Easter lunch - and I loved it. I worked on it for quite a while before Easter arrived, and I was super excited about the whole process! (Here is my post about my planning from last year if you need links to any recipes.) 

This year we are on duty for Easter, so it's up to us to make Easter lunch once again. I'm excited about it, but we had a twist this year! The local food pantry wanted to donate an Easter meal box to our building, and it just arrived yesterday. So I'm just now finding out what ingredients I have to work with so I can make my plan. I told Justine it kind of felt like I'm on a cooking show and just had my ingredient list revealed. 

So here is my plan. I'd call it my working plan, but I have to finish my shopping TOMORROW, so I think we have to skip to this being the actual, final plan. 

* They sent a big, beautiful ham, so I think I'll make this Dashing Dish ham glaze to add to it. I have all but one of the ingredients on hand, so that should be easy to get and put together. 

* They also sent a tray of warm-and-serve dinner rolls, so I'll just use those and try to personally stay out of them. ;) 

* There were a couple of cans of cream of mushroom soup and a couple of cans of green beans, plus a can of French fried onions, so that gives me an excuse to try out this ultimate green bean casserole recipe I found last fall. I don't actually love green bean casserole, but Ryan does, and this seems like a version he'd really really like. (I will have to get a few more ingredients, but it will be worth it.)

* There was also a bag of carrots in there, so I want to try this garlic/butter carrots recipe. 

* I would make deviled eggs, because they sent a carton of eggs, but I know our tenants want to dye eggs, and they also sent along a egg dye kit, so I think I'll just boil the eggs for crafting purposes.

* They sent along a tub of strawberries and some whipped topping, so I think I'll make this shortcake recipe and put together an easy little strawberry shortcake for dessert! 

Then...for the leftovers!

Since there is a LOT of ham and we'll have plenty of leftovers, here are some ideas I have to use a few more things in the box for later meals:

* There was some asparagus in the box, so on a later day, I'll make this baked asparagus recipe and we can have it with leftover ham. (If there are leftover rolls, they can even add some sliced cheese and have ham sliders.)

* There was also a bag of celery and a bag of potatoes, so I really want to make this ham/celery/carrot/potato soup to use up some of those leftover. It looks pretty yummy! 

* There was also a head of lettuce, and a bottle of salad dressing, so I might whip up a salad by using leftover ham/carrots/celery/boiled eggs and adding some cheese.

That uses almost everything in the box. There were a couple other random boxed and canned goods, so the things I can't figure out how to mix in for ingredients, I'll give to the tenants to use in their own cooking adventures. But with what we have, it appears we'll have a great WillowBridge Easter lunch and some leftover options, too! 

How Do You Feel About April Fools?

I was chatting with one of our tenants yesterday and mentioned that today was April Fools' Day. Her eyes lit up with a sly sparkle, and I hurried to tell her I hate practical jokes. (That's always a gamble to admit to someone who likes a good prank, but we're off duty today, so I felt like I might be fairly safe from any of her tricks.)

I told her one of the guys who lived here when we first moved in had played tricks on us our very first day, and she drank up that story with much glee. (If you haven't heard it...Ryan and I spent our first two weeks at WillowBridge living in an empty tenant apartment. Some volunteers had been in the building doing some touch up painting prior to our arrival, so that apartment had been left unlocked for a while. The guy sneaked in and planted individual Pringle chips all around the apartment for us to find when we arrived. Of course when I found the first one...and then the second, I just thought no one had ever cleaned our apartment and these chips had been there for months. I was actually relieved to find out it was just a prank.) 

But I really do hate pranks. I am far too trusting a person and far too gullible for my own good. I fall for the pranks with much finesse and then feel like an utter idiot when all is said and done. 

I'm glad Ryan isn't much of a prankster (to me). He learned early on how much I hate them, so he's usually pretty nice and doesn't tease me. 

One of his early pranks, though, almost had me in tears! We were dating and I knew he planned to propose. My brother-in-law was passing through town and he and Ryan made plans to meet up for lunch while I worked an event for the station. My brother-in-law's opinion of Ryan was super important to me, and I could barely pay attention to my work all morning, wondering how the meeting would go. Would Jeff think we were a good match? Ryan called while I was in the Taco Bell drive thru and sounded horrible on the phone. I hurried to ask what was wrong, and he said Jeff really liked him but didn't think he was a good match for me.

While I was busy trying NOT to freak out, Ryan piped up with "JUST KIDDING! He's really excited for us." And he hasn't pulled too many more jokes like that since! 

So how about you? Are you an April Fools' prank instigator? Do you like having jokes pulled on you? Any good stories from a practical joke?

(And if you need ideas for today - not for me - here are some fairly harmless ideas.) 

Grateful Heart

Thank you all so much for traveling through 100 months of memories over the last few days. I know the posts were long and picture-laden, but I adored writing them. I loved looking back over our almost eight and a half years of marriage in such a purposeful way. 

It had never before stood out to me that different parts of our life together have had such specific purposes. There have been seasons of establishing, seasons of fun, seasons of pain, seasons of serving, seasons of teaching, and more, of course. 

Yesterday we went for a walk together, since we're keeping one eye on the forecast and it appears Indiana is about to briefly forget that spring has sprung. We walked all over Grabill, pausing to appreciate buds popping out on trees throughout town, holding hands as we made our way down the sidewalk, and talking about the this-and-that of life right now. Even something as simple as that made me so very grateful. It made me remember all those long, long walks through the IWU campus, where I held my stack of prayer cards tightly and prayed over a someday-husband, someday-marriage, and someday-life. 

The night before last, Ryan stretched out on our bed to play with Braeya while I folded and put away the last of the laundry. We talked while he rolled the dryer ball back and forth with Braeya, and I remembered days of yore when I thought even double the laundry wouldn't be so bad if it meant I got to share my home and life with someone. (And that was a correct assumption on my part.)

It's not lost to me that we'll celebrate our 100 months in the very city where our promise of life together began. Back when he proposed, we thought we'd be moving to this city and continuing on with our established careers. We figured I'd do radio forever and he was a lifer for health care. We looked at so many houses online and wondered which of them would be ours.

And here we are, 100 months later, just outside the city we imagined, working a career together that neither of us would have imagined. And those houses all went to other families, but we're happy as can be in our apartment - which is something else we never would have imagined. 

I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the answers to prayers that came in a yes form. I'm grateful for the answers to prayer that came in a NO form. 

And I'm grateful for Ryan. He makes life so much fun. He is a great listener. He's a fabulous conversationalist. He knows how to do pretty much everything. He has amazing vision and is a confident and steady leader in our home. 

These one hundred months have been a joy. Thank you, Ryan! I love you!

Memories...Months 91-100

And so we've reached the last of these posts! The memories of the last ten months, which have totally changed our lives! It's crazy to think that ten months ago we were living in a different city and working different jobs, and had so much about our life that was completely different than it is right now. The craziest ten months of our lives, right?

Month 91. 

And this was the month in which EVERYTHING changed. How do I even pick one thing to be a highlight? They were all highlights! We came to Grabill for our interview. The next day we accepted an offer for the job, and the day after THAT, we found out Ryan's rehab hospital would be closing and he would be losing his job. I turned in my resignation at the church and started packing our house so we could move! By the end of that month, we were under contract on our house and I worked my last day at the church. What. A. Whirlwind.

Month 92. 

Ryan me in my garage sale/packing adventures. We passed the baton of our home to its new owners, took our final photos, and packed up to go to Grabill. We started out living in a temporary apartment while we went through training during the day, and we spent the beautiful summer evenings taking long walks. We closed on our house and returned to Kokomo to pack our moving truck and make the official, final move to Grabill! This was a first for us...living more than 15 minutes from our families and the town where we grew up!

Month 93.

We launched into our new job, learning as we went. We began to get to know our tenants through conversations, game nights, and transportation runs. We began to learn to make time for us, too, in our down time. We found some parks to hike, worked on putting together our apartment (another first for us), and began hunting in earnest for an RV to call our own! This was also the month Ryan said his final goodbye to his co-workers from the hospital, which was a grieving process, since he'd spent a decade living life with these people every day!

Month 94.

This was a fun month! We found a sunflower farm to explore, an outdoor ice cream shop to enjoy, and bought a kayak to use on our days off. (Allen came to kayak with us this month, which would be our last chance to do this with him, and we didn't even know it.) We continued to get to know our tenants through our work and had a lot of fun planning community days for them! We took a class at church to learn about the feasts of the Bible, which was both fun and informative. But our best memory of this month was purchasing Abby, our sweet RV girl! Dream come true!

Month 95:

We celebrated EIGHT years of being engaged...with chocolate! We took our kayak out for its final spin and went on a long bike ride on a trail! We took our tenants to a pumpkin patch and then decorated pumpkins here at the building! WillowBridge turned one year old, and we had fun celebrating that, too. But our biggest task that month was doing demo work on Abby and beginning our reno project! SO MUCH WORK!

Month 96. 

Fall showed up in full force, and we stayed busy at work and at home! We finished up painting in Abby - and Ryan finished up his 196 coats of paint on the cabinets. (He may never look at a paint brush again.) We made a quick trip to pick up our Christmas stuff from storage, which was Abby's first trip out on the open road! We decorated our apartment for Christmas, and then we had another first: our own Thanksgiving. We made all the food, and it was so much fun!

Right after Thanksgiving, we left for our eighth anniversary trip, in Richmond, Indiana. We stayed in a SUPER COOL Airbnb loft above a coffee shop and enjoyed doing the Wayne County chocolate trail and scavenger hunt while we were there! We also had a private tour of the Levi Coffin House before we came home!

Month 97.

When we came home from our anniversary trip, it was time to kick Christmas into high gear at WillowBridge! We decorated the building together, which was so fun! Gateway had a virtual Christmas party for all the staff, which was so creatively done, and we loved it. Ryan and I were home for Christmas Day, rounding out the year of holidays on our own, and we actually really enjoyed it! And I think one of our favorite memories from the month was the WillowBridge Christmas night. It was a joy to see our tenants all caught up in the joy of opening gifts and celebrating together. Though we don't have kids, we imagine it must be kind of what parents feel like watching their kids on Christmas morning!

Month 98.

We welcomed 2021 this month! We continued working in Abby, doing more finishing touches. (This is when Ryan figured out he can do upholstery!) We celebrated the birthday of one of our tenants and spent a little time helping Allen clean out some of Nita's things at the cabin. We had no clue that would be the last time we'd ever see him. The snow found us that month too, which felt like the biggest thing we did. Shoveling upon shoveling upon shoveling upon shoveling. What a workout!!

Month 99.

This was the month of the unexpected. More snow (which we should have expected in February in Indiana, but still...). I was a guest in a college class (via Zoom) and our internet picked RIGHT THEN to get cranky. Of course. We had a wonderfully fun Valentine's Day celebration for two at home together! And right after that, we received the news that Allen had died from a heart attack, and our entire world upended again. So many arrangements and decisions and goodbyes - without warning. Our second parent loss in just two years. One with months to prepare and one without a moment's notice. Both so hard in such very different ways.

Month 100.

And now we're to this hundredth month together, which we'll celebrate in a couple of days. It's been a whirlwind of change again. Ryan and his siblings have been hard at work (zooming and texting often) to wade through all the paperwork after Allen's death. One of our tenants moved away, and that brought with it a deep wave of grief for us, because we love each of them so much! So as we work on the push and pull of hellos and goodbyes within the building, we've had a lot to process! And I think our biggest moment this month was officially finishing Abby in preparation for her first real outing! 

One hundred months of life together. Adventure. Joys. Sorrows. Challenges. Change. I'm so grateful we've gotten to experience it all together. Life looks so different than it did 100 months ago, and I have no doubt it will look different in 100 months down the road. But I am so very grateful for the gift of life with Ryan and the ways God is using us together! 

Thanks for reminiscing with me!! :)