Celebrating February's Date Nights

 

            Moving and squeezing in meaningful dates can be a bit of a challenge, but we did our best to make February a month of purposeful dating. I wanted to share what we did, even though some may have been a bit on the unconventional side!

            Our first date was our monthiversary, on the 2^nd, when we redid our January Monthiversary date. We enjoyed cocoa bombs made by our friend Jenna, watched episodes of Without a Trace, and did a workout together. The night was about celebrating our favorite things together and recognizing how far we had come in a month of our new exercise routine!

            Our second date was a trip to our church youth group’s fundraiser dinner! They did a Valentine’s Day Italian dinner, and we thoroughly enjoyed our evening. The food was scrumptious, and we turned our night into a double date with a couple from our Sunday School class who sat at the same table with us.

            Our third date was Valentine’s Day itself! We chose to cook dinner at home together – another favorite of ours – and we through some sparkling grape juice into the mix. I have enjoyed each of the (now eleven) Valentine’s Day celebrations we’ve had, and this year was no different.

            Our fourth date didn’t really feel so much like a date, but it still counted. We had to travel to Indianapolis for a funeral, so while we were in the city, we took time to enjoy Chick-Fil-A for lunch and ran (kind of literally) through IKEA just to look around before returning home. It wasn’t a leisurely day at all, but it was a chance to spend some time together in some of our favorite places. We also enjoyed fantastic conversation in the car to and from our destination!

            Perhaps March will be a little bit more conventional in the dating scheme, but I am grateful for each of these opportunities to enjoy food, conversation, and celebration!

Sunday Sentiments: Remembering Nita

 

Today marks four years since we said our earthly goodbyes to Ryan’s mom. I remember that day so clearly and remember all the kindnesses the Lord gave us so we could even be there when she passed away.

            For those of you who might be newer readers around here, Ryan’s mom battled a brain tumor for about five months, and during her final weeks of life, we were part of a rotation of caregivers who spent the evenings with her at home. The night before she died was our regular night, and though our evenings usually included other visitors stopping in to see her, that night it was just the three of us. Ryan knew time was short and was able to have one last night caring for her and talking to her.

            We weren’t even supposed to be there the night she died, but Ryan had a nudge in his soul that we should go. He suggested we eat dinner at home and then drive out to the cabin, but I reminded him the cabin was overrun with food, so we could just eat there – and we should leave as soon as he got home from work. So we did. The hospice nurse told me when we arrived that she imagined Nita had maybe 24-48 hours left.

            She had 45 minutes.

            We all gathered around her bed and prayed her Home to Heaven, and I was so glad Ryan was there with her. It had been his biggest prayer throughout her illness – that he could be there with her when that moment came. And he was.

            I’m grateful for the kindnesses of the Lord that allowed us to be there with her that night, but I’m also glad for the life she lived and the impact she had on Ryan.

            When I look at his life, his character, his personality, I see the intentional molding and shaping of so many people who invested in him throughout the years. But I see a lot of Nita. I see her compassion, her kindness, her love for people and stories and music. I see her empathy, work ethic, and even her smile.

            Nita was proud of all her children and never missed an opportunity to share about them. I know she was always proud of Ryan and who he became. I believe she would be even prouder now of all he’s invested in over the past four years since he sat beside her to hold her hand one last time.

            I am so thankful for the talks they were able to have in her final days. I’m thankful he was able to care for her like he wanted to do, even though I have no idea how he physically did it all for those months. I’m thankful he was there with her when she died, and I’m thankful he has continued to live his life in the ways she raised him to live.

            I’m thankful for her kindness to me and how she made a place for me at the table when I married into the family.

            We miss her and look forward to reuniting with her someday in Heaven!

Saturday Suggestions

 

This week I’m taking the post old school – just some random things I encountered on the internet this week that you might find interesting! No rhyme or reason. Just a bunch of ideas!

ONE.

I have loved finding new spots for our plants in this new house of ours. We currently own five plants (starting with one from Nita's funeral four years ago) and all of them have stayed alive, so I am grateful for that. I’m improving! I still have much I’d love to learn about making plants thrive, so if you’re a crazy plant lady, let me know. Maybe you can teach me! But I ran across these plant markers and they made me laugh!! I think I could use all of these – though hopefully some not as often as others. Super, super cute, though! Here’s to continuing to add plants to the house in tasteful and purposeful ways!

TWO. 

I’ve seen lots of suggestions for fall/winter simmering potpourri recipes, but these options are all about the spring feel! We’ve had just enough warm weather lately to make me crave some spring come-to-life in here. You can pick the scent combination that suits you best and make the whole house smell just like spring! The good kind of spring. Not the fertilizer kind of spring. 😊

THREE. 

Ryan had a kidney stone this week, which was absolutely miserable for him. We think it’s over, but in talking about it with my boss later in the week, she told me she’d known people to have success in speeding up the process by taking hydrangea pills. Hydrangeas? Like the big pretty flower? Yes, indeed! I found this article, which talks about the benefits of hydrangea, and I did find (in health stores and on Etsy) that you can purchase it in capsule form. If you are prone to kidney stones, it might be something to check out! After the pain he had this week, Ryan said it is worth keeping on hand!  

FOUR. 

I don’t know if I’ve said this in this space before, but I love sloppy joes. They are one of my favorite foods, and I always love finding new ways to try them. I haven’t tried this one yet, but I love it because it’s a NOT-so-sloppy joe. It’s all wrapped up in a pizza crust pocket and stays contained. If you have kids (or sloppy eaters), this could be a great solution to the mess! Now if you’ll excuse me…I want to go make some sloppy joes.

FIVE. 

I don’t know that I have posted this exact link before, though I think I’ve posted similar ones. It’s always fun to see what travel bloggers suggest visiting in each state. This list includes a TON of things on our bucket list. A couple of them aren’t really our thing, but most of them are. We have toured West Baden Springs Hotel, which is the Indiana pick. (It’s gorgeous. I’d love to stay there someday.) And Ryan has gone whitewater rafting in West Virginia. (I looked at the photos. Can you even imagine me in a raft on rapids? Oh my.) And we have been to Lake Michigan (the Michigan pick) – though that is the only one of the Great Lakes we’ve ever officially been to. We’ve driven by another one, but we haven’t paid a proper visit. Fun goals!

SIX. 

I saw this post and it brought back such great memories from my childhood! My mom always put together little gifts for me to open along the way. You can mark them to be opened in certain locations or at a specific time, regardless of how far you’ve gone. It’s a really fun way to pass the time and gives your kids (or picky adult travelers – ha!) something to look forward to as they go! I know spring break trips may be coming up for some of you, so I wanted to share the reminder!

The Celebration Continues: 123 Months

 

123 months of marriage. Isn’t that an adorable number? Ryan really has made this whole 123 months as easy as 1-2-3!

            Unfortunately, he wrestled with a kidney stone this week, so we started the monthiversary with the tail end of that adventure – or at least we hope it’s the tail end! I hate seeing him hurt!

            Last month, we were in the throes of packing, dividing-and-conquering, and trying to redo the previous month’s date, which hadn’t been our best. I remember, last month, being so excited to know that this month we’d be at the lake for this occasion. And oh, what a beautiful morning it was to be looking out over the water when the day began!

            I was happy to see Ryan feeling some better from his two days of kidney stone pain, and I sent him off to work so I could finish getting ready for my own work day. He had barely left before I realized that I couldn’t find my phone. I’d had it earlier in the day, clearly, since I took the pretty sunrise picture. But I could not find it anywhere. Since he was already gone, I couldn’t have him call me to help me look for it. I also knew he was likely to call on his way to work, and I wouldn’t be able to answer. I sent a barrage of emails, hoping he would see notifications on his phone eventually to let him know my phone was missing.

            I spent 25 minutes looking for it. I went into every room I’d been in throughout the morning. I checked pockets. I unmade and remade the bed. I looked in the refrigerator, even! Would you like to know where I found it?

            Laundry hamper.

            I’d taken a shower and apparently gathered it up with my jammies and tossed the whole pile into the hamper. (For the record, I had checked there, but I only checked right on top. It had buried itself deeply in the hamper.) I was so grateful I hadn’t dumped everything into the washer!

            I got to work and then received a call from Ryan asking if I’d like to take a lunch break today and join him for lunch – so I did! It was a quick date, but it was fun, and it was SO good to see him happy and smiling again!

            It was so nice outside and is supposed to be pretty rainy today, so I asked if we could go for a walk around the lake. Lexi and I were both stir crazy, and I hated to miss a beautiful evening. So we headed out and look what we discovered along the way! A beautiful bald eagle, high in a treetop!

            We had leftovers for dinner and used our evening to hang the shelves for our coffee mugs! That allowed us to unpack our last big box. It was a joy to put that together…together.

            Ryan, setting up a home with you is one of my favorite things to do. We’ve done it many times. Let’s have this one hold for a while, okay? Happy 123 months! I love you with my whole heart!

On the Bravery of Ducks

 

Monday was a dark and stormy day here on the lake. Less than a week after the torrential downpour that signaled to us the delightful leak in our roof, rain fell heavily again, and angry clouds tumbled across the sky.

            I’m not a lover of storms on my best day, and I remain profoundly grateful to have two pets who don’t care about storms at all. They sleep right through them with barely a glance skyward.

            I, on the other hand, stalked the radar, watching for green to change to yellow and red. I carried the important things to safety in case we had an tornado. I kept the leash on Lexi in case we had to get to shelter quickly. I wondered how in the world I would push the cat and dog into the SAME space for any length of time if it came to that. Fortunately, it did not.

            But my bigger worry that day was the roof. Would the tarp hold? If it flew off, what would I do? If the ceiling started dripping again, what would I do? I peppered Ryan with these questions before he left for work, and he remained calm. If the tarp blew away, I wasn’t to chase it. Just let it go. We would get a new one. If the ceiling leaked, I should resume pot-and-pan duty and not worry about anything else.

            Not worry?? I don’t understand.

            All day, I worked on “not worrying” from my perch at the desk, listening for drips in the bedroom, listening to the wind whip through the tarp on the roof, peering out the window to see if I could see the tarp flapping as it fell.

            Mid-afternoon, I glanced out the window to see four ducks surfing in the lake. Their little bodies rose and fell with waves. Thunder rolled, rain fell, and yet those ducks just rode the waves. They almost seemed to be having a little contest out there. They weren’t worried or rushing for shelter.

            The Lord nudged me to remind me that if the ducks were okay, I would be too. If things were dire, they’d know and scoot to some sort of sheltered spot. But they were having a grand time riding the waves, not worried a bit about anything.

            God used four brave little ducks that afternoon to show me that I, too, can be brave. I was so grateful when Ryan returned home and could oversee things like the roof, but I was also grateful we had made it through the day – as bravely as we could.

Dreams and Goals: March 2023

 

            I’ve been told our entrance into March (here in Indiana) is considered lamb-like, so we might be in trouble for a resurgence of winter, but we’ll hold out hope for the best. Regardless of the weather, I have many goals for the month of March. Here’s hoping they go fairly well!

ONE. Finish unpacking! We’ve been in our new home for a week and a half and have done really well in persevering to unpack. When I allow myself to set aside my perfectionism for a brief moment, I do recognize that we’ve accomplished a great deal in a short time. But neither of us works well in messes, and we are ready to be FULLY settled. We will continue working a little bit each day to unpack, find homes for things, and figure out how we fit, in terms of stuff, in this space.

TWO. Figure out new daily rhythms. I don’t really want to mention this, but I have to: the time changes this month. That, in addition to changes in the layout of our daily work schedules, plus figuring out how our days function best in this home and this season will require some trial and error on our part. Things that have always worked for us may not work here. Do we need to change our getting up/going to bedtimes? Now that we aren’t dividing and conquering every single night, when should we eat dinner? It will take some time to figure it all out, but I know we’ll need to work on it this month!

THREE. Host our first overnight guests! We are excited to already have a “booking” at the Shafferland B&B. It will be fun to play hosts and get to share our beautiful lake views! (This should also help us unpack on time!)

FOUR. Complete my writing projects. The projects I started last month are both officially due this month, so I must complete them. I don’t want to procrastinate, so I’ll need to work diligently throughout the month to get them done ahead of schedule!

FIVE. Finish preparing and present my retreat material! I am so excited that my first event of 2023 is this month! I’m getting to share brand new material with a group I’ve served multiple times. It is always SUCH FUN to spend time with them! I am so excited to present this series of sessions. I have some finishing touches to add, but we’ll get there!

SIX. Get a new roof. This one is somewhat out of my control (okay, entirely out of my control) but it’s still our hope! We are on the waiting list for a new roof, since ours is leaking so badly that it’s coming into the house itself. We’ve been told the company prioritizes people who have active leaks, so we’re hoping ours can be put on this month!

 

            How about you? Any goals for March?

Reflections on Dreams and Goals: February 2023

 

            It is the last day of February already, and we have had a jam-packed month! I wanted to share how I did with the goals I laid out at the beginning of the month.

ONE. Though this move could not be accused of being my best (aka prettiest) packing AT ALL, I did get the packing done, and a week ahead of schedule, at that! It was markedly harder to pack while working than it was to pack while having the free time I’ve enjoyed in previous moves, we got it done. I am thankful for how it all went, even if it wasn’t picture-perfect. I’m also thankful that the Lord provided an abundance of boxes so we could get everything packed for the move! I actually prayed for Him to multiply them in our garage so we would have enough. He must have because we did!

TWO. Another goal I had for this month was to work on a couple of personal writing projects. I didn’t get as much done on either one as I would have liked, but I feel like I have a fairly good excuse for that. I did work on both, though, and I celebrate that!

THREE. I have right around a month left before I speak at my first retreat for 2023. Even while I was preparing to move, I kept reading through my retreat sessions and feel good about where the preparation stands right now! I’ll have some finishing touches to tend to before retreat weekend, but I am thankful for how far along I am in the process right now. I’ve continued to learn from it as I prepare, which has been meaningful to me.

FOUR. You already read about it, but we did have a good and memorable Valentine’s Day! We cooked together at home (which we love doing) and exchanged gifts, too! And then we moved four days later. No biggie, right?

FIVE. We moved! You’ve read about it already, so I won’t belabor this point, but I will once again mention how grateful I am to have this behind us and the lake in front of us. It is as glorious as I thought it might be.

SIX. I completed a second week of online training in grant proposal writing. This one was far more intimidating than the first, because it was all about federal grants, and that is next-level in the world of grant proposals. I am grateful to have this second week of training behind me! (All my trainings were on Pacific time, and I’ve learned that trying to live a regular life in Eastern time while working in Pacific time is not a great fit for me.)

My goals this month were pretty all-consuming of my time, but I did squeeze in a handful of other things along the way!

·       *   I finished our tenth anniversary scrapbook, so now I am just stalking the sale page to see when I can order it.

·       *   I received a message from a friend asking about the potential of going to speak at her church for a women’s event later this year. That reminded me that in all the chaos of our changes in recent months, I’d done a very poor job updating my website with upcoming events and previous pictures. So I took an evening to get that a bit more current, and I feel much better about it now!

·       *    We hosted our friends for one final party in our Bluffton house before we move. I told Ryan later that I was proud of how far I’ve come in my hosting. To invite friends over to a partially packed and mostly undecorated house was a big step for me! To be able to put together a decent party in the middle of a move was a big step for me!

·       *   We went to see some of the kids from our church compete in a Bible quizzing meet. I was SO PROUD of them for how well they did, and it was fun to see them demonstrate all the knowledge of the Bible they have packed into their minds in the past months of study!

·       *   We managed to (mostly) keep up with our workouts and I kept up with reading (at least a little bit) every single day and stayed current with my Bible study, even with all the busyness! I finished reading Devotedly and started on my next book in my reading challenge. And a note about the workouts: we actually didn’t miss a single day until moving day. We decided to take off the week after we moved because we didn’t have any floor space in the house to work out. We got right back on track again starting yesterday.

Love at First Sight

 

            It’s been 26 weeks since we first stepped into this lake home of ours. It surprised even me when I counted that out just now. It’s come a long way in 26 weeks, and most of that is in great thanks to Ryan, who sacrificed hundreds of hours and an enormous amount of blood, sweat, and tears to transform it into the lovely place it is now.

            I am itching to show you proper transformation pictures, but we’re still working to finish unpacking, and we haven’t hung anything on the walls just yet. So it’s not ready for its “after” pictures today, because it's not looking as spiffy as it will in just a little bit. But I thought I might show you what we saw when we first walked through the house!

            We shake our heads and smile when we think about it now, because we remember melting into puddles of goo when we first saw the space. And then we changed just about everything and wondered why we were so smitten with what we saw!

            Enjoy the befores...and I would love to know any guesses you have about what we changed!

            This room has a whole long story behind it, but it ended up becoming our dining room! 

I hardly recognize this bathroom now! 

A bedroom!!

And another!

A kitchen with a gorgeous desk in the corner:

We saw a beautiful living room in this:

And ohhhhh...the transformation that has taken place here!

    

            Could you have done it? Could you have had a vision for this place? Can you guess anything we've done? I'm so very excited to put the finishing touches on it so I can show you how it has blossomed into a cozy home!

    

            By the way...this is what sealed it for us. Cosmetic changes take labor, but they're much more fixable than a view. This view was worth it all.

Sunday Sentiments: Gratitude Even in Grieving

 

I told you last Sunday that I would spend part of my afternoon watching a livestream of a funeral for the infant son of some friends of ours. It was during that funeral that Ryan told me he had just received a phone call that his cousin’s baby boy was also stillborn that very day. She was just a couple of weeks from her due date. How is it possible to learn about one baby boy’s death in the middle of a funeral for another one?

            We’ve been praying for Ryan’s cousins and the whole extended family all week long, and yesterday we drove to Indianapolis for the funeral.

            I sat on a couch to the side of the full room, listening to the minister’s words, but not really paying attention. My focus was on the tiny baby at the front of the room.

            I rested my chin in my hands and stared at the little blue cap over his head. I thought about the life he didn’t live in the way his family dreamed he would, and I thought about the life he’s living in Heaven instead.

            If you’ve been reading here long, you know this subject is tender to my heart since it touched our family 35 years ago this year. (How is it possible that it has been that long?) I remembered another funeral in another place, where another tiny baby stretched in the littlest casket, and I cried until I couldn’t breathe.

            Answers don’t exist for hurt like this. There are only questions and longings. I stood before a grieving family yesterday and told them I knew full well I couldn’t say anything of worth, because it all falls flat in light of grief.

            But even in the grief, my heart was grateful. Boaz was here – even for a brief moment. His life and story matter, just as my nephew’s life and story matter. I’m grateful I was able to see his face and sit with his parents in their goodbye.

            Our hearts are heavy, yet hopeful. Grateful for the hope of Heaven.  

Saturday Suggestions

 

Today was supposed to be our moving day. How grateful I am that we moved last week instead and are one week further into settling than we knew we would be!

It has been a wild week of unpacking, getting rid of things that no longer fit our life, figuring out how to best place everything, and asking over and over, “Have you seen….?”

So while we continue to navigate the piles over here, I invite you to take a look at some of these fun things I found!

ONE.

Last Sunday I wrote about remembering those we loved who have passed away. We’ve lost another from our family this week. He was just a baby, and it is heartbreaking - as all losses are. We all remember our loved ones in different ways, and I’m always looking for meaningful opportunities to actively remember those I love. I found some great ideas in this article. (I didn’t love ALL of them, but the majority were great, I thought.) If you have said goodbye to a loved one and want to remember his or her life, maybe you’ll find an idea here!

TWO. 

Perhaps I’ve shared this link before, but since I wrote about our travel dreams this week, I thought I’d share it today! This is my inspirationfor the trips I’d love for us to take someday. It’s a 3-to-4-year plan for us. Oh what fun things we can see along the way! (If you had to pick just one of these routes, what would you pick? I haven’t been able to narrow it down to ONE.)

THREE. 

When Ryan and I found our lake home, we didn’t talk about it too much for quite a while. We found that if we tried, people seemed stuck on the fact that we were moving again so quickly. But one day I dared to share our news with one of our former teachers. She said, “Oh, I think it’s wonderful! How many people would have driven by and said, ‘Maybe someday?’ and you chose to make it happen now!” I loved her perspective and permission. While Ryan and I desperately want to make sure the dreams we chase align with what God wants us to do with our lives, we also believe that too many of us miss out on good things in life because we are afraid to dream with God. The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson is a book I read years ago that helped me learn how to pray specifically over my dreams. The book isn’t new, but I appreciated its message!

FOUR. 

I do wish I would have found this article before we moved! We did use a number of these tips and hacks, but there are several more I absolutely would have used if I’d known them. Shrink wrap for the win on this move. It saved us SO MUCH TIME and SO MANY BOXES!

FIVE. 

I told you earlier this week that both of us are weeding out clothes so we can fit into the reach-in closet we now share. I know sometimes it can be hard to know what to get rid of when you’re trying to downsize your wardrobe. Here’s a guide if you need some ideas! I also wanted to weed out enough that I’d have some room left to add things in later. I want to get a few things I don’t own now!

SIX. 

Learning to be creative with small amounts of space has been a fun classroom for me over the past couple of years. I mentioned yesterday that I learn a lot from the ApartmentTherapy website, and here is an example of a home tour that offers a lot of joy and creativity with a fairly small footprint! (Our house isn't even close to this small, but I still love what they did with the space!

Have a great Saturday, friends!

Celebrating Purposeful Spaces

 

            When we lived at WillowBridge, our support couple had a very small apartment within the building so they could have a home-away-from-home when they covered for our days off. While I don’t know the square footage of the apartment, it was a true tiny home. It had a large-ish living space, a full bath, and one bedroom with a closet that you could technically walk in, but it wasn’t a true “walk-in” closet.

            The apartment was cute as a button but did, admittedly, present challenges to both couples we worked with in our time there. It was hard to figure out how to make such a small space truly feel like home.

            That was when I first found and became fascinated by the Apartment Therapy website. It has tons of ideas for making really small spaces function on the regular. (Most apartments featured on the site are in large cities and can sometimes be as small as 200-300 square feet. It regularly blew my mind and challenged me to learn the art of making every single space work as hard as it can to serve a purpose.

            I’ve also learned that living in regular-to-larger spaces hampers the ability to succeed at this endeavor. If you don’t have to make a space work hard, you probably won’t. But when working with a smaller space, creative juices start to flow – sometimes out of sheer desperation.

            When we moved here to the lake, I knew our bedroom would be a big challenge. It’s not super tiny, but it’s one of the smaller rooms we’ve lived in. And the part that would create the biggest challenge? Storing our clothes.

            We left a decent-sized walk-in closet for a shared reach-in closet. In order to help our efforts, we did purchase a storage system that gave us a little more to work with than a single shelf and long pole – which is what it had when we arrived.

            We do have a dresser that used to belong to my grandma, and we do keep it on our room. But it was crafted before the days of tracks on drawers, so opening and closing those drawers is a muscle-wielding, screech-producing experience that no one wants to do early in the morning or late at night. We decided to continue using those drawers to store things we don’t need to access all that often.

            Our bed has shelf storage in the headboard and drawers in the footboard. And our side tables have 8 small baskets each that have served both of us primarily as endless junk drawers for the years we’ve owned them.

            My goal when we came here was to pare down the amount of clothing I own, and make all of it fit with room to spare.

            It was a tall order, but I was determined!

            I worked for two evenings to weed out clothing I never wear (or shouldn’t wear) and nearly cried with delight when I saw how much space was left for Ryan’s clothing. And the thing that made me the happiest was knowing that every single one of those bedside table drawers now hold something useful. Not one junk drawer remains.

            I learned this week – for the first time – that there is intense joy to be found in owning less and creating purpose in the spaces you have. I think it might become one of the biggest lessons I learn from this different-sized space. I’m eager to see how it goes as we settle our other spaces. What things feel sweeter because they’re lighter and more purposeful?

            I used to tell my dad before he preached his sermons, “Remember. Less is more.” Now I’m learning it for myself.

Stories We'll Laugh About Someday...

 

There are two things I’m profoundly grateful for when it storms.

The first is that somehow, in the grand scheme of random pet choices, we landed two pets who are completely unimpressed by storms. They don’t cry. They don’t whine. They don’t whimper. They seem a bit bored by them, truthfully.

            The second is that both of them use litter boxes, so rainy days don’t mean muddy paws and wet fur smells.

            We awakened to Matlock-like storms yesterday (if you watch the show, you get it), and I stretched out in bed thinking how grateful I was about those two things.

            Therein ended my feelings of goodwill toward yesterday.

            Ryan and I got up and ready – and I had to wear a workout shirt for my day of real work, because we still don’t have the clothing thing figured out yet, and a workout shirt was what I could find.

            “Figuring out the clothing thing” means that we both have to sort through our existing wardrobes and pare down significantly. In comparison to others on the planet, I really don’t feel like we have a lot of clothes, but we have more to put in the closet than the closet space can hold. We are going from a normal-sized walk-in closet to a shared reach-in closet. Things will have to go.

            A couple of nights ago, I went through the hanging clothes and cut out almost half of what I own. I probably should go through it one more time – and I have other stacks to purge as well. Once we do that, we can stock the closet and the drawers, and we hope everything will be much easier to navigate.

            After we were ready for the day, a gentleman came to do an installation for us. Moving always means installing new things, so we’re in the week of such visitors gracing our home. He talked to us for a long time, and during a lull, Ryan walked into our bedroom.

            He called out to me, “Can you bring me some pots?”

            WHAT?!

            Turns out all that rain brought about a leak in the roof. You know…the roof the inspector said was in great shape?

            We actually knew it wasn’t – but not until after we purchased the house. We were over here working one day last fall during a terrible windstorm. We found shingles flying off, and when Ryan went up to see what he could do, he said the roof was definitely in need of a replacement. Soon…but we didn’t know it would be this soon.

            I tried and failed to have kind thoughts toward the inspector as all my cooking pots migrated to the bedroom.

            Ryan went to the garage to get our tarp to place it over the offending area, but we’ve owned it so long and used it so much, it’s full of holes – like the roof, I guess.

            He went to the hardware store and found a new, affordable tarp, so now we’re “those people” on the lake. The ones with bricks holding down a tarp. Hello there, new neighbors!!

            It was during a conversation between the installation man and Ryan (who was strategically placing the pots) that I heard our zip code mentioned and realized immediately that the 200-some address update announcements I sent out yesterday most definitely had the wrong zip code. When you have to learn four zip codes in as many years, you’re bound to mess one up. What a time I picked to do so!

            So there, I sat, huddled in the corner to work, watching rain fall into the lake, listening to fans whir in the bedroom, and thinking about zip codes.

            But for all the madness that fell into one solid hour of a day, we did have some blessings.

·     *   Ryan was home to contend with the leak. (As if I have a clue about leaking roofs!)

·     *  The hardware store had a tarp in our price range and in stock.

·     *  We found the leak before it ruined anything we owned.

·     *  It didn’t leak during any of the four months we were not living here to find it in time.

·     *  I didn’t print and mail 200-some incorrect address updates.

·     *  Our pets don’t hate storms.

And thus, we have come full-circle.