Good news

We had an inspection done on the property that is at the top of our list and it came back pretty good. Our realtor was a little nervous about some of the unfinished projects but based on some of the houses we have taken on in the past, this one seems easy. We would have to put up siding and would probably but up "e-log" -(they have an internet site) on the outside and possibly some on the interior as well as we both really like the look of log. I am already planning out decorating schemes - pulled out some Thomas Kinkade farm borders I have had for awhile and also looking at red toiles and burgundy, cream, gold and forest green floral papers. Since this will hopefully we our home for awhile, (more than the 3-4 years of all of our married lives) I plan to have fun and not worry about it having a neutral color scheme for resale. I also want to do some decoupage on the kitchen cabinets (www.durwinrice.com) and on some more furniture (I did several pieces when we lived in NC and had a blast). In order to rest my back a bit yesterday, during quiet time Emma and I sat down and watched a "Sewing with Nancy" on embroidery tips, a "Martha Pullen's Sewing Room" and a "Quilt In A Day" about Pigs in the Blanket quilt blocks. Emma loves these shows and since I only watch about 10 a year it was fun for her to snuggle with Mom and dream about creating. Not much is worth watching on TV but I do enjoy these shows.

Packing up the upstairs bathroom today and cooking for tomorow. Lord willing we will put an offer in on our future home on Monday!

Real Estate and Packing

Lots of real estate issues going on right now. We are having to shop around for mortgage lenders because they all seem to have different standards and rules. We are praying that a gentleman who wants to lease to own our Alabama home follows through at the beginning of next week which will ease some of the financial strain we are under and make banks more willing to work with us, despite our excellent credit rating. The house we hope to buy is being inspected on Friday, we are praying good news comes from that as well.

I have been busy packing and my back is starting to feel the strain. The books inside the house are all packed now, today I move on to quilt and sewing items. Gina is organizing and packing up the workshop with some help from the kids. We are still short of book boxes, hopefully we can pick some more up on Friday.

Weather has turned cooler here - almost like Fall but it is supposed to warm up again, warming up being relative of course to this area, which means 80 degrees (compared to over 100 in Alabama).

We have been told the cooler temperatures are keeping strawberries from maturing this year and tomatoes are struggling. If God blesses us with buying the place we would like, I hope to plant a bunch of things in their big green house to atleast reap some harvest this year.

We will be spending the 4th of July with some local friends and then are back to the moving insanity...:-)

Wisdom of Proverbs

Steve sent me this proverb this morning - Proverbs 29:1 - "He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck will suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy." I sent him a message back asking "which child are you speaking about" since that readily applies to 4 at this moment. One has left the house and decided to live the life of a partying drug addict it appears. One begins the process of counseling/church discipline today for defiance/disrespect issues but his answer instead is to enlist in the military so he doesn't have to obey rules (yes, that is funny to the rest of the world). Another's mantra is "Its too hard" no matter what is asked of him - the world is a place to play. And one more assumes the world should revolve around her and gives us all the daily pleasure of a raging temper tantrum (she is a teenager not a toddler). On a more positive note, a different adult child on her own told us the other day that she would give anything to go back to cooking and gardening and being in the home, even longs to wear skirts again. In light of this, I was able to have a discussion with my children about a couple of things. First, what's in your heart will come out when you are on your own, as is evidenced by our one who very quickly adopted her bio family's legend of intense drug usage and law breaking. Another thing I told them is you have to choose how to live your life and being on your own isnt always as fun as you think it will be. You can choose to follow the path of the culture for self gratification or you can follow the path of Jesus and have a more difficult but ultimately rewarding life.

We attempt to shelter our children from some of the damaging things in our culture and we expect them to follow the "narrow road" with us while they are at home. That means they cannot do everything their contemporaries in society can do but we do try to prepare them for life on their own, knowing they will have to face the temptations of the "never going to grow up" culture we live in - life is about entertaining ourselves it seems. We want them to learn to work hard since hard work is a blessing. We want them to be self sufficient. We want them to love learning. Most of all, we want them to be able to stick to and defend what they believe, even if it disagrees with what we have taught. We have told them that if they choose to follow the life we have chosen or a life in similar fashion, it will be hard, they will be ridiculed and questioned. In the end, at the Judgment seat, I would much rather Jesus say to me, "Well done, thy good and faithful servant" than have the approval of the culture around me and be accepted for "fitting in" - we certainly want to see our children in that same category and so we pray for their hearts and continue plodding along on our daily path of training, even in the midst of some big obstacles... and with that note - a new day begins...:-)

Sunday BBQs

We had a great day of fellowship with the folks from our parish yesterday. Our church has a wide geographical spread of people and so to encourage community we have broken into parishes in order to fellowship and have small group bible studies. One such BBQ was yesterday where the women got together and of course talked about kids, birth stories, marriages, grand kids, home learning, etc... Most everyone else played volleyball, wiffle ball and chatted and ate lots of good food.

We will be hosting everyone in August Lord willing, hopefully we will at least have clean bathrooms and working appliances at that time..:-)

A great way to grown squash...apparently

One of the good things about raising pigs is that no food goes to waste (other than our leftover pork which we do not feed to our pigs). Last year we bought lots of squash from a local farm here and of course, scooped out the seeds and stringy stuff and put it in the pig dish for them to eat. Much of this occurred while the pigs were just starting out in their winter pen. At the beginning of Spring, we took down that pen, moved them to fresh ground and either raked up or out all of the manure.

Yesterday, my 11 year old son came in excitedly, telling me he needed to show me something by the old pig pen. You probably guessed it by now, but there are probably 100+ squash plants of different varieties growing now where that old pig pen was. We are hoping we will be here long enough to reap some of the harvest, but if not, it will be a great experiment to watch it continue over the growing season to see how it does.

Are we home yet??

The farm we looked at yesterday is just what we hoped for. House is set up great for us and also has a huge green house with a planted orchard, including probably a hundred strawberry plants, huge raspberry bushes, grapes, etc... It also has a planted alfalfa field for hay, lots more pasture then we have now, woods for timber harvesting and a generally beautiful setting on top of a small mountain. It also has a chicken house, underground 2 room root cellar, large pantry/keeping room, large insulated, heated workshop - again, everything we wanted in a farm is here. It does have finish work to be done (siding, some walls to finish, etc...) but we had wanted to learn to do some of that work anyway. We have to wait a week or so to put an offer in until what looks to be the purchase to own of our house in AL to be firmed up. God has been testing our faith to see if we will worry and fret or just wait on Him and His timing. Since I want to plan everything out so much this is especially hard for me, but we have seen God work out so many amazing things in this move/potential retirement situation that I should be like Abraham and just know that God will provide.

We still appreciate prayers for Steve's retirement to go through and for a new job to open up. We have some good possibilities and the even better possibility of the job he wants to take being available a year from this Fall.

Today is Ricky's 18th birthday so we will celebrate with him and this milestone in his life.

Have a great Saturday!!

New Farm

We are going to look at yet another farm this morning for the second time. This one is my favorite by far with so much already done it would be easy for us to step in and start our business. The farm now has an organic seed business that is pretty successful but we would focus on raising pastured meats.

I can say that I will be so glad to be moved and done. We thought that was the case when we moved here but God had other plans... hopefully the next house will be the final one, at least for a really long time!!