Life Update/A New Season Pt 1
I know it’s been forever since I’ve done an actual blog post (other than our Gratitude posts)…. life has been so crazy the past few years… for a long time I kept thinking, “Life will slow down after such & such (like the girls’ weddings in 2023, and then after we move, or after so & so graduates)”… but I finally had to realize/accept that we are just in a LONG season of BUSY. Changing my mindset helped me (some)… but I definitely still struggle with the busyness… and now we’ve entered a pretty insane BUSY season…. more on that in a bit…
A brief update since I haven’t posted in years… a little over 3 years ago, we visited Iowa & knew (God made it abundantly clear, but that’s another post) that it was where we wanted/needed to be (we had been looking for a while & once my MIL passed, we didn’t have much keeping us in IL… although we miss a lot of dear friends!!! Thankfully we’re not TOO far!! And we love visitors!! ☺️) It took us about 9 months to find a place to live, move us all, sell our IL place, etc… It has been a wonderful decision – we are SO blessed with our church family & love the area.
When we moved to Iowa, we bought a church (yes, we lived in a church for 2.5 years!! It was a unique season!! Lots of stories to tell about that!! We LOVED the space – plenty of space to entertain, which we appreciated!) This was always meant to be a season – temporary while we looked for land as we’ve been hoping to build a forever home that fits our specific needs/desires (we don’t need large… just larger than usual open communal living spaces for our ever growing family – while we are no longer having more children… we are still growing as we have added 2 son in laws & 2 granddaughters, with a grandson on the way… and expect more as our children grow up, marry & have children). 🤩
Last December, we bought 8 acres, 45 minutes away from the church we were living in…. the new house is about the same distance from the church we’re a part of, our wonderful Doctor’s offices, etc… (just in a different direction…example, we used to live 23 min SW of our church…we now live 20 min NE of it).
In June, we moved (Mike & Lexa moved sooner, so that Mike could build an apt for them to live in while we build our house… the property has several outbuildings, one of which is a nice heated outbuilding, so Mike built a nice little space for their family to live in & a loft above it for storage) and while we did have a contract to sell our church, unfortunately it fell through 3 days before we were set to close… so we would appreciate prayers for the church to sell!! It has been a lot of added stress to have to keep it up & occupied (Grant has mainly been living there, with Logan also splitting his time between the 2 properties & I have gone for an overnight here & there and vice versa… but we miss being all together as a family!!!)
We never seem to do things small – so in addition to moving 11 people for the 2nd time in 2.5 years, we also made a huge change… for over 20 years, we have homeschooled… and with all the things we’ve been juggling the past many years (moving, health issues, more health issues, large family life, helping to care for loved ones & losing loved ones, etc), we struggled to make schooling a priority (partly it’s just hard to sit down & focus on what you’re supposed to be working on when there are so many people around doing other things that seem so much more fun than the book work or computer school you’re supposed to be doing… which, I know, can & does help you learn a lot of different things, but we have some children that don’t learn well in that environment & needed more help than I was able to give), SO… for the first time ever – our kids are going to school!
We chose to enroll them in a local Christian school in the town our church (the one we are members at) is… it’s about 22-25 minutes away, which didn’t seem like a huge deal initially… but when you’re driving it 2-4 times a day… it has been a little more than we expected!! More in Part 2 (including pictures).
Teaser until I can take more pictures: This is a picture from our back deck… I was making a bunch of waffles & enjoying a breezy day. 🙂 We do really love being in the country again!!! While there were things we LOVED about living in town (a grocery store a mile away!!!), it’s a blessing to have wide open spaces & flowers & beauty…
