The majority of my blog has been about my grief journey after losing my son Oliver unexpectedly 6 1/2 years ago at the age of 10. I wrote about the lessons God had taught me along the way, and as God continues to teach me and heal me, I try to continue to share. This work is important to me because writing out my thoughts and feelings has helped me process them and find contentment and because I long to share the hope that I have received with others who are hurting.
I have also shared a little about homeschooling and some general life updates. The life updates are about to pick up because my family and I are about to go through some big changes! If the Lord wills, this summer we are going to be moving to the home we purchased in the UP two years ago, where my husband and I hope to settle long-term. This move is something we have been hoping, praying, and planning for our entire marriage. It is hard to believe that it is finally going to come to pass. And so while we are trying to stay focused on finishing our time at our current location well, our thoughts have also turned towards getting ready for our move. Seeing I have this little place on the internet, I figured I might as well document this transition.
Here's what we have been up to in January to get ready:
1. We spent two weeks around Christmas and New Year's at our house in the UP. We closed it back up for the reminder of the winter for what will hopefully be the last time.
2. Typically one of the first things we do to get ready for a move is start eating down all the food in our freezer. We don't have to do that this time because we are only moving a one day drive from our current location and have an upright freezer waiting for us at our new house.
3. I packed up our Christmas stuff in the first boxes of our move! I also got rid of some Christmas things we don't want at our new place and started going through decor pieces, curtains, and similar things, trying to figure out what we will use in our new house and what we have picked up along the way that we don't need anymore. It will be nice not to have a box full of curtains that don't work at our current place that we are hanging onto just in case they work in our next location.
4. I made a huge calendar and to do list with all of my daughter's softball stuff and our tentative moving dates on it. More so than any other move, we are going to be in and out of both locations for quite a bit of the summer, rather than having a firm break from one before moving to the next.
5. We started to research and plan for our garden. Last year my husband broke ground, and we planted a few things along with a cover crop, most of which got eaten by deer by the end of the season. This year we are hoping to plant more, with a goal of seeing what grows well, how much we can reasonably care for, what we enjoy caring for, and hopefully get a tiny harvest to get us excited for the years to come.
6. My husband found a snowblower on marketplace for his tractor to help us deal with the lake effect snow that is common at our new location.
Words can't express how excited we are!
