Little Offerings: August 2014

Relationships

This is one of the many things Matt and I were excited to see how they grow with our change

Our relationship is improving, always a good thing learning to grow, love, respect, listen, give grace more and more to each other, attending church together. (this is hard to accomplish with Matt in his role and sick kids, its wonderful what that can do for our souls)

The quality of time with the kids is AMAZING, I feel like most Saturday are dedicated to just hanging out and playing with the kids

More quality time with parents/grandparents

Matt was able to spend a good week with his Dad, it had been a while and also he was able to meet Jacob

The family aspect for relationships is flourishing and can’t wait to see how God will continue to use this transition to grow the relationships

With some major events in our friends lives and some family it has really rained me back in to look at friendships and where and how I can be more relational with friends and family..that’s what this life is all about. If my life were to end today I would not want to regret any relationships not growing, with that being said I feel like there is some major resistance that I get when I try to schedule relationship growing things in, shellfish tendency’s get in the way, road blocks come up, kids get sick, schedules book up fast. I want to prevail through these trials that may seem simple but can really deter me from continuing pursing relationships.

Moving

We have been living at Matt’s Mom’s and Step dad’s place going on 10 weeks…how has it already been 2 months? How is it that summer is pretty much over? So many activities and friends to see yet and time is slipping by! Its been a whirl wind two months…Matt has been traveling a lot for district conference, time with his dad and staff retreat. Then we were overjoyed to have Matt’s dad able to stick around for about a week to hang out with us, the kids loved spending time with Papa Steve.

I love having less space. We have to move our storage unit (current one is in Vogla, we did not expect our house to sell as fast as it did and needed to start getting items out fast). I am not looking forward to seeing what is all on there, having the unit there has been good because now we can go back into it and see what we really don’t need, figure out what we really want to keep and donate/sell the rest of the stuff and be free from that weight of stuff. There is no need for the amount of stuff we have, plus if we don’t toss it now we will just have to keep moving it, we want to have a ‘light foot print’

The dogs have adjusted well, there is almost 4 acres of land and I Aussie has trimmed up some from being able to run a lot more. Mable of course loves the space and is always exploring outside of her boundaries, I just don’t have the wonderful neighbors to send her back home any more. Aussie has found his new favorite spot to hang out…in Papa Mike’s lap or Grandma Sharon’s warm spot on the couch, he is slowly starting to lay on our bed again more and more, before that was his comfort spot.

We miss our neighborhood. We miss our friends there. We miss the families in the same stage of life helping with dogs, catching frogs, kids, the open back yard, quick convos yelling across the yard. The neighbors at the end always going out of their way to wave. That green van that ALWAYS drove past. The grouchy old man. People stopping by on their walks/bike rides. The understanding of other things going on, but yet having powerful conversations in short amounts of time. Morgan asking “Where’s Wynn” or saying “I want to go see Wynn” and then hardly saying a word when we go over there., going out of her way to wave at him as we ride past. Her getting excited to see Eric and Rachel as they walk past. Confidently saying everyone is out side playing, but never going alone. This all ties back to Relationships.

That’s what we miss, the relationships that were created and grew in the 8 years we were there.

“Live like no one else so you can live like no one else”

Paying off our debt is a huge reason why we took this leap of faith. Right now we fine tuning our budget and stacking up some savings (Baby Step 1) so we are ready for when the next murphy will strike!

These are just pictures off my phone I haven’t found the camera cord yet!