On to the New Year

Peace and quiet. It's finally come. At least for me.

This week I had almost no appointments, no places to go, no deadlines.  It was quite nice. I spent some time working in front of the fireplace. I caught up on some things.  I've been "nesting" a little and trying to clean up, straighten up and organize.

Tom organized the craft closet. My goodness! It's beautiful. He bought some bins and tubs from Walmart and separated the beads from the paint supplies, the crayons and markers from the play dough, the games from the puzzles, the mittens and hats from...well, everything else.

I suppose a quiet week means that I really did nothing that was particularly interesting to anyone else.  I continue to work on a Newsmax renewal email series. I'm starting work on my HVAC newsletter for spring. I've been uploading old letters at my www.letterstomissionaries.com website. I have not done any thing to my www.teenstyleu.com website-- but I keep meaning to.

I reconnected with a man from Mali, Africa I met at the PLF live event. He has an interesting concept.We are overrun with technological advances, but advances in people-- their brains and skill sets-- are not keeping up. His goal: To bring about that transition in people of all nationalities so they can be more successful and resourceful. I have given suggestions for his project and may actually work on it some.

Monday Tom and I went to see the Hobbit III. I liked it. In preparation we'd watched one and two recently. Tuesday Tom went to help a family finish remodeling their house. He came home white with drywall dust. Thursday Friday he went to Deborah's to finish their bathroom remodel. I think he got it nearly all done. There was a loose tile on the floor he needed to replace, so Deborah will need to grout that when it dries in a few days. But the old window is out, the new window is in, and all the bath surround tile is complete.  Here is a photo of the old bath.

 New tub surround.

 Mirror still needs putting back.

Saturday Tom took the church youth over to a member's house to rake leaves. Then, after he came home, he cut up parts of the tree trunk still sprawled across our front yard from the septic era. Our septic has been working fine. But we still want to get tree and roots away from the leach field.

Tom cut up the trunk in about 4' sections. Then we used the tractor to lift them onto the bed of the pickup and drove them over to the fort the kids had worked on. It sounds a lot easier than it actually was, as we have a cranky tractor. We want to try to make them an upright parameter for the fort.

Today was church. It was really a spiritual feast. I posted my Ahah! moment for the week in the previous post. My goal is to understand the why behind my actions. Why am I praying?  Why am I looking at facebook? Are my actions building the Kingdom of God?

Facebook has some justification. I discovered Adam and Savannah were going to Pocotello Idaho for his "residency" this summer. So I guess it's a way to keep up with family. To keep you up to date as well, Jonathan and Kristy put in an offer on a lovely house in Mt. Vernon, MO. They are moving forward with inspections. While it's scheduled to close mid March, that is lambing season and they will not move until end of May-ish, I think.  Here are two pictures of the house:

Here is the kitchen with the curved countertop and brick floor.  I love the tile behind the stove.