Welcome Back! Wow, it’s been a long time. With so much going on in our lives, we took a hiatus from the clean out/remodel project and – sorry – the blog. It was a busy summer. We just wanted to fill you in on what’s been happening around here and to let you know that we are BACK TO WORK!

When we last met, we took you on a stroll down memory lane to remember events from the past year. We were just beginning to get our old acreage ready to sell. After two weeks on the market, it sold! The buyers are a lovely family who had been on the lookout for an acreage and ours was in the perfect location for them. So after the stress of selling our house subsided, then we had to start packing and looking for a rental in Eldora. Let me tell you…finding a place to rent in a small Iowa town in a short amount of time is NOT easy. Thankfully the Lord provides and we did find one! With two bathrooms, at that!  And two houses away from Grandpa and Grandma!

Forty days later we were moving! We made the decision to move everything ourselves except for the furniture. Um, bad idea. I mean, yes, it saved us some money, but we’re not sure if the added stress was worth it.

Anyways, with the help of Chris’ parents and uncle, we were able to get everything out of the house, the garage, the shop, the barn, the hog barn, and the corn crib.

We closed on a Friday. Chris took off that entire week.

The movers came on Tuesday, so that left 4 days for us to get everything else out. 

To add to the stress, Liz ran the VBS program at our church that she mistakenly scheduled for that same week. The days were long. We both worked all day moving. Then, when evening came, Liz went to VBS and Chris continued moving. I’d say he worked his butt off moving! He worked so hard that he made himself sick! (More on that later)

So on Thursday of that week, at VBS, Miles was injured in a chest-bumping incident at game time. It resulted in 2 tooth gashes – from another child – between his nose and lip.

Yes, it is as crazy as it sounds. So we headed to the emergency room. Being that it was a human bite injury, they couldn’t stitch it up so they cleaned it up and sent us home with antibiotics. Ok, crisis averted! (Although Miles will likely have an odd looking mustache when he’s older.)

We now had less than 24 hours to get the last of our belongings out of our house. We worked diligently that day and at 4:05 pm we pulled out with the last load. (They signed paperwork at 4. Whew!) 

We’d made it! Almost. On Saturday, Chris wasn’t feeling well. We checked his temp and he had a fever. Each day things got progressively worse. His hips were hurting, then his lower back, then his upper back, and then his neck and head. That’s when the headaches came. It was time to see the doctor. He ruled out lots of things. With multiple blood tests, one guess was that it was possibly viral meningitis.  The only way to find out definitively was to do a spinal tap. No thank you!  He was not getting any worse, but not necessarily better either. If things did get worse, he would do the spinal tap. After a little more than a week things began to improve. He was getting back to himself a bit but still dealt with headaches and would get worn out very easily for another couple weeks after. Thankfully he was able to return to work but now instead of the plan of just taking one week off to move, he had now been off for a full two weeks.  Let’s just say, it was no vacation. 

Although the unpacking and organizing took longer than I would have liked, we are pretty much settled in our rental. There are still lots of boxes in the basement but they’ll probably stay there unless there’s a thing or two we need out of them.

So now we’re moved. We’re settled. We’re finally ready to get back to work! We’re so sorry about our absence from the blog. We look forward to posting about the fun things we’re planning for fall.

Till next time…