Stone

Here is the stone on the front of the house. I cannot find my pictures that have a further away view. Ryan is almost completely done with the siding. We are very glad that he is about ready to move into the inside - it is getting COLD! The holiday was a great time of relaxation and family time. I wish I could have seen my side also but that will be for Christmas!!! So excited to be able to be in Iowa for a whole 11 days!!!!!!! I am glad my brother is graduating nursing school so we can visit even longer.

A few (not so profound) things that I have learned.

I was helping Ryan work around our new house the other day - mostly cleaning up and stuff. Here are a few things that I learned or relearned:

1) it really is fun to set things on fire (it was in the burn pile so it was okay) this said I have vowed to stop making fun of my husband for his love of fire. give me a can of diesel and a lighter and I am ALMOST as bad.
2) if you crouch down by a dirt embankment and your shirt in not tucked in you WILL come home with some dirt in your pants - yes I meant IN.
3) a house is a whole lot bigger when you have to use a shop vac to clean up. this made me very thankful for push vacuums. very.
4) gloves are very essential when you are working with wood. yeah, splitters do hurt.
5) when stepping over a barbwire fence do not lose you balance and if you loose said balance do not reach a hand down to steady yourself - there is only barbed wire to hold on to. and no I was not wearing the gloves described in #4. I know that I have been taught better but somehow I just forgot while in that moment.
6) and last but not least many hands make light work and we are made to work, it makes us feel good when we eat (even if it is Har.dee's - hey we were HUNGRY!!!)and justified in our sleepiness.

Spiritual Insight

We bought recycled concrete for our lane instead of gravel - it is about half the price but you have to pull out some old contruction stuff (metal mesh, pvc pipe parts and in our case a 1/4 of a tattered pair of pants...wonder where the rest is...)

As I was scouring the piles for this refuse a thought came into my mind. It must have been from the Holy Spirit - because I am not this profound on my own. I realized that my life is much like this pile of crushed concrete. God has to sometimes break us up to make us something useful to Him, and just like the concrete I have different purposes at different times in my life. And even after I have been through a little "crushing" or the Refiner's fire if you will, He still has to go back through the pile and pull out all the "junk" that is left over (bad attitude, pride, self-love etc). Even though to most it might seem that the gravel is good to go and ready to be used - one has to go over and over the pile to make sure it is a pure and clean before it can be used for its new purpose. And I would guess that even after months or maybe years we will occasionally find a piece of dangerous debris that needs to be removed to protect our child or car tires from damage. And this to is what God does as we mature. His continual care to clean up our life and attitudes is really an act of care for ourselves and others so we further fit His purpose and don't hurt others along the way.

I love it when God reveals wonder from the mundane.

House Progress

I have yet to put up vacation pictures -- hold tight for those. But here are some pictures of our updated house!! The guys are working hard on it this weekend with the siding. Dad and mom came down and so there has been much progress with the siding with Doug, Ryan and Dad. We have also had great grandparent time, some shopping, went to church, ate a lot and just hung out!!

Catch Up

The picture with the orange sweater is from our 4th anniversary. Bonnie took a few but I by accident deleted the others while on vacation. The house pictures are from about 10 days ago - we now have shingles on the roof and cement in the garage floor and a cement front patio. I cannot find the newest pictures. The other pictures are some vacation pictures. As you can tell Cadence played hard and slept well in AZ. It was so great to see family and friends and just relax. We had a wonderful time catching up with everyone and eating at our favorite places. Cadence slept in until 10:30 AM the morning we got home. CRAZY! The picture from the back of the house doesn't have all the windows cut out yet. The windows go in tomorrow and then my dad and Ryan and his dad will be working on siding this weekend. Anyone want to help??? :) It is going up pretty fast - yesterday we had some concrete guys there, AC guys , roofers, cabinet guy and Ryan was working on some things as well. Well, I am going to see if Cadence will lay down for 2 naps today --- we will see.