Today is a beautiful sunny day with just a few puffy clouds in the sky. Normally sapphire blue Lake Superior is a shocking muddy brown right now, because our area had a record-breaking storm the night before last, and our dozens of rivers overflowed their banks and poured into our Great Lake, bringing uprooted trees, debris and tons of mud.

Here’s an amazing aerial photo of the lift bridge in our harbor, and the huge lake beyond, taken by my good friend Bob King for our local News Tribune.

Parts of our city are underwater, and I feel soooo sorry for people whose homes have flooded. Our mayor has declared a state of emergency, and it will take months to do the repairs; streets were lifted up and carried away, huge sinkholes opened up and swallowed cars, entire shopping centers were flooded. 

This next photo by MinnPics is of a street less than a mile from our home.

We had a few rivulets in our basement and a drip or twelve from the ceiling in our entry way, but if you could have seen the sheer volume of water that just poured from the sky, you’d understand why we aren’t upset about our dampness at all.

Our area received between 8-10 inches of rain in 24 hours. I’ve never seen anything like it. Here’s a link with some other photos, if you’re interested.

And this is a photo taken from space by satellite of our huge lake – the mud can be clearly seen.

Thankfully, no lives were lost even though so many homes and businesses have been flooded.

It often takes some kind of shakeup to get us to see more clearly the blessings we take for granted. As I type this I’m sitting in a dark theater with four of my eight grandchildren. They’re watching Madagascar 3 and I’m not. 🙂

We have more than we need. We have hugs and kisses. We have family. We have a relatively dry home. We have food in the cupboards. We have hope. We have Christ. We have hope because we have Christ.

If someday my home is flooded and my street floats away, I may need you all to remind me that blessings still abound. I pray that I’ll always be able to rest in whatever He pours out, even if I think it’s too much rain…

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

G.K. Chesterton

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As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t plan on changing very much about our new house. Been there, done that.

We’re old, and not in the mood.

The two things I think we will change are the office walls (I’m still thinking about red and white toile wallpaper!) and the lime green fireplace.

There’s a neat little fireplace in our dining area, which is in between the living room and the kitchen. This fall, we’ll have a gas insert installed in the fireplace (we’re not in the mood to haul wood either) and I know how much we’ll appreciate a cheery fire during snowy winter mornings, or having a comforting little blaze at dinner time.

We also plan to change out the light fixtures in the kitchen.

Good morning Michael!

I’m not sure what color to paint the brick of the fireplace. The things we have for our kitchen are Delft colored — lots of dark blue and white. Our new kitchen is on the modern side, with cherry cabinets and sleek pulls. I’m not sure the two styles can actually meld, but that’s okay.

I’d like to have your opinion on what to paint the bricks of the fireplace. A friend suggested metallic copper, another friend suggested caramelly light brown. Someone else thinks a neutral taupe would do, and another person suggested darkish periwinkle blue to help us use all our blue stuff in the space.

What do you think? I’d love to know…

There’s a large deck that runs across the front of our new house. The sun rises over one end of the deck, and by noon it blazes on the center portion of the deck. By three o’clock the sunlight is at the other end, near the front door, and by this time there are shadows that make it lovely to sit outside and enjoy the views of Lake Superior, and watch the ore boat traffic. There are plenty of sailboats and fishing boats on the lake too, but the huge thousand footers are the ones that grab our attention the most.

The first weekend in our house, we bought flowers for the three flower boxes on the deck railing. Sara chose varieties that do well with full sun exposure, and they’re all settling in and growing, and making me feel happy about their beautiful little lives.

The red ones are called Lantana, and they attract hummingbirds, and lots of bees so far.

“The earth laughs in flowers,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I love that quote, and definitely agree. It seems so heartening to bring that laughter just a little bit closer to the house.

It seems like all I do lately is post fluffy stuff. Maybe now that we’ve downsized in house and business, my brain has received the signal that it’s finally okay to rest. I have a few things I’d like to post soon, but for today I’ll give you a peek of my new office.

I’m not sure what this room was originally. I wondered if the round mirrors and the polka-dots on the wall were to decorate a nursery. It’s a small room, just right for my office. I had to do away with a piece of my desk in order to fit everything in here, but that’s okay. I have a temporary folding table up to help me with the licensing paperwork I’ve been working on for a while now.

In this new house there’s very little we’re going to change. I’m just not in the mood for much redecorating, and that feels perfectly fine.

I do think, however, that I will change the office someday soon. I am missing the black and white toile from our old bedroom, and think this little office would be the perfect place for some toile wallpaper, only in a different color.

I love blue and white toile, but there’s a lot of blue in this house. The previous owner loved the color (as do I) — I don’t think I’ll add more. I love red. I wonder what a small red toile office would look like?

Like this, perhaps?

I think I like that.

I’ll post a few more photos soon of other rooms in the house.

I’m currently reading Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter and it’s beautiful. I read his Jayber Crow last year and it was an utterly unique and transporting book.

I’d love to hear what you’re up to today, or what book you’re reading….

I’ve got many things I’m turning around in my mind these days, things I’d like to write about, but there are other items on the to-do list that come first. Our foster care re-licensing is coming up next week and I need to finish preparing for that. My dear friend Su came over to help me with that this morning since she’s a foster care provider too; she looked lovingly at me and told me I looked shot, and I believed her and gratefully received her assistance.

We are 95% unpacked, which means there are only two or three more small boxes to unpack and then we’ll be completely finished. We’ve been in our new home for a week now and we love it. I thought I’d post a couple of (not the greatest quality) photos of Michael’s and my bedroom, which feels like an amazing oasis to us already.

A couple of days ago I was poking along at my Fifty-four Year-Old Woman Pace, trying to put things away in the best places in our bedroom and closet, when Sara came to the rescue. She worked fast and efficiently and by mid-afternoon our room was done. (You can click to enlarge these if you like.)

As with our old bedroom, we have a sitting area where we can have our morning devotions together, read, and take an occasional tea break. We have a view of Lake Superior from these windows, which I never get tired of.

The room is quiet and restful (and yes, embarrassingly huge), and Michael and I have our first king-sized bed in our 31-year marriage. I didn’t think it would make that big of a difference in our sleep, but it has. And Edith and Mildred seem to appreciate the extra room too. 🙂

I will post more photos when I get a chance, and I thank you again for making time in your day to stop by.

(Note, added over a year later: we changed our bedroom around and it now looks like this…)

Have a very blessed and peaceful weekend,

Yesterday a lot was accomplished. There are still pictures to hang and shelves to a large bookcase to find (how can large shelves go missing?), but our new house is starting to look and feel like home.

What my daughters do in one hour is about what I would get done in a day. I have thanked God many times for their help during this move.

Carolyn stopped by again yesterday afternoon to bring by a housewarming gift, created by her husband Jeremy and their youngest child Audrey, age 4. They made shortbread cookies stamped with a B for our last name, and Sara and I both agreed it was the best shortbread we’ve ever eaten. I’m pretty sure they had sugar in them and I ate them anyway.

The letter B is so unique – I asked Carolyn how Jeremy did that and she said, “Oh, he just made his own stamp.” He does things like that. Just makes/welds/sews/forges things on his own when the need arises.

Jeremy told me later that apparently Audrey thought they were going to make shortbread with bees on them, so when she saw the letter B on each cookie, she was disappointed that they weren’t “stripey bees.”

Have you ever received a unique housewarming gift? What was the best or the strangest one you’ve ever gotten?

After what seems like months of packing and unending days of moving, we are in our new house. We don’t know where anything is in our new house, but we are here.  🙂

And I am grateful to the Lord for bringing us here.

Things I Love About Living In Our New House

We have a beautiful view of Lake Superior
Our neighbors are so nice
Our bedroom is already a quiet oasis
Our foster gals love their new bedrooms
We have a much smaller mortgage
There’s a fireplace in the kitchen/dining room area
Every room is bright and cheery
The tub in the master bathroom is so deep one can float while taking a bath
We have central air conditioning
Edith and Mildred have finally settled down

Things I’m Still Having To Adjust To In Our New House

Not being near our old neighbors  🙁
Having half the kitchen cupboard space
A fancy dishwasher that broke after one use
A small fridge and freezer paired with a husband who likes to stock up
Less privacy due to a smaller yard
No woodsy view from our kitchen windows
Hardwood floors
Gas stove and oven instead of electric
One less person with us  🙁
No washer and dryer yet (the new ones brought on Saturday did not fit)

The photo above is part of our bedroom. Boxes, boxes, everywhere! And we’re actually about 2/3 unpacked, I would guess. I thought I had gotten rid of so many things, boxes of books, with many trips to our local Goodwill, but on moving day I could see I hadn’t done enough. I should have had Ember come and supervise everything — she would have helped me pare down a lot more!

See the newer super thick shag carpet? The previous owners had it installed and I’m hoping my vacuum is up to the task. I was told I just need to use the highest setting. Hmmm.

I don’t know what I would have done without my daughters. They’ve helped and carried and put away and organized and blessed us so much!

Well, I have paperwork to do, a dishwasher repairman to call, boxes to break down, dinner to plan, books to shelve and a bathroom cabinet to stock with towels and toiletries.

Some of you sent cards and emails and I can’t tell you how heartening this was to us….thank you.

I’ll come back up for air again soon,

I’m interrupting my blog hiatus to say thank you to two men who have just unloaded a huge burden from Michael’s and my backs.

As we’ve been packing up our house and carrying boxes out to the storage pods in our driveway, getting ready to move 1.1 miles west, there’s been a disquieting thrum in the background of my thoughts.

The garage.

The garage is Michael’s domain, and over the past years as his Parkinson’s has advanced, the garage has been harder for him to keep organized. And any time I considered doing it myself, I started hyperventilating and would just push the thought to the back of my mind. But it would always crowd to the forefront again, and I kept thinking, how in the world am I going to go through the garage and decide what needs moving, what needs donating, and what needs trashing?

Last week, I came to the realization that I could not possibly do it.

So I emailed my two sons-in-law, Chris (left) and Jeremy. I sort of whimpered in print that I needed their help. They put their heads together and set a date where they could both work together, and they came over two days ago and cheerfully began the daunting task.

Here is one example of what they had to deal with:

Chris and Jeremy showed up with smiles and started dividing everything up in groups of what to keep and what had to leave the premises. They loaded the storage pods with the most essential things we will need (who needs eight shovels, six levels and nine hammers?) at the new house. They took truckloads of broken or worn-out things to the dump. They did things I’m not even aware of — I just know it resulted in happy, relieved tears from their mother-in-law.

It’s raining today and I don’t have a picture yet of the finished result, but it’s almost miraculous. The garage looks like a garage we can happily present to the new owners of our home. I will put some more photos up soon.

Today I will attend our two Foster care meetings and continue the work on our packing with the feeling that a huge burden has been lifted from our shoulders.

Thank you, thank you, Chris and Jeremy!

We are moving in fourteen days (are you tired of hearing about this yet?), and I’m trying to stay calm. There is still so much to do, even though I’ve tried to make steady progress each day. Screaming tendonitis in my right elbow tells me I’m doing too much; the cupboards and closets still not packed tell me I’m not doing enough.

So I’m going to take a little blog rest. I will be back when we’re all moved into our new house, and I’ll have pictures and brilliant anecdotes about how the movers carried this chair, and the electrician hooked up this wire, and how the Schnauzers adjusted to the new yard, and how the view of Lake Superior looks from a stone’s throw away, and how Michael and I like sleeping on a new king-sized bed — things you’ll be so very anxious to read about. 🙂

Thank you again for stopping by my little blog, dear friends and family.

Blessings,