Currently . . . January 4, 2023

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At the beginning of each month I've been participating in a "Currently" link-up hosted at Overflowing With Thankfulness. Our hostess Jennifer posts a set of action verb prompts for the month and writers respond. So, without further ado, here are this month's prompts and what's happening currently . . .

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Loving - the gift of time spent with family and friends over the past couple weeks. Yes, that's a standard answer, but it was true. I've felt mostly isolated and lonely adjusting to a new home and not having any connections as the holidays approached, so being able to have some extra days to spend with the family in Maryland and to visit with friends was very meaningful to me.

Organizing - all the stuff we piled into the spare room after the holidays! That's my job starting today, I guess, and when I finish that I still have other areas of our townhouse to organize. When we moved in just over a month ago, we designated this the "office" and spare bedroom, but other than the desk (which is STILL in two pieces) and computer, it remained a catch-all as we figured out the master bedroom and the downstairs. Right before the Christmas break, we got the pull-out sofa. We drove home to Maryland for Christmas, and my husband drove back to Ohio with a full carload of more boxes and things for the townhouse. He put most of them into the spare room until I got home (yesterday) so now begins the next round of unpacking and organizing!

Resolving - to stay on top of all those organizational tasks and to run a tighter ship here. And generally resolving to make the best of my new life here and look for all the positives and blessings.

I don't do New Year's Resolutions - do you? I think most people tend to do something more general, like a Word For The Year (which I've done in the past, and I'm not sure whether I'll do it this year), or are more intentional about having measurable goals. For the last couple of years, I've made a sort of Bucket List for the year, and put many of those things into my Remember The Milk checklist. (I still use the older version on the desktop, but there's an app as well) That way I can set things to repeat at regular intervals and can keep track of what I'm actually checking off my list. So for example, if my Bucket List includes writing notes or letters to family and friends, I can set that task to repeat every Sunday, and check it off when I do it. It's a handy tool for my Bucket List items, and for all the tasks that I want to keep on my household and personal to-do lists, like remembering to schedule appointments, set out the recycling, pay bills, or even participate in link-up parties like this one! 

Eating - I don't know yet! I don't even know what I'm doing for dinner tonight, to be honest. However, I brought back a few more recipe books and some pantry items, and will be working on my meal plan later today so I can go get some groceries tonight. It's different cooking for just two of us. I'd love to do more baking, but then it would also be just the two of us eating the bread and cookies and I feel like that might be counter-productive to our goal of getting in better shape!

Anticipating - I'm looking forward to seeing our oldest son and his family soon! They are the ones that live near us here in Ohio, but we haven't seen them since before Christmas. They went to visit his wife's family over the holiday, while we went to be with the rest of our kids in Maryland, and we've all been dealing with some illness, so hopefully by this weekend we will all be healthy enough to get together.

I'm also looking forward to having our first guests here in Ohio. Plans are shaping up for a a visit from friends in late February. Of course I am hoping that I'll soon have a date on the calendar for our next visit to Maryland.

I'm also anticipating all the good that will happen in 2023. I'm not naive enough to think there won't be disappointments, challenges, or heartaches, but I choose to focus on the good things God is doing. 

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ - to the glory and praise of God.

~Philippians 1:9-11~

Anticipating blessings in 2023!

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This post will be linked at this month's "Currently" link-up hosted by Overflowing With Thankfulness. Shout out to Anne in Residence who originated the link-up and is taking a break from hosting for now.

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November Photo Album

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Just popping in to share some photos from the very busy month of November!

The weather was great for most of the month, which turned out to be pretty helpful along the way.

At the very end of October, my husband accepted a job offer in Ohio, so the entire month of November has revolved around making the move happen. Or so it seemed. That meant a lot of farewells and last times doing things too.

We voted in Maryland for the last time, so now it's up to our kids that still live there.

On my last day at co-op, my Lit class students did news story presentations. So fun!

And this was after the surprise farewell lunch they did for me. 💗

A couple of my Old Guard homeschool mom friends surprise me by attending!

I loved the gift basket the co-op families gave me - a lot of restaurant gift cards, snacks, and other fun things; and with a definite Maryland theme.

I wish we had some photos taken on the Saturday even our family did our "Farewell Tour" Bonus Tracks concert at church. I've even sort of wished we'd had the concert on video, but I probably would not have liked how the recording sounded anyway, because that always seems to be the way when I hear any recording of myself! We thought we did a great job of the concert and we were so glad to have a lot of our friends show up. On Sunday morning, hubby and I left to spend about a week and a half in Ohio living at a hotel while he started the job and we looked for housing.

We decided the hotel room needed a little holiday cheer.

One amazing and wonderful thing about moving here is that we are close to our oldest son and his family! So on that initial trip we were able to get together with them a few times, and that meant spending time with our granddaughter.

We got a little tired of eating out, but we didn't have much choice.

One night we treated ourselves by attending a hockey game in Columbus, which was a lot of fun, even though our team (the visitors) lost the game.

We went back to Maryland for Thanksgiving weekend, and made sure to get as much cuddle time as possible with our baby granddaughter. She's growing so quickly and is just the sweetest thing!

We had a great time with our family on Thursday and Friday, and spent Saturday in a marathon of packing and loading our moving truck. On Sunday we went to church, and afterwards had some family pictures done by our dear friend.

Photo Credit: BK

Photo Credit: BK

Photo Credit: BK

After a quick lunch, we loaded the last couple of things onto the truck, and headed to our new townhouse in Ohio. Spencer came along to help, so we were a three car caravan driving out. When we arrived, our Columbus son Harrison came over to help unload the truck, so it went pretty quickly. The goal was just to get everything inside so we could all get some sleep! While the guys were putting the bed together, I addressed the priority for the morning by setting up a temporary coffee bar!

So the last couple days have been spent trying to figure out where things go in the townhome, and continually adding to the shopping list of all the pantry and household items we need to acquire. But as long as I'm busy, I can avoid being depressed and missing my Maryland kids too much. Who am I kidding - I miss them terribly! But keeping busy with the unpacking efforts keeps me from spending my time crying and feeling sorry for myself. 

Looking a little less chaotic every day, and it's only about three weeks until we go see our people for Christmas!

This post will be linked at Pictorial Tuesday, hosted by Peabea Scribbles.

Pictorial Tuesday

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Share Four Somethings - November 2022

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I wondered when I would squeeze in some time to share Something Loved, Something Gleaned, Something Braved/Saved and Something Achieved for the month. It has been a whirlwind, especially this final weekend of November when we enjoyed a family Thanksgiving and packed up to move. Let's see what I can sum up here . . .

Something Loved

The love shown to us by our family, our friends, and our church when we started sharing the news that we'd decided to accept a job offer that meant a move was so incredible. It made it even harder to say good-bye, but all the prayers and good wishes also encouraged us. 

Our kids adjusted plans and helped us with packing and moving, and they will also be living all together in our house for now. Landon and Meaghan want to eventually buy the house from us, but for the foreseeable future, they are moving back in and excited that they will be together with Spencer and Kennady again. Our oldest son and his family live in Ohio, about twenty minutes away from our new place, and they were excited to have us close by. We're happy to be able to spend time with them more often. Spencer took time off work to come out and help us unload the moving truck. I can hardly wait to go visit the Maryland family for Christmas!

After I announced the upcoming move to my co-op people, I was able to find tutors to take over my classes, and then the Board, tutors, parents, and students surprised me with a farewell lunch and generous gift basket on my last day. 

We'd already planned a Bonus Tracks concert at church, and it turned out to be the night before my husband and I left for him to start the new job. So we went ahead and did the concert as a 'Farewell Tour' and were delighted to have so many friends show up. Our church family also blessed us with a generous gift on our last Sunday. 

Something Gleaned

Earlier this year, my friend Jerralea wrote a series on her blog about living A Rich And Satisfying Life. You can see the recap post she wrote after completing the series with some highlights HERE. Many of these posts resonated with me, but here are a couple that have been really encouraging and helpful to me during this time of upheaval, purging belongings, and moving:

Keeping Your Focus In The Midst of Ease:

We tend to take our blessings for granted when things are going well, don't we? It gets easy to be complacent and not be intentional about living our best life when we are already living a pretty good life. This post talked about that!

By all means, let's enjoy the life God gave us, remembering all the while this is just the prelude to a heavenly adventure surpassing anything the world has to offer.

A Rich And Satisfying Life After Devastation:

When everything falls apart, or goes a really different direction than I'd planned or anticipated (yeah, happened to us twice this year), I wonder how it's ever going to be good again. 

However, this series is about clearing out the clutter both physically and mentally that keeps us from having a rich and satisfying life. I can say the lessons learned from devastation has helped us see the abundant life we already have and motivates us to reclaim it and make it even better.

A Whole Raft of Clutter Does Not Enrich Your Life: 

This one. Whoa. I've known this in my head, but over the past few weeks I've had to actually address the raft of clutter and it was no fun.

Clearing out clutter is one of the most liberating, yet difficult, chores of all.

Preach, sister!

Nesting To Prepare For A Rich and Satisfying Life: 

I was working on this new kind of nesting already - empty nesting - but now that we are building a new nest, I'm taking a hard look at what stuff I need here and what my goals are.

My goal is to simplify my home to make room for more in my schedule: my writing, studying, dreaming, and more visiting with my people. I do not want housework to get in the way . . . I don't want to give the impression my nest is not important to me. Just the opposite; my home is my haven and my favorite place to be . . . I do like my sentimental items. I just feel less stuff in the home will be calming and comforting and easy to organize.

Something Braved or Something Saved

Okay, I braved a lot of good-byes and a big move, but that's what this whole post is about, it seems. So here's something interesting I saved - the Google Doodle honoring Marie Tharp. Here's a screenshot - click on it to find out more!

And this was just funny so I couldn't resist:

Something Achieved

At risk of repeating myself, I feel like it was quite an achievement for me to navigate this move and new beginning. I've had to power through fear and anxiety and just feeling overwhelmed, as well as the frustration of house-hunting and keeping track of all the bits of information going in all directions while tackling a to-do list that just seems to get longer every time I check something off it!

One of the first things I did was set up a temporary coffee bar:

As of yesterday morning the living and dining areas looked like this:

As of this morning, the spare room/office had reached this point:

We'll get there! I'm really anxious to achieve my goal of getting some new furniture, but first I have to get the stuff we have organized.

Right this moment, I need to go achieve something else - making dinner with the basic pantry and grocery supplies that I have on hand; and then after dinner I'll get back to the tasks of putting things in some kind of order here. 

This post will be linked at Share Four Somethings hosted by HeatherGerwing.com

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