To make good use of the time.

Our day today involved:

1. A steam mop. 

To clean the basement floor. 

2. Two trowels 

To level the basement floor 

3. a canner

To make pickles with some of the 50!!! Cucumbers we picked this week

4 Two trips to target. 

one to return the hammock and a second to return the two chairs we bought that wouldn't fit in the car

5. a large pair of tree trimmers

to tame the backyard jungle.

6. A trip trip to the grocery store to buy pickling salt (instead I bought three types of peppers)

7. A trip to the garden

For a quick photo shoot and to pick 15 more cucumbers and 5 more squash 

8. Making lasagna using squash for noodles

9.and... About 6 episodes of white collar. 

To move in.

I've been in the house a month now. About thirteen of my friends from church came over a few weeks ago to help us move. (One even brought lunch for everyone!) My aunt and uncle drove up from Georgia for the weekend.

Here's mom's chair. Newly covered. It has been amazing to sit in this chair every morning. It's like sitting down at home. It's so calming, so stable. I feel at rest in this chair.

Here's the steamer trunk turned vanity. I'm not sure where my grandfather found this thing, but he started to restore it for my mother many years ago. I think they got distracted and it turned into a storage bin. I'm so excited about it.

To my sister.

My sister is a much more stable person than I am. She is calm in decision making. Level and steady. She's the person you call when you need to talk a decision through. She'll ask you really good questions and give you really good answers. I don't thank God for her as often as I should.

I marvel at her ability to keep three kids fed, (mostly) clothed, home school, and somehow work several 12 hour overnight nursing shifts. I can barely work teacher's hours and occasionally eat something that didn't come from a drive through or Chipotle.

She's always had superhero like status in my mind. Someone to want to be like. Someone to tell you when you were about to make a mistake so you could go the other direction. She always let me learn from her mistakes.

So this whole home buying thing comes along. We talked it through. As much as she hated the idea that my buying a house meant I would probably stay in DC a while, she agreed that it made a lot of sense.

I remember comparing it to a missionary going off to some faraway place. Is it safe? I'm not really sure. Will it be easy? Most certainly not. Is it good? I think so. God didn't give me the skills and passion to move half way around the world to share the love of Christ. But, looking around, it seems like he did give me the passion and gifts to move across the river.

When we started talking about it that way, it made perfect sense. Maybe not in a worldly sense, but most good things don't make sense that way. It made sense in that heavenly minded way. It made sense in a look back and marvel at God's kindness kind of way.

So my sister started a housewarming party. Well a digital far away using facebook kind of housewarming party. She also didn't tell me about it! So after one exhausting day at work where it seemed like no one had heard any thing I had said all day and there was just a little more toil than fruitful work in my day, I came home to a few cards from dear sweet friends from my childhood. They included gift cards and sweet encouragements and recollections of God's faithfulness.

And now, after a couple weeks of not posting, I can come before you all praising God for his kindness to me in the form of my dearest friend. My sister.