A First...And Our Marathon

My kiddos experienced another new first on Friday:  Bowling!

Our homeschool group headed to a great bowling alley about an hour away, where Alison (our mom/coordinator for March activities) worked out a fabulous group discount for us.  

We had much fun with this activity...some of us because of the bowling, some of us more so because our friends were there!

Guess which of those categories Elisabeth fell into?

Although they certainly figured out ways to have fun during the process, Daniel and Noah both really got into the bowling.

They both ended up playing two full games and they showed great improvement by the end.

Lily Kay fell somewhere in the middle.  She wasn't as interested as the boys, but she was more interested than Miss E.  

Check out that form.  If I did that I would so end up doing the splits.

My friend Shan captured this picture of Mr. G bowling...

...of course I helped him a little.  He actually fell asleep back there for a little while.


I haven't been bowling in over 10 years.  And WOW, have bowling shoes changed in that time!

These puppies were much less ugly than in the past, and they were downright comfortable!




And now moving into "Our Marathon"...



And I'm not talking about that 26-mile kind of marathon (nor will you ever catch me talking about that kind of marathon).

We closed on our new home yesterday!

Our little ham helping to show off our newly-lined pool.

I'm going to have to work to keep an awestruck and thankful mindset about our wonderful new home and property, because right now it would be real easy for me to instead just focus on ALL THE WORK WE HAVE AHEAD OF US!

And at this point I feel like that work is going to go on and on...and on...ad infinitum.

We've got so much to do inside the house...

...and we've got so much to do outside the house...

...and we want to put in a garden...

...and get setup for and purchase chickens...

...and get setup for and purchase dairy goats.

....and....and....and...

And I'm so, so, SO very thankful that we GET to do these things. These are things I've dreamed of for years.  And I am determined to be thankful and not look at this list and feel burdened.

Jas getting started ripping down all the pegboard in the laundry room/pantry/pool bathroom.
This room really needs to be insulated...then he'll put new pegboard back up.

It hit me last night as we worked at the new house that this is a marathon.  Our marathon.  It certainly is NOT a sprint...and I need to adjust my mindset.  This all sounds so cliche, but it has helped me:  We cannot just be interested in the final outcome (whenever that may come...years from now!)...we need to be just as interested in the doing of this, the process that we're going through to get there.  The process of this will certainly help mold Jas and I, but our children even more.  As they see us work and - more importantly - as they work along side us to bring all this about.  And work beside us they have.

We have paint, but we had work to do on the walls before we can even be ready to paint.  Some of the walls had those re-positionable stickers on them, that needed to come down...

...and every room had tons of nail and screws that needed to be taken out...

...with the resulting holes leaving approximately 10,000 holes to be spackled.  That may be a slight exaggeration...but only slight.

Please don't ask me what all the blocks of color are for on the kids' walls.
After spending much time pondering this myself, I still have no idea.

Random picture of an outside area that is in much need of cleaning up and out.  I eventually would like to have herbs growing in this planter right behind the sunroom.

The paint we purchased a few nights ago was for the 4 bedrooms and the dining room, all which we knew needed new colors.  But we like the colors in the kitchen and the family room and so we didn't purchase any paint for those rooms...but...

I really like this celadon-ish color in the kitchen and eat-in area.

 ...we neglected to take into account all the 10,000 places we'd need to spackle.  So those rooms really need to be repainted also.

We've had some people ask us why we don't just hire someone to paint.  Ummmm....money.  We have a specific amount of money budgeted for doing work at the new house (and it may need to cover stuff at the old house, if it doesn't sell soon.)  Basically, we have more time than money...so we really need to do this ourselves.


We ended up vacuuming the entire house last night, our first night of working.  It wasn't what I'd planned to do the first night, but after seeing Mr. G crawling all over and trying to stick stuff in his mouth, my priorities instantly reshuffled.

The house has been vacant for over a year.  When we first walked through it in January, it looked great...spotless (in terms of cleanliness).  But I quickly figured out that they must have just had it cleaned top to bottom before it was listed with this agent.  As we visited multiple times over the next few weeks it was easy to see it was quickly becoming dirtier and dirtier:  spiderwebs, dead bugs at the windows,  stuff getting tracked into the kitchen, etc.

I have been dying to get in there and clean all that up...and the kiddos were very helpful.

Elisabeth isn't much for vacuuming (yet), but she found something she did love today: spackling.  I wish I'd gotten a picture of her in action:  she had fun going around and hitting all the spots that were within her reach...approximately 5,000 of the 10,000 spots.

Don't start feeling too bad for our hard-working kiddos.  They definitely get plenty of downtime while we're there.  Time to have wheel-barrow races and play Monkey-In-The-Middle, all in the nice-sized family room.

I think they're all going to be in mourning for a while after we finally move furniture in here...it is definitely going to put a crimp in their playing!

And what does Mr. G do during all the goings on?  He rides in the ergo some.

Our friends/pastor came over last night.  Kami said they "wanted to see the house."
Uh-huh, she's always just angling for ways to get all G's sugar!

And he crawls around...

...and we've moved one of our first official things:  A basket that is full of G-man toys.

So,  our marathon has officially begun.  I pray that in this, as in every area of our lives, we will "run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith." (Heb. 12:1-2)