grateful list #4

This week I am grateful for

A new calling {role} at church for the opportunity it gives me to serve, learn, grow and work with wonderful people.

Mobile phones. Today while running a bazillion errands for my builder husband I was able to call him and get him to talk with the hardware men to make sure I came back with exactly what he needed.

Chocolate.

That we are so close to being in our 'forever home'.

The book 'Hello Baby' and how my baby boy loves to read it and recite it and how it is our special ritual at the moment.

The routine that going back to school brings.

The offers of help from sweet friends to watch my children or help me clean as we prepare to move.

That all three of my angels slept through last night.

Tomatoes are in season = homemade salsa = yum.

That I have the rumpus room packed.

But the there is...

Having to pack the rest of the house.

Having to still have to clean the whole house.

Our forever house

We are building our house. I call it our 'forever house' because I want it to be just that. When I was still at uni and my sweet husband was still doing his carpentry apprenticeship we bought a Californian Bungalow in need of a lot of love. We turned it into a beautiful family home and then we sold it. We then build a lovely house on a hill and we sold that too. Selling those houses was part of our plan but I am done with selling. He says he is too (I hope he really is).

This house has been a lot of work and a lot of time. Life is very unbalanced at the moment. We are close to the end and are looking forward to balance again. We have to gather together the last of our energy and enthusiasm and push through the long days and late nights. My sweet husband has been doing thirteen to fourteen hour days. I honestly don't know how he does it. He has a strength and determination and focus like no other. The children miss him. I miss him. I know he missed us immensely. He takes his role of providing for our family very seriously.We keep telling ourselves it will be worth it. We know it is worth it. We are building our forever house.

I want this house to be our children's 'childhood home'. We have thought a lot about it and how we will live in it now with young children and in the future with teenagers who will in turn become parents of young children. I want them to remember how the 'orchard' was once small but has grown like them. I want them to remember playing basketball with there dad and how slowly he went from teacher to competition. I want them to remember learning to cook with me in the kitchen and hopefully garden in the veggie patch and why these things are important to us. I want them to remember the pets that they fell in love with and how the learnt be be responsible for another. I want them to remember the fun and mischief that they got up to together as they developed a deep friendship that will last eternity. I want them to remember the magic of their childhood. I want this home to be their sanctuary. Now and forever. I want them to be able to walk through the front doors as adults and have the joy and love of their childhood come flooding back to them.

We are not building our forever house we are building our forever home.

30 in thirty

Make that 31 in thirty one.
Goals we are talking about. Last year I turned thirty. I was looking forward to it, like somehow this was the magic age in which I would finally be old enough and mature enough to achieve some goal and develop some habits that would suddenly turn me in to the me that I know I am inside (not so different from the me that I am now just a little better). Thirty would make me a grown up. A real grown up not just a kid pretending*. So I made a list of goals I wanted to achieve and habits I wanted to form for. Thirty of them. I called it my 30 in thirty  Well this month marks the last of my thirty months and pretty much none of the goals are checked off. Lots were started but not a lot finished. They are not big one off things. I should have done been able to do it. I know I can do it. I know I will do it. I am going to do it this year.
Here it is, my 30 in thirty.

And because this is actually my thirty one year, one more for good measure and to go alone with my new calling

31.Complete my personal progress

* I think I will always feel like a kid pretending to be a grown up.