Home From Tucson

Good Morning! How are you on this fine day in June? We are back from Tucson. As you can see our trip was cut short by the fires that were there. Sad thing to notice, but even with fires burning in the Catalina Mountains, every day since June 5th when lighting started these fires, the sky is bluer than going through L.A.

I can't tell you how I felt knowing that I was going to be staying in a house that was at the base of the mountains. We went to visit our newest grand daughter.

She wanted to come a week early before we even got there. Mom and baby are doing great.
We have eleven grands right now. Number 12 is due in August. Number 13 is due in December. On Father's Day we found out that number 13 will be a boy. As of right now, the count is 7 boys and 5 girls. Megan and Ben are waiting the old fashioned way. My heart and cup over flows.

Would you like to see a few pictures of the new house?

Here are just a few.

I have always wanted a fire place like this. I love the mantel.

This was almost the deal breaker. Ron doesn't like chicken wire in cupboards.
He liked this one though.

We went through the house with the inspector. Its a nice kitchen. I have always wanted a kitchen like that too. This was the day after the baby was born, and I felt like a deer in the headlights, so that was all of the pictures I took. It will be a nice house for two people. 

This is my little cactus. He just makes me laugh. He looks so funny with his blooms and his sunglasses. Moving is coming along very fast now. We could be closing on the house and moving very soon. I have been packing and packing. How in the world can I have this much stuff? 

I was thinking the other day. Moving is always stressful. Our girls having babies is stressful. Having strangers traipsing through your house is stressful. Then the whole crazy stuff going on in the world is beyond stressful. Trying to hang onto peace and the strength to find good in the world is harder than ever before. 

We brought a rental car back from Tucson. We had a slow leak in a front tire, so we kept having to find a place to put air in the tire. It costs 1:50 every time you need to use air. I didn't have quarters. I went into stores to get change. Every single time I went in, the sweetest people worked in the stores. But my favorite was this one. 

I walked into this kind of scary looking grocery store to get change. When I walked in I had a mask in my purse, but I didn't have it on. As I walked in behind the counter was the biggest, scariest looking man you ever saw. In front was a man, buying lottery tickets. The man buying lottery tickets, immediately stepped back.  I looked at the big man behind the counter and apologized profusely. " Did I need a mask?" " No! both men said." I motioned for the man who had given me his place, to go back and he did. I looked up at the tall man and said, " Could I have five ones for the air machine?" He looked at me and said, " No, I turn it on for you." I said, " Excuse me, you can just turn it on?" He again said, "I turn it on for you." I said thank you and went out side in sort of a daze.

So my take away from this is just this. I am a victim of the lamesteam media. I have focused on the evil and bad people who are trying to cause me to be afraid. I have looked at people differently since this all started. I need to pull my focus back and stay off of the news, which has always sold fear. I know this. To focus on the negative, I will always get what I expect. But if I expect to find good, then its just as easy to find that too. I think this sums up what kind of attitude I want for these crazy times. John Wesley said this:

“Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can.”

As always it must start with me and of course my attitude. I just wanted to share a tiny bit. So much huge things have happened in my life lately. I really need to sit down and do a post. 

I will wait. I just wanted to stop in and wish you blessing upon blessing today. 

~Kim~

It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.     

Maud Hart Lovelace

A Lovely June Morning

 

Good Morning! How are you? Its a beautiful morning today.  Here in California, you can get a mixed bag for June. Sometimes its hot and smells toasty, then there are mornings like this when the air is sweet and the ocean breezes are coming in and its almost to cold to have breakfast on the porch. It will be nice though to open the house and listen to the birds and the sound of the breeze through the wind chimes.

 

I was thinking this morning as I was getting ready to write this post. I think I have to change my word for 2020 to Adaptability. Being able to land on my feet and keep going is how I feel. The changes we have experienced is unreal and yet take your breath away crazy. I am talking about my own life and not political or cultural.

On July 7th 2019 we made that decision to get the house ready to put on the market. That was such a hard gut wrenching thing to say we would do. The verse I claimed for myself was, " “For the Lord GOD will help Me; Therefore I will not be disgraced; Therefore I have set My face like a flint, And I know that I will not be ashamed" Isa. 50:7
You have no idea how many times I would shut my eyes and reach my hand out to the Lord, put my head down and pray. I have cried and lots of times I have just felt stripped to the bone. I would get up and continue on knowing I had set my face like a flint.

 

  Our boys moved out on March 14th. We put the house on the market April 1st. Do you know what kind of idiots we felt like, with that whole Covid thing going on and here again we were trying to sell a house? The last time we sold a house 911 happened. But, we kept going on with our plan and hanging on to God for dear life. There were people who came through and I do think showing a house is one of the most stressful things in the world to do. Some days there would be 3 showings a day.

On May 14th, these wonderful people came to see our house. The real estate agent that was to meet them, was late. The people were early, so we met them, we showed them the house. We loved them. I had been praying for a family, one that my brother and sister-in-law would love. The lady told me right off the bat, she was a homesteader and she wanted more land because she was trying to homestead in her suburban lot in her neighborhood. She asked me about my bookcases upstairs, and I told her, " If you buy my house, I will leave them for you." Never dreaming that she would be the one who would buy our house. The real estate agent finally arrived, and apologized, because she had hit two detours. I personally think it was a God appointment.

On June 1st we accepted the offer on this house and we have sold the tractor, gave the chickens away. Our offer hinged that we find a house. Now when we started looking at houses in March. We were in the middle of the Covid thing. People had removed house listings, and what houses stayed on the market were few and the ones we liked were snapped up. This week, we had to find a house. We went to a couple on Thursday. I was just sick when I came home. I still can't figure out for the life of me why would you list a house for sale and then not clean it or do anything to it. Out of desperation we had our real estate agent make appointments for Friday. Did I add that because its a sellers market, in our area, houses are selling in one day? There aren't enough houses for sale here in this area.

 

  The first house we looked at I liked and I could live there. I guess I should tell you, I am not looking at houses because I like them. I am looking at houses just so we can be out of our house for the buyers. I did not have in my mind any plan of liking a house. I mean I have spent 20 years in the perfect house, why did I think I would ever find one I liked?

So there was the second house. I had showed to to Ron a few times. He always said, " No Way!! Not happening!" But we are out of options at this point. This house had sold but had just came back on the market again. Its a further out of town than I was thinking I would live. In fact, when I was a teenager, my best friend lived out here and this had been her Dad's hay field. We pulled up to this very pretty house. It was so pretty and it was brick. I have always wanted to live in a brick house. It had a very lovely entry, with double front door. Also a favorite of mine. Walking in I knew this would not be Ron's favorite or so I thought. We opened the front door, and between Ron and the real estate lady oohing and saying " Kim!!! Come look at this," and Ron laughing. We were just in awe. Our real estate lady, said" Oh, I want this house!!" She whips out her camera and starts taking pictures. As we walk from room to room, Ron is already saying where his office is going to be and I just felt stunned. He loved it. It also was clean!!! We weren't going to have to fix or work on it to bring it up to livable conditions.

We told the real estate lady, to make a offer right then. She told us that there is a offer on it and we have to act fast. The is 10:00 A.M.  We signed the offer papers at noon, and the people accepted our offer by 3:00 and opened escrow. So now the race is on. They think escrow could close on July 1st.

Here is the best part. In 2020 God is giving us three grand babies!! The first is due in June. The second is due in August and the third is due in December. When I said this year is about adaptability. that is what I mean. By December 31st, we will have 13 grand babies.  So do I feel out of breath. Yes!! Does the news scare me to death? Yes, just like it does you too. But, I think better days will return. Because I have read the end of the Book and we win!

I don't know if I will have to change the name of my blog, because I am moving to an old hay field, after all. Some years it was cotton. Its not as big as my field of dreams is here. But it will be a nice place to dream new dreams and to be able to spend more time doing the things I love. I have a list of rugs I want to hook a mile long when this is over and the boxes are finally unpacked.

Sorry this is so long, but a lot has been happening and I wanted you to know.
Blessings to you all!
~Kim~

There are moments, above all on June evenings, when the lakes that hold our moons are sucked into the earth, and nothing is left but wine and the touch of a hand.    

Charles Morgan