Family First...

It seems like I have been away from blogging for months! I have been so busy during the week working at my new job (which I love!) and working at the retreat house getting ready for each weekends' new guests. Then during the weekends, if I'm not at the retreat house hosting events, I am working to help finalize my Grandmother's estate.

My parents, my kids, and Rog and I have been working for months now to get her settled into a great assisted living facility and completely out of her house. She is adapting to the change as well as can be expected, although she misses living in her own house and gazing out at her flower garden. Unfortunately, she has just got to the point that living alone is no longer a good idea. Now she is surrounded by other people, has many more opportunities to do day trips and social events, as well as living only 15 minutes from all of us! (She used to live an hour away.) With every difficult change comes some advantages.

Sorting through years and years of her acquired stuff has been quite a challenge! We have been sorting, moving, purging, donating, storing and selling all that she has amassed in her 87+ years! The amount of stuff was quite overwhelming! She has been a "saver" her entire life! We discovered dresses that my mom wore in high school, news clippings from every major event in Washington (okay, so the scrapbooker in me saved them as well!), magazines dating back to the 70's, vintage clothes and furniture from the 60's, more gift wrap than she could use in TWO lifetimes, etc...etc... It was amazing what all she fit into that little, three-bedroom house!

Now we are ripping up carpet to expose the incredible hard wood floors, painting the inside and out, and getting ready to put the house on the market. It has been a long process, but I can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

So as the schedule winds down a little I hope to return to blogging a little more regularly again!

enjoy the feeling of the finish line drawing near!
-d.