Moving Forward With Gratitude

It has been another busy and exhausting week of moving and remodeling and renovating the house we are moving into.  Every day has been full as we loaded up our Honda CRV and made multiple trips to the house with everything from clothing and books to our freezer.  I have decided to put regular blogging on the back burner for a while, but before I go on a "blog break" I want to remember the good things by joining with Susanne over at Living to Tell the Story for Friday's Fave Five. 

😊 Progress continues on the renovation/remodel.  This is the new closet that is being built to make the large downstairs family room into a fifth bedroom.  The upstairs bathroom is also progressing, but not as quickly as we had hoped.  Apparently some of the needed tile pieces were in short supply and had to be shipped in from Italy.  We have been told they will arrive early in July. We sure hope so. Despite inevitable delays, we are grateful that things are moving along. 

😊 Our new stove was delivered this week.  It looks great, but we haven't been able to cook anything on it yet for obvious reasons.  We are grateful that the stove came.  Now we wait only for the new fridge, which won't arrive until  August. 

😊 We have moved a lot of things over to the house, including our freezer, our small downstairs refrigerator, and all of our family photo albums. (They are shown on the shelf in the corner. The photos need to be digitized, but that is a goal for another summer). We moved several book and storage shelves by ourselves in our Honda, which holds more than one might think.  I have also spent some time getting the ample basement storage room in the house organized.  While not perfect, it is straightened enough that I can find things in it.  I am grateful that I have had the time to get things ordered and organized as we move in. 

😊 While we have been moving, we have had the opportunity to take a hard look at what is in our home and decide if we really need or want it. We have made multiple trips to donate everything from books and bedding to yard furniture, flower pots and bookshelves.  I am grateful for the opportunity to lighten our load and help others in the process by donating things we don't really need. 

😊 These beautiful pink hydrangeas are blooming in the front yard of our house right now.  While I won't have time to do much more than basic mowing, trimming and weeding this year, next summer I plan to plant more flowers and get the vegetable garden going again.  I am grateful that the house has a nice, manageable yard with lots of yarden areas and beautiful flowers already in bloom. 

Now, with gratitude for all of these blessings and more, I will take a short blog break.  I hope to still come around to visit my blogging friends and comment, and I will post from time to time, but probably not as regularly as I have been.  Thanks for your understanding and thanks for stopping by to share the good.  I'll be back soon!

Until next time, 

😊Deb💖

"Gratitude makes sense of our past,

brings peace for today,

and creates a vision for tomorrow."

~Melodie Beattie

Summertime ~ Part I

As soon as school was out in our district, Charly and I left Arizona and drove to Utah.

We were there in time for Memorial Day weekend, so we did something we had not done in a long time ~ visited family graves.  This is where Charly's maternal grandparents are buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery.

This is the grave of Charly paternal grandma who died in the 1980s.

Charly and his sister, Jacque at their parent's grave early on the Sunday morning before Memorial Day. 

This is my parents' grave ~ located in the same cemetery not far from where Charly's parents are.

On Memorial Day itself, our awesome son-in-law brought four of our grandchildren for a visit.  (Our daughter, mom of these kids, was out of town in Maryland, helping her sister whose son is battling cancer).  We all went to see the fun new Disney movie, "Zootopia."

        

After the movie, my grandchildren had fun playing with some "Polly Pockets" that belonged to their mom when she was little.  I saved them aside and gave them to my grand daughter, but you can see that the boys liked them too!

Grandpa enjoyed holding the youngest on his lap, while the other kids played.

We spent most of the rest of the week of Memorial Day working on our "new" house, getting it ready to rent. 

Although the house was well-cared for, and is in pretty good shape, the yard was overgrown and needed some work. We trimmed bushes, dug up weeds and planted flowers.

Charly has been hard at work doing additional work this week, to get the house ready for renters, although I left Utah last Saturday and flew out here to Eastern Maryland where I am staying with my oldest daughter and her family. I will do another post soon, to update what I have been doing here this past week.

I will leave this post with this thought for the week, which is a variation of what my mom and told me many times growing up.  I think my children heard this a fair amount in our home too, and am sure my grandchildren will also be hearing it as they continue to grow up and get older.  Seems like more people in our society,  especially many of our leaders, need to memorize this quote and engrave it on their hearts.  :-) 

Until next time, enjoy what is left of this week, and have a great weekend!