I was looking at the ADORABLE (yes I am biased) picture of Ethne in the tub & wanted to try to find a picture of Lilyanah when she was the same age. Or as close as possible. In the pictures of the girls with Grandma, Ethne is one week younger than Lilyanah when the picture was taken. Can you even believe the size difference!!!!? Lilyanah was SO itty bitty! My apologies for the excessive absence of entries lately! Life being busy is no excuse because I suppose it always is! Let's see, I threw our annual Valentine's Day Party. I had a good time & hope everyone who attended did too. I truly love party planning. . . getting into all the details. Will gave me a budget that allowed me to rent some tables & chairs so everything even matched, which I LOVE! Someday I hope to own my own round tables so I can set them up whenever it's 'party time'.
We had that party the 9th of February & the following weekend had our family 'work weekend' at our house. For Christmas instead of trying to figure out what to get each other, we did 'work weekends' where we all went to each other's home for a day to help with projects that needed to be done around the house. We started at Jeremy's house, followed by Corey & Kelsey & attacked our house on the 18th. Dad & I started demo on the second bathroom the Friday before everyone came over Saturday. It was a little more of a mess than we expected, so right now we're at the insulation & drywall stage. We made a good dent into some of our projects, so that was exciting & the best gift! Mom keeps putting off their weekend because she can't decide
what she wants us to do! Too many projects to choose from I suppose. A couple of days after our workday we left for Twin Falls, Idaho.
This subject deserves its own paragraph. When Will accepted the job to work at Waste Connections, he was promoted to an Assistant Controller & told the interviewers that he would be willing to move if they needed him to in order to fill a Controller position. We weren't sure how long that would be, 6 to 24 months we thought (expecting the latter). As it is, they are looking for an Assistant Controller to move to Twin Falls as soon as possible & move into the Controller position in 6 to 12 months.
They're hoping Will is their man. It's been a couple of months since it was first casually mentioned and it seems to be getting more & more serious as time passes by. Will went out there to help about a month ago & was pretty impressed with the office, the people & even the town. He especially has been praying very diligently for direction & discernment in making the best decision for our family. I've told him that as long as he is seeking God's will that I will go where He & he leads. We've listed out our pros & cons. The list of cons is very short but substantial.
Number 1, of course, is moving away from family & friends. VERY BIG. And 2, most likely losing money on our house. Of course the landscape is a con, it is not a pretty place. I'm an Oregon girl & green is beautiful to me, not brown! The biggest pro though is that we would get another 3 hours with Will every single day! His commute would go from close to 90 minutes to less than 10. I would love for him not to have that stressful drive as much as I would love for all of us to get to see each other more! I don't pretend leaving family & friends wouldn't be extremely hard, I just can't rationalize sacrificing time with Will to have it with everyone else. It would be a 3 to 5 year committment.
I admit I can swallow 3 years a lot better than 5! On our trip over, though, God was obviously the orchestrator! We had a great place to stay, we got to have lunch with Will almost every day, we met a wonderful lady, Tomi, a real estate agent who showed us nearly 20 homes so we could get an idea of the market & what's available. She was referred to me by the secretary of a church I found & wanted to visit. We thought so much of her & everyone else we met from the church that we hoped we would like the rest of the church as much.
Let me just say, after visiting Sunday morning, that should we move to Twin Falls we have found a church family that we look forward to serving with & worshiping our Lord with! I was even pleasantly surprised with the town. Everything you need is there, so that's nice. As it stands, for the next 2 months Will is going to be traveling there for at least 1 week a month. They want to be sure that HE is sure he wants to move there. I guess they're pretty concerned that I would actually do it too. The way I look at it, no one is praying for Idaho to work. We're praying for God's will, & all of my family is praying God works something out for us to stay in Oregon, so if doors keep opening toward Idaho, then we can be confident that God is the one opening the doors. We would appreciate your prayers also.
The picture of the girls playing is with what I would consider Lilyanah's favorite toy. Her Mema got her the village set for her birthday, it's so great! She almost always has to take one or two 'village people' with her when we go somewhere. For example, we visited Mom at work & Lilyanah sat down at her desk like it was her own. As you can see, the village characters she named Gigi & Papa are on the desk behind her. Mom can lock her computer keys, so it was great because Lilyanah could play. Hopefully this gives you a little idea of what's been going on the last month. I'll truly try to do better, but no promises! Thank you again to all of you faithful who still check up on our little family! We love you all! ~Wendy.
I know you all are amazed that I'm writing 2 times in one week, I guess twice in one month is impressive for me these days! Anyway, I was taking some pics for Will to send him (since he's in Idaho for the rest of the week) & thought I'd finally give you a little peek. Of course it still isn't finished but just so you can see the difference! Hopefully you think it looks better than before. We've doubled the amount of counter & cabinet space, added about 4 feet to the kitchen & made it a lot more open to the rest of the house. I really love it & can't wait to see it all together! The first two pictures are the same corner. The second two are also looking at the same wall. The open space on the left is for the dishwasher & the open space on the right is where the fridge will go. The 5th picture is looking from the new doorway (where the oven was in the first picture) down into the laundry room. The last picture is of the wall where the door use to be, the oven will go in the opening. That's all for now! Ethne is crawling around all over the place trying to keep from falling asleep. I hope you all have a great day! Love you all! ~Wendy.
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