Month: August 2013

A New Door

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We moved into our current house in December of last year. We knew it would need some work, but we had faith in the landlord (he’s sort of extended family – my brother’s wife’s dad), and now that the weather’s good (not too hot, but also not rainy) we’re starting to get some of the work done.

The first big project to tackle was the sliding glass door that  leads out to the back deck. When it was installed, they somehow put it in backwards. I don’t even know how that happened. It also didn’t quite fit in the hole properly, so we had gaps where the outside air could seep in.

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You can imagine how awesome that was in January when it was 18 degrees outside.

Here are some other “before” pictures.

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Back in April, our landlord bought the replacement door. He got a great deal from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. The new door just sat in our garage until this past Saturday. It took 4 men (hubby, landlord, a friend from church, and landlord’s son – who happens to be the previous tenant here) 8 hours to get the job done.

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It was a very elementary, though time consuming, project. Once the got the old door out, moving the new door into place took all 4 of them plus our neighbor. Then there was the removal of the moulding, some cutting away of the siding and floor to make the hole big enough for the new door, the door installation, and replacing the moulding. From a spectator’s perspective, it seemed very difficult! But I’m told it really wasn’t, other than the size of the project (the weight of the door, the use of power tools, etc).

The new door… is fabulous!! It’s glass, like the one they took out, but is a traditional door, not a slider. So there’s a door-sized window on the left and a door on the right.

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It’s so nice not to have to fight with a incorrectly installed sliding door anymore!

–Wendy

Picture of the Week: Naptime

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Small Fry is at the stage now where when he’s tired, he’ll climb up to where I am and snuggle in for a nap. No prodding from me required :). Yesterday, I didn’t even bother moving him from the couch; I just let him slumber there while I worked on a new quilt. But don’t worry – I checked on him often to make sure he didn’t roll off!

For the record, these two pictures were taken at different times during the week.

Enjoy the weekend!

–Wendy

The Tooth Fairy (and other mythical creatures)

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Hearts for Home Blog Hop

 

For a long time – until last Christmas – we did all the fantasy characters with our kids. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny. We didn’t see anything wrong with perpetuating the myth. Along with that went all the commercialism associated with said characters – Christmas stockings, Easter eggs, a Tooth Fairy pillow, etc.

Hubby and I got to talking during the Christmas season last year and realized that if our kids came across the truth of these stories on their own, we would lose credibility with them. The question we asked ourselves was, “If we ‘lie’ to them about Santa Claus, how can we be sure they believe us about Jesus?” The answer was, quite simply, we couldn’t. We live in a time where Jesus isn’t here physically. We have to train our children to believe in him and love him unconditionally – and yes, experience him – without ever laying eyes on his physical body. The same is true for those holiday and special life event characters. We expect our kids to believe in the truth of those figures. But they’re not real. And if our children decide that we’ve lied to them (as opposed to simply “having fun”), we have no basis in matters of faith.

That was a frightening thought.

So we had a conversation with the boys. We told them that the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny don’t exist; we had been the ones giving money for teeth and Easter baskets. We told them the real story of Saint Nicholas. We even traded out our “traditional” Christmas stockings – designed to hold lots of small gifts – out for holiday themed socks (yes, regular socks from the apparel department of Fred Meyer). Our new stockings remind us of the simplicity of the true gift of Christmas – God’s son. And that we should be caring for others during the season, not just buying gifts for ourselves. Just like the real Saint Nicholas did.

It was a little bit of a tough pill for them to swallow, but they did so with no less grace than I would expect from my children. And now we have confidence that they’ll believe us when we tell them that they need to have real faith in important things.

Like Jesus.

–Wendy