There’s lots to be thankful for despite the storms

We’ve been at the rental house a little over a month now. Sorry that I’m not an awesome updater of the blog. It’s been a busier time getting settled, figuring out a schedule that works, remodeling, and all the storms.

I’ll preface the remodeling section with don’t watch a bunch of HGTV, it makes you unable to be content. On the other hand, the house no longer has carpet so I think it’s still a huge win. The paint had been so messed up with nail hole patches in some places that the walls looked camo, and let’s be honest, carpet is nasty and never allows you to get anything very clean. I repainted the 3 bedrooms and the hallway and took down the base board trim to repaint it white. It took me about a week, but I got it done. My paintbrush was contaminated and made my hand hurt and go numb when I was using it. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I slapped my hand on my thigh like someone packing a pack of cigarettes or just whacking it on the wall for a different stimulus. While painting, we slept on our air mattress in the living room and Wesley moved his desk out here as well. All of the things happening in one room was not good for the room. I’ve slowly been cleaning it (bc you don’t want to pop all those toxins at once), and it’s getting better now that we’re sleeping in our bedroom again.

After painting, we setup our bed and started sleeping on that before the floors got installed. What a glorious change after downgrading to an air mattress for 2.5 weeks. If you’re looking for a decent mattress without spray on flame retardant, we’ve been really happy with Brentwood homes. They use silica and wool instead of the spray on flame retardants. That’s one thing I’ve not stopped reacting to plus we don’t want the baby on a mattress with flame retardants so this was a good move for us. I was wondering if it was going to end up being too soft, but we both seem to be adjusting. If it ends up being a problem, we have a year trial with the bed to fully check it out. I got the foam/coil combo which is softer than their foam only. Having laundry at home allows us to wash bedding daily to protect the mattress from toxins we sweat out in our sleep.

This week has been a crazy whirlwind. Wesley’s project that he thought would be done 2 weeks ago got a strong rejection by the client bc of a communication issue. In the meantime, he got more projects to fill in the anticipated hole in his schedule. Well to say the least, it didn’t go like that and he ended up with a normal week of work plus the old project needing to be reformatted. Last week was busy, this week was insane. I think 12:30 is the earliest he’s come to bed all week with multiple 2:30 mornings. He has an income goal each week that he hit halfway through Wednesday he’s put in so many hours.

The new LVP floors got laid this week. Jason and his boy did a really nice job on them! Now we’re waiting for the transitions and we decided to go with a taller trim vs a drywall patch in the office so we’ll stop at Lowe’s and pick that up tomorrow so I can get them painted this weekend and have my part ready when the transitions come in. If you go to the last post I did you can see how far we’ve come!

One of the companies Wesley freelances for is wanting to buy him out of Upwork to gain access to him 40 hours/week. They want to know what it would take to accomplish that so we’ve been making a list. He’s proven to be a very valuable asset to them. Pray for wisdom for us as we make decisions regarding the business going forward as well as finding balance amongst Wesley’s current clients with one wanting 40 hours/week. This may be the way God replaces my income we had in Iowa, allows me to stay home longterm, and homeschool as the kiddo grows up.

Another thing you can be praising God for along with us is making friends with the neighbors. They are doing a small homestead. They have two teens, a toddler, and she’s pregnant with their 4th. Their baby should come 2ish months after ours arrives. They go to a local church and we’d like to try it out, but the more I’m around people, the worse I do. We’ve intentionally started hot tubbing at 3:30 to avoid people, which is about the worst time to go for Wesley, but it’s gone so much better without the vax slammers. Churches are really tough from a mold perspective alone, and I have instructions to not be around vaxed people from my midwife and my body so I’m not sure when we’ll try it out.

Another huge praise is it looks like Audrey and Seth will be able to come down and visit for a few days bt Christmas and New Year’s. I’ve had a rollercoaster of emotions from excited to worried that she wouldn’t be able come bc of complicating factors, but it now looks like they’ll be able to come! This is try 3 to see them since we left and I’m sure hopeful it works out! It will be our Christmas miracle for sure!