Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Friends!
I hope to update our blog more often in 2014. I'm so thankful for new beginnings. 2013 was a year of "unexpected's". I know 'tis life. To sum up 2013, I'll just say, that I learned throughout this past year that God works outside OUR plans. His goal is His glory. There were many plans Justin and I had for this year, and it seems that exactly the opposite happened. :) I'm confident that the Lord will use it all to sanctify us for His purposes through these earthly trials, no matter how trivial/inconvenient they are.
About 18 months ago, I started feeling sick. I won't go into detail here, right now...though, hopefully I can shared my journey at some point. William started having some breathing issues, which we thought were allergies and weather related. Samuel has had big, dark circles under his eyes for a few years now, even with me being cautious with foods and too much sugar. I even wormed him several times. :) All of this coupled with some other health issues (Justin's heart rhythms...etc,etc), we were praying, praying for some answers. Now that we are on this end of it all, everything makes perfect sense. Long story short, we ended up having the air quality in our home tested. We had a HUGE mold problem in our crawlspace, outside plumbing issues which re-activated an old septic tank under the boys' bedroom, a high humidity level in our house, moldy closets, and a roof leak right above Samuel's bed, which ended up having mold all behind the drywall and down to the subfloor!
Justin and I (with the help of our family and helpful friends) completely gutted and re-constructed our house nearly 10 years ago. It's the old farmhouse on my family's property...the house my Grandpa Max grew up in. Needless to say, we've had quite the education on toxic mold exposure and mold remediation. We are currently on the tail end of our 2nd remodel...thousands of $$,$$$ later, endless hours of cleanup, and repainting.
We moved out of our house November 4th, and have been living with my parents. (THAT, was certainly something I NEVER planned on doing...especially w/ 4 kids! LOL!!) And, really it's been fun! It feels like a vacation or something...we've stayed up late pretty much every night either chatting with my parents and siblings, or watching movies. We even shared the stomach flu this past week, just to top off the year, ya know!
Currently, the crawlspace and the moldy places in our home have been remediated, the house is re-painted from top to bottom, we've replaced the carpeting with hardwood floors, have thrown out a lot of stuff, and we've started the process of moving all of our clean-able belongings back into the house. This week, besides Christmas (!!) and painting trim, I've been deep cleaning every single item in my kitchen. I don't believe it's been this clean, since before I had children! I'm embarrassed to admit, but some of the things I've cleaned recently have never been cleaned--9 years is a long time not to clean something. lol! There's lots of missing items to be found behind the refrigerator, washer, and dryer--especially long, lost lego pieces.
So, all in all, 2013 has been quite the year for us. We are all feeling better and I have learned a lot about my health through a local, natural Dr. I'm so thankful for God's grace and specific answers to prayer through it all. For Justin and I- Type A+ personalities- this has been quite the process.
Tomorrow we are leaving for 10 days of Florida, to visit my in-laws. Our 9 year old hardwood floors are being refinished next week (why not, right??!!) I'm being summoned to help fold all of the summer clothes we scrounged up and cleaned before our trip tomorrow. Good night and Happy New Year!
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