A New Adventure...A New Beginning for Blogging

In case you haven't heard the news yet, we are moving this summer. Wow...it was a lot harder to type that than I thought it would be. I have accepted a job in the Washington, DC area and so we will be moving. I never in a million years thought we would leave this small town, but Heavenly Father obviously has other things in mind for us. I had put together a list of conditions that I thought were nearly impossible for any job to meet, and this one has met them. We have spent much time in prayer and pondering, have been to the temple, and have fasted about it and we know it's the right decision. That doesn't make it less scary...and, in fact, I'm learning that it can often be scary to do the right thing. But we do have the peace of knowing it is the right decision. No, Mark doesn't have a job yet. That's what I'm praying for right now. That and that our house will sell quickly and not at a loss! I decided I'd better get better about blogging since this will be a great way for our family and friends to keep up with us after the move. So what have we been up to lately? Well, Alyssa is getting ready to graduate from high school. She has received many awards and honors and is her class salutatorian (which means she has to give a speech at graduation). She will be attending BYU this fall (full tuition scholarship!!). Brienna is finishing up 7th grade and has had straight As all year, as well as being captain of the academic team, on the basketball team and soccer team, and pretty much being involved in any school activity she can find. Mark and I continue to work and work and go to the girls' activities. A run down on where we're at on the move so far... I have packed three boxes of books and a box of my sweaters. The girls have packed some of their winter clothes. We painted the shutters and front door and Mark is working on prepping ceilings to be painted. We have SO much to do and it's really incredibly overwhelming. We are meeting with a potential realtor on Saturday and we'll see what she has to say. One thing that has been impressed upon me in this process is to always listen to the Spirit, even in small and seemingly unusual promptings. Especially in small and unusual promptings. Case in point -- about a year ago I felt impressed to start working on updating our home. The impression was to work on one room each month, putting in a little money to redo paint, replace some of the light fixtures in the house, decluttering, and generally just sprucing things up. I had the best intentions...but didn't follow through. The prompting continued to come and yet I didn't follow through. Things are always so busy and there wasn't much time or money for things like that. And so I didn't do it. In January I started a decluttering group on Facebook and I've done a pretty good job at following through on that, and so that has helped. But then when we found out at the end of April that we would be moving this summer, I really, really, really, really began wishing that I had listened to and followed those promptings to work on the house -- decluttering, deep cleaning, and updating. Because, had I followed through on the promptings, we wouldn't be stuck right now trying to do about a year's worth of deep cleaning, updating, and decluttering in just a couple of weeks and on a shoestring budget. *Sigh* Lesson learned the hard way!