Looking back, feeling blessed even amidst some failures

August 23, 2018
Looking back over the past couple months I feel so blessed. We took a big leap from "city" living to going out to the country, and trying new things.

We have had a few failures.
We tried to set up our grey water pipe with a hose. finding fittings for it was a challenge. Then the first day it was finally set up, it backed up into the bath tub while our 3 year old was in it. She was slightly traumatized by it and the next few times she bathed she had to be reassured it would not put "that yucky stuff" in her bath water.
Not so much a country thing, but a new house thing. Our 12 year old was showering for the first time and we were running a load of laundry and suddenly noticed water leaking downstairs. YIKES. We had flooded the basement of our last house the first month in. Thankfully this time the only "guest" was our exchange daughter. After much stress and searched it turned out to be as simple as she did not put the curtain in the tub right and the water from the floor was just seeping through a space in the wall/floor under the baseboard.
We bought a pallet buster to be able to up-cycle pallets for free wood. Maybe we just don't use it right, but it is not as easy as seen on TV -- duh. It was lots of Youtube videos, but apparently still not to be trusted. Though we will still use it some, we will not use it as much as I wish.
Our sad tragedy with the baby birds, me having to be the one to find the snakes (my children laugh they can sense my fear), losing our first barn cat -- possibly to a Hawk/Eagle/Owl/Falcon...

Still feeling so blessed. We have a coop up and producing. We have learned a lot. We have had a lot of time together. Our 3 year old is blossoming here, our 12 year old is too amidst some preteen mood swings, our 16 year old is proving to be a hard working genuinely nice and helpful guy, our 18 year old got to try new things before heading off to school, Our other older children might think we are a little loony doing all this, but are still generally supportive and having had them visit we feel reassured that it would not have been the right life for them but the Lord knew it was the time now...

We are so much farther now than we expected to be at the end of our first summer in so many ways.
We can see the Lord blessing our feeble efforts and helping us do so much more than we would be able to do otherwise.