Steady progress

I have a baby not quite settled in my lap so will write the simplest of the three posts rumbling in my head.

After (and even during) one of his highest-invoicing months in a long time, Matt has been making steady progress on the house addition, and I've been able to get out and help him occasionally, too!

this is the window-that-will-become-a-doorway, now with the old exterior trim removed and sheet rock installed around it so Matt can mud the corners so he can sand (messy!) before removing the window

view from the back toward the front of the new living area - now with one coat of paint! on the walls and ceiling

this will eventually have a plexiglass window in the opening to allow Matt to look into the living room at floor level from his office, and to keep matchbox cars from falling onto his desk!

First coat of paint in the front part of the living room

Matt mudding in his office

the tile is down in Barb's bathroom (and tonight while I'm working on this, he's out there grouting the tile)

and the fireplace wall is moving along - ready for its last coat of mud

Outside, the kids and I have been working on some of the landscaping because as we get things more settled on the outside of the house, rainwater is more easily managed. We have a lot of plant material in this yard, both from Matt's grandma's garden that got displaced to prepare for the excavation as well as hundreds of hostas from the rock wall garden of our neighbors that we re-located to our yard. Aside from the mulch...

30 cubic yards of messy fun delivered Friday morning!

...we won't have to purchase anything!

One pretty little corner started

We got fantastic news yesterday when the man from the company that is going to do the concrete polishing and staining was here to see the project - because of the rain forecast for the next few days, they're going to be able to start work on our floors on Monday! This was great news, and also news that meant Matt had to kick into high gear to get things ready for them. There can't obviously, be anything on the floors of either the main or lower levels, or the entry/office by the time Monday morning rolls around, and as of yesterday when I took these photos, things were looking a little messy...

...like the entry level stair landing...

...and the office...

...and the basement...

...oh, yes, the basement.

 BUT, when Matt came in for supper, he gladly reported that the basement was empty! There's still some things to move out of the main level, but that wasn't as scary to start with.;)

It's been very easy for me over the last few weeks and the weeks preceding Evania's birth to fall into the trap of thinking that we "needed" to have Barb here...now. She lives very close (about two miles, or six minutes of travel time), but needing to make that round-trip three times a day (and one of those right around the time when supper is wanting to be getting on the table), six times a week was starting to get old after a year and nine months of it. I am so ready for the logistics of our life to not include TWO houses, but to have it all consolidated into one place. Although it will definitely be very nice when this goal is reached, in the meantime I've been reminded that I didn't (and don't!) "need" it to happen, but simply want it to happen. God knows what we need, and has promised to supply all of our needs. Hm. Even as I'm writing this I'm realizing that could very well mean that unbeknownst to me, I need to have my life involve the interruption of daily chasing! Or that Barb needs to be in her house for a little longer, or that her current morning care-giver needs to be working with her for a while longer, or...

Two lessons here for me - first of all, this whole thing isn't all about me!!! God is in the business of orchestrating details that have impact across the scales. I think of the birth of John the Baptist. There's the big scale culmination of history in the incarnation of God in the man Jesus announced by "a voice calling in the wilderness" and the small, individual scale detail that Elizabeth gets to be a mommy! And I delight in the timing of it. She was older when he was born, meaning that she was more able to see his birth as the miracle that it was, but also meaning that she likely had already died before her "baby" was beheaded by Herod. All those years she spent waiting were a blessing of mercy for her! But it's always easy to forget the bigger picture. And this whole deal isn't all about me and what I need and what I'm learning.

Second lesson is simply to remember to rest in God's timing, knowing that he tends to do things at the right time whether we can figure out why it's the right time or not!

One way already that we've seen that the slow timing is part of his plan for this process is in the area of finances. Having committed to taking on the addition and the adoption without incurring any debt means that we need to have actual dollars to be able to keep up with the pace of the work. The money that we got from Matt's Dad's IRA has all been used up since very early this year, so we're working with what excess we have from regular income. This has been working just fine since most of the materials we've needed for the work in 2014 have been things we had already purchased, or else very small cost items (buckets of mud, a roll of tape, a box of screws). So we've been working along not at all hindered by cash flow, but only by time reasons.

I find it to be no coincidence that as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this past month of May saw Matt having the one of the highest total dollar amount invoiced since he began working on a contract/self-employment basis nine years ago. And now in June we're going to be starting the highest cost item remaining - the concrete finishing. And we'll have enough to pay for it.

What do you think about that!!? I'm saying this because it's good for me to hear it. We have simply been working diligently to complete the work that God has set before us, and it seems to us to be going much slower than we think it ought to go, but as we continue to work, God continues to provide what we need at the right time to keep the work moving forward.

(Hmmm. Can you tell that baby fell asleep and I was able to finish this post off with two hands? "Real" typing goes so much quicker than one-handed pecking!)