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Home is Where the Lake Is You, my readers, may remember a post in early April called “Sight Unseen.” In it I shared the story of how Mike, prior to our wedding, found a house for us on a lake in Florida. I was living in Ohio. Still, we put it under contract without me seeing it. If you missed that one, I’ll share the link at the end of this post.     I have now seen the house.   Not only that, Mike and I have moved in…into a dream. Note… Not a nightmare. A dream.   Not that it’s fancy. Not that it’s a mansion. It is “Just Right.”    Okay, maybe that sounds a bit like Goldilocks, but the truth is the truth. This place is perfect for us.   We moved in slowly. One piece at a time. The dining room set my new sister-in-law offered us looks as if it was made for the space. Some chairs she donated to the cause appear as if they were designed for the small square table Mike already had. We put it in the breakfast nook. We bought new bedroom furniture along wit...

  The Pickup Truck My husband, Mike, drives a big pickup truck. For me, it’s a climb to get into the front seat. The make and model?     A Ford F-250 4X4 (whatever that means…) and it’s a diesel.     That truck can apparently haul anything we need to haul. It is a great vehicle.   The truck was a blessing the time Mike came to see me in Ohio and it snowed. Mike was born and raised in Florida where he has never had to drive in snow. Still, I climbed in the truck beside him and buckled up without a thought that this could be a challenge for a Florida boy. It wasn’t. He drove through the white stuff falling down and accumulating all around us without the least concern.    Later, when I asked why it didn’t bother him, he said if the snow started to get deep he’d just put it in “4-wheel drive high” (whatever that means…) and it could handle it.   After our wedding in April, we left Ohio in that truck and headed for Florida. We stayed a couple of d...

  Lake Rules   Mike and I recently purchased a house. It is our first home together. It’s pretty exciting. It's on a huge lake. Some of my readers may remember the post where I shared that we purchased the house without me seeing it. (If you missed that one, click HERE .)    It’s true. The final walk through before signing our names on the bottom line was the first time I saw the house in person. Inside, that is.  We did manage to do a “drive by” when we came to Florida after the wedding and were able to sneak a peak in the backyard on another day.  Shhh…not sure we were supposed to do that but the owner had moved out so we took a chance. View From the Water   I saw the actual inside of the house the day before closing. As of this writing, we have not yet moved in…but we’re heading in that direction. I’ll likely share some photos or stories from the lake house at that point.   For this week's post I wanted to share some observations about our new ...

A Look in the Rearview Mirror Yield . That was my word for 2023. Even as I typed it back in January, I didn’t have a full understanding of what it would mean to me this year. (If you want to view that initial post, click HERE .)   Here is part of what I wrote:    “… YIELD means … trusting God with my life. Fully. Completely. It means giving up what I want for what He intends for me.”   I have a verse from the Bible I wrote out last year and placed on my kitchen counter. It is all about yielding.   Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path. Proverbs 3:5   Sometimes you have to take a look back before you can make that Right Turn. This week I decided it was time to check in on how that word is playing out for me. I went back to the January 4 th  post. After reading it, I read a few previous posts on my blog. The one that caught my attention…the one tha...

  Birthday Candles   I had a twinge in my shoulder the other day.  “I wonder what caused that,” I said to Mike. “Birthday candles,” he replied with a grin.   He’s probably right. We are the same age. Almost. His birthday is in February and mine is in May. We married in April so he could always say he married a younger woman. At least that’s the story.   This week I celebrated my birthday and caught up with him. He may tease me about the growing number of birthday candles, but he has a loving heart.  Mike and my late husband, Tom, were childhood friends. He knew Tom well. He also knows me. This year, my sweet Michael surprised me for my birthday in a most tender way.   Some of my readers will remember the story of the palm tree. A few weeks after Tom’s sudden death in 2014, my oldest daughter and I attended an event called “Grieving Through the Holidays.”    It was much too early for us to wrap our heads around the grief we experienced. We wer...