Bye Bye Boat Boxes!

Wednesday we completed our packing of shipped goods. It's funny, when people ask what we are taking we say, "oh, not much other than clothes and some bare necessities" I think I need a better answer for that question...cause somehow we filled all these bins!

So here are some of the things we packed.....

Wait a minute... she's going by plane.

If you are wondering what we really packed that we thought we couldn't do without here's an idea of what was important to us to take. We took 2 guitars. One of which get's played by me (Stephanie) and one which will hopefully be played by Chad or Paige. 4 bikes, a rather large tool box, a Blendtec, a juicer, a crock pot, some sheet sets, a full box of games cause this family LOVES to game! Lego, Meccano, polly pockets, rainbow loom, each one item chosen by the kids. Chad chose to take his loved wine glasses and I had my kitchen stuff. Lot's of other odds and ends I guess and some warmer clothes for "winter' in Belize.

A job well done!

Keaton and Chad drove the load to Mississauga and it's wrapped and loaded on two skids. The shipment will leave Aug 1 and is supposed to arrive in Belize on Aug 12. Now we will try to find a way to get this load from the port to our house in Belize.

We have agreed to a rental home just outside of Bullet Tree. My next posting I will show you a peek at the house we will start off in.

 

A big HUGE thank you to all those who came out on Sunday to say goodbye and even more than that encourage us in our move! We are amazed at family who drove from Sarnia, London and Niagara Falls to see us. Truly, truly we are blessed with such a great supportive network here. Our mom's worked hard to have a great day where we could see those we love before we go.

It's feeling good so far. We are trying to marvel in our "last's". Chad and I had two great rides before we packed our bikes. We had a great 50km ride in cottage country and our last ride with our biking buddy here on Sunday. It's still feeling a bit like we are getting ready for vacation. We will head to the cottage on Sunday for a week of family time with one of my sisters and some extended family. As we prayerfully prepare to leave we are praying for comfort for our family as we say goodbye to each other and courage for us to say goodbye and be confident in the will of the Father!

 

 

Good Bye Open House

Just a quick note to let you know that our Mom's are hosting a good bye open house on

SUNDAY JULY 20th

If you want to stop by to see us before we go come on over to the farm anytime between 2-7pm.

We'd love to see you all before we go.

July Nomads

So we are now in our last month here in Canada and we are living rather nomad like. We have the privilege of spending time at Chad's parents and Uncle's cottage near Lindsay. I tell you as I sat in the boat on a beautiful sunny afternoon streaming through the waters of Sturgeon Lake I reflected that we are certainly not moving looking for paradise because we have paradise right here at he cottage.
We will be splitting our remaining time travelling between the cottage and "home". (We use that term loosely now!)
We seem to have three points of focus now.

1. Finding a rental home in Belize. We are spending time in cyber world looking at many possible places to rent. We have limited budget of $500.00/mnth and are hoping to get a 2/3 bedroom house with a small amount of land. We are praying for water, either a pool or a place on the river and some fruit trees were we could enjoy some fresh goodness picked daily. We totally believe that as we continue to pray for this providence of water and fruit tree that God will show us the right place and the provide these things. We believe in His word when he says,

¹³ And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

John 14:14

 

2. Packing....this took a bit of a "U" turn from our recent plan to take 10 suitcases, 3 bikes, 2 guitars and 3 kids. My super diligent husband called the airline to confirm what we were planning to take as luggage and what the extra bags would cost...only to find out that our first leg from Toronto to Houston we are on a 75 seater commuter plane. This means no 2nd luggage, no sporting goods, and not even a regular sized carry on! Slight hiccup! This means  we are now shipping stuff! We had already found a shipping company that would ship very quickly and very cheap so we've contacted them and we will be shipping most of our stuff. We will drop it in Toronto a week before we leave and it will arrive in Belize the week after we arrive. So, two weeks in transit....that's pretty good! Bearing in mind ......it's not actually there yet, this is merely an ideal right now!

 

3. Finally on the agenda....to start he good byes. Now it's getting harder. As I see friends, family, acquaintances my mind rushes to thoughts of, "when will I see them next", "what will change in the their live until I see them again", and "have I said everything I really wanted to say to this person face to face before I leave" and so many more thoughts too. This is when reality is hitting. When I say goodbye or give a  goodbye hug I know it's going to be for much longer than it has been in the past.

 

So, if I'm honest (this is Stephanie speaking), "YES", I'm definitely getting more teary. Saying goodbye the fabulous teacher we had at St. Jacob's school was the first of many to come. As I'm writing, I'm coming up with strategies for myself. Maybe I need to think less about the saying goodbye and more about thank you for what you giving to me or our family in the time we have had.

 

I look forward to sharing with you soon about the rental home we find. I know God is asking us to trust him in this area. And so we will wait for whatever he has for us. Hopefully this posting gave you some insight into how you can pray for us and what we are feeling right now. On a great note....the kids seem super excited! Probably the most positive we've seen them. Pray for them, especially Paige as we feel it might be the most difficult for her. She's amazing though and has had opportunity to share with us that she is feeling excited about going to Belize now. She's an amazing 8 year old!

 

Stay tuned.....

Stephanie

                                       Here are some of the fun times we are having in our last

                                                                          few weeks

 

 

Crazy Keaton loving the water at the cottage

Grady's favourite.... making soup, truffles and pies in the sand

I'm sure she had a book in her hand that just didn't make the shot

A carefully engineered castle and castle city

The things we adults find fun....TRX challenges

Games, games, and more games

 

Hoping you can all make it! All are welcome, please feel free to extend the invitation to others.

The tickets are booked - AUGUST 6th!!!!!!!

We finally took the plunge and booked our tickets to Belize.  We now have a date.  August 6th.
The Lord is so good.  For the last couple of months people continue to ask us if we have a date when we are going.  We would always say that we wanted to get the house sold and that transaction completed then we would start looking to book our flights.  Well, last week on the day the house transaction closed I took a look at flights and to my astonishment they had dropped by about 30% in price.   FANTASTIC!!!  Thank you Lord!  This was our sign to get the tickets booked.  No turning back now!

Next step, find a house to rent.  The real estate agents we have been in contact with have told us to email them about 3 weeks before we come and they will find us a place.  So no rush just yet!

The Little Move!

Move #1 complete...ok, almost complete. The last few weeks have been all about sorting, packing, gathering, and PURGING! Last Saturday we had an open house sale. Yup, pretty much everything you saw was for sale. In our attempt to "live light" we had a lot of item to find new homes for. Many of them still wonderful and some holding memories for us. But none the less, we can't take them with us and it was our hope that others could find good uses for some of our pre-loved items. It's been a healthy exercise to pare down your items to necessities only!

We all have a room or things that we hold tight to and for me (Stephanie) it was my kitchen! God is still challenging me with holding on to some items that yes, I might need when or if we come back home but a still small voice (or is that's Chad's voice??? ) begs the question, " will God not provide for you when you return the things that you need". So, I do confess....I have three boxes I need to unpack and reevaluate. Shout out to our amazing kids. I was fearful of the process and how hard it would be for them to part with and narrow down to just a few items that could be brought with us. Wow, did they ever put me to shame! Paige, had many books that are dear to her but she was more than thrilled to pass the ones she so loved on to some friends or cousins who might enjoy them as much as she did. Keaton, he's a tractor guy but he graciously parted with his green riding tractor on sale day and even did his own bargaining for the sale. Grady.....well half the stuffies are thrifted or gifted and the other bunch we'll tackle with move number two. Chad....hmmmm. I'll have to ask him what was the hardest for him to part with for next post.

Anyway, thanks to friends and family who came out to make our house sale day so easy to part with our belongings. The conversations and encouragement from you all far lightened our day for sure!

As I started to say, our move over to mom's place is almost complete. Just a few items remaining to sell, some to purge, and some to thrift at our old place. This was an excellent pre-Belize exercise for us as it our goal to be at 15 or less pieces of bins/luggage to take with us. I thought we were close but I swear I carried WAY more than 15 bins of things across the house yesterday! So, we still have some work to do before we hit that mark.

Mom and dad have graciously let us move into their long awaited loft bedroom before they have even used it. It's a lovely one room fits all! Cozy, quaint, and just what we need. Here are a few pictures of our nest until the end of June! Thanks to Tyler for muscling the heavy loads over with Chad!

Welcome friends, family and others!

Welcome friends, family, and more!

It is true we are off on an exciting adventure of a life time! Not exactly sure when but these 5 little monkeys are going to be "swinging" to Belize sometime in July 2014. Since we are so excited to be able to take this adventure and because we have a sense that God is going to bring us to a new understanding of trust and faith and family, we would love for you to experience it with us. The fun, the excitement, the jungle, the heat......oh, the heat, the days we miss you all so much, the blessings and riches of trusting in a BIG GOD! Come on and follow us.....