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bouncingpig

Just bouncing in to say hi!

bouncingpig
18 years ago

It has been quite a while since I've posted, but I see some of the familiars are still around! Hi to all! Things have been good with me and my family, just very busy, which is why I have posted so rarely. As many may remember last year my MIL broke her leg in 3 places and then had a grand mal seizure and nearly died. She made a great recovery, but in the meantime they decided to relocate to Oregon with their son. Anyway, long story short, DH and I took over the house payments and completely redid it inside. It was a total renovation. It was a ton of work, but in the end it helped his folks financially and we also pocketed a nice profit. We gave them the value the realtor told us before the remodel and we kept the difference. All were happy.

Then in October I put on an antique show. It was called "Past Blessings" and was very successful. It was much more work than I anticipated, but well worth it. We plan to do one each spring and each fall. It will be more of a music fest also in our Spring one, as we have many bands and groups playing throughout . . . from bluegrass to big band! Lots of fun!

And then DH has began a new business pursuit which is heavily involving me. He is starting a real estate book in Spokane. This particular one is very successful in other parts of the Northwest, but no one had a distributorship for it here in Spokane. Right now we are dealing with competitors trying to freeze us out, but we are too persistent to pay much heed to that. It has great potential, but who knows where it will lead. DH just knows his back can't handle paramedicine forever. Most sick people tend to be quite overweight, so the lifting gets pretty hard on him physically. I hope to eventually be less involved, but for now we decided we couldn't afford to bring in outside help, so I will be doing all the layout and pre-press work. Since it has been 14 years since I was in the graphic design field, my skills are very behind and so I have to learn lots of new programs and methods. It is very intimidating. For some reason, the older I get, learning new skills gets harder. Must be those dying brain cells! I have a good friend from the agency I worked at in my "previous life" that we are going to hire to teach me. He is an older dog than me, so surely I can learn this!

We are homeschooling all three boys now, but have found a great program that the kids attend one day a week. It gives them assignments for the whole week and they do all the grading. Makes our job simple . . . we basically just have to make sure they get it all done. It is really going well.

Our home is certainly not too organized as of yet, but it hasn't completely lost control either. I have a booth at a local antique store that has helped to remove lots of the "stuff" while still earning a bit. I did sell a few things on ebay last week and will do more again after the new year. But I doubt I will ever try to be a powerseller again. It takes a lot of time and I know I can't do that many things and still do it well.

Hope all is well with the "Gang" and I will try to become a "regular" again. I miss the accountability and think maybe I need it in order to keep everything moving in a positive direction.

Also, I notice lots of new faces and am looking forward to getting to know you all!

Brenda

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