Now Where Do We Eat?

Sold the table and chairs!

Passports

ARE HERE! Now we have the paperwork to get us where we want to go. Next on the list is to get Visas from the Ukranian Embassy. Meanwhile, we are selling EVERYTHING. Wanna buy some knickknacks or a trike?

Downsizing dry run

We are staying in our timeshare this week, vacationing at Canyon Lake near San Antonio, TX. We have a furnished apartment, 2 bedrooms. All we brought were suitcases of clothes and an ice chest. We grocery shopped here. We are doing okay! I think we could handle it. One more bedroom would be plush.

Dylan was asking a few questions about Kiev today, about shoes and mountains and stuff. I think he might be realizing the reality of it all. I told him we will take some things with us and order some things form the states, but they wear boots there and we plan to live like the locals sooner than later. I think he will come around--as long as he doesn't have to give up his XBOX!

E-mail us!

KIS tech department let us know we are on the faculty roster now! You can email us at carlalman or kimalman@ukr.qsi.org. We aren't there yet, but we'll get your e-mail. Cool--one more step on the journey there!

Praying for Rain or Not?

If you schedule a garage sale, you hope for good weather. Of course.

A friend suggested we "Pray for good weather."

Can you do that? I mean, you can say the words, but can you really ask God to clear the skies? Will he? If you're really good? What if more farmers pray for rain? Good farmers. I guess they win.

I'm not that good. I better just hope for clear skies. And buy some tarps.

Everlasting Tuck?

Kim has taught the book Tuck Everlasting nearly every year for the last 13. I finally took a moment to read it this weekend. I can't believe I've never read it! How could I have missed such a wonderful (and deep) story. Loved it!

Here's my favorite part:

"Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short," she [Mae] said calmly. You got to take what comes. We just go along like everybody else, one day at a time. Funny, we don't feel no different. Leastways, I don't. Sometimes I forget about what's happened to us, forget it altogether. And then sometimes it comes over me and I wonder why it has happened to us. We don't deserve no blessings--if it is a blessing. And, likewise, I don't see how we deserve to be cursed, if it's a curse. Still--there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes..."

Sometimes we remember how we got where we are and how it all happened. Sometimes, we just get up and go to work to get the job done. But one thing is for sure--fussing about the past sure won't change it. And you won't know if it was a blessing or curse until it's too late to do anything about it anyway. Might as well live while you can!

garage sale-ing your life

Ever get things ready for a garage sale? It's a lot of work! Going through things, picking out forgotten items, deciding what to price them (not to much and not to little).

Now try it with everything you own.

We collect so many things as we walk through life. Where does it all come from? How could we possibly need it all? half of it? any of it? True, there are those special items--that tall glass from New Year's Eve at a Chinese restaurant in Georgetown, TX from 20 years ago, the pampered chef collection that you use some piece of everyday, the book you haven't read yet, but definitely will someday. The list goes on and on. Where does it end? I guess it ends when you have so many "special" things you have to step over them and can't even remember why they were all so special in the first place.

I don't want to be a collector anymore. But it is no easy habit to break. I guess selling them one "special" item at a time is the best way to start. Someone will pay 25 cents for those old fish tanks rocks I've been hanging on to just in case, I know it!

Our plan is to leave with only what we can carry in our suitcases and store only the irreplaceable. But that's not as easy as it sounds. Those may be some BIG suitcases.