JEAN'S BACK-GOOD BYE OLD HOME !!

I am so happy to be back. Missed doing my posts every week.  First, I would like to thank Martha for filling in for me during our move.  Also, her, Joseph, and their children helped us get  moved and are storing some of our items for our new house in their attic.

Appreciate your kindness and questions for my Grandmother Olive.  I appreciate her doing the posts on the wood burning stove and preseasoning cast iron pots and pans which is coming up this Friday. 

We are finally living in Kevin and Bridget's new house with some items in a storage, Martha and Joseph's attic and in the barn.  Some of the boxes we will have to go through when we get to our new house as we just didn't have time to go through them when we moved.  We never thought we would go through this much to move-but with a house that has had three generations-there was lot in there.

I asked Marilyn if she could put in a picture of the house we lived in.  This is what the outside looked like before we had the fire.  After the fire we put on a different siding, so it doesn't look the same now, but this is the way we want to remember as we lived in it so many years.  I thank Richard for allowing me to have it on here and Marilyn for going all through Amish Stories previous posts to find it.  After she found it, she made it into a photo for our house.  We can't have pictures of people, but we can this house.

We didn't make the closing on January 15th as both David Sr. and Edward landed in the hospital with the flu  David told me to have Joseph, Martha's husband, call the people and explain the situation, which Joseph did.  The people were very nice.  They had decided when they get possession they were going to have the wiring taken out of the house and the new walls in before they moved in.  They are going to stay with their daughter and son-in-law until the house got done.  All they wanted was the barn for their animals.  So, we had our animals moved to Kevin and Bridget's-Kevin and his brothers took care of them until we got moved there.  Our barns were ready for the Amish people's animals.  The Amish lady spoke with me and told me that the delay was God's will and not to worry about it.  While staying with her daughter and son-in-law she was also going to be with her grandchildren.  They got to New York on January 14th and were at our house to help us on the 15th-even went to the hospital and visited Edward and David with me.

We closed the sale on January 22nd-a week later than we were suppose to-but Edward and David were out of the hospital.  The afternoon before the closing, we all made a final walk through.  In a way it was like losing a friend we had lived in for many years. The one who took it the hardest was Michael.  We hadn't given thought about the facts, that Michael had not had a stable home until he came here-now he was losing it.  David explained he wasn't losing the stability or our family-just the house.  We are a family in Kevin and Bridget's house, in our new house, and were in our old house.  After we got outside, he wanted to take one last walk through by himself and we let him.  He came back with tears in his eyes, which we got, too.

We spent the evening in Kevin and Bridget's house with  cocoa and popcorn talking about the memories in the old house.  The good times, bad times, funny times and just everything in general.  It was a nice evening and I think Michael felt better.  .

David, laughing, says he knows why Kevin wanted us to have the house before they did.  There have been several things that needed adjusted or enforced.  Our stove would not fit in where it should go.  It was off just a fraction of an inch-so David repaired it-now the stove fits.  A couple of the bedroom doors didn't close right and David adjusted them.  In the bathroom the cupboard wasn't attached to wall as solid as it should have been, so David fixed that.  Kevin does not like to do this type of work.  He prefers farming or something he can take apart and put back together again.

We notice in the new house, that many of the rooms are bigger in Kevin's house than in our old house-especially the bedrooms. Bathrooms are bigger, too.  Ours will be bigger in our house.  Of course our old house was built in the 1940's.  Things have changed since then.

After our new house is built, the Amish people that bought our farm are going to have our barns torn down and new ones built.  David's father build the original barn after the previous one burned down.  He and we have added on to that barn-so a new one would be nice.

I told David, I never want to move again, but he tells me, I have to move one more time.  I hope it is the last.  Really don't like all this moving-sorting, packing and unpacking.

Thank you for waiting for my return.

Be With God,
Jean

JEAN'S GRANDMOTHER WILL BE BACK FRIDAY ON HOW TO SEASON THE POTS AND PANS.

 A SPECIAL POST BY RICHARD OF AMISH STORIES,  IS COMING ON VALENTINE'S DAY