So my mom just sold her house. Which means that moving vans will soon be arriving on my doorstep!

I thought I’d take today and give you all a bit of a personal update into my life.

First, a story from yesterday. My daughter Katie and I have been invited to speak at the Association of Christian Women in Music and Media meeting in Burlington, about 3 hours from where I live–but on the other side of Toronto. Anyone who lives in Ontario will know the significance of that last bit. It means that if you don’t time your drive exactly right, you will end up sitting on the highway, really frustrated with the traffic.

So we left 7 hours early, shopped in Ikea for a while, hung out at a bookstore, had some food, and then went to the event. Only to find out that I got the dates wrong, and it’s actually today. We turned around and drove home (through rush hour) and now have to do it all again today!

Katie made a video about it. I’ll put it up on Facebook this weekend. 🙂

Anyway, details are not always my strong suit. Well, they’re really NEVER my strong suit. So I was just a tad frustrated at myself last night! And she was, too. Sigh.

End Story #1.

Okay, now about my mom.

Mom at her Glad You’re Not Dead party–the 25th anniversary of her surgery from breast cancer.

Sometime last year my mom and I were driving to Ottawa, likely to see Rebecca or do something for the wedding. I can’t remember now. But we were talking about her house, and she was saying that she just had to make a decision about whether she was going to stay or whether she would try to buy a condo. It’s a great house–perfect location, lovely neighbourhood for walks, great garden–but the size of the garden and the hassle of shovelling snow in winter was just getting to be too much. And we weren’t really home enough to help her.

We were discussing condo options when I suddenly said, off the cuff, “maybe you should just move in with us.”

I mean, with the girls gone we have a big house that’s just the two of us, and with Keith and I on the road so much it’s often empty and she would have to take care of it.

I hadn’t really thought about it until I said it, but then we all started thinking and praying and decided it would be a good idea.

Mom has always come on vacations with us–here we were in Rome a few summers ago!

My mom’s totally healthy; there’s nothing wrong with her. So it’s not because of health. It just means that she’ll save a lot of money, which she can then use to support more ministries that she’s passionate about, and we’ll have someone in the house more, and it seems like a win-win. I mean, we have all these rooms, and I really only ever use the living room, the kitchen, and our bedroom.

Here’s the plan we made: she has the basement. We have the upstairs. And the main floor is common area.

So Keith and I are going to turn one of the upstairs bedrooms into a sitting area for us, in case we want to watch a movie at night, just the two of us. That way Mom doesn’t have to feel that she’s interrupting something if she comes up to the kitchen. If we’re in the living room, we’re open for company. If we’re upstairs, we’re not. And she has a little microwave and fridge in her room downstairs, too, in case she just wants to hang out down there for a bit.

We did have to put a full bathroom into the basement, but we were going to do that anyway. And Mom paid to have the two rooms downstairs renovated, and they look AMAZING. One room has wall to wall closets, and one has these amazing built in cabinets now. I wish we had done it earlier!

The biggest problem we have now is that all of my mother’s stuff has to fit in two rooms (though some of her spillover can go in the rest of the house, too). We’re going to go through all of her furniture and keep the best between the two of us, so we’ll likely end up getting rid of some of our stuff and replacing it with hers.

I think it’ll work quite well. We all get along well, so that’s not an issue. I know I’ve written before about living with in-laws, and for many couples it doesn’t work well. I think we’ll be fine. And it’s probably good for me to have someone in the house during the day, because I have a tendency to become a hermit when I’m working. This will force me to actually talk (though I do talk to myself sometimes. I likely shouldn’t admit that too widely).

Anyway, her house sold on Tuesday (yay!), but with a closing date of late July. We also have a family vacation coming up, so the next few weeks are going to be very busy for me. I’ve decided I’m likely going to only post four times a week now until the end of the summer, so I wanted to tell you all why. I know you’ll understand!

But any tips about how to get a ton of stuff into a small space? And tell me what you think about our new living arrangements!