Terry's sabbatical began Sunday, June 4, which was actually the day of his half marathon. We feel so enormously blessed to be able to enjoy a sabbatical this summer. In case you don't know, a sabbatical is time of rest away from ministry work. The ministry can be incredibly draining (and boy did I feel that this year) and so a church can offer a sabbatical every once in a while to prevent burnout and give time to reevaluate and rejuvenate. Basically, REST. Rest can be in short supply, especially in the summer. Just when we get to the end of another whirl wind year and are ready for a break, that's exactly what is not in store. Summer is crazy! Terry travels on youth trips so much that we don't have energy or time for a vacation of our own. It starts to seem like the entire world is off frolicking around but your time never comes. Enter sabbatical. YAY YAY YAY! Can you tell I'm excited? I'm probably more excited than Terry. I'M SO EXCITED!
Terry has been a youth pastor for ten years now, five in Gburg and five here. Our church's policy is a sabbatical every seven years, but they graciously allowed us to go "early," even though in another sense it's been longer than they usually go. Except we weren't here then. In any case, we were ready for a break.
We hemmed and hawed about a possible trip to take this summer and finally landed on Zion National Park in Utah and Legoland in California. But in order to make that happen, we have had many, many things to accomplish first. The very first thing we did that first morning home on sabbatical on Monday June 5, was make this list. Terry let Evie write most of it since that is totally and completely her thing.
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| We have since found a Legoland discount and bought a sprinkler timer :) |
The very first thing Terry did the day after his race, besides to make the list, was to install this doggy door. We had been dog-sitting Bo for nearly two weeks and I guess his visit pushed us over the edge. These dogs were going to let themselves out of the house, darn it!
It's been a wonderful addition.
The next thing to accomplish was work on the van, the new van we bought on June 2. As I already described in the van post, we did an extraordinary amount of work on that van. I have a share in it too since I detailed the heck out of it after Terry put in the doggy door.
One of the other big things we did was tiling the laundry room floor. Back at the beginning of April Terry tore out all the nasty and disgusting carpet and installed a new sink. Since we're going to rent our house during our trip, we needed to have that laundry room ready to go before then. So the third day of sabbatical found Terry scraping glue and other irregularities off the laundry room floor to prepare for the tile we had bought about a month earlier.
Scraping in real time. It was so exciting!
All done.
We took everything out except the water heater. We even bought a new toilet!
The following evening, Thursday June 7, Jeff came over to help tile. That's what he does for a living and we were beyond grateful for his help. Go Jeff! Yay Jeff! Jeff is awesome!
It's actually vinyl tile so it went a lot faster than actual tile would have.
They spread a primer down before dinner and then went to town after we were done eating. Granted it took a big chunk of time and we didn't say goodbye to Jeff until 11:30pm (poor guy, we felt so bad), but we got it done in one evening.
Jeff laying the last tile!
The tile had built in grout lines, which we wanted to seal the tile in in case there was ever a toilet overflow, but boy was it a pain in the butt. Man, that stuff did not cooperate! Actually, it was because the grout lines were too shallow and the grout kept getting wiped out. Kind of a bad design or something. So annoying but in the end it was done!
Boom baby!
From the opposite corner.
From where the sink is.
Ok that's enough, but a before and after is always so gratifying :D
I wanted a picture with all the stuff in it plus the new toilet so I just now took this picture.
Terry also hung that mirror, which is an old one of Shari's. Oh, and I forgot to add that I touched up all the paint - there were giant chunks missing behind the sink and old vanity that had been there.
We still have more than enough to do though! We have been incredibly busy so far this sabbatical!
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