I'm Back...

I'm sorry I went away...

I had to...

I was no longer blogging for the right reason, and had lost the joy of it. Also I was failing to follow through with commitments I made both in my real life and here in the "bloggy" realm... I needed to prioritize and blogging just wasn't on the list. I felt like I had to read about 30 blogs daily before I could write mine and spent hours a day on this computer... It was out of control. Also, I had lost a lot of my joy... Not just for blogging, but in life. The transition to full time caretaker of my Mom and Step-dad was much harder then I could have anticipated, and I let seeds of resentfulness and negativity take root in my heart... I had a valley to go through, and blogging was one more thing then I was able to deal with in that valley.

But that is mostly behind me now... I can once again declare I have JOY in my heart and for that I am grateful!! As you can imagine big changes have happened in the seven or so months I've been hiding from you guys! I don't intend to disappear again so I will have plenty of time to fill you all in and avoid this post feeling like a novel.

I will update you on a few of the bigger changes...

The Bakery is closed... Yep, you read that right. We were doing a booming business... In January I became a full time partner and we changed it to The Pastry Garden Bakery and Bistro. We were open for dinner service and having a blast... Then in mid February we were notified that the new owner of the building would not be renewing our lease that ended in March. Just like that it was over... My cousin didn't have it in her after ten years of operating in that location to start over, so we closed the doors, and sold off the equipment... She took a job managing a kitchen/ head chef for a new restaurant in town and I am once again at home full-time. (Which of course means I am hardly ever home...) She does still do some catering on the side and I help with that, but otherwise my food service career is limited to feeding my family and whatever extra teens we always seem to have hanging out here on any given day.

The other big change is Cate is going to college in the fall! Yippee and drat!! After a year of working in a grocery store (aka as a dead-end job) with people who have been working there 10 or more years and are still just cashiers she realised that her life was quickly going nowhere. She had felt the call on her heart to be a missionary for several years, but was off track. How everything came about is a story for another day but suffice it to say for now that she was accepted at a small Christian college here in Maine and starts in the fall! That is the "yippee" part... The "drat" part is my nest is about to become a little bit empty and I know I will miss this "chick" terribly...

I guess that is enough about me for one day... If any of you are still out there give me a "holla"!

Thanks for Listening,
rebecca d