Georgia - Geeeooorrrgia...

It's been a month, but I still want to capture this here where I will know where to find it, so this will be a bit of a catching up post.

I used to live in Georgia. As a matter of fact, I have often said it was my favorite place I've ever lived. Some of that was because of the culture, some was because of the people I knew there. We moved away when I was 18. It was a decision my parents made based on church preferences and I left kicking and screaming. I think literally. Or at least I know I cried most of the way from Georgia to Texas. I'll skip over the next few years, but my heart was often sad and I cried in my bed many nights over disrupted relationships that were inevitable due to the church situation we were in then.

Life moved on and I mostly lost touch with the people I had known and loved in Georgia. I often dreamed of returning. But, you know how it is, months flow into years and there are always things demanding your attention. Not to mention that the awkwardness of how I left still lingered in my mind.

I reached out to one friend, my closest friend back in the day, Laura to see if it would work to see her and her family if we traveled to the area over spring break. Her response was fast and overwhelming. In essence, "Yes! Please come! Stay with us! I have dreamed of this..." From that point the trip took on a life of its own. It was sweet and amazing. I cried a lot as I remembered and came to grips with... all of it. Keith and the kids were sweet even though, in typical Erin fashion, I had not told them much about any of it.

We stayed with Laura's family. We sat and visited for hours. She has this beautiful house with a big front porch. We sat out on the swing and talked. I can't say we picked up where we left off because the difference between 18 years old and 45 years old is too great for that. But I can say we reconnected in a new and deeper way. We have raised families, faced pain and hardship, and changed in so many ways. There were funny little things: we not only drive the same vehicle, the ones before these were also the same. There were the really meaningful things: we grieved similarly when our oldest children left home, we both work with our husbands and know the stresses and joys that entails. 

We also saw others while we were there. We shared meals with people, stopped in for short visits, and even walked through the church we went to there. This was the church where I was baptized and joined the Mennonites. People were overwhelmingly kind. Even as I fumbled through the apologies I felt I needed to make, even as I cried and stepped into the awkward. I felt accepted and loved. And it was good.

 

We even got to walk through the house my family lived in when we lived there. We had moved 2 houses onto land and put them together. Now someone we knew, who was just a little girl back then, lives there with her husband and 4 boys. It has changed so much, but was still so much the same. 

The whole experience was... I don't even know how to put it into words... it was amazing, and life giving, it closed circles and opened possibilities. I'm just overwhelmingly grateful for a second chance at friendship with some very special people.

Back to Blogging?

Here is the thing. I like to write. I always have. It feels easier to convey thoughts through writing. And I have so many thoughts. I may be drowning in thoughts right now. So, I'm going to try blogging again. I miss it. I used to blog several times a week plus almost daily for Superkids. Not writing at all doesn't feel right. I may drop it again, I may blog forever. It all remains to be seen.

I guess a little update is in order. Kind of like the Christmas letter, to get everyone caught up on the Martin crew.

We are now 20 months into owning Ebenezer Groceries (I guess business ownership is like a new baby, you count months for the first 2 years) it has been a huge growing experience for us, but it's going well and we are happy to be doing what we are doing. We have built a management team we love, which makes a huge difference in how busy we are on any given day.

Now for the kid updates. Everyone is healthy and doing well if you want to skip the mom brag that is coming.

Douglas & Kayla have been married since the end of July. They are super busy with both of them being in their final semester of nursing school. We are so proud of their dedication and hard work! Not only are they in school, but they both are working. And... (drumroll please!!) they are expecting their first baby in about 4 weeks! Meaning we are going to be PaPa and Nan-Naw Just expect this blog to be over-run with grand baby pictures in about a month.

Freeland is 19 and lives in an apartment in Schaefferstown. He is working with a landscaping crew. I am so happy to see him able to be more active again after his back problems and eventual surgery a year ago. He works out and has worked hard to get his core strength built back up after that set-back. He has always been our active outdoorsman, so it does my heart good to see him back at it.

Casper is 16 and is a junior in high school. He is a sweet kid who loves his dogs and cares for them tirelessly. School work has always come pretty easily for him. He is hoping to go to flight school to become a commercial pilot after he graduates.

Annika is turning 14 next week. She is finishing 8th grade online at home. I enjoy the extra one on one time I have with her while the other kids are at school. She got an early birthday gift this year. His name is Olaf and he is a chinchilla rabbit. We got him from the local animal shelter and he is 5 years old. He is so soft and already pretty snuggly considering that she has only had him for 2 days.

Eliana doesn't love when I call her the baby of the family, but my baby she is and will always be. She is 12 and in 5th grade. She is back to going to school full time and I miss her so much on the days she used to spend at home! She had a hybrid schedule until fairly recently, so we got a bit spoiled. She is still my little cuddle bug most of the time, though she occasionally reminds me that she is 12 and has more important things to do than watching cooking shows with me.

And Keith and I are, let's say mid-40's. He is the one who does most of the buying and numbers stuff for the store while I do the marketing. We make a pretty good team, if I do say so myself. 

And I can't close without telling you about the dogs. 

Bubba is our adorable, spoiled little cockapoo. He has his favorite place on the sofa and whines if someone dares to sit there or put something there. He loves snuggle times and will go part way back the hall then whine for me to come back to snuggle with him and rub his belly on the bed. He recently went to obedience school and is a very good little boy even if he does pout a little at times when he has to do something he doesn't want to.

Thor is our big, goofy Rottweiler. He is absolutely the sweetest, most laid back dog. He loves to be snuggled too and will often push his way in when we are giving Bubba attention. He has a big, mean sounding bark, but would pretty much welcome anyone in and serve tea if he could. He also went to obedience school and is such an obedient good boy. 

So that is about it. The update. And bless you if you made it this far. Anyone who followed my blog in the past knows this is not my normal style. I just had to have a base-line to work off of. 

I'm excited to be back!! <3

P.S. Photos of Casper and Annika coming soon. 

Christmas Party - #1!

A company Christmas party - our first as business owners, is a good reason to dust off the old blog, huh?

We really have some amazing employees. It's been some crazy months with taking over the grocery store here. But, thanks to steady employees and the way the former owners helped us transition, all is going well. At the end of the year, in the season of tradition, giving, and goodwill it is natural to stop and reflect on how grateful we are.

So, the Christmas party... we had such a good time! We had an ugly Christmas sweater contest, which produced some great laughs! We had wonderful food and did some hilarious mad libs. We had a "Secret Santa" gift exchange.

The sweater contest judges huddling to make their very important decisions.

Mostly we appreciated the joy of relaxing and showing appreciation to the the people we work with every day.

Stacked Pancakes {Pure Maple Syrup}

When I was a child my mother loved the Little House on the Prairie books. She read to us in the evenings in the winter months. I don't know how many times we read through the series. We had our favorites for various reasons. Farmer Boy was about the food. We would try making what we read about. Mom even tried apples and onions once. That wasn't so great, but the bacon and pancakes and jellies... those were fun! It was thanks to Farmer Boy that we started sometimes dipping our bacon in flour before cooking it to give it a different crunch.

I've always wanted to try the amazing-sounding stacked pancakes that Almanzo's mother made on Sunday mornings. The fluffy pancakes slathered in butter then liberally sprinkled with maple sugar before being added to the stack were described in great detail including the way the sugar and butter melted together and ran down the sides of the pancakes. The only problem was, out in West Texas we didn't exactly have lots of maple sugar. So we never tried it.

This week Keith decided to add pure maple syrup, maple cream, and, you guessed it, maple sugar to our inventory at Ebenezer Groceries. As soon as I saw it I knew what we would be having for breakfast on Sunday morning.

And they were good. Really good.

And the butter and maple sugar melted together and dripped down the sides. It really did. It was everything I hoped for. It even had a little bit of crunch from the sugar that I wasn't expecting, but that added to it! And the pure maple flavor was simply amazing!

How else should I use the rest of my bag of maple sugar? How do y'all use it?

My next thing to try is going to be the maple cream. I'm pretty tempted to just open it and eat it straight out of the jar, but I'm guessing there are better ways to use it. Any suggestions?

On Buying A Grocery Store

This is all new to us, the whole buying a business thing, the whole getting ready to run a grocery store thing. I mean, who knew that so many vendors were involved? Who knew that getting the POS to communicate with the scales was a very important step in the printing of labels? Who knew that buying produce was one of the most time consuming things an owner/general manager needs to do?

Certainly not me, but I do now!

We are about a week and a half out from taking over. Thankfully the current owners will plan to stay on for a while to help us learn the ropes. I think that is what is keeping these days from seeming overwhelming. As it is we are just pretty excited! We know that the learning curve will steep, but we are counting the days!

Apparently we need 5 gallon buckets of pepper...

It is funny that at the beginning of this year as I was looking ahead I decided to not make this a year of trying to do big things or make big changes, but just to shore up and strengthen the things already in place.

The bulk food room.

So far this year:

• I went to Panama for a new treatment.
• Douglas got engaged!
• We are buying a grocery store!!
• The children are changing schools.

That is a lot of changes for a year of no changes! :) :) :)

In 1 Month...

The last time I was in Taiwan I got a text from Keith. Now remember, it is a 13 hour time difference this time of year, so it was sent in the daytime here meaning it arrived in the middle of the night. I tend to wake up more often during the night while there (thank you, jet lag!), so one of my awake times I glanced at my phone to check the time and saw these words:

"Do you mind if I buy a business?"

At that point I was just like, "Whatever, sure, do it."

We did speak more about it over the phone when I was actually awake and he was really excited. I was a little blown away. Before I even got home, and I was only gone a week, he had gone to see the business and had made our interest in buying it known.

A few days after I got home, while I was still a bit fuzzy-headed from travel, we had a conversation with the sellers and got a tour of the business. And I got excited too.

There are a lot of steps that come in next. The waiting to hear if we would be the ones they would decide to sell to was a little hard. But when the answer came it was a YES!

So here we are, working through all of the legal steps to having a family business! I'll give more details soon, and {hopefully} some cute pictures. For now, we are looking at a real change of pace in about 1 month when we actually take over the business.

For those who don't know, what type of business do you think it might be?

And for those who do, please don't say quite yet! 

Pictures From Panama

We have been here in Panama for almost a day now. Our hotel is gorgeous and comfortable. We have an ocean view room with a balcony on the 26th floor. The view is mind-blowing. We can see ships waiting to go through the Panama Canal from our balcony.

We walked around a little today. We went inside a basilica, which was lovely.

Then we found ourselves wandering through some non-tourist-y parts of the city. I think my favorite part may have been when we saw people gathered in a shaded area playing dominoes.

I love the way photography is such an amazing way to bridge cultural differences. I could not speak with them, but I could understand that they wanted me to take their pictures. And I wanted to, and I loved showing them. The whole interchange was so fun!

The heat got to us and we headed back to the hotel for a cool, restful afternoon. Tomorrow I have my first appointment.