2014 The Year of Change

It's a new year! Happy 2014 everyone! The Lord has made known to me that this will be a year of CHANGE for our family. Here we are January 7th, and change has already come to us.

One of the first changes happening is Roger's employer Beechcraft is being bought by Textron. Textron also is the parent company of Cessna where Roger used to work for 14 years. He does not know yet if this will affect his job. He doesn't know if they will try to combine the two workplaces so he might be working with people he used to work with when he was at Cessna. It's all a waiting game to see what will happen.

Another change that started last night was we are no longer a part of Boy Scouts. The Teaching Parents Association, the homeschool organization that supported the homeschool BSA troop, decided months ago that they would no longer endorse BSA due to the policy changes they made that contradict Christian values. We wholeheartedly supported that decision. In less than a year a new organization called Trail Life USA has sprang up. They are basically similar to BSA, but will hold Christian values. It's so brand new, so there will be many bumps to iron out (what badges to earn, how to earn them, the different ranks and levels a boy can make, etc.), but because this is nationwide, there are many people doing their best to get this organization going and successful. Roger is in charge of the boys 6-8th grades. He is currently the only leader and last night he had 22 boys. He knew about half of them since many just transferred over from BSA and they're homeschoolers, but there were many boys totally new to anything like this, and not homeschoolers, so he will have to get to know them. He did say that some parents told him they want to help in some way, so hopefully next week when they meet again he will have more volunteers to help him.

The TPA also decided they will no longer support Girl Scouts. Instead the new similar organization is called American Heritage Girls. There was one troop already started here meeting at a church, and they will continue as their own troop, and now there will be the TPA troop, which like Trail Life, is open to all students whether homeschooled or not. Lauren is joining that and she starts next Monday. However, there are 7 more meetings of the year for Girl Scouts and she will finish those. Many of her friends from GS are doing both groups. GS will meet opposite weeks of AHG at our leader's home. Hopefully AHG will be a fun group and we will be able to continue it next year. Like Trail Life, there are an abundance of kids signed up, but leadership is lacking. I will be helping with registration and check-in, and hopefully good women will step forward to become leaders.

A 3rd change is we are changing realtors to try to sell our house. We tried for two 3 month blocks with one realtor and it didn't work. That contract ended at the end of December. We do want to replace the flooring in the house in the kitchen, dining, and entryway first and it needs to be done this month so we can get the house back on the market next month. The realty team we are going with this time are friends of Roger's. Our first realtor was endorsed by Financial Peace University founder Dave Ramsey so we were hoping to have good luck with him. Now, I hope that this next team will be good luck for us, and that things don't get yucky--I hate doing things like this with people you know just in case things go wrong and it might effect friendships.

So...the beginning of the year and 3 big changes happening already. Okay, Lord, I don't know what else you have in store for us this year, but I just ask that you guide us through it. And, please, please bring the right people to our house to buy it! Amen.