Christmas Card 2018

"Deck the halls like Chip and Joanna are watching."

At the writing of this Christmas letter, we are four days away from welcoming the town of Ames through our doors for the 30th annual Holiday Home Tour. There are about 658 things I could be doing but sitting on the couch in front of a Hallmark movie, cuddled next to Josh under a buffalo plaid blanket is by far the best choice on this frigid November night.

That sentence and this scene feels so familiar, just like every other year we've celebrated Christmas together...except this year that couch is in a different house. To say we have a few things to fill you in on would be an enormous understatement and I'll warn you, this year it gets a little long.

Last December (after our precious little Christmas card had already made its way into mailboxes across the country) we made an offer on a long-shot, fixer upper, potential dream home...a cottage farmhouse that sits right outside of Ames on five acres. Our offer was immediately accepted and closing was set for December 29th...which was nothing like how we'd planned to spend the end of the year or the last Christmas we'd enjoy in our sweet house on 13th St. We just didn't even see this coming and yet somehow the timing of it all ended up being perfect. I spent the month calling about utilities and packing anything that wasn't Christmas decor while Mav played with his new train set. Josh plowed snow every other day, and somehow, we managed to host a couple parties in the calm before the storm that would be the next two months of our lives.

I need you to understand what I mean by 'fixer upper'...that's not even an accurate description of the work this house underwent to be livable. From the thousands of square feet of rancid carpet/padding/subfloor to the eight wallpapered rooms...the overwhelming pet smell and significant mouse infestation...we spent every waking minute of January and February living and breathing this home renovation...I look back and I'm honestly not sure how we survived it (our friends bringing us meals and our family picking up paint brushes every weekend is how) but we did and have lived to write a Christmas letter about it.

We moved into our (old) new house the last week of February with a broken washer, no kitchen sink or countertops, and Josh's BLC equipment in complete disarray. We started Move-In Day with Mav throwing up, our water heater exploding + flooding the toy room and ended it with an outlet in our bedroom catching fire and smoking in the wall. I am not making one bit of this up. While the hardwood floors in half of our house were curing (and we still had a TON of work left), the only sensible thing to do was book a mid-week-four-day getaway to Galena to spend some much-needed time working on the BLC stuff we'd been neglecting...and bonus, tax write-off because 'work trip!' I'd say we came home recharged and ready to get back to work, but by this time in the renovation 'project' we'd developed some mild PTSD from the demo and broken appliances and 1,496 hours we'd spent painting. Poor Maverick existed on frozen pizza, Chick-Fil-A, and hours of Super Why on Netflix, but ended up spending the summer at the pool and quickly snapped out of that.

I dug deep and kept at it, Josh got busy with BLC spring work and in April two dogs came to live at our house because why not. When life is this much chaos, sometimes adding another thing can help in an insane, backwards way. Milly and Remy are two Great Pyrenees sisters who are the sweetest, most perfect addition to our new life on an acreage. And even though they bark at the UPS man and chew leather boots guests accidentally leave on our porch, they are so cute and cuddly it's stupid and we absolutely love them.

This year Boersma Lawn Care carried its largest crew to date; added an enclosed trailer to the fleet; and by the end of the season Josh had a full-time, chemical-licensed employee to help with the craziness of the fall and plowing in Ames and Ankeny this winter. And BLC got a new logo! Our Ames house is filled with renters we love and I'm shocked at how sad we've been at times over the past year, remembering things we loved about our old house and backyard and neighborhood. Picturing how we 'did Christmas' in our old house...so cozy and special...makes me homesick to think about, which is ridiculous because we literally got to move into our dream home this year. Our Cambridge acreage is still there...and rented. Our 'plan' shifted a bit this year, but for now it works as a rental.

Some random year highlights for you: Josh and I both turned 30 this year! He got a big surprise party (the weekend after the week I had the exterior of our house painted, not stressful at all) in May and I got an amazing sister-trip to Waco in June (yes, it was six months early). Mav tot a Gator and spends hours playing outside driving all over our property picking up sticks. The mice continued to be the bane of our existence, so we gave in and got two kitties in July. The dogs wanted to kill them until two weeks ago and now everyone sleeps in the shed at night and loves each other. Together, the cats and dogs have killed five possum's which may have been the bonding experience they needed. RAGBRAI went right by our house this summer and we handed out free donuts and poured iced coffee (and bloody Mary's!) for three hours starting at 6am. I started a casual decorating 'business' which means I charge a fee to help people arrange a shelf or mantle or room they're having a hard time with. Sometimes people pay me just to come over and look at how I organize our closets. It's slow growing, which I'm fine with, because being creative for the sake of loving it is enough for me right now. Maverick Wesley James turned three and is SO THREE. He's sweet but his attitude has started to emerge, and I feel like we have our parenting work cut out for us in the upcoming year. He got a playground for his birthday and of course it rained for a straight week after it was delivered to our house (poor buddy). Auntie Jamie started dating a boy in March, was engaged in September, and we are currently in Wedding Planning Mode for May. Josh, Mav, and I all have roles in the wedding festivities, so we're excited for the fun stuff to come in 2019! Josh seems to like having Adam around to balance out our Sister Act, and adding a fourth to our gang has been a really fun and easy transition. I only mind sharing Jamie a little bit. We spent a week at Twin Lakes with Josh's whole family; did our annual fall trip to Galena while Mav did the "G'ma Tour"; and I decorated for the big women's conference at my home church (for the last time).

What I'm saying is, the house is 'finished.' The outbuildings have been cleaned, painted/covered in metal, but are a work in progress in the organizing department. We have plans for goats or maybe chickens because the sort of 'go' with this whole white cottage farmhouse vibe...we've adjusted to life on an acreage well, due mostly to the fact that Target and CFA are still a mere five minutes away. We're conveniently located in Cornerstone's 'backyard,' so we're almost never late to church anymore! As we settle in here more and more, we've even discussed ideas of having a small Christmas Tree farm or seasonal antique shop open in our shed. Where we felt 'stuck' in our old house, here the possibilities feel endless and it's been amazing to work hard for the transformation, and now sit back and dream about what else we can do.

This week we are in extreme Tour Prep and our usual Christmas decorating has reached new (insane) heights. 16+ trees, lights around the whole house, and I might have hung stockings on the porch for our animals. You can find before and after pictures of our house renovatione on Facebook and Instagram, and I occasionally still post on our blog www.boersmasglitterandgrass.blogspot.com!

At the end of one of the craziest years of our lives (where we've hardly been sitting still long enough to reflect how God blessed us above and beyond what we expected) we are amazed...amazed by God's goodness and provision even in the trials. like, I always wanted a front porch...but He didn't just deliver on that, we also have a screened porch that wraps around the house to our bedroom and I can't even with it. Over the past year we've spent hours on that screened porch with friends and family and have already made more memories than I could have hoped for. The bedrooms and couches are consistently occupied on a nightly basis and our desire to use this home as a tool for hospitality to ultimately show our people the love of Christ is what made all that dang hard work worth it. Drop in unannounced for a cup of coffee anytime, this house is God's and we just get to live here.

So in the midst of all the projects and painting and 'pretty stuff'...the over-the-top decorating is really my way of pointing everyone back to the true meaning of Christmas. There could be over 800 people coming through our house this weekend and I've made sure each one will know without a doubt why we are celebrating Christmas at this cottage farmhouse. Jesus being born in a manger, bringing the hope of the Gospel to a lost world has always been and always will be the reason we decorate and celebrate.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Josh, Mollie, and Mav (and Milly and Remy and Stripe Kitty and Gray Kitty)