The Talens' Tales

Sometime I find is hard to know what to share about my life and what God is doing in it. I feel I have a wonderful, but rather average life. I am a dairy farmer's wife and mom. My days consist of driving to places for my kids or husband, housework, cooking and laundry. I like to read, do puzzles and make cards in my spare time. I am involved in a few different things at my church. We are all healthy and we are not in great need of anything. So sometimes I think that what I see God doing in my life isn't really worth telling other people about. There is little drama or excitement. But for the past two years I have been a part of a group in our church whose main objective is help us do just that - tell our story. And to tell it to help disciple others in their walk with God as well. And something big in our lives happened this week that God has been prodding me to tell. So, here I go. That big thing is... we sold a house. Now this may not seem like a big thing in the gr...

For this part of the tour you are going to need to use your imagination. These rooms are in a bit of an unfinished state yet. However I wanted to share because I wanted all of you to see that we have room for lots of visitors. The first guest area is known as The Apartment. It has its own entrance from the outside, but can also be accessed through the toy room. When you enter form the outside, the first room a nice little nook with built in bunk beds.  Then you enter the living/sleeping area. Imagine a bed along the wall on the left. The door straight ahead leads to the toy room.  There is a fully functional and well supplied kitchen. All you need is food!  And its own bathroom The upstairs is a room known as the Big Room. It has served many different purposes over the years, but it is our intention to make this into a nice guest room. Right, it is storing all sorts of things that we just don't know what to do with yet.  It also has a loft that...

Then there is the second floor, filled with a lots of little rooms. The first room you find at the top of the stairs in my craft/sewing room. This space is working out really nicely for all of my card making and scrapbooking. When you walk through the craft room, you enter the first of the upstairs bathrooms. The next room is Joash's room. He has requested that we paint it orange. We shall have to see about that on. Then there is the loft room, as Joash has decided to name it. Right now it is really a diaper changing station and storage.  This ladder leads up the loft in the "loft room." And Mataya climbed up this ladder twice with in the first week we lived here. Joash has yet to make it past the fourth step. This is grown ups bedroom. Another bathroom And Mataya's room.  There is another bedroom that is currently storing all of the earthly possessions of Wilbert's brother, Jander, and Jander's wife, Tiffany, while they are in Af...

 I promised a house tour, so here it is. I have decided to break it up into three parts so things don't get too crazy. So today it is time for the first floor (or most of it anyway). Since we have only lived here two weeks, I can take no credit at all for how things look, the layout or anything like that. My in-laws did a great job taking care of this place and remodeling parts of it. I do have plans for paint in some parts, but I haven't gotten to that step yet. The entryway. The door we most often use leads you here to the entry way/laundry area. The first door you come too then leads to a bathroom with a shower, sink and toilet.  The door at the end of the entry way leads to this. It was the office, but we are making it a toy room. But the filing cabinet will have to stay where it is because nobody wants to try and move that. We have some of the kids toys here and Joash has some things in the basement. Mostly things that he doesn't want Mataya to get into. ...

As I have eluded to in the last few posts, my family has made a big move...across the road. We swapped houses with my husband's parents, so we now live in the farm house. It is lovely to be here on the farm place. The move went really well. It was a gradual move, but that was good for everyone. The week prior to the actual move date, I began to haul boxes over and putting them in the apartment portion of the house. That's right. This is a house with a small apartment attached to it. It even has bunk beds! So that means all of our friends in other parts of the world can visit PEI and have a free place to stay. Even if you have kids! Anyway, we moved on a Monday. We rented a U-Haul truck for each house, packed them up and swapped house. Monday we were able, with the help of some wonderful friends, get all of the bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens moved. Over the rest of the week, the rest of the things were moved to the new homes. I will do a little house tour soon. I have ...

That's right, we now live in a house with a dishwasher. For our almost 6 years of marriage, we have never had a dishwasher...until now! And it is great! I am enjoying doing dishes only once a day, rather than 3-4 times.  Joash is enjoying the new dishwasher too. It came a nice box, so we cut out a door and some windows. He enjoys his little house. Sorry for the non smiling pictures. Like I said in a previous post, it is really hard to get a good pictures of him smiling these days.

This is our new house. Joash and I would like to take you on quick tour. When you walk in the door we use as our main entrance, you can go up the stairs to the hallway,  or down the stairs to the basement.  We will start upstairs. The first room you come to is the playroom. Joash uses this room quite well already. We have misplaced one tractor in the move. I am sure it will show up sometime, but I have yet to find it. Joash has not noticed that it is missing and happily plays with all of his other tractors, cars and trucks.  The hallway then opens up into the dining area.  Here is the kitchen from the far wall in the dining area.  This will be the guest room. "But right now the guest is the new dishwasher," says Joash. It is just waiting for the first cut of silage to be over to be installed.  The main floor bathroom. That's right. We have a lavender tub. I know you are all really jealous.  The living room/offic...

A quick up date, with pictures this time! We are currently in process of moving to our new house, so I thought I should update quickly before we get lost in the craziness of a move. Life is good. Joash is learning at least three new words a day. Today was "watch," "dolphin" and "juice." It is so fun to hear him talk. Though now when you ask him what his name is, he responds with an enthusiastic "tractor!" Here is Joash showing his cheesy smile and that he is wearing his dad's watch. He loves that watch for some reason. Today he also learned how to drink from a straw, so I envision lots of smoothies in our future! Well, that is all for now. The next time you hear from me, we will be in our new house!

Remember this? Oh yeah. The house that we still  own in Minnesota. Thankfully it has been rented out the majority of the time since we have moved. Unfortunately, it looks like our renters are moving out the end of this month. So, we are back to the same old stresses of last summer. During the time it was rented, I sort of forgot about it. I got comfortable. I became self-reliant. What can I do? How can I make this situation better? And now I am a overwhelmed with the enormity of owning a home in a different country, wondering how on earth we are going to make our mortgage payments in a few months. I am pleading with God to bring the people to town who will buy this house and bring them soon. Like today. I sound like broken record. I am relearning the same lessons I learned last summer. I have more to learn about this whole trust thing. Prayers are appreciated as we learn to trust that God's plan is perfect in this. And if you happen to know of ...

I am certainly glad got out yesterday. Today is a great day for staying inside out of this weather. I am cetainly glad it is not snow, even though my husband would argue otherwise. I have another thing to add to my list of things I miss--Chex cereal. How do they no have Chex Mix here? How am I suppose to male Puppy Chow? Or any other yummy goody that calls for Chex? Grr. And a strange thing I have noticed around here. Not only do people put up the usual Christmas lights, but there is also this odd trend of putting up spotlights to illuminate the front of your house. I could understand this if there was a nice manger scene or if you put a lot of greens up on your house or something like that. However, most them have nothing but lights up. So, they put a spotlight on their Christmas lights. Why? I don't get it. Another variation on this is illuminate a large tree in your yard with spotlights. Not a nice pine or anything like that, but just a random, leafless tree. I don't unde...

Moving to a new place always brings out things that you maybe didn't realize you liked about the place you came from because you took it for granted. I find that other then family and friends, there are a few things that I miss here, mostly food stuff. I am sure this list will continue to grow as I continue to look for different things as I cook and bake. Crock Pot Liners -I love using my crock pot and I love how easy Crock Pot liners make clean-up. They are just a special made plastic bag that you line the crock pot with and then when you are finished you simply throw the liner away. Why these are not sold here I really don't understand. Mrs. Butterworth's Syrup - Sorry, I am not a maple syrup fan. Mrs. Butterworth's is the best. M&M's in a large bag - I have only been able to find M&M's in little stand up bags, but not in the large 1lb or more bags you can get in the state (for the same price of the little bags here.) Almond Bark - It is Christmas time...

We have finally completely finished the moving process. Today we registered our vehicles on the island. It was sort of a process to get that all done. Not only did we have to go through all of the work to have them imported and then inspected, it was also quite a process to become insured here as well. We had to get a special letter from our insurance company in the states and also have our driving record sent from the state of Minnesota. So, it really did take us this long to get everything in order. But now it is finished and we will have our PEI plates on our vehicles soon.j And Joash is seven weeks old today. Here he is by our Christmas tree in his Sunday finery. The clothes are a little big and they make him look really grown up and really cute. He is growing though. At his last weight check, which was last Wednesday, he was 10lb 6 oz. What a blessing to know that he is growing well.

When we told everyone we were moving, and where we were moving too, we had a lot of people who were very excited and said they wanted to come and visit us sometime. That is great with us. We love visitors and we love showing off the Island and where we are at. On Sunday, we had our first visitors from the States, so sorry if you thought you would get that honor. (They even beat my parents who are coming in December). Our first visitors where a pastor and his wife of a church that several of our students came from while we taught in Edgerton. They already had this trip planned in the spring, and so when they heard we were moving, they added visiting us to their agenda. They joined us for church and Sunday lunch. It was a very nice afternoon and really fun to see a familiar face, even though we really did not know them all that well. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. I have now vowed to make sure I get a pictures of our visitors from the States. I think that will make a nice...

We are quite settled into our house now. I thought I would quick post some updated pictures of the rooms that were not quite put together the last time I posted. First, the living room. The baby things are starting to accumulate in the corner. A family from church gave us a bouncy seat and swing that they are finished with. We left this corner open for baby stuff and I think it will work out well since the corner is visible from the kitchen. Looking the other way into the living room. The fire place is on the wall to the left, so the couch is facing it. And the one you all have been waiting for, I am sure. The baby's room. This is a view from the back corner. The crib is ready to go and we were able to fit the changing table that Wilbert's dad made before he was born. I made the curtains and the crib skirt. There is a drawer that is on wheels under the crib, so it is a nice storage space. I also made the wall hanging from a mobile that I had as a baby. So there is a little bit...

As part of our moving process, we decided to try and downsize as much as possible. And since we hadn't seen with our own eyes the place were we would be living, it was hard to know what large things we would really need or what would work in the house. So, once we got here, we quickly learned what we would need and then set out to find stuff for as cheaply as possible. So, we bought everything used. Here are the great finds. Our computer desk. It fits perfectly in the space we have for it, has a little bit of storage. This was most expensive of our purchases, but considering it is only three years old and fits our space so well, it was well worth it. A dresser. This one is almost identical to the one we sold in Edgerton, but it had a little more wear and tear. So, I put a cloth on top to cover up the not so nice looking part and Wilbert fixed a few of the drawers. For $20 we have a very nice and functional dresser. I really wanted a chair for in the baby's room. We found this g...