The MacDonald Family Singers: Fire and Trip prep update!

Hi everyone!

We are SO thankful THANKFUL! God has blessed us so much through all your continued gifts and help. Even if it sounds redundant, THANK YOU. We can't say this enough. It is so encouraging to see the Lord provide through all of you. We had a neat opportunity to record our meal thank you tune with new words for our local radio station for the local area people. We appreciate so much the help that has been given.

I wanted to post an update sooner but I wanted to have some photos to share this time as well! My camera and (and flash!) were replaced.

First, here's our new residence!

We migrated from our temporary housing at beginning of the new year to the new house, 66 N. Main house. Us having this house is a miracle in itself! We bought it foreclosed for a great price *last* summer (11'.) It was intended for music, bus part storage and Seth and Carol's living area. We had no idea this was part of God's plan for housing us all! It is quite a bit smaller than 54 N. Main and we never dreamed of all living there. Seth and Carol lived in the top floor for a few months but had to leave because the heating system wasn't figured out. Well, we have a new heating system on the way and a temporary heating solution going on now.

Even with the temporary heating solution the first floor level took a long time to move into. The main hold up was getting the plumbing figured out. Apparently the man who owned it stopped paying the mortgage and didn't make any more repairs from then on. 6-8 feet of plugged up drains! Seriously.

We took down 99% of the ugly dirty drop ceilings. ( We had ripped out the gross carpet immediately after purchasing.) Eventually we'll have to replace the ceiling but we're not going to until the new heating system has been installed.

Here we are in the kitchen eating lunch today...

We had to rip out the kitchen cabinets because they were moldy and falling apart. Thankfully we were given some older, but sturdy and solid wooden ones!

Across the hall is the living room/laundry sorting room...

We are hoping we can remodel this into a better layout because the bathroom is in a very strange spot off the kitchen and overall it's a closed feel. You might have noticed we don't have much room in the kitchen/eating area once we all get in there. Hopefully opening the house layout up will help that.

Randomly switching subject but here's a before and after so you can see how the house demo is moving along....

Before...

After...

But for now, the old house demo has stopped. The cold is too much to work in and plus it's about time to start on our winter tour. We're looking to start fresh on the demo again once it warms up. We have a huge job ahead to finish but we're so far along, too. We are planning on keeping the back of the structure if we can.

Instruments

We were given some instruments, loaned and others gave money specifically for replacements. Right now we have a lot of what we need for the trip. Still waiting on the return of the tuba and flute from the repair man. But, we are THANKFUL for what we do have ready to go!

Here's a photo of Peter in the rubble holding the mandolin he lost...