I recall reading once that there are 5 major stresses in life: 1. Death of a loved one 2. Divorce 3. Moving 4. Major Illness and 5. Job Loss. I've personally experienced all 5 of them but never two in one week and definitely not during holiday peak season!!. This has been a challenging past couple of weeks to say the least. We made it through it all just fine. Maybe even a bit stronger. We have so much to be thankful for this holiday season.
We moved about 20 miles east of Los Angeles to the beautiful All-American city of Monrovia. While living next door to my daughter and her family was a blessing in itself, financially and logically it just made so much more sense to combine households and save on expenses. We fell in love with the first place that we found but unfortunately by the time we could get our schedules together to see it, the house had already been rented.
To our delights, the house became available a short time later and this time we jumped on it. Within a couple of weeks we were boxing up the two households and preparing for our big move. We opted to take as much as we could by ourselves and then hire Armor Moving to do the heavy lifting. BTW, if you are in Los Angeles and looking for a trustworthy moving company, look no further than Mike, his son Eric and the amazing staff at Armor Moving. They came highly recommended to me by a dear friend who had used them for several of her moves and I have to give them a definite thumbs up!
The house could not be any more perfect. Built in 1926, it's one year older than my mom, it's a two story house. The kids will take up the second floor and we'll have the more accessible first floor. We have not one but two lovely backyards and a gorgeous California Coastal Oak in the front yard. We're nestled in the foothills and out of my office window I can clearly see the San Gabriel Mountains. Just a hop, skip and a few jumps away from some gorgeous equestrian property too. It may not be the same beautiful view of the Griffith Park Observatory I've had for the past 7 years but it's still pretty breathtaking and who knows maybe there will be snow in those mountains this winter.
So a couple of days post move, while still surrounded by boxes, Chris had surgery on his completely separated (not just torn) rotator cuff. Surgery was a success but Chris will not be able to work his wheelchair for a minimum of 2 months, perhaps 6, so it was very important that we were in an accessible place for him to rehab. We're very fortunate that his brother Laine was able to come out from Florida to help him/me for the past couple of weeks.
I wanted to take this time to thank everyone for your patience and understanding, lovely emails, and words of comfort for Chris/us during his recovery. We truly appreciate it. Since I haven't had a vacation since starting Beauty Cafe (going on 20 years), this is the first time I've closed Beauty Cafe down for an extensive period of time. Still unpacking and searching for the business phone and checkbook but I'm almost there. So if you've left a message and haven't heard back, please send me an email.
xoxo,
Lisa
