NWRAW OPENED and IN CAME NANNY JIA!

NUTSHELL #3

Our beautiful organic juice shop.  NWRaw, we love you.

Note 1:  NWRaw opened in February!  We are trudging up K2, whipped by ice pellets and the blinding wind of running a raw food bistro and juice bar.  Good thing God can work with ignorant.  We may not have known what we were getting into, but we are committed to seeing our dream come true.  Thanks to those of you who are supporting us by putting foot to pavement and busting through our doors with fervor.  I love it when I see and hear of your enthusiasm for our juice!

We are going back to school as it were.  Reading...ever learning that our business is so much more than juice and healthy food choices.  NWRaw is our product.  And what a beautiful thing it is.  Now to do the dream and NWRaw justice and learn the art of how to create an excellent experience for our customers time and time again. To create the most beautiful, supreme juice bar business in the country; heck, in the world!  I get a lump the size of a lime in my gullet when I think that in a few months Northwest Raw will be one year old.

These past nine months have been harder than we’d imagined.  Hear me.  Having to plow winter wheat fields in a blinding snow storm, uphill behind a pair of oxen whilst pregnant with quadruplets might compare.  But, if you are going to climb you might as well go for the highest peak.  Right?  We are finding the quote, “it takes a village” too true when it comes to having a brand new baby business.  In May we brought to our staff, our son-in-law Trevor to manage along with our daughter Rachel (and the real boss, almost 2-year-old Elaithia June).  They have been such godsends.  They are young and beautiful and have energy.  Web and I don’t have as much of that precious commodity as we used to.  We have our place and that is, we are finding, different from the day-in and day-out management aspects.  We are having to learn how to run a business.  We love our little northwest juice bar, but as they say in the small business world, we need to be working ON our business, not IN it.

I feel we are about to crest the mountain top, but the trek to the top took kahunas…(in Hawaii) a wise man or shaman.
• informal an important person; the person in charge: one big kahuna runs the whole show.

• informal (in surfing) a very large wave.  Just in case you were wondering.  I was.  Oh well…I’m leaving it.

Nanny Jia

Note 2:  She Came— Zach’s Mary Poppins. Seemes God paved a golden path for her right to Staunton Hill.  Through a variety of encounters and name drops of this wonderful person, I felt prompted to go to Facebook and check her out.  I was shocked to see her face at my door…you see…

Jia held a face I’d seen in a dream a while back.  It was a real nighttime dream that seemed from God, but was not only improbable, but impossible at the time.  In this dream we as a family were interviewing for a nanny.  She walked through our front door dressed (yes as she did in reality) in a car coat tied in the middle, hair pulled over her shoulder and that face.  It was the same face I saw when I went to her Facebook page.  I nearly fell out of my clear acrylic chair.  God is NOT dead.

Now, oh the sweetness of the present…Monday through Friday we have consistency in our day.  Sigh…Zach has showers not given my myself, or Web.  On days we are not at NWRaw early we get to enjoy steaming mugs of coffee together in our pj’s.  All the while, Zach is having his meds drawn and given, food prepared, shower given, clothing washed, walks in the park and all manner of care given by a beautiful, lovely and kind young woman who loves Jesus with all of her heart.  I couldn’t have picked a better nanny.  I’m so glad I waited for God’s timing.  And I didn’t even have to interview another save Jia, whom I knew immediately upon seeing her, was the one for us.  The great thing is…she knew too.  This is excellent for Zach and for us.  We hold gratefulness in our hearts.

So…slow down, enjoy every aspect of your life because the journey is part of the dream, even in the tough stuff, even when the path seems longer, the air murky and dark and you feel like quitting, there is One who sees and who is creating, re-creating if necessary to bring about really good stuff for you.  I can honestly say after this difficult season of caring for Zach, 20-years with little help and of birthing a new business.  *tongue hanging out!  Sticking to the side of the One Who Creates will pull us through.  Hang on.  We walk through life, one foot in front of the other, hope in our guts and maybe a little organic latte (made with freshly squeezed nut milk) in our bellies.
*Coming to NWRaw in two weeks!

CLEAN WHITE PARCHMENT

Nutshell #2 (it’s about time Marmie!  Somewhat busy with NWraw and family and….)

Zach’s first visit to NWRaw

It’s like that.  The new year is like a crisp white sheet of parchment.  I never dreamed in January 2013 that in February of the same, we would be given a dream seed of a new business.  Not in my vividest dreams could I have conjured up this new venture.  Truth is, we never know what a new year holds.  I wasn’t dreaming big enough.  That’s the problem.  What I thought was that we would be diving back into what we knew, not storming shoulders back into the new unknown.  This dream is bigger than the two of us.  It’s bigger than I could dream with a horde of dreamers.  We needed The Dream Giver to embark on this wild wonderfulness.  Astounding is what it is!  What will be written on our new parchments at the end of 2014?  Exciting to even imagine considering this past year.  What will be the joys, the challenges, the dreams and sorrows?  We will each have some of these things in the new year and most likely all, if not more.

We here on Staunton Hill are loving life; at NwRaw still hammering, still nailing, still waiting to open.  Challenge number one in 2014, open this new business ASAP.  We dreamed a dream, we pushed forward with gusto.  We gotta hike up that preverbal hill; take the high country.  Live the dream.  I like a good challenge and this new business is that.

Grand babies in the unfinished cupboards at NwRaw.  I adore this photo!

Good tidings came near the end of 2013.  News concerning the funds available for Zach in 2014; amazingly enough, plenty and then some for the hiring of a full daytime nanny!  Oh yeah, lets hear it folks!  *clap-clap-clap!  Now, Mary Poppins, if you could please appear at my front door.  Thank you very much.

What will Marmie Karen do with eight hours of care per day for her Zach Angel?  I’m reeling with ideas.  Reeeeeeling!  Write…work some at NWRaw and perhaps; no probably I will just sit and stare…breathe in the restful refreshing-ness of nothing pressing.  Tell my shoulders to get down….where they belong.  Mornings in my pjs with time to sip a hot cuppa.  Ahhhhh….

How will Zach do with a new caregiver?  She/He will be phenomenal, energetic and loving, stupendous…able to bring out the best in our beloved, or we won’t hire them, period.  In a nutshell, he will love it :).  Happy new year, happy new friend Zachie Angel!

We have our space at NwRaw almost completed and it is astoundingly beautiful.  We are working nearly around the clock to get those doors open.  Cold Pressed colorful goodness in a glass coming your way in weeks.

I can’t wait to post a full on photo of our shop and of people bustling in and out…for now…here’s a partial peek.

Dream, and stand back.  The filling of our 2014’s will be fabulous!