Three Months

**Guest Blogger**

Eric Hendrickson

From December 23rd through March 23rd, I was on a paid 3 month sabbatical through my employer.  These sabbaticals are given to long term employees who are eligible to take one after 7 years of employment.  My opportunity came after 11 years.  I went into it not understanding the point of having three months off, but soon after the sabbatical, I understood why they are offered.

On December 26th, we headed out to Colorado to ski at Granby Ranch with family.  This was the first time our kids have skied.  Granby is a great resort for kids.

There are two mountains.  The easy side and the hard side.  My brother-in-law, Eric, and I would sneak away every once in awhile to the hard side.

Colorado was beautiful and the skiing was fun.  It was a great first week.

From about 9am to 3:30pm each day, I worked on finishing the basement.  The first room I finished was the "Craft" room.

It took about 2 weeks to finish this room.  Then I moved on to the bathroom.

The bathroom was already roughed in and had a tub installed.  Someone wanted a jacuzzi tub, so I took out the tub and tore out all the existing plumbing rough-in.

There was a lot of work required for this tub but I really like the way it turned out.  It took about 5 weeks in the bathroom.

The last 3 weeks I worked in the main living room/game room area.  I had finished 1/2 of the room when my sabbatical was over.

There is a mess of wires/cables behind the TV, and I built an oak enclosure to house the electronics.

Our last week was to be a spring break vacation (see previous blog).  Unfortunately, it was cut short due to the coronavirus.  We did have a great visit with Grandma Great.

And we had a short stop in St. Louis.

We did get to see the Ark Encounter and meet Kirk Cameron.

Part (the best part) of my sabbatical plan was increasing my devotional time from 45 minutes a day to two hours.  I used this extra devotional time to catch up on some reading and to watch some video series that I have not been able to make time to do.  The more time you spend with God, the stronger your relationship will be with Him.  I very much enjoyed the extra time I got to spend with my Lord and Savior.

While on sabbatical, I let my facial hair grow.  Stacee said no to the full beard, but she likes the partial.

All good things come to an end and I am now back to work.  It did not take me long at all to disengage from work at the start of the sabbatical, and similarly it did not take me long to get back engaged at work.  I enjoy my job so it was easy coming back to it.  I am grateful to my employer for the wonderful three months.