Funny Sayings

The kids are always saying funny things. I always think I need to go write them down, but by the time I have time, I've forgotten them.
One of Josiah's favorite things to ask is: "Yes, you said?" He'll come and ask a question, and we'll answer him and he almost always says, "Yes, you said?" Even if we say no.

Josiah: "Did God tell Daddy he could go to work?"
            "Where is God's house?"
            "Did God say not to break the cup??"
            "Did God say not to throw the cup on the floor?"
(These were all asked at supper tonight)

Josiah: "What are we having for supper?"
Me: "Lasagna"
Josiah: "NO, It's BITzagna"

Luke while reading his God's World book about bees enemies: "like Winnie the Pooh"

Timothy has started screaming at Josiah, so Josiah screams back and then quietly says, "yourself" to the effect of "AHHHHHHHH,.... yourself."

Tonight Josiah saw a picture of Aunt Rachel on the computer and he said, "That's my favorite Rachel."

Timothy was wearing a shirt with a bear on it (not Winnie the Pooh), and Josiah says, "Him's wearing Winnie the Pooh, Mommy. You gotta be kiddin' me!"

Luke's prayer at lunch today included prayer for Emily to close her eyes, and for Josiah to not eat while we pray.

Josiah: "God said no to get on the cabinet."

Josiah: "Mommyyyyyyy"
Me: "Yes, Josiah?"
J: "Umbrellas don't like dogs. Specially Pongo. But not Cooper... he's a big ole boy!."

After we got home from church today, Leigh got out of the van and when he opened the kids door, he said, "It's gusty out!!" and Luke says, "Wow, it even made your hair move!!!"

Play

Timothy has learned to climb in and out of the stero cabinet. Today, Josiah climbed in with him and Timothy was not pleased, so I made Josiah get out. I'm not quite sure how Josiah got in without hurting Timothy, but he sure did!! Timothy also has two new teeth coming in on the top on either side of the two middle ones. He stood up today from bending over on a toy. He's standing for longer periods of time. Luke and Emily have learned to roller skate! They've been going outside almost every day and "practicing." They're doing pretty well! I need to take them down to the park and see how they do. Maybe we'll do that this weekend!!

Flowers

The day Leigh went and took his drug test, he brought me home some flowers!! They were so pretty and fun!!

Tickets

A couple weeks ago a member of our household received a ticket. It was quite interesting the mail we received several days after that. We got 8 different ads for traffic school and/or law firms to get the case dismissed. We've received about 1 or 2 in the mail every day after that.

(The ticket was for "speeding" in a school zone, and a stop sign had just been passed, so it couldn't have been much over the 15mph.)

kiddos

The kids are doing very well in school. Some days are harder than others to keep Josiah occupied. There was one week he kept snitching food out of the kitchen. (My dad would say I should feed the kid!) I had made chocolate chip cookies - that was probably the problem - and they sat in a container on the cabinet. The cabinets in this house, excuse me, the countertops, in this house are not as deep or as tall as the ones in Pensacola, so if something is on it, Josiah can get a stool and easily reach it. That week he ate cookies, crackers that I had made for Timothy (although Timothy won't eat them), graham crackers out of the diaper bag, graham crackers off of Timothy's high chair tray, two of Emily's skittles, part of one of Luke's cookies at lunch, and drank out of everyone's water bottles. No, he's not starving, he gets plenty of food, I think he was just bored that week or something. I don't remember Luke or Emily ever snitching as much as he does.

Timothy started saying "uh-oh" a week or two ago. And, he uses it appropriately. He has started playing the "throw my food off my high chair and say uh-oh" game. It is very cute though. If he drops a toy while he's playing he says uh-oh, too. He was playing with a dinosaur at the coffee table the other day and it sounded like he was making it roar. He was making it "walk" down the table and he was doing a very good job!

Josiah entertaining himself at school with address labels

that we got in the mail.

Update

Well, we had a good week this week. Leigh started his job on Wednesday. He went in and took a drug test on Monday, and they said it would take 2-3 days to get the results and then they would call and he could start work. We didn't think he would get called until Wednesday, so we were expecting him to start on Thursday, but they called on Tuesday, and he was able to start on Wednesday, so he didn't quite get finished all that he had hoped to before starting work, but he was able to finally finish most of it this weekend. After about a week of him being home after all our company left right after we moved down here, I didn't think I was going to survive with him being home every day. It was driving me crazy, because I was trying to unpack boxes and keep the kids busy, without interrupting his computer time where he was trying to find a job. I find it's easier for me to stay patient and just take care of things when it's just me, versus him being in another room to just ask to do a "quick" something. It was better when school started, because the kids and I were more occupied and weren't in and out as much, and we kind of got into a routine. Well, we must have been doing pretty good because I got right used to him being home. (Neither one of us has ever thought that we would do well with him working from home. We would have to have a detached shed or something for his office if he did.) After they called and said he could come to work on Wednesday, I was sad that he would be leaving! I was lonely on Wednesday, but it didn't take us long to get back into a new routine. I packed the kids up Friday pretty soon after he left for work, and we went to the library book sale!! Yay for book sales!! I was able to find several kids books, and a sewing book and a craft book for myself and it all cost under $4.00!! The kids books were .25 and .10 which were good prices I thought for a book sale! On Thursday and Friday, he came home for lunch, which was a fun highlight in our day and helped us not miss him so much.
Leigh's new schedule is later than it was in Pensacola, so that will take some getting used to, especially on Wednesdays with trying to get him supper and get to church on time. It's a good thing we don't live far from either, otherwise we would probably just have to meet him at church!! On Saturday, we went and did the Lowe's project, which was a monster truck with a green blinking light on top. The kids seem to enjoy it and it's a fun, free activity! That was about all that happened this week! Very exciting.....!  :)

New experiences

Saturday we went out on Family Visitation with our church. It was a fairly nice day for it, warm, but not roasting hot - nobody got sunburned. :)  Luke and Emily went with Pastor and his wife, and Leigh and I took Josiah, letting him walk, and pushed Timothy in the stroller. We only had about 4 people open their doors, so in that respect it didn't go very well. The other groups didn't do very well either. The kids seemed to enjoy it and I think it was a good experience for them. Luke was rather timid to start out with, but by the end of it he was participating very well! Josiah was hilarious! We had running commentary the whole time. He got to hold the tract to give to the people - supposedly they'll take it from a kid faster than an adult - and he did a very good job. One of the first houses we went to had a big, fluffy, live cat in the front window. He says: "Is that a cat? I don't like cats. (pause) I not afraid of cats. It has green eyes." Another house had little dwarf figurines and he wanted to know "what are those things called? Can I touch it?" A few houses later we walked up and they had three benches on their porch, and he informs us, "I'm going to sit on their bench." Um, Let's not, they might not like that... "oh" As we were walking up to one door, he says, "It might be a mean lady." I'm not sure where in the world that came from, because at that point the only lady that had opened the door was a really nice grandmotherly like lady who made us listen to her doorbell because it was missing notes. Several houses had dogs and he informed us at one house, that he has a dog, too. I said, "But we don't have a dog," and he tells me, " Well..... Cooper is my buddy." (Cooper is Grandpa and Grandmommy's dog) "He's at Grandpa's house." It was really sweet. The last house we went too had a nasty looking Halloween "dead person" hanging next to the door. It was a head/not quite skull thing with one eye bulging out and the other one either gone or inside (I didn't study it very much) with gray, stringy, decayed?? clothes? hanging on it (no other bones or anything). It wasn't too scary looking, just nasty looking. I tried to stand so he wouldn't see it, but I think he spied it as we were coming up to the house. So he asks, "What is that man doing?" I said, "He's yucky don't look at him." Josiahs says, "He's wearing a dress," and then he gives a little laugh, "that's funny, ... Can I touch his face?" I was like, "no, he's yucky!!" "Is he a mean man??" I don't know.
He was so fascinated by all the new things he saw and experienced. It was really cute and funny to hear him talk so much and ask so many questions.

In other news (possibly TMI)

Josiah is finally completely potty trained!! (and has been for a few weeks) Yay!! I kept putting off potty training him due to different things going on, so we finally got settled enough and got it done! I usually start potty training when the kids turn two. Josiah's birthday is in Sept., so we had just started school a few weeks before, and I was pregnant with Timothy who was due Nov. 30, so the energy and motivatin was completely lacking, and "they" say kids regress when you have a baby or changes, so I thought I'd wait until after the baby came and things settled down. Well, then Leigh gave me the News in October that we would be moving. Ha, How do you potty train a two year old, when you have an infant, and have to leave the house spotless at a moments notice and are trying to school two children?? Wasn't happenin' at my house. Oh yeah, and try to pack and declutter before having house pictures taken and putting a house on the market. Anyways, so he has been the latest, so far. He really wasn't hard to potty train due to the fact that he had full bodily control. It was mostly the training of "put it in the potty" and get there in time. I do have a theory that there is a certain time frame that works best. It would be when the time where sitting on the potty is still new and fascinating and the language and understanding isn't quite there to argue and "not want to" go on the potty and they request a diaper. I decided at one point that he was "to old" to potty train because he asked for a diaper because he didn't want to go sit on the potty. He should have been potty trained by then.
The other night at church I took him to go potty and there was blue water. His response was quite loud and firm, "I DON'T NEED A BLUE POTTY." I told him to just go ahead and go and then he says, "I flush the blue potty." That's fine, you can flush it! I didn't know it would be so traumatizing to have blue water in the toilet! :) One day I took him potty and after he was done (he sits on it backwards of his own doing), he says, "Git me offa here." He is so funny. (I think ages 2 and 3 are my favorite ages-the way they talk is hilarious)

Timothy was walking through the house today pushing his little push toy with wheels. He was so funny because sometimes he would let go and kind of tease us by standing there and then he would hold onto it and go some more. I wasn't sure how he would do with it and so I was very careful when I stood him up to it. I was afraid the wheels would move too fast on the hard floors and he wouldn't be able to keep up with it and would face plant, but when it started getting ahead of him, he had enough balance to pull back on it and not crash. He DID NOT appreciate Josiah trying to help him though. He gets quite vocal with Josiah. It's very funny!

Luke told us tonight that he had an idea to "draw beautiful pictures to sell to help make money until Daddy got a job." So he decided to draw some beautiful pictures anyways even though Daddy already had a job. They range in price from "3 sents" to "6 dollers". It was really sweet. He aslo learned to ride his bike without training wheels the beginning of September. He had to overcome his fear the first day and about two days after that he was doing it!!

I guess I should have put this first, but Emily accepted Christ as her Saviour a few weeks ago!!! I've been trying to encourage her to tell people, but she is very shy and quiet about it. Probably like someone else I know....:) I was so excited. Every time we would talk about Jesus and sin and whether she was saved or not, she would just cry and cry, so I knew she was sensitive to it, the understanding or something just wasn't quite there, and she would say she didn't know how, even though we would have just explained it. This time I explained it to her and she cried and cried, and asked me to help her!!! I was so glad it was her decision and she finally asked!

Etcetera

The biggest thing on our mind lately has been Leigh finding a job. It feels like he has been searching nonstop since we moved.  At times it has been very frustrating trying to find a balance of when it is okay and not okay to interrupt his time on the computer and such while he was job hunting. I think we adjusted well to having Daddy home all day, although it did become easier for me once we started school and my mornings were taken up with stuff instead of in and out and doing things all over the house. I think he did better too, because he knew I wouldn't be interrupting him whether on purpose or on accident (not that I would EVER purposefully interrupt, but maybe accidentally on purpose???? :)  :)  )  Anyways, we had to lay some boundaries down for ourselves and make it work and it has gotten much easier since we've gotten into a routine. I really have enjoyed having him home the past couple months. I really think it has helped me feel a little more settled and safe having him here. So that's good. We are so thankful that he has a job. It sounds like it'll be a good job and he will enjoy learning new stuff.
I feel very undeserving and amazed at God's provision for us. Our whole moving expedition has been a fascinating learning experience for me. I grew up and lived in the same house my whole life, my family is very close, I did live far away from grandparents, but I always wanted my kids to know their grandparents well, so moving in and of itself was a interesting concept to accept. I wasn't sure how to help my kids with a transition like this, because I had never had the feelings that I'm sure they have, but they seem to have adjusted beautifully. Yes, they miss our family and friends, but I don't think we've scarred them for life. Leigh and I have both had absolute peace about the decision to move. We sought Godly counsel and advice to make sure we weren't "missing" anything, and had absolutely no red flags from anyone or anything. We wondered if it was "smart" to leave a good job in the economy we were in, but we knew that we wouldn't go without anything we needed. We met with a realtor I think the beginning of February. At that time the average for a house to be on the market was around four to six months (if I'm remembering correctly). Our realtors put our house on the market the end of March and there was a signed contract on it the end of May. Wahoo! The closing date wasn't until Aug, and we were hoping to be able to stay in it until Leigh's contract ended on July 31st. (A shout out to Skip and Kristy-Thank you! :) "Technically" in our "economy" it shouldn't have sold that fast. Leigh's job ended July 31st, so he's been out of a job since August 1. He starts his new job next week, which is only 2 1/2 months of not working. After hearing him inform me of the statistics of finding a job and such, especially in a specialized area, he "technically" shouldn't have gotten a job this fast. It's neat to look back and see how God has worked specifically and generally in so many different ways, but it has also been neat to look forward and know that God WILL sell our house and God WILL give Leigh a job, we just don't know when.
Another interesting tidbit about his job, is that a few weeks ago, he went around town to different companies dropping off his resume and asking if they had job openings. This company was one of the ones where he dropped off his resume. ( I think they actually accepted one, most of them wouldn't take one) They told him to look online at their website and see if there were any openings. So, when he got home he did that, but the website didn't have any openings. It was about a week later when a recruiter contacted him about this job - they never did have it listed online.
Anyways, I guess I'm done rambling. I hope it makes sense. I'm trying to make a little sense out of some of my feelings, but I don't think I've done very well explaining any of it. Oh well! Hope you weren't too bored.

Job update!!

Thank you so much to everyone who was praying for Leigh to find a job. God gave Leigh a job this week!! The company called today to extend him a job offer (they were supposed to call yesterday, but HR didn't get around to it), so he went down this afternoon to fill out some paperwork and such. He goes in on Monday for a drug test and when they get the results back from that (two to three days), he gets to go to work!!!!  So hopefully he'll be able to start Wednesday or Thursday. He'll be the Oracle DBA for Nationwide Laboratory Services. He was looking for an Oracle DBA job, and when he wasn't finding many openings for those, he broadened his scope to some other programming things and such, so we are very thankful that God gave him a job specifically in the area in which he was looking. There are a couple new things that he will have to learn, but he seems excited about that.
He also will not have a long commute, which is one thing we were a little concerned about living in a larger city, so we are very thankful about that also!!! 

In Leigh's words:
"I have a job!  Praise be to God! 60% faster than average using the normal 3% application to interview ratio and in a market with 14 million people out of work.  It is with Nationwide Laboratory Services less than 15 minutes from our house.  I will be their Oracle DBA and get to learn RAC and Linux"

What happens when you refuse to take your afternoon nap??

You can't make it through supper!!

Such a sweet baby...

Job Update

Well, Leigh had his technical interview today at 11am. It lasted about 2 hours, I think. He thinks it went okay, but we don't know whether he has the job or not. Hopefully we'll find out one way or the other by the end of the week.  The CIO(chief info. officer???) came in partway through the interview, so there shouldn't be a third interview with just him, unless they had more questions or something. It wasn't sure whether he would be there or not. He did take Leigh on a tour of the facility and mentioned the his wife went to PCC, probably before Leigh's time. Thought that was interesting.... Anyways, that's all. :)

Baby Update

Hee hee. Did that make anyone nervous for a minute??? hahaha.
Sorry. I'm probably the only one laughing :). So, my little baby turned 10 months old on the sixth!! I can't believe he's already 10 months old and growing up so fast! He has four teeth. Two bottom ones and two top ones. He has started standing for a few seconds at a time without holding onto anything. He crawls fast and loves going after and playing with his siblings. He learned to wave Bye-bye this week. It's really cute!! He uses both of his hands and he says something while he does it. I don't think any of the others waved bye until they were at least one. (No, he's not a genius). The development charts say that waving bye can start as early as 9 months, but I had never seen a little one do it until a few months before we left Pensacola.  There was a little girl in the nursery who was barely crawling, but she could sure wave! (She was cute, too.) He seems to be outgrowing his fussiness. He has been, by far, our fussiest baby. He has gotten to where he will play by himself without demanding to be held, and has learned to open cabinets, drawers, and pull out whatever is in them. So far, he hasn't emptied a dresser, but I'm sure that day is not far. :) He loves to take baths and splash in the water. He likes to climb onto the trundle bed and then stand up and reach for things on Luke's bed. He loves it when the kids play with him. A few days ago, he was the "sister" to Emily and Josiah according to whatever they were playing. Also, the past couple weeks, he has gotten to where he will be content with me while I hold him and let me rock him. I was sitting on the couch one day holding him and rocking him a little and he went to sleep!! I was surprised he did that. Usually if I'm holding him and he's tired, he just wants to nurse. A few nights ago, we were trying to put him to sleep and he sat and rocked with me for about 30 minutes. He never did go to sleep for me that night, but it was such a sweet cuddle time. He has been jabbering a little more lately, and he has gotten louder. He has started letting us know when he is displeased with things being taken away from him, usually when Josiah is playing with him. Josiah often doesn't think he is allowed to play with things and so tries to protect him by taking them away. They're actually quite funny to watch interact. He's a busy little guy and smiles a lot!! And I'm so glad he's coming out of the "fussy" stage!! Oh, I almost forgot, He has also started sleeping through the night!! Wahoo!! He still gets up about once or twice a week, but that's heaps better than two or three times every night!!
Take a few minutes this week to hug your babies tighter!! They grow up way too fast...

Disclaimer

I just want to apologize for any grammar or spelling mistakes that their might be in my posts. I try to think through things as I write them, but if I went back and read through everything and tried to make it sound just right, I probably would never post anything at all, because it always sounds silly when I read back over it. I try to just write as I would talk. Which is probably why everything seems to just run on. Oh, and I don't know how to turn on spellcheck. Maybe I'll figure it out one day. Anyways, for what it's worth. :)

Job update

Well, Leigh had an interview on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. When he first heard about the job it sounded like something that he would be very interested in and would enjoy doing. He actually turned in a resume to the company about a week before, but according to their website, they didn't have any openings. He was contacted by a recruiter and so everything is done through the recruiter as far as setting up interviews, etc. Needless to say it has been a lot of phone calls back and forth trying to get times to work and stuff for the company. After he was finished with the interview he wasn't sure whether they were still interested or not, but come to find out they are, SO on this Tuesday at 11:00a.m., he goes in for another interview. Please pray that everything will go smoothly and that this will be the job God has for him if it's His will. There's a requirement for the job that Leigh doesn't have, but he would enjoy learning about it, if they would be willing to train him. One of the things that he enjoyed so much about his job at PCC was the diversity of things they had to learn and be able to do.

Beginning of School/ First day off

 We started school on August 29, which seems really late to me because we usually start the last week or last partial week of July. So I have been trying to do some extra lessons and such to "catch up" so that we're not doing school until the end of May. I like to finish near the beginning of May, usually just because I start getting ancy to get other things done, and the beach craving sets in about March/April when the weather starts getting warmer. So this past Friday, Sept. 30, we finished our first six weeks!! WOOHOO!! I'm not cramming in lessons, it came out to one extra lesson a week, which was doable, especially since the first few weeks are a lot of review. As a reward we took yesterday off. It was so nice to have a day off. We don't take holidays, except for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so all our days off are based on what I need to get done, or when I decide to go visit someone, or someone's sick, etc. I found last year, that the kids really enjoy looking forward to having a day off, and since we don't take holidays, they were missing out, because I would plan my schedule and tentatively plan a day off here or there, but not tell them, in case I changed my mind or I was able to fit school in along with the other things. I didn't realize this until towards the end of the year, so they only had like one or two days to look forward to, so I decided this year to try to make them a little more planned. They had a Great day, even though I didn't plan anything special or anything, it was just a day off. L had asked for the trains and track to be brought out a couple weeks before so they could play with it, but I wanted to get their room cleaned and reorganized, so I could get the tub down and leave it down, so we did that Monday morning and they played in their room very happily with the trains and track most of the day. Which made it very nice for me because I was hoping to get some sewing done and I was able to, and even got more done than I had planned!! I needed to make Emily a slip to go under some of her dresses, because it is very difficult to find little girls slips, and when you do it's hard to know what size to buy because they make things so short, so that's been on my sewing list for quite a while, so I was able to get that done. Then Luke only had one pair of summer pajamas and I had put them in the laundry and they were stuck in the laundry for three days (usually I try to wash them and dry them in the same day, so he can wear them again, but I got behind) so I had already decided I was going to make him some more pajama pants. I had two remnants of material that I had picked up somewhere along the way and I thought one of them would be long enough-it was a full yard, but due to the stripes, it wouldn't work for pants, but it would work for shorts. So after looking at them both, it ended up that I would have enough to make Luke shorts and matching shorts for Josiah and Timothy. They turned out cute and I was able to finish all three of them!! Leigh  even gave himself a little less to do. He called his recruiters and did a few of his job emails/application/stuff and then he worked on the church's website. HE's been doing their website since they started, but he's had ideas and such that he's wanted to add, take down, change, etc and just hasn't had the time. He hasn't had the time, or some of the info, to do it, so he took a few hours yesterday and worked on it. He seemed pleased with how it was going. I told Mom he had changed it, but I didn't realize he hadn't put it live yet. So if you read this Mom, it won't look different yet. :)  Anyways, we had a nice, fun, relaxing, yet productive day!!

 

Interesting Info.

South Florida traffic is the worst in the state, 15th in the U.S., and will get worse once the economy recovers.  How exciting!! Thankfully, we haven't experienced bad traffic, yet. Although, I'm sure when Leigh starts to work, he will eventually get stuck in it. :)