EASTER!!



Happenings

Well, I didn't realize it had been a year since I last posted anything. A lot has gone on, mostly good! Trying to think back as to what we did that long ago. I think the kids and I went to Dothan in March.In April we went on "Spring Break" to St. Simon's Island and met up with Dana and her kids. We had a blast!! We had a sunrise service with baptism at the beach in April for Easter. The end of May we went to Dothan to pick up a friend to intern at our  church down here, and ended up swinging over to Pensacola to attend a funeral for a friends baby-very sad. Leigh was able to go with us on that trip because was over the weekend and combined with Memorial Day! June was a super busy month. The church had four interns that went out door to door almost every day, and the last week we had VBS. After July 4th, the kids and I took Norian back to Dothan and spent a week there. In August, we went to Sanibel Island to celebrate our 10 year anniversary (which was in June). We took the kids with us and were beach bums for a day and a half. It was sooo much fun and I am looking forward to going back sometime!
Luke started school the end of July. We started him in the A Beka video streaming, and I have absolutely loved it!! He does his school mostly independently, which gives me more time to school Emily and Josiah. I started Emily and Josiah the beginning of August. Josiah's in K-4, so his doesn't require too much work. He's been doing a really good job and seems to enjoy it! We had a little bit of a problem with Luke not thinking I was his teacher, too and not wanting to do the work I assigned him, but we dealt with that and this second semester, he has really jumped in and been  doing an excellent job participating and getting his work done quickly. A lot of days he starts earlier than the rest of us, so he can get done and play! He started going to the orthodontist over the summer and in the Fall, we started a treatment plan due to the way his teeth and jaw are aligned. This past week they put in an expander on the top and bottom of his mouth. The top one is one that we turn twice a week with a special tool. It's to help the top of his mouth expand out because his upper jaw causes his upper teeth to sit slightly inside the lower teeth and jaw. The lower expander is expand the lower part a little so that his permanent teeth will have more room. All of his teeth are crowded and when the permanent ones have been coming they are awfully crooked. There would definitely be a problem later on, so they say the earlier the better to start fixing some of it. He has really been a trooper through all of it! I thought sure his teeth would be more sore and he would be complaining about it while eating and such, but he's only mentioned it a time or two. He has eaten a little bit slower, but it doesn't seem to bother him much at all. He's had tylenol once since getting all this new hardware in his mouth. I've been very pleased with how he's done!!
We bought a house!! Signed contract in October and moved in December. We're still getting moved in and settled. I should say we're settled fine, but we still have a ton of boxes to unpack. They're mostly in the garage. We've had the normal homeowners issues of having to fix random things that break, etc. The roof is older, so we had to get some estimates on it and a licensed roof inspector out to inspect it per our insurance, but it passed, so we have a couple years before we HAVE to get it replace, but we're so thankful it's not this month/year. There's a leak in the floor/wall in a bedroom on an outside wall that Leigh's been working on trying to find the cause and fix. He's pretty sure it's related to how the sprinkler system hits it or something. Then he got new tires on the car and was informed his brakes were bad, so he replaced those, then he changed the oil on the car and van and realized two or the motor mounts on the van, that he just replaced had cracked  clean through, so now he has to replace those again. He feels like it's never ending. I've been trying not to ask him to help me move things in the house cause he's so busy already. But maybe I will ask him to hang my two big pictures! :)
In October we got to go to Orlando and meet Dana and her kids and go to Sea World. That was a super fun treat! We were offered a place to stay for free and Dana was offered free tickets from a friend!! That doesn't happen very often, and we had so much fun!!
We went to Dothan for the Peanut Festival Parade in November, and Mom and Dad and I actually took the kids to the fair! It was a lot of fun, and the kids seemed to really enjoy it! We don't usually go to the fair, just the parade, so it was a fun treat! In December we went to Pensacola for Christmas and had a nice time. We got to see some friends and Leigh's brother and family a couple times and hang out with my sisters and parents. It wasn't too cold, just a little chilly a couple days, so that was nice. Came back home and finished moving everything out of the rental and cleaned it and got settled in our new home.
I think that about brings us up to now. Very thankful for how God has blessed us and the fun things we got to do last year and family and friends we got to see! So very thankful for our new house, too! It's so nice to finally have a little more space!
If you're on Facebook, you can see all the pictures that should go with all our trips, etc. I tried to find them and add a few, but I couldn't get them to work!

The Passing of Time

Well, the last time I posted anything was in October of 2011. A lot has gone on since then. In November the kids and I went to Dothan and visited my family. Rachel and Deborah got to come on the weekends and see us ( and Mark, too :) ) and Deborah got some personal days to spend with us and Rachel had a day off school and got to spend extra time with us. It was a very fun week. We got to go to the Peanut Parade, which is a tradition, and we also celebrated Luke's 8th birthday! The trip up went much better than I anticipated, which helped relieve some of my apprehension about future trips. When we got back to Fort Lauderdale (I almost typed Pensacola) we hit the books hard to finish up our last six weeks of the semester. We didn't quite finish, but off we went a week before Leigh to visit in December the week before Christmas. Leigh flew to Panama City on Christmas Eve and Dad went and got him. We spent Christmas Day together, and then we left on Monday to go to Kansas to celebrate Leigh's Grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. It was nice to see some of Leigh's side of the family, with some extended aunts, uncles, and cousins. We drove two days up, spent two days, and then drove two days back to Dothan, and spent one day and then drove down to Lauderdale. We've been busy, busy since then.
School's going well, we passed Lesson 100 a few days ago, which means we only have 70 lessons left! If we double up every day we'll be done in 7 weeks!!!! Buuuuutttt, we're not going to do that. I've actually been only doing one lesson a day, because I don't have a goal to be done for this six weeks, and it's made our school week much less stressful. I usually try to get six lessons done in a week, just to get a little extra done, and because we started later than we usually do, but I think we're pretty much caught up, although I do want to start doing some extra, so we finish the middle of May. We'll see. I'm also trying to plan a "Spring Break" or whatever you want to call my next trip. :)
Our church is having revival services the last week in February. There is talk of a ladies retreat in October, at either Camp of the Pines, or Bill Rice Ranch. Hopefully I'll be able to go. Leigh would have to get a day off work.
Valentine's Day is coming up, so I've been trying to plan some things. I think we're going to have a Valentine's party the Friday before to make cookies and valentines for our friends at church. We also might take it as a Holiday because February 12th is Abraham Lincoln's Birthday. Luke found this information out in one of his books he reads and keeps reminding us, so I'm thinking of making him a cake! Ha. I've also been planning a date night at church for Valentine's day, providing childcare at the church for the couples who want to go on a date. It will be presented this Sunday, so hopefully people will sign up. 
We've started looking at houses to buy. Last Saturday was our first time out, we only got to look at two and neither one of them were any good, so we're going out again tomorrow. We have absolutely no idea of how long this will take. Hopefully not too long..... There doesn't seem to be a whole lot out there with our criteria.
Anyways, That's all for now. It's getting rather late and I need to get to bed. The baby has had a fever today without any other symptoms, so I"m afraid it's his ears and I might be up all night-seems to be a trend with him when nothing else presents itself. I hope not!!
TTFN!!

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.

New places, new faces, cont.

We moved to Fort Lauderdale, FL on August 1, 2011. This was a move that had been in the "works" for quite a while. Some friends of ours started a church in May of 2006 and had been "pestering" us to move down and help them. I, personally, was not inclined to move anywhere. I liked where we lived, my sisters lived in town, and my parents weren't far away either. Leigh's family was only a days drive away and one of his  brothers had just moved down.
Everything I had ever heard about Fort Lauderdale was bad. "It's a wicked city", "there's blatant "sin" ", "there's awful stores on every street corner", etc. I'm also not a big fan of large cities and interstate driving to get to where I want to go. Some other questions consisted of  How do I shelter and protect my children the way I think I should, when there's other kids in the church who aren't taught to not use certain words, hand gestures, etc., or Will there be any kids in the church so my kids will even Have friends?, etc. etc..I don't know Your friends very well, I don't know anybody, etc.. I also had other questions, concerns, complaints, mostly excuses, as to why we Should Not move.
Of course I didn't know I had all these excuses, until my dear Leigh tells me one day in September of 2006 on our way home after Sunday night church, that he thought God wanted us to move to Fort Lauderdale. So, out came my "reasons" about why it was not a good idea and why we shouldn't move. I wasn't totally against it, to the point of saying , "No, I'm not going" I just wanted him to be sure and to hear my reasons as to why I didn't want to. We decided to test the waters so to speak and go down and visit and show our support for our friends endeavor. So we went down in October of 2006, saw their house, saw the church, met the people-the few that were there, went to a youth activity at the beach, rode the church van, attended a service with the pastor, his wife, and I think 4 or 5 other people.
We came home and I said, "When do we pack??" and Leigh said, "No, we're not supposed to move down there now." (We also went down in December of 2009, just to visit) So after that, every December, I asked Leigh if he would be resigning his contract in January, or if this would be the year that we would move. Well, last year, in October 2010, Leigh told me that he felt this year was the year that God wanted us to come down to Fort Lauderdale and try to be a help to his friend. So we waited until after contract signing came and went, because we wanted to make sure there weren't any red flags, to say for sure that we were moving. Our house went on the market in March and had a signed contract in May, even with the allowance that we would like to stay in it until the end of July; came to Lauderdale the second week of July to find somewhere to rent, signed a rent contract the day we left Lauderdale to come back to Pensacola, and moved down a week later, and closed on our house on Aug 8. So that is the where, when, how, and why we ended up down here. We both have a complete peace that this is where we are supposed to be. We're excited about what God's doing in our lives and in the church. And it's been neat to see how God has worked everything out so far. Since this has been rather long, I'll wait to share some other things for another post. :)

Yay for T-BALL!!!!!!!!

T-ball

I love t-ball! Our church has an in-house t-ball league that they've done for two year, now, and it's so much fun for the kids to be able to get together with their friends and play. We practice once a week and all our games are on Saturdays. This year L is in the 6-8 year old age group and E is in the 3-5 year old age group. In the 3-5 year olds there were only enough kids signed up to make three teams, so about every third Saturday she gets to play two games in a row! They love it and I am so glad that we are able to have this opportunity for them to learn how to play with a team and to learn to have good sportsmanship!

Their numbers correspond with their ages.