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. :)

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. :)

Funny kid

So, today after I finished my teaching for school, I started decorating J's birthday cake. It was before lunch and since we only had two pieces of bread left, I thought I would let J pick whether he wanted a sandwich or macaroni and cheese for lunch. He has had birthday on the mind this week because E had her birthday last Saturday, and his is the day after (although that doesn't quite register for him yet), and he was excited because I was making his cake. So I asked him, "J, would you like a sandwich or macaroni and cheese for lunch?" He gets a funny look on his face, like he's trying to decide, pauses for a few seconds, and says, "CAKE!!!!"  I told him he couldn't have cake, and asked him again and his answer was "nothing."  After a little more conversation he finally decided on a sandwich. :)

New places, new faces

So, it's been over a year, since I put anything on here. I think it's called getting to busy with things.....
Anyways, a lot has happened since my last post and we have moved to Fort Lauderale, Florida. The name of my blog use to be Ponderings from Pensacola, but obviously I had to come up with a new name. There are not any synonyms for Ponderings that start with F, hence the new title. We'll see if I can keep up with better. :)

So Excited

I'm soooo excited!!! Today I finished getting our LAST two weeks of school stuff ready! I pulled out all the rest of the papers from the books and we are ready to hit 'em hard. Several of the days are just review days, so I'm hoping to combine a few and finish a little earlier!! The kids have worked hard and are looking forward to being done. I have a few fun things planned for this summer. The first thing we're going to do is go to the BEACH!! I've been holding out until school is done!! I also have some fun workbooks for the kids to work on, a couple painting projects, a slip and slide I've been hoarding for a few years (waiting for the kids to get bigger), tapes to listen to, libraries to go to, and any other ideas are welcome!! So, What are your summer plans??

L and E drew me a picture on the chalkboard yesterday. It was a "secret" and I couldn't look until I got all the way in the room. I came in and they said, "Ta daaa" and they started singing together "Frosty the Snowman." It was really cute! The snowman on the left was drawn by E and the one on the right by L. (Please notice the flower on the hat - just like the real Frosty) That was pointed out to me so that I wouldn't miss it. :)

They did a good job.

Notes

It was a very sweet surprise to find a "note" E wrote to us a few weeks ago when I went into our "classroom". She doesn't enjoy cuddling as much as L does, and she seldom does "sweet" things. Occasionally she will snuggle with me and say, "(sigh) I love you mommy." But she definitely has to be in the mood. She's a very independent little girl, and very sensitive. So here's her note on the chalkboard.

I Luv U Luke

I Luv U Aulu (Angela)

I Luv U Li (Leigh)

Isn't that precious???!!! I was very touched. I'm not sure why she uses our given names, but when she writes us notes and colors papers for us she wants to put our given names on them. When she talks to us, she is only allowed to call us Mommy and Daddy. (In case anyone was worried. :) )
Oh yes, I was also very proud of her because this was the first time she tried to sound anything out and write it. She enjoys reading and is doing very well in school. Go EMILY!!! I love you too. :)