another sunday afternoon, and still working on those house plans.
i'm feeling a bit more peaceful about everything and a few of those major issues have been resolved. (God is good!)

i'm really excited about a few of the ideas we have for the new house. it helps me to focus more on the idea of building and less on leaving the house i'm in.
but reality is going to set in this week as i begin the long, sad process of boxing up all of our stuff. there's a lot of it that i probably won't see for a year.

as it is right now, we are planning on moving in with my parents. which is a much better living situation than cramming into an apartment. they live in a big house on a lake, and they are at the norris lake for most of the summer.
the kids will have a blast.....we haven't told them yet, and when we do they will think that all their dreams have come true.
the only real worry for me is tekoa and 24 hour acess to the lake. may God's angels help me. that girl would dive right in without a 2nd thought. my best bet would be to just leash her to the house, but since dcfs probably doesn't allow that i will just have to keep floaties on her everyday and work on teaching her to swim.

so.....that's that. 2 more days of school, 6 days til wren turns 1 (yes, i'm having a hard time with that, but don't have a lot of time to dwell on it), and 9 days til shaeya's 6th. and much to her bitter disappointment there will not be 100 boys at the party.

i'm aware that i am failing horribly at posting pictures, and telling my humorous and disgusting stories about our day to day living, but just bear with me for a bit.....

dave and i are sitting at the kitchen table right now after a long day at church. don't get me wrong, we love our church, but it's always a long day with all the kids.

but now that we're home and we have 2 kids asleep and 2 entertaining themselves (for now anyway,) we are working on house plans. by "we" i mean dave. i'm supposed to be helping him, but i guess i just don't have that long of an attention span. so i'm "just checking my e-mail really quick." i think i have about 15 minutes before he notices that i'm blogging, and that i've eaten the entire bowl of popcorn that i made for us to share.

we've sure had our ups and downs in the last few days. we had some complications with an inspection, and the apartment that we were thinking about renting won't be available now until july. these 2 issues make me very anxious. i know worrying doesn't help, and there are no quick fixes, so i need to just relax and trust that God has a plan. i don't think we'll end up on the streets or anything....

and tomorrow i'm going to forget about it all and enjoy the day with my kids. i'm going with them on their "end of the year" field trip. we're taking a bus to st. louis to hit the zoo and the science center. we'll be leaving at 6:45am from the school and won't be back til around 9pm. it will be a long but really fun day. and my mom is taking tekoa for the day so i will be pretty free to enjoy hanging out with tyden and shaeya and their friends.
you know, i have to do these things while it's still cool for mom to come along. it's a short window of time....

well, dave hasn't needed me yet, but i better just "check" on what he's been drawing up.

It's Done

i don't think the full reality has even hit me yet, but we did it.

we sold our house last night.

i think i'm okay today........i think.

what i do know is that i feel God leading us- He is showing me in many ways that He is in this. and that's all that really matters.

but everything gets really crazy from here. we have to be out by june 17th, and we are going back and forth on where we are going to live. yikes.

we have to find a place to live, decide what stuff to move and what to store, pack it all up, finalize our plans for the new house, and start clearing trees off the lot.

one huge sigh of relief- i don't have to clean like a crazy person anymore. i have kept a perfectly clean house with 4 children living in it for 2 months. i feel like i deserve some kind of award or something....

Detox

my husband and i are detoxing this week.
sugar.
i think it's the reason the last few pounds of baby weight don't want to come off.
not that i've even been trying to get them off.....maybe this will be a jump start.
it hasn't been a cakewalk- mmm cake- but i'm doing it. and i think i feel pretty good. well, if i can feel anything past the cravings and the hunger than i think i feel good.
and yes, holli, you may have inspired this- and i roped dave in along with me. it's no fun suffering alone, right?

in other news- wren has one stubborn tooth that wants to come through but won't. she is miserable. it's been 6 days of misery and it's wearing me out. i miss my happy, cuddly, sweet baby. and it's hard to type with her tossing and turning and moaning on my lap.
it's just a good thing i've mastered one-handed typing- i'm almost as fast with one as i am with two.

lastly- we had a showing last night and these people are really interested in our house. i'm kind of freaking out- dave will attest to this. i was actually physically ill last night when they kept calling with more questions.
this may be it. i may be living in an apartment next month.
all alone.
i mean all alone with my kids- for a year.
i'm just really scared about it all. the economy, apartment life, missing dave while he's off building the new house.
i just keep praying that God will lead us so that we can follow with confidence.
we will know more on friday.

so people possibly wanting to buy my house + a teething baby + no sugar = a friend you don't really want to be around.

Mother's Day....

nothing says "happy mother's day" like waking up with plugged milk ducts on both sides and the feeling that you've been slammed into a wall.

but the new phone that dave bought me definitely helps ease the pain.....

Little Girls

aren't little girls funny?

they just are.....it's so funny to watch them as they grow and develop such strong passions for things. i mean boys are passionate.....you know, anything big, fast, or loud- or anything that resembles a weapon- but it's not quite the same as it is with girls.

for example, tekoa is passionate about bugs. she gets so very excited when she finds one and then she quickly loves it to death.

a couple weeks ago she caught a "celepede." when she showed it to me i said, "oh, tekoa, put it down! that kind will bite you!!"
she looked him over as he crawled up her arm and then looked back at me and said, "that's okay, mommy, it's okay."
i said, "it will hurt, honey, he will bite you-" thinking maybe she didn't understand me, and she said, "that's OKAY, mommy!"

she carried a caterpillar around all day yesterday. held it tightly in her little fist and kissed it and petted it. she even took him swimming in our little plastic swimming pool.
after awhile she plopped her little wet self down next to me where i was sitting in the sun, and she opened up her hand to once again admire her new friend. he was soggy and wet and definitely no longer living. she sighed and looked up at me and said, "mom, calapillars just don't last..."

2 days ago it was a HUGE wolf spider she found in the sandbox. and being the loving mother that i am, i shivered a few times and then scooped it up into a bucket and dumped it into her bug catcher. she named it charlotte and carried that bug catcher everywhere she went. with her mother reminder her every 2 minutes to please not touch the screen part and please don't carry it into the house.....

and then shaeya.
she has always been best friends with tyden- they do everything together (they held hands all through music at school today- it was so sweet.) so she tends to gravitate towards boys when she plays. and her stuffed animals are always boys and her horses are boys.

she pretty much calls all the shots with the "guys" and she loves that.
and they give her space- girls tend to be a little too intense for her....how can i describe this better.....she wants to play, yet be left alone- she wants to lead, but not be followed.
she is not like me at all.
and i can't help sometimes that i wish she was a barbie and baby doll kind of girl like i was.
anyway, i'm not alarmed by her love for boys at this point- i think i understand it when i put myself in her shoes.
but i still had to laugh yesterday when we were driving to the park and she blurted out, "only 3 more weeks until my birthday, and i want to invite 100 boys to my party!!"
hopefully she grows out of this phase sometime in the next 5 years or so.....

so i took a quick break in my typing about 5 minutes ago to put the finishing touches on my chicken soup, and tekoa came running in the kitchen holding the dead caterpillar from yesterday.
"MOMMY, HE'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!"
by some strange miracle the dead caterpillar has revived himself and tekoa is now petting him and saying, "oh, i missed you so much!"

like i said, little girls are just funny.

It's Getting Old.....

the kids did a great job on wednesday. everything went really well- it was such a beautiful day- and i was really proud of them all.
i had no reason to be nervous, but i've learned that you just never know what could happen. you could forget words, or chords, or trip over a cord, or say something really stupid into the microphone- all of which i've done at one time or another.
but wednesday went smoothly :)

we had a showing today. i was at the park with my cousin when dave called and asked if i could show the house at 2pm. it was almost 1.
i thought i had plenty of time since the house was fairly clean, so i stayed at the park a bit longer and then brought my cousins daughter home with us to spend the night.

well, of course they came early. and caught me in the middle of my last minute cleaning. and the front of my shirt was soaking wet (don't ask.)
i quickly pulled the broom out of ty's hands, shooed all the kids outside onto the deck, picked up the baby, and then let them in.

they were an older couple looking to downsize, and they seemed really interested in the house.
and in us.

a few examples-
-they asked if we were catholic. "we just thought that maybe since you had so many kids that you were catholic."
-i showed them the exercise room and the guy asked if me if i use it. what was that all about???
was he implying that i should be using it?
-i mentioned that we love the layout upstairs because it's great for entertaining, and they asked, "oh really, so do you do a lot of entertaining? like who do you have over? young people your age?"

no, old people. would you like to dine with us tonight? we could talk more about me and my husband's "indoor activities" and look at more of our family photos. maybe finish the evening out with a good workout in our weight room- i'll be sure to take part.

i don't know, maybe all the house selling business is just starting to get to me. maybe i get annoyed that they are even here and going through my home and looking in my closets and opening my cabinets.

it'll all be worth it in the end.....i just have to keep telling myself that.