please God, no more "open house"...my children would live outside if we gave them permission. i love their adventurous spirit. in our backyard they will: play ball, make sand castles, catch butterflies & ladybugs, ride bikes, plant a garden, help us with yard work, practice archery (not ella!), pretend play star wars or lord of the rings, dress up in camouflage and play army, chase each other and laugh out loud. but i must ask for you to pray that we sell our house quickly, because the other day, damon asked clay to play "open house"!
an apple a day...yesterday for part of clay's math lesson he cut an apple in half, counted how many seeds it had, and shared it with his brother. this morning for math he needs to make a pictograph. he needs to ask at least 10 friends, and that's you, to eat an apple and let him know how many seeds are in your apple. clay said he'd rather have you eat ice cream like bronwyn! oh well, enjoy a healthy snack today!
plans...most of you have probably heard that the person that signed a contract to buy our house is attempting to back out of the contract. when i wrote a blog entry about my stuggle with depression, i received several calls. some said, "i will pray for you", others said, "i know exactly what you are going through because i was there and didn't want to talk about it". through that experience i have come to see that sharing openly with the people that love you is probably the way that God intended relationships to be within His church. as you can imagine there is quite a lot of stress going on in our household right now. we made plans; found an apartment until our house in prescott is ready, had a "moving sale" so the house is a little bare, we stand to loose $10,000 in escrow money if we don't sell our house in time, damon planned to play baseball in prescott, clay is beyond excited about our family vacation to disneyland that will not be scheduled until we sell the house. we changed our plans; bumped up the date for the last big shopping trip with the girls to the forum, celebrated damon's 4th birthday @ jillians a few weeks early so that he could spend time with his friends, took stacey out for her birthday early because she was sad we might not all be together, serenity's room got the "extreme home-makeover edition" - which we had planned for awhile but we got it done sooner. so i am asking for your specific prayers for our family in this situation: 1) that we stay focused on God and His plans not our own, 2) that our children do not sense the stress and start to worry about where we might live or when certain things might happen, etc., 3) for me personally, i do not want to go that awful place of depression again, but i am feeling anxious about the unknown and as andy would say, "when momma ain't happy ain't nobody happy!".
smells...while on my bike ride this morning i smelled bacon cooking. i arrived home and was craving bacon with our breakfast. the other day, while on my bike ride, i smelled the fresh scent of downy in a dryer. i love the smell of downy, however i don't recall coming home and running to the laundry room??
my hero...lately i have been "out" of the house in the evenings more than home~spending lots of good quality time with my girl friends. this means that dad takes over. a friend asked me tonight if andy does "ok" with all three of the kids. i answered, "oh yeah, he does great!" he loves the time he gets to spend with all of them. i realized tonight that i am not giving him the credit he deserves. i know, and don't want to take for granted, that when i arrived home the children will be fed, played with, bathed, cleaned up their toys, had storytime and be tucked in bed. he knows that i appreciate him and i know that he truly wants for me to spend time with my friends. this man was meant to be a father.
andy, i love the way you wrestle with our kids, teach them about life, read to them, communicate with them and make them feel important, show them respect for me, cuddle and hug them. i love watching all three of our children in different ways imitate you, follow you and just want to do whatever your doing, talk about how much they miss spending time with you when you have to work and then run to you as you arrive home! thank you for everything you do to provide for and protect all of us, you are
my hero!
