Easter

Sunday morning we woke the kids at 6 am, dressed them, did the girls hair, loaded our food and necessities of the day and headed out the door by 6:50 (just in time to be 5 minutes late to Sunrise Service). It was such a celebration of Christ's rising! and returned home well after dark, fell into our beds and slept. and in between sunrise and sunset? we played, we talked, we ate. we stopped shortly to talk about "the real meaning of Easter" to reflect on the "sacrifice Christ made for us" but I am feeling lately the weight of God's hand on my heart. The tightness in my chest, knowing there are changes I have to make in my family. The Easter Bunny, nothing malicious or mean. But Easter is such a Holy day...the bunny seems to take so much from the day. I have nothing against rabbits, they seem nice enough. kids seem to like them. soft fur. whatever. my hope isn't to offend anyone but more these are my own convictions and the way I see MY family going. I want my children to know not just the key phrases used on Easter but have a trued grasp of the magnitude of the situation and love and respect what Christ did for us. This HOLYday is more than enough without fouling it up with rabbits. Like I said, this isn't meant to hurt anyone or offend anyone, its just how I feel my heart being lead.

Family Update

This is a big week for our family, with lots of potential for change. On Monday Todd had a huge test, life changing test that would determine if he gets his teaching license. We won't get the results back for a couple weeks yet, and he has the 2nd half of that test next Monday. Please be in prayer for us and this situation, my prayer is for a clear mind and for him to understand the questions and answers so that if he knows the answer he can get it right. The girls mom has court on Friday for some legal stuff...she hasn't shared all of it (the worst of it) but has shared some and what she's shared could really throw a wrench in her case plan to get custody back. Please also pray for this. My prayer has been for safety for everyone, clarity, peace and God's will. Girlfriend is on the verge of being potty trained! She has gone 4 days with only 1 accident and even woke up through the night to potty on Sunday night. Amazing little person! Little Miss would sit in her own filth for days and is absolutely clueless! Cracks me up how different they are from each other and how much they mirror Lane Michael and Ethan. I am confident that Little Miss will one day wake up and without any practice or coaching be fully ready to leave diapers in the dust. I'm not stressing it. Ryan who recently has decided his name is Connor has been as funny as ever. His Aunt L was giving him a hard time about something the other day and he was hollering at her for whatever infaction she had commited, so she snatched him up and kissed him (a horrible offense, punishable by death), he stomped into the dining room and shouted "I didn't want to marry you today! I just want to play" and as he headed upstairs he was shouting something about boobies. who knows what. Don't judge me. Lane Michael has taken a turn since changing churches, his heart for God has just grown and matured so much! He's learning so much about the Bible and about God. Listening to him pray is moving. Genuinely and completely moving, when we get together with our friends, anyone who would like to pray is given a turn, Lane Michael and Bird often bring us all to tears with their prayers. Amazing! My Grandma and Mom have hinted that they think his heart may lie with ministry...I don't know what this boys future will hold but it'll be big whatever it is! Ethan is doing so well in school right now! Straight A's! I'm so proud of him! Last night he laid in his bed and read a chapter book! I never thought we'd see the day! He struggled so much in the beginning! I can't tell you the countless nights we worked and prayed and cried over homework! I will never regret medicating his ADD. I will face all judgements with the knowledge that we did EVERYTHING to keep this boy off of medication, fought tooth and nail and in the end, when we finally relented, I had the peace of knowing the steps we took that failed. And found such success in medicating him. He's brilliant and funny and confident! I love this boy! Braces....Lane Michael and Ethan had a consultation with an orthodontist. They both need lots of hardware...step 1 is to have teeth removed. Each will require TWO 1 hour sessions of teeth pulling. Then we'll move on to spacers. Very much necessary and worth it but looks like it's going to be ridiculously expensive! Anyway, that's our update for today! Everyone is doing really well, we're in a good (and rather easy) season right now. Todd graduates in May with his bachelors degree! I'm so proud of him!

Potty Training the Twincesses

I have taken an entire week of vacation so that I can potty train the twincesses. I plan to plan no projects, no extra cleaning that must be done, nothing. Except for potty training. Girlfriend is ready, Little Miss I'm hoping will follow suit fairly quickly and easily. I will let you know how progress goes!

Progress - or changes?

I can't post specifics, but things are happening in the girls case. Things that will mean changes...of course we knew eventually one of 3 things would happen: 1. the girls would go home (this is and should be the goal of foster care - to allow children to be raised by their parents as long as it is safe) 2. the girls would go to a family member or friend (kinship placement) - this allows the children to remain in their biological family - I used to support this, I'm now building a real opinion that is more detailed than I would like to go into today. 3. the girls don't go anywhere - this may mean adoption. Foster care is hard, regularly the hardest part is the up's and down's of visits (more downs than ups it seems but I digress), but then once in a while, pops up questions about the girls future, and an always pending "other shoe", and you know it's always there, like a shadow in the room and sometimes that shadow is an elephant. Elephant days are case reviews (once every 3 months), homevisits (every other month), and when mom or dad really do something big (good or bad). That's when things get hard....because it means change is coming. And right now, change is coming. Maybe not for us, or our girls...but it's coming and it will affect someone. We just don't know who all is under this umbrella of change. Well I wrote the above post on the 20th but since I was posting about debt on the 20th I decided to hold this post in drafts until today to post. Turns out, that was for good reason. More information has developed and OH MY! I have a private blog where I am writing specifics. But I just pray for the girls Mom and Dad, for salvation and above all else, for God's will to be done!

My Desire to be Debt Free

I have consistently been in debt for the last 12 years. Mostly vehicle loans and credit cards, stupid decisions! So a few years ago I decided I was done with this mess! This debt is out of control! It never got bad, never even half of the national average but bad enough that it made me angry! So when Todd became a student, the year Ryan was born (actually within a month of Ryan being born) I decided that if it hadn't been for the debt, maybe the it wouldn't be such a blow when someone is laid off, forced to take medical leave, or any other emergency that may come up! So for the last 2-3 years I've been working on being debt free. It's been a struggle (especially with a husband who's a student in a college that's an hour away). So we made a plan and we stuck to it. Until we didn't or couldn't. Buying the suburban right in the middle of this great plan of mine hurt. set us back. But that's ok, we readjusted our spending AGAIN and set a new plan. One we will stick with. and soon we will be debt free (except for our mortgage). We paid off the credit cards and most of the blazer with our tax return, now we're snowballing everything we have at the remaining balance on the Blazer, taking the monthly payments that we were putting towards the credit cards and applying them to the Blazer. We will then take the pell grant Todd should be receiving and putting that towards the Suburban. and then snowballing the blazer and credit card payment towards the suburban. and May 2 we SHOULD be 100% debt free save the mortgage! Paying off $16,000 of debt in 4 months! I will try to update again in mid-May to let you know if we made it!

God Speaking

So today as I'm driving to work (I have to take the girls 10 minutes out of town, swing back into town to drop Ryan at preschool, then across town to drop off the bigs then back across to go to work), after dropping off the bigs, I turned on the radio and was going to change it but didn't...it had background static and was a little hard to hear but it was a man speaking. And he spoke about how when we fall into trials, as Christians we are not being tested but that's our chance to shine. That when we have cancer, or a wayward child, it's not that we have done something wrong it's that God is giving us a chance to show the world the difference in how we handle situations, the difference between Christians and those who don't have Christ in their life. It was an AMAZING "sermon" and I thought "man he is talking to me" and all those who are going through tough times or have gone through tough times. then I went to find what station I was on. Somehow the radio had been switched from fm to am and was on a station like 72...but I couldn't find the station again after I had switched from it. He really was talking to me

Moving Ahead

Todd and I don't see ourselves as movers but I guess we are. We seem to move more often than most. We lived in Texas then moved to the farm. We stayed there from 2003-2007. We moved to our current home in 2007 and already we're thinking of moving. We want to be back in the country (really regretting selling our farm if we're just going to move again). We need something with enough land to have a garden, a couple farm animals and a decent sized yard, we need enough house for our family of 7 (5 when the girls move on), and I'm in a place in life where I'd like it to be pretty. We aren't finding much by way of houses in the area we want, meeting all our needs. There is one property we've been watching for years. literally...over 3 years. The house at one time was in decent shapte, 3 outbuildings, over an acre and a half. The house has since been ruined (no longer has any siding), and the property has just really taken a hit. In one of the out buildings is an apartment. 4 bedrooms, 1 bath. Has a lot of potential. So with this property we would have fix up the apartment, then move into that while selling our current home. After selling our home, we would build a new house on that property, and tear down the house that's no longer any good. Then there's this other property, it's listed for $72,000, 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, 4 car attached garage. Lots of potential, off the beaten back, 1.16 acres, and one small barn. This house has been empty for 2 years or so, the kitchen is gorgeous! The downstairs bath is...going to need updating....blue toilet, bath, shower just don't do it for me. The living room is big and has this HUGE stone fireplace, and a small office just off it. The downside? upstairs are 2 skylights. that are leaking. the house will need a new roof before anyone can move in...and a few new windows. and the laundry room will need to move to the 1st floor since the one upstairs is gross...and small. but that's fine. I'm becoming more invested in this property as time goes on. So the plan for this house would be to replace the roof and window before moving in, then make the big living room into our bedroom and the small office would be an office. the dining room would be our living room for now and the breakfast nook would be the dining area. Ethan would have his own room, the girls the middle size room and Ryan and Lane Michael the biggest room. Make the laundry room into a closet and the pantry into the laundry room. Move into it, sell our place, then when we've sold our current home, we would remodel the 4 car garage into a 2 car garage and in the small storage room, put a mud room with a shower and toilet (it shares a wall with the kitchen so that's doable). So we would still have a 2 car attached garage and Todd would add an additional building out back as a work shed. update they just lowered the price from $72,000 to $64,800. Hope it stays on the market till we're ready to buy!