I HATE IT!! I HATE IT!!

I have it when I don't know what the Lords wants us to do. Well we looked at two more houses today and like them both, there is just $70000price difference in them. But we decided to put a bid in on the older home for there was more room for the children in the house and the yard was a little bigger. We had gone with Jocelyn over to Moundsville and on the way back we got a call from our realtor and he told us that the one house that we liked had a lease on it until November. Now is the Lord telling us that we are to buy a house? Dad and I both felt that maybe he is saying that Dad's job is not secure. We already know that there will be some cut back but he was told that he would not be one of them. But we know that the Lord knows more so if all of you would pray to the Lord to have let us know what we are do. Today we are fasting to find out if we are to rent. No matter what happens I hope to know if dad will have a job or not before I move the children out of school.

Thanks for helping us out. Love all of you

Happy Birthday Parker!

Parker click on the link to see you video. Love you lots!! http://FreeGabMail.com/AV/Viewer.html?SID=I4u5LD7xqewpiBu5

Happy Birthday Sierra!

Click on the link for you very own special video! I love you Sierra! http://FreeGabMail.com/AV/Viewer.html?SID=LW80GFe54AQ5o5mM

pic for hillary

NO House

Well we are three for three but we know that there is something out there for us. Dad will be looking at more houses tonight and tomorrow night. If there is a possibility in any of them I will take off on Friday to go look at them this weekend.

Logan and his milestones

On Monday January 5, 2009 Logan, Audrey and I all went to the store, but that is not the exciting part. The exciting part came after we got home. This is when I put underwear on Logan and told him that he was not to pee in his underwear, but to only go in the toilet. Now, we had tried this before for like one day and he just wasn't haven't it. I am not one to force it if it is not working so, we went back to diapers. However, on this glorious Monday things seemed to be working. For the rest of the afternoon he didn't have any accidents. He also refused to poo, so I am assuming he was just holding it. That night he went to bed (with a diaper on because I am not about to deal with a wet bed), then in the middle of the night he came into our room and said that he was poopy. I think that he was holding it so much the night before that he just couldn't anymore. Now, I wasn't mad because I knew that he was still learning, not to mention that I had Les change him :) The next day he had one more poopy accident, while I was upstairs feeding and changing Audrey and then that was it. Not a single accident after that!!!!! He was even telling me when he had to go instead of me always asking him. We are all so proud of him and the great job that he did.

At FHE the following Monday, my mom presented Logan with a blue ribbon for his great accomplishment (that's what Grandma's are for, right). He was so happy to stand in front of all of us and hear us clap for him.

Another milestone that Logan accomplished this month involves this blue nemesis of mine that is pictured above. Many people always liked to mention the fact that Logan still had his "meme". Now, I definitely wanted him to get rid of it, but he truly loved it so much. We tried different incentives, but he just wouldn't budge. I know that as the mom I could have just taken it away, but I didn't want to do it like that.
Last weekend my sister and her family came for a visit and we were all sitting around the living room that Sunday morning and I mentioned to Logan that we needed to throw his "meme" away because it had a hole in it. Normally he would cup his hand around it and say NO, but this time he got right up off the couch and said something like "Throw my meme in the garbage". We all looked at him with shock and wondered if it was really for real or not. I thought, yea lets wait till bed time tonight. Well, he never asked for it once that night or the next day. I guess he is just a quit it cold turkey kind of guy. He has grabbed Audrey's a few times, but has never freaked out over it. I can't tell you how happy we all are that he has CHOSEN to do this on his own. He is such a sweet little boy and it is always wonderful to see his happy, smiling face. Now WITHOUT the meme hiding his smile.

Request

I am asking if any of you might have pictures of Merrit and/or Makayla from 2004 to 2006. This might seem like a weird request, but I'll explain. I make a quilt for each of my kids for their baptism. On these quilts I put iron-on pictures of their family and friends and of them through the years of them growing up. I began Merrit's but couldn't finish because all our pictures were packed away. So I got them out the other day to finish Merrit's quilt and begin Makayla's and realized that our photo albums end at the beginning of 2004 and the pictures I have on my computer start at about 2006, and I really don't even have many from 2006. I can't recall when we first got our digital camera and so I don't know what time frame I would've started to have pictures on the computer. My only conclusions for why I am missing almost 2 years of pictures is that either I have those pictures packed somewhere else waiting to be put into photo albums (which I hope it the case so badly) or they were on the computer and when Charlie purged it right before Christmas of 2006 those pictures were erased (which I hope, so badly, is not the case). Either way, I would like to have pictures from this time frame for Merrit's and Makayla's quilts and it doesn't look like I'll be able to unless I get them from somewhere else; thus my request. I hope you can help me out. Please just email me whatever you have.
Thanks!

HOUSE?

We looked at more houses today and Dad put an offer in on a house. You can view it at Homefinders Plus Real Estate, Inc. - 102 Cardinal Place The family room is in the basement with a fireplace. We feel that this would be a good room for Sabrina for we also plan to close off the one car garage door (you can hardly see it for it goes under the house) and put an entry door there so she can have her own entrance to the house. The room downstairs also has a half bath off it. The bedroom upstairs is one open room and would be difficult to divide off so that would be our room and I would also make part of it a guest room with my sewing junk. There is a half bath up there too. I'm not sure where the description of eat-in kitchen comes from because if that house has an eat-in kitchen you better be Michaels size and there better be only two of you. The kitchen will only allow one and a half average size person in it at a time, so with my size I can say it is a one person kitchen. The yard is small but I can fit in a swing set and a small garden, and I will see if a clothes line will fit in to. I will let you know how things work out when we find out we should know in three days if they have accepted the offer.

Skating

I went ice skating today which was quit the adventure. I was invited to go by Joseph, my ex-home teacher, and we were joined by his roommate Mike and another girl named Niki. I am not an ice skater by nature and I had to hold on to the rail to start with. I eventually got to the point where I could move away from the wall and go on my own. I would have preferred if the skates I wore had gone up higher so that I could have better support for my ankles. If I am to go again I will definitely have to either buy or borrow a pair of socks from my roommates because I only have ankle socks and it hurts not to have long socks. I did not fall a single time, but I would have if I didn't have Joseph and Mike to grab onto. I did all right at skating and despite my disabilities I had a fun time. And just so you all know I wouldn't mind doing something with Joseph again, we shall just have to wait and see if this occurs.

So I'm sitting here watching Jaxson play with the vacuum. It was the only way I could get him to leave me alone long enough to check my email and go over some of my homework, and obviously, look at the blog. He's such a poor deprived kid during the day when he has no one else to play with. I try to spend time with him, but unfortunately I have other responsibilities I have too so I can play with him all the time (which is what he prefers). I even tried to build him a fort today, but he won't play in it because I won't. Maybe after I get some reading under my belt I'll be able to join him in the fort this afternoon.

Classes have started again. I have an intro to business class which is on campus and an ethnic literature class which is online. The campus class is on Tuesday nights from 7 to 9:45. The first class was last week. Our teacher let us out early. It would be nice if he did that all the time, but I'm not going to count on it. I have taken an intro to business class before, in fact I think I've taken it twice (maybe). It was really easy before and so I was hoping it would be this time too, but from the way the teacher was talking last week, it probably won't be as easy as I was hoping. I don't think it's going to be terrible, just not easy. It does seem like it will be interesting though. We are suppose to explore many different branches of the business world and different types of jobs available. I know that probably sounds boring to you, but it's interesting to me. I'm also excited about my literature class, although I don't like to read. We are suppose to cover some interesting pieces of ethnic literature and discuss them. I look forward to brightening my horizons.

Charlie and the kids are back to school. They were all sad to go back. They wanted vacation to last a little longer. The kids already have a four day weekend coming up this weekend though, so it's not like they've had to go through tons of school without a break again. Charlie only gets Monday off for Martin Luther King day. He needs it. Wrestling will be over in the beginning of February. I think I'm ready for it to be finished. It wasn't too bad for the first couple months, but having him gone so much is getting a bit old now. I'm glad he had that job though. It's been really good for him.

I was just called to be the first counselor in the relief society. I know it's such a different calling than before. We had a ton of changes in our ward yesterday. I hope it means good things to come.

On Thursday we got a call from our new contact person at the auction house we bought our house from. We are hoping this means that things will finally move forward with the house. We have a clear to close from our mortgage company. We finally got the title work from the seller's title company. So now all we are waiting for it the seller to sign an extension contract so we can get a new closing date. What a process this has been. I don't want to move again for a long time. Thank goodness we've had this house we are in now to stay in and haven't really had to worry about being out yet. The day is coming, but we hope things with our house will be settled before that.

Aahhh

I have survived the first week of school. It seems like it is going to be a pretty intense semester, I just have to keep reminding myself that it is my last semester. Basically every class is requiring notes to be taken in the assigned reading and then write reflection papers. I feel that reflection papers are just a waste of time. Some wonderful news is that next week is my last week of work. I have decided to take the semester off so that I can focus on school more. I worked 20 hours last semester with 16 credits and got real good grades, but it was very hard and stressful and I don't want to go through it again this semester. I look forward to getting more sleep and having somewhat of a social life now. A couple of says ago I was making pizza and realized that I had no toppings to put on it. But I did have some breakfast sausage that was maple flavored and decided to give it try. The pizza ended up tasting a bit different, but I actually liked how it tasted. I went and saw Bride Wars tonight at the movies and it is really cute. I am now done with my ramblings.

Our New Year's

So I wanted to have a picture to post with this, but my camera wasn't working at the time I needed to take the picture. I wanted to show you the insane rash Chelsea developed last week. I don't remember any of my kids ever having anything like it. It started out as really pink cheeks on Monday last week and by Wednesday it was spreading to her forehead and neck. I took her to the pediatrician on Wednesday and he told me that he felt it was probably just a reaction to her body fighting the "flu" bug she had had on Christmas. So I took her home. She wasn't even itching. But by that night, at 8, her body was covered in red and it was starting to creep down her legs and she was itching pretty bad. So I took her to urgent care that night. That doctor told me that it was either a virus and a food allergy that was causing it. The doctor told me to watch her carefully just in case she started to swell (if it was an allergy) and have trouble breathing. She told me to give her Zyrtec to help with the itching. So the next morning her eyes were a little swollen, but the rash was pretty much gone. We watched her that days to make sure the swelling didn't get worse and it didn't. She was O.K. by that night, thank goodness. So I still don't know what caused it, but I'm glad it's over.

I'm pretty sure I had strep throat last week too. It hit me on Tuesday and I pretty much slept all day and my throat hurt bad. I almost went to urgent care, but Charlie was at a wrestling tournament all day and by the time he got home (9:30 pm) I didn't fell like going. The next day I didn't feel nearly as bad, although my throat still hurt. I was more concerned about Chelsea that day anyway. By Thursday, I felt mostly better, my throat hardly hurt. So I actually didn't actually have a diagnosis, but I've had strep throat before and that's what it felt like to me.

And... Charlie got sick on Sunday. He went home from church early to sleep. He was nausea, but never threw up. He felt better after sleeping a while so he was able to go to work today (much to his chagrin). The kids weren't too excited to go back to school either. They were liking the days of laziness and relaxation. I was glad for to school to start again. Although I hate getting up in the morning to get the kids up, I get so much more accomplished during the day without kid distractions. I hope everyone else had a good New Year's Day.