better

Surprisingly, things have been going okay these last few days. (Thank you for your prayers and support!) Heath has been very productive at work as a strategy to keep his mind off the tense, sad environment, which is absolutely the best thing he could be doing, since there is more work now. Several people are already interested in the open positions, and one person in Heath's department is being trained to help pick up the slack. So the 10 or 12 hour days I anticipated haven't materialized yet. If they get someone to fill the positions quickly, maybe they won't be necessary.

My ear/body ailment is getting progressively better - I actually felt pretty rested after 8 hours of sleep last night, instead of feeling like I really needed a couple more hours. The pressure is still there, but not causing enough pain to take ibuprofen anymore. So this is all good news!

A new, sweet development for our family is the presence of some neighborhood friends for our two oldest boys. Two houses down are two little boys ages 6 and 4. How have we lived here for two years and not played with them? I know, pretty crazy. Jacob finally met the older boy in his class at school. They sit next to each other and have become "best friends" and play every day on the monkey bars at recess together. They seem to be sweet boys, and their daddy is nice and apparently normal (in this day and age, you almost feel like you should provide background checks for each other before letting your kids play at one another's houses, but we resisted that urge). He is mostly a stay-at-home dad since he only works eight 24-hour days a month as a fireman. He takes the kids to stay at their grandma's house for those eight days, I guess. So, now that our boys realize these boys are available to play almost any time, they want to play with them all the time! It's cute, and I don't really know how to handle it. Like, right now I'm telling Ethan it is too early in the morning - mostly because I haven't showered yet. The daddy doesn't seem to mind letting his boys play with ours as much as they want, so I just hope if it does become too much he'll feel free to speak up.

Oh, but a crazy scary thing about this - Last night we were all out front washing the cars and using sidewalk chalk. Heath and I were both keeping an eye on Samuel, because he is pretty adventurous. We had been checking with each other periodically to make sure he was in sight, and this time, Heath asked me if Samuel was up by the garage, and I said "No..." and we realized he was out of sight and we had no idea where he was! We totally freaked out, all four of us started shouting for him and branching out down both sides of the street with Heath standing in the middle of the street to try to see him and block any cars that would come zooming down with Samuel possibly in the middle of the street. After a few scary minutes, we heard our neighbor with the two little boys say, "He's down here!" Apparently, after walking down to the little friends' house several times, Samuel had learned the way. He had toddled down the sidewalk and up onto their porch and was petting their cat. The four year old had come to the door, and he and Samuel were waving through the glass to each other, and this is how the daddy had discovered him. Normally when we call Samuel's name he responds, "Yeah!" But not this time. When I went to get him, he put his hand up to push me away - he wanted to stay. Crazy kid. I am so glad he was okay!