I recently lost two checks worth almost $800 together. I had received the checks as we were frantically packing up to leave GC last weekend, and my brain just lost the memory of where I had put them. I had a vague memory of putting them somewhere I thought was safe, and I had checked all the safe places I could think of. So, I emailed my mother-in-law and my aunt-in-law to see if I had left the checks there, and my mother-in-law emailed me back and said, "Pray, God knows where it is. Ask him to reveal it to you or us."

So, that night as I lie in bed, I prayed and asked God to help us to find the checks, to bring to mind where they might be. An image flashed in my mind of a white folded paper that I had seen in my wallet earlier, when I had pulled out the insurance cards to pick up Jacob's prescription. At the time, I had thought how it didn't look like a receipt (because I couldn't see the type on the other side), which is the only thing I usually put in that compartment, and I wondered absentmindedly what it might be, but then I was immediately distracted by talking to the pharmacy tech. So after seeing this image in my mind, I immediately called to Heath, who was still up, and asked him to please bring me my wallet. Of course, that white paper inside was the envelope containing the checks.

I was just so amazed. And I shouldn't be, because I know the power of God (as much as my limited mind can at this point), and I know He can do far more than show me a picture to jog my memory of where a check is. But it was just such a great reminder of how if God can handle the little things, then He can certainly handle the big things. If he can show me where my checks are - checks, which could have been replaced, not even cash which would have caused a considerable loss - then surely he can take the extra weight off my body or preserve my health or smooth over a relationship or grant Heath favor at work.

It reminds me of something that happened while I was fasting, and only drinking hot tea with sweetener and a little milk. We were going out of town, so I had grabbed a handful or two of Equal packets to put in my box of tea bags. I finished the box while I was out of town, and as I got down to the last tea packet, there were exactly the right number of Equal packets to go with it. "How strange!" I thought. But as I was standing there at the counter with them in my hand, God spoke to me and said, "If I can arrange such a small thing as this, don't you think I can arrange to give you this house?" It was an amazing reassuring moment. We had a contract on the house that we are now living in, but our financing was far from secure. We both felt like God had told us we were going to get this house, so we felt that it was surely going to work out somehow, but it was hard to see how that was going to happen. It was a very stressful time. At any rate, we were sure that whatever happened, it (we) would be fine, even if we had heard God wrong. (Like the Hebrews in the fiery furnace, "We are sure our God will save us, but even if he doesn't, we will still praise him!") Getting this reassurance was balm to our souls and strength to keep our faith and comfort in Him.

blog trails

Sorry I haven't blogged much of real substance lately. Since I started blogging again, I have started reading all of my friends blogs again, too... and following the blogging friends trail is amazing. I started out at the site of a close friend, clicked on one of his friends' names to see who it was, recognized an acquaintance, clicked on two of her friends' names and found another acquaintance and an old friend, whose site lead me to another old friend. So I get a peek in on the lives of these acquaintances and friends that I haven't seen in years. The internet is a crazy and amazing thing, how it lets us be involved in the lives of so many people that we otherwise would never connect with on such a level.

Anyway, I think I have been too caught up digesting what I had soaked up of their lives from their blogs, so I couldn't post to my own blog. I remember these friends in a certain way, as I knew them 8 or 10 years ago, and their voices sound the same even now. But all of our lives have moved forward so much. I wonder if we all hung out in person, would they think that I was the same? Because I feel like an entirely different personality than I was 10 years ago. The only thing that is unchanged is the very core of me - I guess the spirit part of me. And some of these friends were close enough to connect with that part of me, so I guess in that way, maybe I would seem the same. And maybe that is why they seem the same to me.

Okay, this is getting too sappy even for me, so I'm going to stop. My next decision is whether to post comments on any of these blogs and let them know I am listening in.

RIP

Apparently we killed the most industrious mother mouse in the world. Look at this house she built in our storage closet! It even has a doorway (see the piece of paper folded at an angle). We felt sick when we found this last night.
 

For some reason, I think if I had two daughters instead of two sons, I wouldn't have been hearing this morning, "Can I see the mouse Daddy? Please can we go out and see the mouse now?" This, referring to the dead mouse with his head still squished in the trap, which Heath had temporarily disposed of on the porch. "Wow... cool! Now I've seen a real mouse!"

So, how did the mouse get into my basement? And does he have 10 or 20 friends down here, too? ((Shudder))

My two boys love each other so much. :-) I was cleaning the bathroom, and I thought, "Wow, this is amazing - they haven't come to bother me, and I can hear them playing in the bedroom so nicely together...." I was already thanking God for giving me a chance to clean in peace, but when I saw that this is what they were doing, then my heart was really full with the blessing of my children. 

Well, I haven't done so well at posting every day, but I'm back now. I do have a sort-of excuse... we were gone to GC for 5 days, which was a lovely, busy time.

As often happens with our vacations, we brought back a cold. I hate colds. I understand why we haven't been able to cure the common cold, seeing as it is actually 200+ different viruses, but I still feel put out whenever my family is knocked down by one. I still find myself thinking, "All these technological advances and inventions to make our lives easier and virtually pain-free, and really? We can't cure the common cold?"

On a lighter note....

Ethan's speech development has been a source of constant amusement for Heath and I. He has a pretty sizeable vocabulary of words he seems to have just made up. "Dute-doo" was popular for a while - it seemed to be a generic term for any human being. As in "Dorry, dute-doo" in apology, or "Hi, dute-doo!" to family, friends, and strangers in the parking lot. Then there is dee-one. Which at first observation would seem to mean "this one," except it doesn't always fit. Again, it seems to be a generic term for any sort of object or person that he wants to "name" or draw attention to. So, the obvious use is "Dee-one! Dee-one!" meaning he wants us to get him the object he is pointing at, or wants us to notice that object. The less obvious use is, "Ethan, what kind of animal is that?" "Dee-one."

The crowning achievement of his language creation is a certain sentence he repeats over and over, exactly the same each time, and we have no idea what it means. When we couldn't understand most of what he said, we would just nod and say "Un-huh, yeah," like we did to everything else. But now that we understand most of the rest of what he says, this sentence stands out. He seems to be asking something about Daddy, because that is the last word, but the first 3-4 words I don't know. I'll try to listen closely today so I can post the phoenetics of the sentence on here, and maybe we can analyze it. I suggested to Heath that we record it and slow it down or speed it up or break apart the syllables to see if we could figure it out.

Here's a crazy story I heard at cell group last night.

One of the men who just joined our cell with his wife had a weird experience when he was 12 or 13 years old. His family had left for the weekend, but he stayed at home for some reason - football camp or something of that sort. God woke him up at midnight, and he felt the strongest urge to say out loud "I love you, Lord." So, feeling a little crazy, he whispered it. He again felt this compulsion that he needed to say it, only louder. This happened again about a dozen times, each time him feeling that he needed to say it again because he hadn't said it loud enough. He always remembered that night, still feeling like he had never shouted loud enough, "I love you, Lord!" He didn't know why God had woken him up in that way, but it was a memorable experience.

Years later, this man was in an AA meeting, and one of the older men was giving a testimony. The older man described how he had been so down and out that he was homeless and starving. He was wandering around a neighborhood looking for a house to break into to get food. He approached a certain house where he had seen the family leave and felt certain it was empty. But as he approached the house to break in, he thought he heard someone say something. He thought, "If there does happen to be someone home, I will just have to kill them, because I have to get something to eat." But as he proceeded, he heard someone speak again: "I love you, Lord!" After this, he was scared off and decided not to target that house. And thankfully, he saved this boy's life and saved himself from becoming a murderer.

After letting my blog hibernate for many months, I have decided to revive it. My plan is to post every day, even if it is just a few little stories about our day.

Here is my post from yesterday, that I didn't get around to posting until this morning:

I noticed today that Ethan has changed his method of counting to "Nine, two... go!" (The counting is usually to start a pretend car race.) Last week it was "Whan, ooo, five...go!" On the positive side, he has learned to respond to the question "How old are you?" with the correct answer, "Two," instead of, enthusiastically, "Five!"

Earlier today, the boys were playing "tackle" with a football. The crazy thing is, when they first started the game, they lined up across from each other and crouched down just like linebackers! We have never shown them this posture or suggested that they to pretend that way. Ah, the things they pick up.

Here is our Christmas picture, which will be arriving in mailboxes shortly. I hope everyone appreciates it, because getting the boys in dress clothes and keeping them clean and wrinkle-free until it was time to take the picture aged me by 5 or 10 years. :-) I'm sure we will treasure it for years to come, though, so it was worth it. 

feeling good

I am feeling like a great stay-at-home mom today. First of all, I took the kids to the playground this morning. Yes, it was 42 degrees, so it was McDonald's indoor playground, but it was large motor play nonetheless. Ethan shunned the actual play structure and preferred to climb repeatedly into and out of the high chairs, but I figured it was the same sort of skills he would have been exercising in the play structure, so it was ok. (He even pushed the high chair up onto the cushioned play surface like he knew what he was doing was risky.) Then to top it off, we went to the library. I saw one of my Tuesday Bible study girls there, and was encouraged to see Jacob interact with her son. That combined with watching him interact with a boy at the McD's playground who he had never met before, combined with reassuring feedback from the nursery workers and his Awana teachers, has now allayed all my fears that he might not be on a good track with his social development.

After this productive morning, I managed to come home and fix a nutritious lunch for my family, feed the kids before picking up Heath, and take Jacob for a haircut over the lunch hour [a scary chore because I have to hold him still while they cut around his ears :-( ] Then, after putting the boys down for naps, I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher and cleaned off the counters BEFORE taking a break at the computer. It dawned on me, this is probably what most (dare I say "normal"?) people do - clean up the kitchen after EACH meal. My first instinct is to put it off, by any means. I always feel like there is something better to do, and that to clean up right away would just be sad. However, it is more sad to have a dirty kitchen all day when "a little later" never comes around.

Digressing a moment back to the playground thing: Heath loves it when I take the kids to the playground. I think he feels really good about me being home with them when I take them somewhere like that. He also worries about them being "cooped up" in the apartment all day. I try to remind him that the space is a lot bigger to them. Also, I told him, I remember being at home with my mom as a little girl and how being home was my favorite thing - it was so secure, so familiar, so comfortable. I don't think kids have the same desires that we do to get out and "do things." It is enough for them to impact and conquer the world that is inside their home (and themselves! i.e. physical/mental/emotional milestones). However, I do understand Heath's point, and he says little boys would feel different about being at home all the time (he theorizes since he was in daycare). Maybe he is right (and I have to trust his opinion, never having been a little boy myself), since in general it seems grown-up boys have more of a drive to get out of the house and "do something" than grown-up girls.

housing decisions

Lately, we have been trying to decide what we are going to do about housing on a long-term basis. We signed a six month lease on this apartment, thinking that hopefully we would have the house sold by the end of the 6 months, and then we could get another house here. But then we thought, maybe we should try to get all of our credit card debt paid off before buying, so that we could afford to buy a house we would be able to stay in for 10 years (instead of just 3 or 5). So, that would mean maintaining low housing payments for another 2 years approximately, to free up money to pay off the credit cards quickly.

The question this brought up was, could we stay in an apartment for 2 more years? For me, it isn't so much a question of whether or not I could stay in an apartment for 2 years (no problem), but can we really ask that of our kids? To spend 2/5 of their pre-school, at-home years in an apartment?

Honestly, I cannot figure out what the stigma is with an apartment. Is there something inherently bad about sharing walls with another family? It is actually quite economical; it saves insulation, energy, building materials, space. There are a lot of reasons I should love it, because I love efficiency. Furthermore, as a stay-at-home mom who feels isolated at times, having neighbors I am forced to see should be a plus, right?

I know a major downside of an apartment is not having an outside play area (i.e. yard) for the kids. However, this apartment complex does have a playground - better equipment than I could expect to have in my own backyard - and there is a park with deluxe playground across the street. Still, I know I am less likely to give them outside play time when I have to march across the parking lots with them (or pile us all into the car), and then sit and watch them play. With a house, I could just open the back door and let them out (theoretically - but there are always people who would disapprove of this approach and say I should still go out with them and sit and watch them play, just like at a public playground - still, I would at least avoid coordinating a walk or drive to the playground).

And then there is the economics argument - is renting throwing away money that could be going toward equity? In this case, since we would be moving again in 2-3 years, we would only accumulate enough equity to pay for the closing costs and realtor fees.

Talking to Heath about it, though, he very much wants to own a house. And in fact, so do I. I can't explain it logically, but there seems to be a stigma toward living in an apartment once you have reached a certain stage in life. It seems to subconsciously signal failure on some level. So, we are now looking for homes that would still yield a low housing payment and allow us to get the cards paid off just as quickly as living in an apartment. Even though we will just break even financially in 3 years, and we will have to deal with all the responsibility and upkeep of owning a house (not to mention selling it after those 3 years!), for some reason it is more appealing that renting an apartment. Heath tried to explain something about it being part of man's nature to want to own land. Maybe that is it. But for my part I still can't explain why my heart is so traitorous to my logic in this case.

Funny story

I don't know why it is so hard to keep this thing updated. I will think of some story or comment I am going to post, but by the time I think of it again I am either busy or in a weird mood or something, so I don't get on here and do it.

There is one funny story I was going to post. The other night I was putting some spoiled food down the disposal in the kitchen, and Heath kept commenting, kind of teasing me, "You are stinking up the whole house! That smells terrible! Do you think you can quit stinking it up in there?" Finally, Jacob says to me, "Mommy, go poop!" It caught us off guard and we thought it was hilarious.

Apparently, I act my age....

You Are 28 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

a very useful engine

I thought of a chore I like!!!

Throwing away papers. I get such a thrill out of it. Whether I am throwing away a whole trash can full after letting it build up (as I too often do), or if I am just sorting and throwing away 3/4 of the daily mail, I find it very satisfying. I also enjoy the paperwork side of being a housewife, like making a shopping list or balancing the checkbook, but I have never felt like I could count those as chores since they weren't actually cleaning. But throwing away papers - I think that counts.

As I started cleaning the kitchen this morning, I thought, oh this is so boring; it is painful! But once I got started, in a rhythm, and turned on some music, it wasn't so bad. I think the anticipation of the housework and just breaking the soil - finding a place to start - is much worse than the middle and end. I actually like the end. It makes me feel very useful and good about myself to look at my spotless kitchen. I like looking at the cabinet doors and knowing that behind them everything is organized and in place, and seeing the counters swept clean. For a moment, I get a sense of completion, if only until the next meal time. This is rare in the life of a stay-at-home mom.

Saying that I felt useful made me think of Jacob's Thomas the Tank Engine videos. I thought they were so funny at first, but now they have become very endearing to me. The topmost values on the island of Sodor (the location of Thomas's rail line) are being useful, being on time, being dependable, working hard. Not such bad values for the rest of us. I think it actually is very important to feel useful - even if it means doing housework to get there. :-)

I haven't posted for a while because I guess I haven't thought of anything profound or humorous to say. But I thought it was time for an update, anyway.

I was talking recently with the girls at my Bible study about how hard it is to make friends once you have kids. Moms can get together during the day, but so much energy is focused on monitoring the kids that not a lot of bonding can take place. And husbands are not fond of being left alone with the kids in the evening while we make new friends (wives aren't either when the situation is reversed). Once the kids are in bed, we want to have time with our spouses. I am starting to understand why so many couples seem to not have friends they hang out with during their child raising years. Family life can be so consuming, and it certainly should be the priority. But yet we need friends to lean on and to laugh with. So, I am going to make more of an effort. I think I will call one or more of the girls I have met to set up play dates. Or maybe our families could get together for dinner.

The interesting thing about starting over in a new city is we can be whoever we want to be, in a way. We have joked about how the new Jenny can be a great housekeeper and always on time, and the new Heath can be... well I forget what we said about Heath. That shows that I don't see his shortcomings nearly as easily as I see mine! But anyway, stereotypes are gone. We could completely change our interests, and no one would know. It is an interesting exercise to think of how we would recreate ourselves given the chance. Only time will tell if it is really possible.