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| Well, I have the great joy of being home with Anna today since Rachel is off seeing friends. It's always so nice to be home with her that it gives me a glimpse of being a stay at home mom and I how much I want that. These weekday mornings are so great when I'm home, just getting up with her and having breakfast together and watching her goofy cartoons. Anyway, second best to me staying home is that we found a great daycare for her to stay in a few weeks. That has been a big relief. I work with the woman's husband and they are a great Christian family with daughters that already adore Anna. And we will also be saving quite a bit of money from what we were paying before. We also had a wonderful vacation over 4th of July. It was a great time of relaxing and hanging out. We went up to Neebish Island from Saturday to Thursday and then to Sturgis from Thursday night to Monday and got to do some shopping (us girls!) and swimming in the pool. Having a 2 part vacation made it feel longer. Anna enjoyed herself too.  Here is a link to some (ok, alot!) of pics of her from this summer, some courtesy of her summer nanny Rachel. http://www2.snapfish.com/share/p=984191184854288049/l=286865771/g=100775798/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB So, yeah, the ones of her with the stick and a smudge of dirt on her face are from her big adventures at Neebish. She looks like she just got back from a big hike or something! (Or trudging through the jungles on Lost, we were saying at the time.) Anna is saying so many words now, it is awesome. She'll repeat anything so you really have to be careful of what you're saying. Which is good anyway, as I figure if I can't have a 17 month old repeat it I don't need to be saying it! Josh finishes his schooling the middle of September. He has been enjoying it and doing well, and he's passed all his certification tests. Hopefully a new career awaits him soon! In entertainment news, we went to see Evan Almighty (going to the movies - a rare treat!) last weekend and it was great! Good family movie with lots of Biblical humor - we laughed so hard! I guess that's it for now. Wishing you all a blessed day! | |
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| Though I will sound like a loser for posting about American Idol, hooray for Haylie going home!! I've about given up on Sanjaya ever getting booted at this point, especially since he keeps annoyingly getting better. Now if Chris would just get kicked off - I'm sorry but his voice is really really irritating and he looks more like KFed than Justin. Hey Rach, Phil's wife was wearing your pick-a-date dress! See how cool you are??? :) By the way, I thought about posting a picture of our lovely MI weather but never took a picture today. Lots of snow, enough that just about every church and school function was canceled (except for my poor hubby's class). Hmm, isn't this April 11? Yep, good ol' Michigan. | | |
| I know it's shocking, but I'm finally updating. I kept thinking I needed to post some new pictures of Anna but never got to it. Just one more thing to do that falls down on the list of priorities. But here I am at the Woods' house and have a little free time, so here you go. I know it's been awhile, but I have to include Christmas because it was so special. Ok, so this is actually Thanksgiving time but we took pics then for our Christmas cards, so here are some from then: 
And Christmas Eve... 
Somehow we ended up with not very many pictures from Christmas Day - I guess we were too busy enjoying it and opening Anna's mounds of gifts! What an even more amazing time than other Christmases, having such an incredible blessing to be thankful for. Here is one of her a few weeks before her birthday: 
Notice the mischevious look on her face as she is going for the pulling off the sock move. And her wonderful birthday party - my not-quite-one-year old!! 
Her party was the day before her actual birthday, so we got to keep the celebration going the next day, just us and Anna and her aunt and uncle, who had spent the night after her party. I can't believe how quickly the year went. Though every day at work still seems like an eternity. Josh is starting an IT support type training March 12, which lasts 6 months and will have him certified so he can, God willing, be ready to get a job in the field pretty soon after. For anyone who may not know, the real estate thing was just not right for us and wasn't working out so Josh ended up leaving that behind this past fall. It is going to be hard while Josh is training, since it is 5 hours a night twice a week and Josh and I won't see each other at all those days, other than maybe a quick hi when he gets home at close to 11 p.m. (and has to work at 5 a.m. the next morning), and he won't see Anna really those days either. But this really seems to be God's leading so hopefully we got on the right track this time. In other news, I don't want to jinx it since she can still change her mind, but it looks like Josh's sister Rachel will be our very own live-in nanny this summer - yay!! So we will be able to get out of our day care provider who has fallen below our expectations, and give us time to find someone new for fall. And keep the prayers coming that that won't have to be for TOO long. I don't know how much Josh will be able to make starting out, and we would be better off to be able to pay down some debt with me still working for awhile even if he is making enough for me to stay home, but I can't handle the thought of not quitting for years so I can't even go there. But faith-wise I am in a better place than a few months ago, though there are still hard days. Our pastor has been preaching on Job, so that does help with my perspective! So that is all our big news I think, other than also my mom is going to be moving to South Carolina in a few months. But that is a whole nother story. Here's a picture to end with, of Anna today at Grandma and Grandpa's: 
Our big girl - a TODDLER! | | |
| Ok, I just have to share one section of the REAL rules and regulations sent to us by the City of Grand Rapids regarding our refuse cart usage, under Prohibited Materials: "Items that may damage equipment, pose a safety threat to collectors or the environment or are regulated by the state or Federal government may not be placed in refuse containers serviced by the City. These include pianos, garage doors, heavy metal parts, fuel tanks, automobile, truck or other vehicular parts and tires." Now, upon typing this it occurred to me that this probably includes dumpsters, not just our little trash bin. But I still like the thought of trying to cram a piano into our 64 gallon bin.  | | |
| Well, sorry to have dropped off the face of the earth but when it comes down to sleeping or blogging, sleeping wins! Actually, I usually end up wasting time watching TV, spending hours onling trying to figure out what kind of spider we discovered on our wall, or some other method of staying up too late. But at least I actually have some updates. And yes, Lucy STILL smells like skunk sometimes. Anyway, since the last time I wrote we bought a minivan (I am officially OLD! Or a mom), went to Neebish (too quick, as always), and went to TU Homecoming. There were probably other things in there as well, but it's a blur. Oh, we did make it to 4 years of marriage! Anna is growing and growing. It is so fun to see her discover new things! She recently started waving - that is the cutest thing ever! It is especially awesome when she does it without even prompting, like this morning when one of the other parents was leaving daycare and Anna just started waving at her. We've also got her trying to clap her hands - we just say "Yay!" and she gets this big grin and starts flailing her arms around toward each other. Today I interviewed for a supervisor position at work. Though it sounds like more stress, in a big way it would be less. No on call, no weekend med drops, no demands for direct client time - instead I'd be telling other people to do that! I felt fairly good about the interview but 14 people applied (from within) so I am not feeling super confident. What happens happens. The thing is, though, that as long as I have to be working, I might as well be making more money, right? We'll see. In other news, God had a conversation with me this weekend. He definitely wanted me at that church Sunday, which was Hanfield, Rachel's church. God and I have been battling it out for a few months now - actually I haven't been much on speaking terms with Him. Well, I have never felt a sermon more directed toward me in my life. How do you handle God's testing your life? Bitterness - check. Withdrawal - check. I have never been angry with God in my life until the past few months. And I made it through a rather significant share of trials growing up and into young adulthood. I know it seems crazy to have that attitude at the time in my life when I should be happiest - I have a wonderful baby girl, an absolute miracle. But it is bittersweet looking at her and just missing her so much, even when I'm with her. Just thinking about dropping her off again the next day, for someone else to look after while I go to a job I don't want to be at. It may not seem like a big deal, but I am convinced that only other moms can understand the pain of leaving your child, and squeezing out those minutes of time each day before she goes to bed. Then feeling guilty when I'm doing dishes or something else not with her when she is up. I have told Josh, I feel like a failure in so many areas of my life right now - I know I'm a good mom but not the mom I'd like to be, where I can devote so much more time to spending with my daughter and teaching her things and just hanging out with her all the time. I don't like my job so how good at that can I be? I am not the greatest wife these days becuase I am moody and sometimes withdrawn. And my appearance has left me feeling not so womanly, at least not in any attractive way. This is mainly due to the extra weight I am still carrying but that also seems to magnify everything else I don't like about myself. Well, all this to say that God grabbed hold of me on Sunday. He told me to trust Him. He told me He is carrying me. This is not to say that I just came bounding back and am filled with joy and hunky dory now, by any means. But I am at least softened, and asking Him to help me rather than turning my back on Him because I am not understanding His ways right now. Wow, this has gotten lengthy. For anyone in my life reading this, your prayers would be appreciated. I guess this is also part of the reason I haven't been posting, because I didn't want to have to be honest. Besides, who wants to read a downer? But as much as I may think I want control, we all know that God being in control is a much better situation than us being in control, even when we don't understand. Amazingly, I happen to be singing Shifting Sand at church this Sunday. It is a Caedmon's Call song, and very appropriate to where I have been lately in my faith. My faith is like shifting sand, changed by every wave. My faith is like shifting sand, so I'll stand on grace. | | |
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