Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I do hope that you all have blessed Thanksgiving.
As I baked away in the kitchen today, I pondered on all of the blessings the Lord has bestowed upon us this year. I thought of many happy moments we have had in this house, that has now sold. I am sad to leave this house but it has given me some of the best memories of my life. Today I am even more thankful that I have been able to be a mom, wife, daughter and sister! Blessings to you all and I pray that God would bless your day with joy and peace.

May I brag?

I just wanted to show how good my son's fine motor skills are getting to be. He has really been working on his coloring skills lately, he colors for probably about 2 hrs every day! Really, he does! :-)

Look at how he colored in the tops of the ice cream cones. He is really getting good about staying in the lines. :-) Yes, I know, a Proud mama I be!!!



Also, the day before he was playing with his big lego's, and he sorted out all of this certain size and then proceeded to sort those particular ones into the colors that they were. So there was a line of blue ones and greens ones. He even pointed to the blue ones and said "boo." Oh, I couldn't have been a more proud mama ever! :-)

Lots of News

Sorry for not posting much lately but I have been on refreshing week away at my friend Amy's house in Lakeview in southern Oregon. It was nice to be away from all the stress of selling a home and the energy that it takes to keep up with all those little things. I come back feeling able to face it all and ready to pick it up a gear and pack my house up and move.

Yes, our house has sold finally to one of the original couple's who put an offer on our house. It wasn't the price we wanted but we did compromise on numbers we could all manage. It is likely that our house will close a week before christmas. We are preparing to deal with family issues that may be effected by our moving so soon before christmas. We are trying however to make the best decision for us and our child. We know moving several times will be harder on him than one big move so we have decided that when the house closes, no matter what time that happens, we will make our move to California. I think unfortunately, much to our families dismay. You see we live near both of our parents and my husband's siblings families, so this will be a very hard move for several families, but good for our future and things to come. We are very excited about all that is to happen in this next year and look forward to what 2006 will bring to us.
One of the things that stresses me so much is that I will have to go back to work. There isn't a day that goes by that I remember soon I will be working during the day and Josiah will be with my sister and her chidlren during the day. I am truly so thankful that we have someone we trust to watch him and he will love being with other children during the day, but it just means we don't get "our" days together anymore. You know all those precious moments, I will miss coloring, or reading books, watching Sesame Street together or just watching him run around and learn new things like dribbling a basketball. I will miss these days and am currently trying to soak in every moment and cherish them in my heart.

Well on another note, I am going to leave you with some pictures from my trip to southern Oregon. The first is a picture of my son's first encounter up close and personal with cows. My friend has 3 cows on her property that they raise for beef. The second picture is of some bald eagles that we saw on our drive home. When we first saw them they were about 20-30 feet from the road! It was spectacular! We did one of thos quick u-turns and whipped it back to the spot they were but they were already flying. We finally caught them as they stopped on a cliff to take a rest from their magestic flight.
Enjoy! and blessings to you and your families.

Josiah and the cows

Bald Eagle

Trials of our lives...

I guess the time has come to explain a few of the comments I have made lately about all that we are going through these days. I will briefly explain them and then I can expand on any if I am not clear, just ask. :-)

About a month ago is when our non-stop stressful life started, when my husband who is a flooring sub-contractor hurt his back. He is better now, only with some occasional pain still, but it's normal with his type of work to have some pain. The following week I was at dr's offices 3 times with my son for ear problems. We found out that he has some hearing loss in his right ear, but we are not sure why. The ear, nose & throat dr wants to wait and re-test his hearing in 3 months (well 2 now). He said that with children this age it's like being a veterinarian as far as guessing what is wrong b/c they cannot tell you what hurts or why. So for now, we have been trying to speak more to his left side. The dr did say that this should not be impeding his speaking. So we are off to a developmental pediatrician on Dec. 1st to explore if there are any physical problems as to why he is not speaking. Now, he does say some some things but only some of those are actually understandable. Long road my little boy has been through and we will make it down this one as well. :-)

The next week my husband's work van was stolen out of the parking lot of the apartments he was working at that day. He only had a few simple tools with him in the apartment at that point as it was still early in the day. So needless to say they got all of his major tools like air compessor, nail gun, saws, drills... etc. And then to find out we do not have any insurance coverage on any of it, including theft of the vehicle itself. The police did find his vehicle a couple days later but everything was gone... they even wiped his dashboard down and all. Who would of thought... clean theives! They even spray painted a tacky yellow stripe over the red one that was there. So it's like a new vehicle to us... well not really. It broke down yesterday... so not only did it cost us to get it back, from towing, but we had to spend more money yesterday getting a new clutch part.

Last week, (week we got van back), we got an offer on our house! We were thrilled! Until we heard the actual offer. Then they ammended their offer which was worse. But we found some do-able things within it and made a counter. Well after many counter-offers we are completely offended by these people and they know what they can do with their offer. Basically, every time a new offer from them came in they asked for us to do more and we got less money! I'ts not supposed to work that way!

We did get another offer from a different couple last friday, and we quite excited becuase there was no expectations of us to do anything, and it seems like it will be quick transaction as well. That is a good thing. BUT.. their offer was 9k less than what we were asking so we countered that night and are still waiting to hear if they are going for it, countering, or rejecting it, becuase eveidently they went out of town and their real estate agent is not able to get in touch with them. So more waiting...

I think the God must think that I need to work on my patience this last month, becuase it seems that's all we've been doing. Waiting for dr's appt's, or answers to health issues, for good health to return, and for our house to sell to somebody!

Well I think you are all caught up now. I better get back to patiently waiting for now... I will check back in later when I have more answers. :-) Thanks for sticking in there and reading this long post. :-)

Feeling goofy...

Well in the midst of all that is happening right now... I thought I would write a silly blog instead just to lighten my mood today. :-) Bear with me. :-)

As any of you who know me personally, you know I like to cook but may not really know what I get to do with what little free time I have. I am food network junkie. Yep, I must say I may need a support group for this. LOL! Really though, I love to cook and I learn some really great things when I watch... maybe that is why I have improved over the last few years. I have all this time at home now. :-)
Here is my ode to my favorite shows: (remember, bear with me.... feeling silly)

Oh Sandra Lee, how I wish I could entertain like thee;
Then there's Alton Brown, he brings such joy to my son to make him jump up and down;
And zippy Rachael Ray, she'll whip you up a meal in 30 minutes, me, replicate, maybe someday;
We cannot forget Mrs Paula Deen, and her scrumptious recipes of which I am very keen;
Oh how the food network has saved this old marm from such boredom or other such harm,
I wish you all happy cooking from this day on.

Halloween Fun

I made a yummy dinner of worms and eyeballs. Actually spaghetti and meatballs... the meatballs had a half of a olive in the middle so they looked like eyeballs. Very cute... although I did not take any pictures of it. Sorry I don't get to share our yummy meal with you.

After dinner Grandpa helped Josiah get dressed in his Giraffe costume. I got quite a deal when I bought this for under $12 from Ebay. :-)



He was very excited to go....



But not very excited about wearing the hood until he got to see himsef in the mirror.



Mommy and Grandma and Grandpa took Josiah trick or treating around the neighborhood. We didn't go very far since Josiah was pretty tired. He was so tired that when we got back to the house, we got his jammies on and he laid on the floor with daddy until the grandparents went home and then he got put to bed. He has been fighting a temperature all weekend and it came back last night after he went to bed. He woke up at 11:30 last night with 102 temp, hopefully he will get over the fever soon. I think halloween was much too fun for the little boy this year. And need not worry, he ate plenty of candy thanks to Grandpa. :-)