Life

One of the struggles I've been facing is the frustrating feeling that nothing is going smoothly. There seems to always be a hiccup in the plans that we lay out. Recently, when asked how my summer has been, I've given the response, "Overwhelming." Many of your know that in the span of two months I lost both my Papas. Here's what else we've been dealing with.

Curtis has been job hunting since January. We were only looking in College Station and in Wichita, KS. The market in Wichita isn't the best for Curtis' area of expertise. We continued to look here in College Station, with some positive leads that lead no where. In May(ish) we received a call from a bank in Michigan, wanting Curtis to apply for a position that they had available. We decided at the beginning of this process that we would walk through any door that God opened, so Curtis applied.

In mid June, Curtis had a great interview at A&M. The next week, he had an even better phone interview with the bank in Michigan. Both places seemed to be moving forward, and Curtis and I were excited and overwhelmed as we looked at the possibility of having to decide between the two and the very real possibility of moving to Michigan.

We waited, anticipating to hear from both places in the first week of July. We still haven't heard anything, leading us to believe that he hasn't gotten either job, putting us back at square one. There still hope that the A&M job is available, since the process of getting a state job can be a slow one, and several people have been on vacation. We're trying to prepare ourselves for not getting either job, which is frustrating and discouraging.

Add to this emotional roller coaster the house situation. The house was on the market from September-January. We took it off the market, for January and part of February. We put it back on the market in February, as the market started picking up. We have TONS of showings, but nothing panned out. A couple weeks ago, we lost our realtor. Curtis and I were under the naive impression that our house would just roll over to another realtor. Instead, we learned that we had to completely take the house off the market, and start back at square one with a new realtor.

Rather than going through that process again, we've decided to take the house off the market, and work on "moving back into our house". This will involve unpacking some boxes, moving everything out of our storage unit and back into the house, rehanging pictures and the bulletin board, getting the boys in bunk beds, rearranging rooms so that Elizabeth can have her own room, and finding a place for all our homeschool stuff.

The frustrating thing about all this is I feel like we've been through the wringer, yet we're right back where we started. I'm curious to see the lessons that God has been teaching us through all this, but not yet sure what they are. I know that all these events will produce fruit in my life. It's been my goal to be faithful to my Savior, in all these things, because of his faithfulness to me.

This is what 60lbs looks like

last night, on our way to see the Harry Potter finale (which, by the way, was awesome!)

March, at Micah's birthday party

Between the two of us, we have lost 60lbs!! We're still working towards our individual goals, but feel really good about what we've accomplished thus far. More than anything, I'm thankful that we've been able to make some healthy lifestyle decision for ourselves and for our family.

Lunch

Peanut butter on a spoon and sliced bananas. Timothy's new favorite lunch!

Baseball player

In the evenings, after his big brothers and sister are in bed, Timothy enjoys some time as an only child. One evening in particular, he enjoyed "playing baseball" with his Daddy.




Oh, the cuteness!!! He used a turtle puppet as his bat, and a smallish beach ball for the baseball.

This is the stuff.....

During a phone call to Curtis to figure out our busy evening schedule, I told him that we weren't having a bad day, but there was just lots of little stuff that was making me crazy! Things like....
waking up to 100's of ants on the kitchen floor
too many poopy diapers
bickering over the Lego window
smashed Graham crackers
ants in the clean laundry bucket
the coffee pot turning off before I had my 2nd cup of coffee
stepping on a block in my bare feet
a daughter who forgets she's not the mommy

This is the stuff that makes me crazy! But this is also the stuff that He uses to teach my patience.

Then and now.... weight loss edition

4th of July 2010.

4th of July 2011

For the past few months, Curtis and I have both been working on loosing some weight. I got VERY excited when I saw our family picture from this year, and compared it with the family picture from last year. It's nice to see results!

And can you believe how bald Timothy was?! Sweet fuzzy headed little guy.

4th of July fun

Compared to some of the other 4th of July celebrations we've had, yesterday was down right boring! But we loved it! After an emotional, draining, stressful and crazy couple of month, a three day weekend with very little on our plate was just what we needed. I'll go into more details later, but things have been particularly stressful in the past week. Though it's exciting to see the hand of God moving in our lives, it's a little scary. But more on that later....

Yesterday, we went to Heritage park in Bryan. They have.....

a bike parade....

sack races with pin wheels for prizes....

lots of patriotic fun and flag waving.....

and face painting!

We spent the morning at Heritage Park. After that, it was a quiet afternoon for the kiddos while I worked on organizing the laundry room. Exciting, I know! We're hoping to finish painting the laundry room this coming weekend. In the evening, we grilled,and enjoyed more time outside in the pool.

I am so thankful for the days of calm given right in the middle of craziness!