They Did It!

Time for an update! So many of you are so faithful about posting to your blog - many of you everyday! How do you do it? Where do you find the time? I admire you!

The camp out...
I fully expected to see two cold, shivering, miserable, weary campers come walking through the door before the sun rose. Good thing I wasn't holding my breath! They did it!

T woke up several times during the night, each time checking to see that MW was still snuggly tucked into her sleeping bag. At one point he looked over and saw that she wasn't in her sleeping bag. He scanned the tent...no MW. In what was quickly becoming a terrifying moment, he got out of his bag and headed to the door of the tent. Before unzipping it, he decided to feel her sleeping bag. He put his hand into the opening and felt down, further, and still further...finally he felt her hair. That little turkey was WAY deep in her bag! Snug as a bug! In the wee hours of the morning, during another wakeful moment, T discovered she'd turned her body 180 degrees so that her face was in the bottom of the bag and her feet were poking out the top! Crazy girl! They finally came in around 8am! Both of them grinning from ear to ear! MW was ready to do it again, claiming she'd slept all night! How fun...especially for a SCHOOL NIGHT!

Tuesday T and I spent the day doing more home improvement projects.

And then, there was light! He repaired the star light in our kitchen! Yea! It works again! He replaced the switch in the breakfast room! Yea! We can use the chandelier! And he put in a new fixture in the pink bathroom, replacing the completely broken one that hasn't worked in years! This turned into a bit more of a project than either of us anticipated...ha! What doesn't??? Because in the '40s no one put plugs in bathrooms, we have no plugs in our bathrooms, excpet in the broken light fixture of the pink bathroom, the broken fixture that T had removed before we realized we'd be without a plug once it was gone...so he put up a new fixture - thanks Aunt K and Uncle M! Then my sweet husband installed a plug in the medicine cabinet (um...which I'd like to one day replace) Oops, another new revelation! That fixture he removed also had a pull chain for turning it off and on...not a light switch like normal overhead lights...so in addition to installing that plug, he installed a switch...in the medicine cabinet! So, he gets everything put back together, and I go in and immediately angle the three lights down...well, if they're angled down, like they're designed to be, you can't open the medicine cabinet, which means you can't turn on the light, or use the plug...so we angled them up...not my first choice, but it works...oh the complications of trying to do small repairs to an old house! It's never small! But, I must say that thanks to Robot Sam (my super cool tin bank) and T's coin bowl, we've technically stayed "on budget!"

So what did I do? I painted exterior trim. I scraped it, I caulked it, I primed it, and I painted it! And I only have the west side of the house to go - two windows and a little trim at the top, plus one section of gutter in the back!! Did I mention that I strapped T3 on my back just so that I could paint while he was awake? I was a woman on a mission. A friend of mine once told me she had strapped one child on her back in a backpack, and the other on her front in a baby bjorn, just so she could clean her house! I thought she was crazy! Maybe not...You begin to realize maybe, just maybe something is wrong with you, when your ten month old has thrown your hat on the ground (which was hiding the "missed my shower this am hair"), is pulling your hair, your rear end and left leg are soaked with milk from a sippy cup he's shaking upside down, and your neck is wet with spit from the rasberries he's blowing...and it's all in the name of painting trim!?

We have missionaries staying with us this week! They arrived Wednesday night and will stay until Sunday afternoon. We're having a blast and have heard so many neat stories of their adventures! They have two daughters who are super neat! Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I took a shower all by myself this morning...while T3 was awake! Thanks to these sweet girls! They played with him and it was SO wonderful!

The missions conference at our church has become one of the highlights of our year! Last year we made MW sit through all the services. So many people thought we were just horrible! Making a two and a half year old sit through a church service! Well, MW heard the gospel in a way that penetrated her heart like never before. Monday will mark the one year anniversary of the first time we observed the Holy Spirit at work in our precious little girl's heart! I'll have to blog more on that later!

Not too much else to report...yet! My baby sister, A, is supposed to call later tonight to share some big news with us. She's expecting, due the beginning of August, and just found out today what she's having. She's keeping it a secret until she can tell all of us at once. This is a bit of a hard thing to blog about. My sister, A, is a freshman in college. She found out in December that she was expecting and she did a really hard thing. Instead of tucking tail and taking the life of the baby growing inside, she made the bold decision to go home and take responsibility. I am VERY proud of her for making that decision. I can tell you that an abortion would have saved face. No one would have known. A could've tried to bury that deep in her heart. Yet, she didn't. All that....and...God IS sovereign. God IS good, all the time. So much has happened in our family during the last four years. There are times my heart feels ripped into a million tiny pieces that could never be put back together! And yet, how encouraged I am to think about David's life...a man after God's own heart. God called him that! David didn't live a "christian" life. He committed some "BIG" sins! Talk about saving face...he tried to and it just didn't work! Remember when Bathsheeba wound up pregnant...David tried to get her husband home, so David wouldn't be to blame, but that didn't work so David had her husband killed! And yet, David was not beyond redemption. His sins weren't bigger than the work that would take place on the cross. God redeemed David. God used David in HUGE ways! David is part of the lineage of Christ! I cannot see what God is doing in our family right now. There are moments when I "feel" like things are beyond hope. This is WAY bigger than me! I am completely NOT in control! And I am so happy that God IS in complete control. I am so happy that this little one growing in A's belly is not a surprise to God. I am so happy that He is bigger than all of this and that I can rest in Him!

I didn't intend to say quite that much. I struggle to walk that line of sharing without sharing too much. The fact is just that in America it's like we're all supposed to be happy and smiling all the time. I feel like we tend to hide what's really going on in the name of saving face. You know, we all get asked all the time:

"how are you?"

(Really? Really? I just yelled at my kids. My husband and I are in the middle of WW III, money is tight and I'm angry...but I'll just smile and say...) "Great, thanks! "

And with a smile on our faces, we run the other way... Perhaps it's better that way. For now, I can't muster the energy to glue a faux smile to my face when my heart is shattered. So, I'm spilling a little of my heart on my blog...and if I'm smiling, rest assured it's a real smile. I don't do fake ones very well...just ask my husband!