My Oasis...

Ivan attends preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Some days when he is at preschool I have some much loved quiet time. My favorite thing to do during those precious moments is to sit at my kitchen table and look out the window into the backyard. There is a wonderful bird feeder there that was left by the previous owner. Watching the birds and just admiring God's creation has become one of the most treasured gifts of our new home. I love it here and I am so grateful that God led us to this particular home.

It Feels Like Home...

Before we moved to our new home my sister shared a warning with me. She advised me not to be surprised if the new house did not feel like home for a while. She admitted that it took her almost two years to really consider their new house their home. She said that with your fist house it is just that, your first house. It takes little to no time to consider it your own. However, the second house seems to take awhile to "break-in". I appreciated the advice and really started to prepare myself for that feeling of I live here, but it isn't home yet.

I am thrilled to say though that nothing could be further from the truth for me! This house has felt like home from the day we moved in...literally It is remarkable but both J and I feel this way about the house. There is work to be done but it just feels right. That is not to say that our old house did not feel like home, it did...but it was J and C's home, not the house we plan to raise Ivan (and maybe some day another one) in.

I am attributing this instant comfort to the fact that this was the house that God had set aside for us all along. Despite my insistence (at the time) that the other house we bid on first was the right house. J was never as comfortable with the other house, but I was CERTAIN that it was the one for us. In truth, I was seduced by all of the wrong things and God knew it and spared us from making that mistake. He hardened the hearts of the seller's to our offers because He knew where we were supposed to be...I just wouldn't listen.

Thank you Lord for sparing me from my own short-sightedness. Thank you Lord for putting us right where we need to be.

Insomniac...

I don't know what is going on in my house, but no one is sleeping...including Sherman. The fact that Ivan goes in "sleep phases" is nothing new, but this total wacko sleep cycle (if you can even call it a cycle) is baffling me completely. Here is what's been going on here lately:


First we moved to a our new house about three weeks ago. Ivan hasn't seemed to skip a beat since the move...everything has been normal until very recently.


We have been semi-intensely working on Potty Training the last two weeks. By semi-intensely I mean we talk about using the potty ALL the time, Ivan sits on the potty several times throughout the day, he has pee peed in the potty on some occasions and he has worn his "big boy pants" a few times with only one accident (and it was a huge mess - thankfully on the kitchen floor and no where else).


To add to all that Ivan has finally bitten a hole into his final bah bah (pacifier). When we moved he had four bahs left and when he would hand me one that had been bitten through I would inform him that when he bit through the last one, there would be no more. The other night he handed me the final bah (with a tiny hole bitten through the tip) and said "No!". Ivan has only been using his bah bahs at nap and night night for about a year and half now, but they are somewhat of a security item for him so we will see how the "loss" of them affects him and his sleep.

Funny, when I write all of this out it seems somewhat obvious why he hasn't been sleeping too well. The little guy's world is changing so fast.

*****Edited to add*****
J put Ivan to bed last night at 7:15 and we never heard a peep. J put me to bed at 9:45 and never heard a peep. It is currently 7:50 AM Tuesday morning and Ivan is still asleep...hopefully this will put him back on track and the rest of us as well. We shall see!

Homesick...

Last night as J and I gratefully fell into our bed I was totally overcome with emotion. I love our new house and the location can't be beat, but I was feeling homesick. I wasn't pinning away for our old house as much as I was tired of not knowing where anything is. Every time I go to look for something, I have to think about it. Is it in a box? Is it put away in it's new place? If so, where is that place? I was just tired of it all and so I fell asleep crying and missing the familiarity that comes from living in a place for 9 years.

A Nickel and Dime and a Ben Franklin or two!

I really don't want to poor mouth here and I know that as long as we continue to give to the Lord with a giving heart He will make it all work out. However, this move is getting expensive! It isn't any one thing but all of the little things that are adding up and fast.

OK, well there is one big thing...the cost of the movers. Woowee are they going to cost an arm and a leg! We have some extremely large pieces that we will need to move and there is no way that we can do that ourselves, so we have to hire movers for those pieces. Their hourly rate is hefty enough, but throw in the "travel charge" and the gratuity that will be expected and boy howdy does it all add up! Plus we were thinking that we would move out on one day and move in on the next, but that just won't be possible. One company quoted me an overnight fee of $500 and the other $625. That is almost as much as we are going to have to pay for their actual service time.

Then there are the "nominal" charges that the phone company, cable company and power company will charge us to reconnect to their service at our new location. Never mind that we have been customers for almost 10 years and that we are just transferring the service to a new address.

Ahhh! It is all so maddening. I am beginning to understand why all of my friends say that they will never move again.

We Got It!!!!

Well, we got the second house that we bid on, but only after a very restless and sleepless night.

I am nervous about the move and the new house...it is just the way I am. However, I believe that this is the right house for our little family and that God had set it aside months ago for us but as always, we weren't ready yet.

Thank you Lord for putting us in the neighborhood that we really wanted to be in and for making it all work as only YOU can. We thought that this house was out of our reach, but you showed us the way Lord. Thank you.

Starting Over...

Well, after several back and forths we had to walk away from the house that we bid on - they just would not come down. I'm sad, but we are making a bid on another tonight, so we will see if this is the one that God has set aside for our little family.

On the move...

Well, God has blessed us again! Our house has sold!! Yahoo!! The only catch is that they need us out by the 30th of May. Oh my that is fast approaching.

We made an offer on a house tonight. If it all works out I will post more later. If not, back to the drawing board.

Life Happens...

There is no truer statement at this time in my life than that one. Our life here has been happening at a frantic pace for the past four and a half months, but especially the past two weeks. Our house went on the market April 2 and we have had 18 showings in 16 days. That is a lot of out of the house time for Ivan Sherman and me. J too but he was out of town last week on business and he is at work during the day - so not as much as the three of us. We have spent far too many hours in the car lately and frankly I am already tired of the whole process. I am fairly certain that our "bubble of interest" has passed and that the number of showings will decrease moving forward, but who knows.

I will just be happy to get a decent offer and accept and move on to looking for our next house...which will be no small task.I am thankful for the blessing of lots of showings, but ready to have an offer as well. I am so impatient. I know in my heart that God has the right buyers picked out for our house and that He has the right house set aside somewhere for us as well. It's just hard waiting on His timing when the whole world works on it's own timetable.

The other night at dinner J made one heck of a good point in favor of God's timing and plans verses ours though; he pointed at Ivan and said that had things gone the way WE wanted them to we wouldn't have Ivan. So true. God was right on then and He will be right on again. I just have to wait and be patient.

I must remember the words to my favorite hymn: Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

People will say we're in love...

And they wouldn't be far off either! Ever since we decided that we should move J and I have been cleaning out the house. We have been spending our weekends painting scuffed-up walls, throwing out years worth of stuff that we now realize we never needed in the first place etc. Well, this weekend I purchased something to help me with my cleaning efforts. I have never enjoyed dusting more and my house has never been so dust free!

It's the little things that make me happy.

The time has come...

Well after eight and a half years of living in our home, the time has come for us to move. I am on here constantly looking to see what is out there in our area and in our price range. It's going to be tough to leave our cute little bungalow, but the time has come at last for us to move up a little.