I guess its time for a much-overdue entry.
Life is still pretty crazy. 2 nights ago the temperatures dropped about 40 degrees and when I woke up, I started having asthma attacks. Fun times. I haven’t had one since 8th grade, but I guess my body didn’t appreciate the climate change, so it decided to stop breathing. I had to go to the doctor and get an inhaler. Yuck.
Then, when I tried to go to sleep, I felt all jittery and like I was high. I couldn’t sleep and my mind was racing. It turns out that’s a side-effect of the medicine. Niiiiiiiice. Who really wants to sleep anyways?
So today I’m pretty tired, wishing that I could’ve slept some more last night. Hopefully I won’t be buzzing for too long.

Ugh, hurricanes.

It looks like another one is bearing down on south Florida, and my friends and family are all in the path. I’m so thankful to be out of there, but so sad for everyone who still has to deal with it. I’m hoping that the news is just being alarmist, but they’re saying that they’re shutting off power today at 2pm in Palm Beach and that they expect it to be out for 3 weeks. Apparently all of the relief crews are still helping with Ivan, so there’s no one to drive down to get the power restored any faster. That would be so terrible. I just pray that it doesn’t turn out that way.

I’ve said that, whooped and hollered, and clapped my hands more times today than I ever could’ve imagined, hehe.

Earlier today I was watching my TiVo-ed recording of Dr. Phil’s special and I saw him potty trainining the kids in 1 day. We have just been waiting for Matt to be ready and not rushing him since he’s had a lot to deal with in the past year, starting with a new baby sister, then moving, then hurricanes, etc, etc, etc. My mom had tried to potty train him when we came here in July, and it was a complete failure. He couldn’t care less.

So today I decided to ask if he wanted to go on the potty. He said “sure” and we sang songs, read books, and had a good time while he sat there. Nothing happened. That was fine.

A little while later he asked to sit on the potty. He read a book on his own because Juli was being very needy.

Then tonight, after his bath, he asked again to go poopoo on the potty. I sat him down, we sang, we sang some more, we sang even more, then I asked if he could show me how to go poopoo, and right then he started going. Man, why didn’t I know that key word before?! We did lots of cheering and sang the poopoo song, and he didn’t want to stop. That was a lot of poopoo-ing!

Once he was done, he called Grandma and Grandpa and told them all about it and he was so proud of himself. I hope this is a sign of things to come!

MAN OH MAN!
So much has happened since I last had a chance to blog, so I’ll give you the short version:

Hurricane Frances hit our closing date
We were stuck in FL with no gas, no power, no fresh food, and most importantly: NO A/C!
The closing was delayed for over a week
We drove to Colorado not knowing whether or not we were going to close in FL
God performed a miracle and everything worked out only a few days behind schedule

In-between the lines there was a lot of ups and downs, but the general idea is the same Frances was really scary and I never want to go through another hurricane with young children (or at all, really). Luckily, that shouldn’t be much of an issue here in Colorado, LOL.

Let’s see…
Yesterday I tried to do a batch of OAMC with chicken recipes. I had been doubling and tripling our recipes for the past couple of nights and that was going great. Then last night ruined my record. All 3 of the dishes that I intended to make flopped. The absolute worst one was supposed to have homemade stuffing. It called for melting butter, then sautee-ing (hard to spell without the little accent) celery, then you took cubed bread, dipped it in an egg/milk mixture and browned it with the celery. Easy enough, right? WRONG! Instead the bread sopped up all of the egg/milk mixture and when I poured it into the pan it made this disgusting celery omelet! It was so nasty and I just kept cooking and cooking it to try to make it brown, but it was impossible. Joe said it looked like mashed potatoes. It was nasty. We ended up eating KFC

Today is already a better day though because I think we found our church home!!!!!!!! Its a church that is affiliated with southern Baptists, so I never would’ve guessed that I’d go there. Just last night Joe and I got into a heated discussion about the SBC and I basically said that I’d never want to go to a SBC, but lo and behold, God seems to like making me eat my words!
Its really contemporary. The music style is acoustic and was honestly the best music I think I’ve ever heard in a church service. It gave me goosebumps. Their beliefs are very traditional, but they aren’t all stuffy. The sermon was really great and made me think. Everyone was SO nice!
Matt went to the Sunday School (he told us that he wanted to go in there!) and made a little craft, learned about God making the world, and was singing songs when we went to pick him up. We’ve NEVER been to a church where the 2 year old class had a lesson. They even gave us a sheet of things to do during the week to strengthen the lesson.
Most importantly, I felt a peace and sense of home while we were there. I love that feeling. It just felt right!
Now I need to go email them about their small groups. I think we’re interested in one that’s going through the Bible in a year, but I need to see if they offer childcare.

Well, thanks for reading if you made it this far! I’ll try not to go so long in-between updates from now on!

Wow! I’m really starting to feel the pressure from the move now. Tomorrow morning the moving truck will be here, and then we’ll have to get to work loading the truck and securing everything for its cross-country trip. I’m getting a bit nervous that Hurricane Frances is going to try to screw up our closing date. Our neighbor mentioned that our buyer’s homeowner’s insurance policy won’t get written on Friday if the storm is going to hit within 48 hours. Ugh. I hope that’s not true. If so, then I guess we’ll have to wait until Tuesday to do the closing (assuming our house is still standing ).

Today at church I ended up spending the whole service either pacing in the back of the sanctuary or out in the foyer. Juli just would NOT fall asleep and she kept shrieking these happy sounds that made everyone turn around. I was wearing my homemade wrap, which got a ton of compliments, but she was in a vertical position so it wasn’t good for breastfeeding in public. So I ended up going into the bathroom (yes, even though I am totally against breastfeeding in the bathroom) and nursing with her still vertical. I just lifted up my shirt (a tight, one shoulder, not-made-for lifting-up-high little number), and made my boob go at 2 90-degree angles to fit in her mouth. But hey, she fell asleep while I was doing it.

As I paced up and down the bathroom floor, a woman came in and started peeing. I kid you not when I say that she must’ve peed for 2 or 3 minutes straight, and not like a trickle, but a super stream! I was thisclose to commenting on how she had obviously never given birth or had her bladder blown up like a balloon, as I have, but I just let it pass. I was still mightily impressed though. I bet she hadn’t peed in a week!

Oh, but after the amazing peeing woman, I went into the foyer and was able to talk to 2 new mommies. One was speaking of very punitive parenting techniques and bottlefeeding, whereas the other talked to me about breastfeeding and how I made my wrap. I got the strong urge to tell her about GCM and cloth diapering, but for some reason I decided to hold back. I’m definitely going to pray for her though, and I hope that Jessie will talk to her about it once I’m gone She’s on my heart. I promised that we’d come back and visit and talk again.

After church we met my parents for lunch and they bought Juli a very expensive, but amazingly beautiful set of diamond studs. She’s 7-months-old and has bigger and more expensive diamonds than many women 5 times her age! They are really lovely stones though, and they sparkle every time she moves Thanks mom and dad!

I’m off to pack because I have really slacked. Good night!

Joe is playing football right now, so I have a few minutes to blog, woohoo!

Let’s see… today I did a ton of packing. Matt and Juli’s rooms are basically done, and the kitchen is really close. Our box of boxes was finally delivered today (who knew that getting boxes in the mail could be so exciting?), so we were really able to get down to business. Joe vacuumed the display shelves for me, so that was pretty sexy! I love a man who is willing to help with housework

After cleaning out Matt’s closet, he spent most of the day playing with bouncy balls and throwing them onto his closet shelves. He thought it was the most hilarious thing. Juli was pretty laid back today and napped well. I’m very proud of her!

Tonight I did everyone’s favorite job – scrubbing the tile floors with a toothbrush thingie (the kind made for floors). Now the hall bathroom is sparkling. I love that! Matt was very interested in everything that I was doing, and tried to help out. He’s such a cutie

Now I’m just trying to relax before bed. Tomorrow we should hear back on whether or not our buyer’s loan financing is complete. There was a bit of a delay because of hurricane Charley, so the realtors are getting anxious and suggesting that we open the house back up for showings to show that we’re serious. Ugh! I do NOT want to have to show the house anymore! Please pray that it all works out!

OK, I’m off to challenge Joe to a game of xBox football. Goodnight everyone!

This is going to have to be a super short entry, because it is way past bedtime already.

Today I basically did no packing at all. Both of the kids striked their regular naptime AND bedtime. We spent the day shopping and eating out, since my MIL is in town, and I can’t believe that they weren’t totally pooped.

Oh, and speaking of being pooped, this morning when I went in to get Matt up, I opened the door and the stench of poop hit me like a ton of bricks. It had shot out of the top of his diaper and was all over his clothes, his bed, the walls, the chair, the carpet, you name it! For what I think was the first time ever, I even gagged when changing his diaper. I had to give him a bath immediately, and then I desperately needed one for myself. Gross!

On a completely unrelated note, we did the pre-closing today. Now its just a waiting game. All of the papers are signed.

I’m so excited about moving, but still so overwhelmed. God has really been teaching me to cast my cares upon Him though, and I’m really proud of the changes that He has made in my attitude in this short amount of time. Its amazing to know that God can fix things about me that I was afraid were just personality flaws

Well, Joe’s waiting for us to start our devotional. This is my favorite time of day, so I shouldn’t put it off! Thanks everyone for reading and the sweet comments. Teri, you made my day with your compliment! My eyes even got a little teary! You’re so sweet

Good night, everyone!

I have had this blog for years now (literally), but I’ve always used the ones on my private sites instead. I wanted to make a new blog to follow our trek west, so I thought this would be a good place to do it!

The picture above is in Colorado Springs during October. Isn’t it pretty? Its getting me all excited about living out there

So… only a week until the movers are here! Augh!!! I’m am SO unprepared. I feel like nothing is packed up yet. I know I’m going to have to pull this out of my butt at the last minute. Luckily, I’m pretty good at that Lots of practice from college…

Hmmm, I want to write some more, but the kids are both playing on the floor next to me, so I’m going to get down there and play too. Thanks for stopping by!!! I’ll try to write some more tonight.