HippieMommy

posted by amanda on Sep 26

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.

posted by amanda on Sep 24

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!

posted by amanda on Sep 20

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!