Birthday & vacation ketchup

2-3 months behind...better late than never??

This Christmas we were able to visit Mike's family in California. We were also joined by his sister & her family from Oregon. Since we never take actual "vacations", we included a mini day trip to Hollywood this time. It was the first time any of us (except Mike) had been there.

December 31st is always a big day at our house. This year Tyler turned 7 & Annie turned 1. And we can just quickly skip over the fact that mom turned 33 a few days later. (Not nearly as exciting). I have included a few pictures from their special day.

I wanted a picture of them together on their birthday. Annie had other ideas.

Dances in Heaven

This is my Grandpa.

He passed away a few years ago. My boys still miss him so much & talk about him all the time. He left this earth before Annie was born. However, I am convinced that she knows him very well. You see, Annie loves to dance with people. She doesn't just like to be moved around like most little girls. She lifts your hand, and puts her hand flat in yours. When I was little, and also my kids, my Grandpa would hold us close & dance hand-to-hand, cheek-to-cheek, just like Annie does now.

We have been remodeling the living room the past few weeks and had to take down the pictures to paint the walls. When I was deciding where to put the pictures back on the walls, I placed one of my Grandpa on a small table. Annie walked over to the picture, pointed to her Great Grandpa, put her hand up just as if she were dancing with him, smiled & moved around. I couldn't help but have tears in my eyes.

Here is a picture of her dancing with her Daddy. You can see how happy he makes her :)

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Home Tour

For those that aren't up here to see the new place yet, here are some pics for you to have a little tour. We have many decorating plans, but this is the beginning of it all (with a little of what we have done so far). Please forgive the dark pics. It was a very cloudy day. We'd love to have you come visit!

Smooth Move

You'd think that having moved 9 times in the past 11 years we would be old pros, right? Unfortunately, not quite so. However, Mike did have a genius idea for this past move that I wanted to share. I only wish he would have had the idea sooner so we could have applied it to everything that was in storage too & not just in the house.

Pretty much everyone tapes the bottoms & tops of boxes when moving & then writes on the top with a marker based on what the contents of the box are, what room it will go into, etc., right? And then, as a ton of people are helping pile all these boxes into your new place, they mostly end up in one room, all piled on top of each other so you can't find that one certain box...sound familiar? Here's the solution: Buy a bunch of rolls of duck tape brand duct tape. Yes, this brand matters. They come in MANY different colors. Get one color for each room of the place you will be moving to. When you pack a box that will be going, say, to the kitchen, peel off 2 small squares of the color designated for the kitchen & place them on the SMALL ENDS of the box. Not the top or the long side...the small ends. This way you can see them more easily if you stack boxes sideways & usually fit more boxes. If you want to take the extra step of labeling the specific contents of the box, feel free. However, with as many boxes as end up with miscellaneous contents that just need to go to a specific room, this seemed (at least for us) to get them in the right place a whole lost faster. Enjoy your move!

Signs, Signs

Have you ever had a small doubt about anything and then seen something that wiped all doubt away? That's how I feel things have been recently for our family. We really thought we would be living further south than where we purchased our home. We only walked through one home in this city & more further south. I looked at the house first & Mike went through later. When he went through, he really didn't say much. I always felt good about it, but still wondered just a bit if we were making the right decision... especially not being sure of what he was thinking. Then the two of us walked out the front door. He then pointed out the tree in the front yard. I believe it is a birch (could be an aspen). Either way, he suddenly had a tear in his eye. This tree was the same kind that his grandparents had in their front yard while he was growing up, and was a very sentimental thing to him. We have a picture of us, soon after we got married, in front of that tree. Then, I turned around and couldn't help crying myself (and I'm not usually that emotional!!). Right by the front steps I saw just a few little purple pansies. When I was little, my grandpa used to sing a song called "Little Purple Pansies" to me. It was his favorite primary song. At that moment, it really felt like our grandfathers were hanging out together in heaven, looking down at us saying, "Yes, this is it!!"

Fast forward about 2 months. The night we finally got the key to the house was a very rainy one. I went out on the back deck & saw an absolutely beautiful, bright rainbow above the trees with the mountains covered in fall colors in the background. It was like another sign. A sign that things were finally getting better. I know they won't be perfect, but I felt like I could finally take a sigh of relief. My family is where we need to be. I have included the pictures below. Unfortunately both were taken from my cell phone and aren't the best quality, but I hope you can enjoy them anyway.

Quiet or loud, He is there.

Last night, I had just gone to bed and was just on the edge of sleep. I then heard a loud crashing sound coming from the other room....the kind that jolts you out of bed. Annie also heard it & started crying. I found 2 shopping bags on the floor in the kitchen that I know had been on the counter for hours, untouched. At the time, I wondered how on earth they ended up on the floor with no one around to touch them. I went back to the bedroom to calm Annie back down. Usually this works with just a Binky. Not this time. She didn't want the Binky & started burping a couple times. So, I got her out of bed to be sure she got it all out. I went to the living room to sit with her for awhile. A few moments later she started vomiting severely. This continued pretty much all night long. Luckily we figured from the beginning that this was very likely a reaction to some new food she had tried at dinner and not the flu. We did the usual, taking care of all the mess. But during all the chaos, I couldn't stop thinking about the shopping bags on the floor. Then Mike pointed out the obvious. It was the holy ghost making sure Annie and I were awake before she threw up in bed, possibly aspirating fluids, etc. You may or may not believe in a holy spirit, but for us, we knew there were greater powers working to protect our baby that night. There was no other explanation. It all made perfect sense. I am so grateful for the times I am able to listen and feel that something just isn't quite right. The Lord works in mysterious ways. He knows best. He is there.