WE'RE NEXT!!!!

I stopped by our agency today to drop off some paperwork and talked to our Family Advocate and he said that we will not get our referral in this month's batch expected out any day now, but we'll be getting our referral next month. Whoo hoo. At least we know that this is the last batch before us. We're really almost done with the wait. I can handle anything for a month.

I finished painting the kitchen this past weekend so all I've got left is the front room/stairwell/upstairs hallway. So I'm going to get that done this month so the entire interior of our house will be painted before we get our referral...and then we can be completely focused on getting things ready for the baby. Yippie!

The nursery is painted!

Some people (my mother) never thought I would get the nursery painted...well HA...it's done. Well, painted at least. We still need to assemble the crib and the glider rocker and ottoman, hang the window valance and then decorate. But, we're off to a good start and I love the color. It's bright and cheery and it looks great with the pink, purple and yellow in all the decorations. I'll post new pictures as soon as it's all done.

Trying to decide between painting the walls yellow or green.

Green wins!

All painted!

Katelyn's cute chair that I painted to match her room.

Oh the water!

This morning Josh threw in a load of laundry and then was doing something else. When he came back into the kitchen (our laundry area is just past the kitchen) there was an inch of water all throughout the laundry area, kitchen and half bath. So after using EVERY towel in our house we got most of the water sopped up, Josh turned the valves at the washing machine to turn the water off and take the hoses in the back off to try and figure out what the problem was...it was at that point that bad got worse....We found out that the hot water valve switch is broken as water came JETTING out and of course at that point you can't get the hose back on...so we are frantically trying to find and get to our water main shut off. Josh saved the day and turned the water off for the whole house (I know how to do this now too.) But unfortunately our bad situation got worse and after cleaning up the one inch of water...we now had another two....UUGH...So I drove VERY fast to the Walmart, looking oh so lovely (because I got out of bed to this whole situation), and purchased the last five gallon shop vac. I think we probably disposed of a good 40 gallons of water today.

So we aren't sure where the problem is. We thought the drain might be clogged but our free (thank God for something today) evaluation from Roto Rooter left us thinking it's most likely our washing machine that's clogged somewhere (oh blessed pets and and all their hair)...so the appliance repairman will be here tomorrow afternoon.

The joys of home ownership!

On a sidenote...Josh was GREAT this morning and held up perfectly under pressure. He didn't yell or anything...He just took care of things. I was a very proud wife!

All those kids

A family that lives in our neighborhood has five kids. They range in age from 7 years old down to 10 months. All five of the kids are part of our children's ministry and the difference that I see in them from summer until now is amazing. The family is more stable and the mom and dad are at church every week. They are building relationships with others in our church and everyone seems to be growing.

Recently these parents shared that they were pregnant. Of course my first thought was "Really God, can I please have just one child?" Then my second thought was, "Gesh, they can hardly handle the kids they have, what will they do with another one?" It makes me sad that selfish responses were the first thing that came to my head. And at the same time, I'm sure that I wasn't the only one to think these things about this family's situation.

The other day this mom almost miscarried her baby and is now on bed rest. At first I had thought that it would be really sad if she miscarried her baby but at the same time, she has five others. And in the same moment I knew that wasn't true. A mother doesn't love child number six any less than child number one. If she had lost her baby she would have lost a piece of herself. I'm really glad that she didn't lose her baby. I'm glad we'll have another little one in the nursery. I'm glad that as a church we now have another way to love on this family and serve them as they continue to care for five kids with mom on bed rest. I pray that during this time I get to know this family better. And I really hope I get to hold the baby!