Waiting in the hall

I found this passage today while digging through an old book that I read when I was young, Mere Christianity. I thumbed through it trying to decide if this was what I needed to read now. Then my eyes fell on blue highlighted sections in the book. This was just what I was looking for, little carrots to nibble on while pondering the bigger picture. I wonder if when I was young these passages applied to me or if I needed to highlight it so I would find it later on when I would need it. Anyway I thought I would share. I'm going through a hard time right now waiting in the hall. It seems I keep ending up in the hall because my room was apparently only temporary. Now I wait, knock, and pray until another one opens for the next part of my journey.

"If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. God keeps no on waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping (funny since the post before this is about camping). You must keep on praying for light and above all you must be asking which door is the true one, not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling. When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall."

Summer catch up

playing in the fountains on memorial day weekend

Lucas loves the droids, but not so much up close

promo at florida mall for the new star tours ride

our first sesame friend, super grover from sea world

my 30th birthday

after dinner we went to city walk to get our groove on

love this guy

sisters birthday shot, oatmeal cookie

dancing with Danae

cake at the house

Lucas was not a fan of the candles

the 501st came to our library

Camping at Alexander Springs

We had a great time camping at Alexander Springs over the weekend. We went camping with 2 other families, each with a small boy, though Lucas is the youngest. They had fun running around, playing in tents, making smores over the fire, playing in the dirt, riding bikes/4 wheelers around the campsite, and wadding in the springs until they were covered with goosebumps and wanted to get out. The weather was lovely, not too warm during the day and fairly cool in the evenings/mornings.

We seem to have the best timing because it was also tick season. I was the only one who ended up with any on me. I had one on my "knee pit" as I like to call it (hey you have am arm pit why don't they call that part of your leg your knee pit) and one on my hip. At least these were the small red ones and not the crazy big black ones. I found them pretty quick too due to our frequent "tick checks" that Dave and I did on both ourselves and Lucas. When I went to change Lucas' diaper I said "tick check" and one of our friends though I said "dick check" lol. I also managed to find 5 crawling around in our tent from time to time. What can I say, bugs love me apparently. The mosquitoes didn't seem to get us too bad thanks to our frequent applications of bug spray. We apparently got chiggers, small red spots that don't itch nor are raised or bumpy. Ours went away the next day so we didn't have to put nail polish on them like your supposed to do. I figured it was because our bug spray had deet in it to keep the ticks away and it probably worked on the chiggers too.

It was pretty cute to see Lucas walking around the campsite. I still can't believe that he is walking around already. He is such the toddler now, into everything, walking, talking, independent. He manged to get a skinned chin and fat lip on our trip. He decided to slip/wipe out between the picnic table top and the seat. I was getting something out of the tent when I heard him wail. Dave said there was alot of blood since it was his lip. It didn't bleed long and had stopped once I walked over there. Dave says that the scrape makes him look tough. I guess this is what I have to look forward to having a boy. Speaking of boy, one little boy who was on the campsite next to us would come over anytime we had built a fire and say that his fire was bigger than ours. Then he would wander back over to his site. Gotta love random children.

Our camping trip was not without more excitement (thought sometimes I think we have too much excitement between all of our families). We unfortunately got to see an EMS, Fire truck and, medivac helicopter. One of the boys with us is autistic and he ran and tripped into the fire pit shortly before we started dinner. Thank God the fire wasn't currently lit and my husband was standing right next to it when it happened. He was able to grab him out quite quickly. The last time we had used the fire pit was that morning during breakfast to warm up, but there were still hot coals underneath the soot. He ended up with second degree burns on his hands, with a few third degree burns on his finger tips. We called 911 and had EMS and a fire truck on site very quickly. The campsite next to us brought over extra ice water and one of them was a police officer off duty who helped too. Dave and I took the boys out of the way and walked them around the camp grounds trying to distract them and ourselves. They ended up flying him to Arnold Palmer. He is doing better now and will hopefully recover soon. Its amazing how resilient children are as opposed to adults. We were ready to break camp and go home a night early, but it was already too late and we were loosing light so we stayed the night. We were all so worn out we slept like rocks. Overall it was a good trip even with our accident. Now Dave wants to go camping again soon, but it will soon be too hot to go so maybe we will look into next year for more trips.

after mostly unloaded

chad putting up his tent

daddy putting up our tent

the big boys playing catch

pet door/kid door

boys playing in the buck's tent

gotta have juice

playing together

checking it all out

Talking up a storm

It still amazes me that Lucas is walking and talking now. Dave and I talk about how it was just the other day he was crawling or not even able to roll over and now he is talking up a storm and walking all over the place. Some of his words are: mama, dada, ashley, alexa, liz, doug, oreo (babysitters cat), jojo (for Aunt Jordanne), working on nana and meme (for Aunt Jamie), Paul, working on Sherry, ball, hat, car, truck, fish, moon, go, up, down, all done, more, no, juice, cat, dog, water, milk, hot, honk honk, bye bye, what, this, that, and ut oh. We know where our eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair, arm, belly, belly button, feet, toes, and peepee (dave is so proud) are. He likes to find your belly button or tickle your toes to make you laugh. He still loves to read. He will go sit in his ball pit, push the button on his fish tank that makes music and scrolls fish, and read his books. Every night we try to read at least 2 books, one of which is always Good Night Moon. We saw a commercial on tv today where the dad is talking to this little toddler sitting in the drivers seat. The camera pans back and forth between them as he talks to her. Then the dad hands her the keys and it pans back to a teenager ready to drive. We know that before we blink our eyes it will be 16 years later with Lucas getting his drivers license. Until then I am content to watch him hobble around the house as he talks or sings to himself.

A fat lip to end the evening

Tonight I gave Lucas a bath (which we do most every night). Then Daddy came and helped us put on a clean diaper and our pjs. Lucas decided he wanted to stand up on the bed. Now Lucas isn't the most coordinated child (takes after his Mommy in that regards) so he tries to stand up quickly. Well, lets just say that didn't work out so well. He stood up, lost his balance, and fell back down on the bed. No problem right, he was still on the bed. Well it wouldn't have been a problem if Mommy hadn't been lying on the bed next to him. As Lucas on his way falling back down on the bed Daddy saw impending doom and tried to save me, but instead Lucas' head landed on my face hitting my lip. So what do you think happened next? Mommy now has a split, fat lip. Its not that bad, it just stings a bit and is swollen. Enjoy the picture.

Joy of Love Days 1-5

01 what they do

 Lucas loves technology. He wants our phones or the remote to the tv constantly. You can't fool him either by giving him one without batteries. He always finds the 'live' one.

02 how they look

  These are my handsome boys that I love.

 

03 then and now

 Now for this one I have to cheat because Amy already made a then and now picture of Lucas not too long ago. I loved it so much that I am getting the now picture put on a float wrap which should be here on Tuesday YAY! I still can't believe how much he has grown in a year. He is a far cry from that little baby on his laptop monitor.

 04 what they wear

 Lucas wears pjs. I am lucky that I can take him to the sitter in pjs and she will change him once he is more awake or after they play for a bit. We are not morning people at our house so anything we can do to get a few extra minutes of sleep is worth it.  

  
05 love to hate

  Lucas is not a big fan of wearing shoes or socks. He loves to take them off especially when riding in the car. These are the cute little shoes that his Aunt Joride bought him for Christmas for probably waaayy too much money. 

 

 

The dark cave opens

There once was a dark cramped cave. It was full of an assortment of things, car parts, a broken riding lawnmower in pieces, old oil, paint, junk, tools, all piled in several heaps. Then along came a fairy with a magic workbench and some worn out lumber. Now this workbench looked like just a bench to most people (infact it had been used as a bench by the previous owner), but the Lord of the manner saw potential. After adding a few pieces of the lumber to the bench and turning it on its side *poof* it became a workbench. The Lord of the manner added a shelf to help store things in his workbench and then set off to make room for it in the cave. The Lady of the manner decided to help organize the cave with the Lord of the manner and together they were able to pair down and get rid of many things that were unnecessary and merely taking up space. The Lady was delighted at the amount of space that had opened up in the cave. There were still many things that needed to find alterior homes, but this was a start. The squire soon awoke which caused the Lord and Lady to stop working on the cave, but they both felt much better about it. Later that evening after a few phone calls to other manners and Lords, the Lord of this manner was able to find a home for the broken down riding lawnmower. The Lady wasn't going to believe it until she saw it. Sure enough the next day when she returned from work, the lawnmower was gone and in its place was a large opening in this cave. An opening fit for a party. And that is exactly what the Lady of the manner did, she had a party to delight in this newfound space.

Ok so we didn't really have a party with people over, but we did celebrate in the fact that we now have a garage. Its not totally organized, Dave needs to make places for his tools and he wants to add doors to the workbench to keep the squire out, but it is a wonderful start. So that is how we spent out weekend. I hope yours was as productive as ours.

Jar of Memories

This is such a great idea. You write down memories as they happen and put them in a jar. Then you can go back and read them when you want to remember or need a pick me up. As soon as I get a moment I'm going to make one of these and I'll post a picture of it. Here is the blog that gave me the idea.
http://stephaniemoorestudios.com/blog/2011/01/our-jar-of-memories-memphis-tn-photographer/

Fun Geektastic weekend

Before I go into our lovely weekend, a Lucas update. On Thursday we went back to the dr (we had just been Friday before for his 15 month check up) because he had a runny nose and a bad cough. The dr says he has bronchiolitius caused by rsv. So he is on a nebulizer for 10-14 days to help him breathe. Poor guy. He seems to be feeling better now. Anyway back to your regularly scheduled programing.

We had a great weekend with some time to relax and enjoy our friends. The geek crew came over to our house on Sunday. The boys did manly things like installed an outlet in our bathroom for our automatic litter box, put a trailer hitch on Andy's van, and attempted to fix the squeal coming from Chad's van. The girls hung out inside with the kiddos. They all got along pretty well minus the usual attempting to share toys. I felt bad because Lucas seemed to manage to be asleep when the big kids were awake and he was awake when the big kids were asleep. Anyway it was fun to be able to spend time with the Geeks. We don't seem to do it often enough. The next get together I imagine will be at Sea World since we all have passes and the kids love it. Here are some pictures of Evie and I making brownies before the Bucks came over.

Lucas learns to like sliding and gets a black eye

          We decided to get out of the house this weekend. We settled on going to Downtown Disney (even though we missed meeting up with friends there the day before). After walking all around, eating chocolate, looking at legos, dinosaurs,and fish, we decided to take the boat to the Riverside at Port Orleans Hotel (we had been there walking around another weekend before which is how we found out about it). We figured Lucas would like his first boat trip. Well by the time Dave convinced me it was a good idea, I mean who would pass up a free boat ride, it was around 4:30. Lucas normally has his second nap by this time. He was fine untill we got on the boat. After about 5 mins and not understanding why he couldn't get down and crawl around he was fussy. We played pass the kid, look at that, tickled him, everything we could think of to at least keep him from crying. I was afraid he was going to lean too far over the railing and fall in. I pictured him going overboard and me frantically jumping in after him because if he did fall in, it would be the end for him. Good that did not happen, but we decided to get off at the first stop at Port Orleans.
           We figured it was best to walk around a little bit before trying to get back on a boat to go home. So we walked around, watched people go down the alligator slide, went to the bathroom, colored in the lobby, ate a mickey mouse ice cream bar (Lucas' first ice cream on a stick), and found a playground on our way back to the boat. This was a little playground with one structure that had a big slide, 2 little ones, a place to climb up and a curly fireman pole. Lucas normally doesn't like slides, but we figured why not try again because you never know. Well this time he decided that he liked it. Daddy  helped him down holding him the first few times. Then he would go down with Daddy's hand behind him. Then he went down with Daddy right next to him. Well on that time down he went a bit crooked and bumped his head on the side of the slide. It didn't look bad, but the silent scream, and immediate red bump told me otherwise. We got him to shake it off a bit and then made him continue to slide a few times, twice with mommy and once with help so he wouldn't be afraid of slides. He went along with it, but wasn't too happy about it. So we got him a apple juice and headed to the boat. He loved the apple juice because he normally drinks mots for tots which is half strength.We also tried to get him to put it on his eye to help the red bump, which didn't happen.
         He did better on boat ride back, I'm sure partly because he was tired, partly because of the boys about his age behind us to look at. We were talking about how it would be a black eye tomorrow and the lady behind us said "wait until you have to go in for stitches." Oh boy, lets hope not, but I'm sure it will happen. Then we loaded up and went home. After a nap in the car we got home, ate dinner, and got into the bath. It was then we could see his lovely black eye starting to form. Ahh yes, Lucas' first black eye. It didn't look too bad this morning, which is good. I don't want people to think I beat my kid.

We just saved $56,640

We refinanced our mortgage down from 6.5 to 5%.  Doesnt it make you a little sick to know that you are paying for your home twice?  Even with the new interest rate, if we stay in this house for 30 years we will pay 155,000 in mortgage interest alone.  Sigh..but what are you gonna do?

On a creepy related note, we did a digital closing.  No people.  No notary.  No one to wait around for or pay extra.  Just click click click.  Its the friggin future mannnn!  You get all done and save a .pdf copy for your records.  It was a refreshing feeling to close a mortgage in my pajama pants at quarter to 10 pm...i highly recommend it to anyone who is closing soon.

--Dave out

Happy New Year

Its the start of a new year. Amidst all the cleaning and organizing we make resolutions that we never seem to keep. I just want to try and make the best out of this year. To stop and take notice of the small things and not to let them pass us by in a blur. Lucas gets bigger every day and it amazes me that he once was so small. I love seeing him grown and learn new things every day. This year I want to do a photo project. I would love to do the 365 day project but there is no way I have time for that, so instead I will try at least the 52 week project. One photo a week is doable. I will be uploading my pictures to photoblog at http://www.photoblog.com/suitejessi/ So check it out. Fun pictures from new years.