What we are UP to

Loving the weather and all of the other months we get to play outside!


We met some friends a while back, who had just moved to Florida from the UK. We thought the move was tough for us, but they are starting a company on top of it all too! BOY!

Because I love to cook, and as we'd received several Thanksgiving Day dinner invitations, we decided to have an early Thanksgiving Day celebration. Since our new friends had never celebrated Thanksgiving, they joined us last Sunday, as well as their parents who were visiting from Ireland. While I didn't understand 'everything' my friend's father said, we learned all about the different sports in Ireland, the UK, and Trinidad. Ever heard of 'hurling'? I know, it sounds like a 'post Thanksgiving Day dinner, I've eaten too much sort of sport', or 'put your shoes back on, I'm going to hurl'. We laughed a lot! While we only had 14 people for dinner, I (of course) cooked for around 40. 6 pies, a 25 lb. turkey, and an exhausted me later, I didn't do much cooking for the rest of the week.
Later, on Thursday - the real Thanksgiving, I made 3 more pies, Hawaiian bread, and yams, for dinner with friends, we played on the golf course while the guys practiced a little bit, and then decorated gingerbread houses.
We headed over to our UK friend's home, and spent the remainder of the evening with them - meeting members of their family who had come in from Trinidad and California for the holiday. The girls all ended up with graham crackers and frosting, making mini gingerbread houses, and decorating the houses with left over Halloween candy. We loved giving our friends root beer barrel candies and watching their faces as they sampled the different candies here in the states.

Wednesday evening we took the plunge and bought Disney tickets. We headed to one of the parks - planning on staying all evening for the extended hours, but disappointed when rides took 3 times longer than indicated, and we didn't have a chance to find a good place afterwards for the parade. It didn't seem to matter where we went, we were directed by employees to find another place (in a not so nice manner). We ended up being directed right out the front doors - 3 hours earlier than we had planned.
We did spend the entire day on Friday at another park, and enjoyed our entire time there.

Finally, we finished up all of our daughter's allergy testing appointments, and got a final diagnosis on her eyes - convergence insufficiency-met with the school, met with the teachers, and have set up vision therapy which we are excited to start next week. From what we've read, usually within a couple of months, progress is pretty apparent.

I've been volunteering in the classroom and having lunch with our youngest daughter, and in the next couple of weeks I get to work with 3 of the classes doing science projects - my friend and I are the SUPER Scientists for this year. I can't wait for the science experiments!

Oh, and as for me, I finished my hardaanger project - the swedish cutwork embroidery one that I've been working on for about 4 years. Yep - I hit Michaels' 75% off custom framing sale yesterday, and am excited to put it on my wall.

We got our Christmas decorations up, and Christmas projects are officially underway.

The Waiting Game

We cleared the preliminaries, and we are now excited contestants in "The Waiting Game"!!!!
Whoop Whoop!!

Yes, a little ambiguous I know.
So, 2 weeks after moving into our rental home, we were served with papers from the county letting us know that the property we signed a year lease on was going into foreclosure.  It wasn't the greatest day I've ever had, let me tell you.

Of course, we went into a panic and started making phone calls.
We were assured that it was a mistake and that all was well.  So, we went on with life, and periodically kept checking to see if anything was going away on the court case.  While nothing much seemed to be happening, it didn't seem to be going away.  

Two weeks ago I got a phone call, and the owners of the property let us know that they were putting the house up for short sale.

Hence, another flurry of activity, questions, (and I'll admit - a little anger) trying to figure out what now?
They told us that they were working on listing it with a realtor who would want to begin to show the property.
 I felt a little rebellious and angry because we still have nine months left on our lease.  I would have NEVER signed a lease that allowed someone access to my home for the purpose of selling it while I was still living there.  NEVER.

After some prayers and consideration, we decided to put an offer in, and yesterday it was accepted.
As such, we are now waiting on the banks (like half of the nation) for a yes or no.  It could be 2 months, it could be 6.  No one seems to know.

While it initially came as a shock, as I've thought about it, I'm wondering how much might be 'coincidence', or better termed, Heavenly Father's guiding hand in our lives, and it may actually be a blessing - it's that shift in perception that turns everything around.
 
We initially wanted to purchase a home here in Florida when we began to consider our move.
I spent days poring over maps, trying to figure out which area we might want to live in.  Then, I spent days on the internet looking at listings and talking to realtors, and even banks.  They basically told me that it wasn't going to happen for 3-9 months because everything in Florida is essentially a short sale.

So, we started looking for rental properties - and we weren't very impressed.
We found 2 possibilities through people at church who were moving and looked at their homes.  While my heart was set on the other house, we got a very strong impression when we prayed about which one to pick that it should be this one.  I wasn't very happy about it because I liked the other much better.  But, I knew that our prayer had been answered, and so albeit a little grudgingly, but trusting that Heavenly Father knows what is going on better than I do, we chose this one.

This house is in a perfect location.  We have 2 neighbor girls who are the exact same ages as our kids.  We live 1/4 mile from church and 1.5 miles from my husband's work.  Our kids have lots of friends, we live in a really great neighborhood, and have some really great neighbors.  I found out that things would have been very uncomfortable if we had rented the other house.  The owner was going to move into an RV and continue to live on the property while we lived in their house.  Ew - that would be pretty uncomfortable for me...  We had no idea, but wow, we are sure glad in retrospect that we made this decision.

I think we are just learning over and over to turn things over to our Heavenly Father and let Him drive.  As we wait to see how things turn out for our future in this home, we hope things will work out, but also trust that if they don't, they will turn out for the best.

Happy waiting to me!

IT IS A GAP!!

This is what many of my relative's teeth look like.


Mine however, are so tight in the front that I have a hard time getting floss in there.

My gap is unfortunately, on the side.  Let's pluralize that now.  SIDES.
Instead of the lovely gap in the front genes, I got the 'gap on TWO sides genes'.
I'm so lucky.

After all, they are just teeth.

I wish the sunbeams in primary knew that.
There I am, singing away with the little 3-4 year olds, and suddenly one of them points to my mouth and shouts out, 'you lost a toof!!'.  Yes, I did.  I smile and we continue because if I don't, we'll have an entire discussion on lost teeth and gaps, and the tooth fairy, and I'll get to see lots of loose, or not so loose teeth.  And then the stories about when so and so's brother lost his tooth.  

Then the little 4 year old hasn't been to church in a while and viola - he re-discovers my 'lost toof', and once again points it out to EVERYONE.

Well, I was relieved when we moved from Colorado and I didn't think I'd be seeing that little guy anymore.  Whew I thought, I won't have to deal with that anymore.

I was so wrong.  Today in church, I was once again singing some songs with the sunbeams (3-4 year olds), when one of the kids stopped singing, pointed to my side gap, and said, 'you are missing a toof'.

Yeah, yeah yeah.