Calm after the storm!

We've reached the calm after the storm - we are settled in at my parents. I know I know - there it is normally said the calm before the storm. Well, we are experiencing it afterwards! We have a nice bit of space here - our own kitchen, couple bedrooms, living room, etc... The girls are loving life - grammie has great toys, a huge play set outside, & a barn with kittens. I am having some wierd feelings about never going back to our house, and just feeling weird that other people are living in it - crazy. We had all three girls in that house! Very bittersweet. We lived in it for 4 1/2 years - 2 1/2 longer than we expected! It's plain to see now though that God had His timing for when we would sell and move out - I think it is perfect timing! I am so excited for the new house though! We have footings down, and hopefully Monday and Tues. we have poured walls!

Good bye Home. :(

Hello hole in the ground!

And some sweet pics of Braelyn and Selah that Shawn took on Father's Day.

A rare moment of love between the two!

Selah - you can tell from her face that she is a bit of a stinker - problem being she is such a SWEET stinker - it's hard to stay mad at her for too long b/c she'll whip out a cute little face!

OK - off to enjoy some more family time tonight! Hope you all have a nice rest of your weekend!

MandaKay

Great Kit for a Great Cause

For you digiscrappers I have a great kit I want you to seriously consider. There is a scrapper that I have met, who lives near us in Holland who has lost her husband last month. Laurie Garza. She has 3 little kiddos and is obviously in need of some help. When I saw on the forums that she lost her husband I was devistated for her b/c I know her love for him and I know how devestating it must be. Some designers have come together and put a huge kit up for sale - all proceeds (except paypal fees) are going to Laurie! I ran to purchase it - it's a great cause and the kit looks AWESOME!

Today's a better day by the way. I am at work. LOL! No just kidding. We always make amends by the end of the night. You see I think God made kids so adorable when the are sleeping so that your last look at them at night is nothing but pure LOVE! :)

(1) 2 Yr. - Free to good home

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was me screaming at the top of my lungs. I think I need to be admitted to a psychiatric ward. Today and yesterday have been some real tough days. My daughter Selah (the 2 yr. old) is really in some kind of funk. Really all of the kids are. I don't know if it is just them testing me in a time when they know I am stressing out or what. Maybe they are totally confused about all the moving and packing. Not real sure, but I don't know how much more I can take. All of this house stuff came about so quickly for us so there are a million and one things to do and get ready. I think I almost have my parent's basement ready finally for us to move into which will be a relief. We painted one of the bedrooms Monday night and today I quick mopped the floor with bleach and moved some of my kids clothes totes over there. Also on Mon. night Kyle's parents came and did some moving here with Kyle. Kyle's mom helped with the girls and got them in bed which was sooooo nice. I don't know what we would do without family - I tell ya - they are lifesavers! Kyle's mom called today and offered to sit with the kids here tonight again! On a day like today it is soooo needed.

Braelyn is in VBS every night this week for 2 1/2 hrs. and she LOVES it! The thing is - she is the easy one to take along on errands and what not, but we have the other 2 - who are much harder to take on errands. We went last night to look at appliances, b/c we heard that prices on all appliances will be going up the end of this month. Selah is running around the store like a crazy monkey, and Gracyn is just crying away in her car seat. All of this kind of behavior is so not acceptable to me, but I don't know what to do besides just not doing those type of things with kids. And well, that is just not an option always. I really am struggling with HOW to handle situations. I read a book called "Have a New Kid by Friday" by Kevin Lehman while I was in Florida, and it was great, but it doesn't give me play by play on every situation. I wish someone like Super Nanny could come and help me out. I feel like our family is out of control at times. I call us the circus act. I sometimes regret having my kids so close together. I think it's fun and great for them, I just don't know if I was cut out for it. I'm not sure I was even cut out for parenting at all. I don't want to sit here and complain though, but I am just venting some of my feelings. Maybe a few of you out there have the same feelings at times. I just NEVER knew how hard this would be. I never anticipated all of the emotions I am throwing into this. One minute I am in complete bliss about my CUTE kiddos, and literally in the same minute I am just irate with something that they did. Part of it is that I think I have such high expectations for them. Probably too high. I feel like they should know better about a lot of things. We don't hang from curtain holders - I mean come on - who doesn't know that??? :)

That brings me to what I was thinking about this morning in the shower. How awesome is God's love for me. I wonder....does he ever get as mad at me as I get at my kids. I wonder....how he continues to forgive me after I do the same thing time after time after time again. I wonder how many times He can put up with me saying sorry, just to see me turn around and commit that same sin again. I'm telling you it has to be quite hard for Him to watch millions and millions of Christians say "Sorry", only to do wrong again the next day, week, year. I know for me it's hard to do. I get sick of even hearing "I'm sorry" when Braelyn fights with her sister, because I know she will do it again and I think "is she really sorry then"? How amazing is God's love and forgiveness?!!!

Gracyn is crawling!!! Full blown crawling! Another thing that is truly amazing to me. How in the world does a baby learn that??? I do love watching them grow and learn. She has something going on too though. Even as I write she is crying only after about 1/2 hr. into her nap. Yesterday she did the same thing. I wonder if she is teething or what. She still has no teeth. She will be 9 months old next weekend. My other two girls both had teeth by 7 months.

Sorry that that all was so random! OH yeah - the closing on the house is all done - I forgot I never mentioned that. I have mixed feelings on moving out of this home. This is the home that we had all three of our girls in. They won't really remember it, but I will. The part I love is that we get to move into a new home - that's always fun. A new home to make memories in. A home that we will hopefully only be in for about 2 years. Wow - I can't even begin to think about doing this again in 2-3 years. I will just forget about that for now.

Back to packing boxes and cleaning up I guess (after I finish up a LO I have been working on!) I have never seen our house in such a mess - I mean this is BAD. I could never live in this type of clutter all the time - I know that is part of my stress. A clean uncluttered house keeps me a little less stressed! Temporary, temporary I tell ya. I know, I know - you are all saying "you signed up for this - quit complaining". I agree! I'll stop now - I just needed to put a voice to my stress a minute. Now I am done and I feel better. Maybe you all feel better just knowing you aren't going thru the moving thing!!! :)

Have a great day everyone!

Digi Goodness

Just wanted to share some digi goodies that are out today! Shabby Miss Jenn just introduced this PACKED full of goodness kit - called Beach Shack. I had a ton of fun with it and when I get more time I for sure will be scrapping more of my Florida pics with it!

I also just noticed that she has some June desktop freebies - YUMMO!

:::Word to Shabby Miss Jenn - the glass tables were bought pre kids - hence why we don't mind selling them - LOL!:::

:::Word to Bethany and Sarah::: Glad you pointed the typo out on the previous post- I fixed ASAP!!! :) :::

And then hop on over to the Pad for their new goodies. Annie of Paint the Moon designs has a new kit as the guest designer this month, and there is also a new Funky Junky Collab out by Kate and her friends!!! Bunches of other goodies too!

I did this LO for the up coming Lilypad challenge - betcha can't guess what the challenge is!!! But the LO is using a ton of great new goodies at the Pad. Check in on Monday for the blog challenge!

Have a fabulous weekend everyone!!!

MandaKay

Moving Sale - for locals

OK - so just wanted to put a few things on here that we are looking to NOT move! If you are local and any of this interests you please call me or email me at kahuiz@charter.net. I've been busy listing stuff on Craigslist so thought I'd quick do an add here for any locals looking.

Couch & Loveseat - $300 OBO

Glass Coffee Table/End Table Combo - $100 for both.

32" Sony Wega TV and stand - $500 OBO.

Also Available - Sony 5 disk CD/DVD changer - $50.

This is all stuff that we could be forced to part with :) if we must! No really - we do still love all this stuff, but as we go over our house blue prints we are trying to configure furniture, etc... and figured this stuff might sit in our basement of new house unfinished if we keep it, and it just might not be worth that!

So I am finding out quickly that it is NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to pack with 3 little kids. Kids just demand so much attention and it's hard to balance it all. They don't quite understand the time crunch we have, and how could they?! Oh for their carefree life - right?! We've got the storage unit filling up, and the storage trailer is coming sometime this weekend! My living room is full of boxes and I am just at a loss of what to do next. I feel like there is so much stuff I just CAN'T pack up yet.

Fun weekend planned - we are closing tomorrow at 4:00. I think we'll celebrate with the girls at Red Robin for dinner (really we just have some free kids meals coupons from our Dr. that I want to use!). Saturday day we will be packing, and then at night we are going to dinner and to a bunch of the Parade of Homes. Sunday is Father's Day of course and we have church, lunch at Mom's (or I should say Dad's!), home for naps and then pizza at Kyle's parents. Busy busy day/weekend!!! Fun stuff!

Were you all waiting for me to come back here???

Well, you all can't see me, but if you could you would see a girl beaming from ear to ear! The buyers did not seem real concerned about the water, and the home inspection went great! They had a few little things like scratches in the wood floor, and a gutter thing, but besides that I guess the inspector said to our neighbor that it was one of the best built houses he's seen in a while! Props to Kyle for his great building! Anyway so we are set to close on Fri. afternoon!!! So from here on out we will be packing boxes and bringing stuff away to our storage unit. It's a little overwhelming to me b/c I am NO professional packer by any means!

We are also going to try to hit some homes in the Parade of Homes this weekend. I want to get wood/paint/carpet ideas. I have NO clue what direction we will go on this new house. We should have our blue print ready by Fri. too so that will be fun to get back and see it all put together. And then hello excavators - let's dig that hole. The sooner the house gets done the better. We will be living with my parents (who are FABULOUS) so they will probably be rushing us along too! :)

:::Scrapping related:::

THIS woman has to be one of those women that God brought into my life to inspire me and keep me striving to be a better person. She is just so real to me - partly because I have met her (and hope to meet up with her again this summer before her move to Indonesia). She is so kind too to give away a template today on her blog!!! Thanks Janet!

Congrats to Lynette for making the WST creative team!!!

Have you checked out THIS blog yet. If not - you MUST add it to your blog feed! There are always GREAT freebies! I am working on a fun LO right now using the Momtourage kit that We Are Storytellers put on there last week!

Well, I'm sure I'll chat at you all again soon!

Ciao!

Dry

Yep - we're all dry! Our basement actually looks cleaner and better than it did prior to the water coming in! Part of it is because there is barely anything down there anymore, but partly b/c we cleaned ALL day (and all night!). Our garage - well - that looks like a tornado went thru it. I woke up this morning at 7:00am (so about 4 hours of sleep), with the girls, andwe went right back downstairs to assess the situation. It was all pretty dry by then, just a tad musty. We redid a little bit of drywall and kept the fans running and now at 6:30pm it is smelling good and i don't think there is a lick of water anywhere. The county drain commissioner came this morning too which was very nice I thought. He must have sensed my concern last night when I called him. We got a bit nervous at 2:00 again because we got a brief storm again that came thru - God was good to us on that one. I truly think the flash flood thing was a fluke thing and I really think we are pretty lucky. As I was catching the Today Show this morning I realized even more how lucky we were because I saw the devestating floods in Indiana. I know it could have been much worse, so in the midst of cleaning I am thankful and rejoicing! We will wait out God's plan with the house sale. The buyer is keeping the appraisal and the home inspection for tomorrow and hopefully they find that things look great and we pray that they continue to go with the purchase.

Anyway - I guess I don't really have much more to say - that's pretty much been all consuming. I hope to scrap a page tonight while watching our Sunday night movie - I need the therapy. I've got some fun kits to play with too! Gracyn is almost crawling - it should be just a matter of time. She has no teeth yet although every day I swear the should be getting one because she always seems fussy. I think maybe she is just a mildly fussy child. Selah is so bummed that she can't do gymnastics like Braelyn - she gets so jealous everytime we drop Braelyn off. Braelyn loves gymnastics - we have this week of it and that's it. Did I tell you all I now have my half day off for summer. Since the whole offer on our house and all the things we have going on in June for the girls I decided to ask for that half day off. It will be awesome to have that extra day home!

Here's to hoping everyone has a GREAT start to their week!

2:30AM Musings

So yeah - Here I sit 2:30AM - just got out of the shower. Why you ask??? Well, from 10:00PM on we have been down in our basement paddling out 12 inches of water. I am just sick to my stomach. We had a RARE flash flood here. I guess the news said 5 inches in 2 hours. Guess where 12 inches of water sat. Our basement. A blessing: We do not have a finished basement. A Curse: We are supposed to close on our house on Fri. Yeah - remember my last post - we had a purchase agreement and are set to close this Fri. the 13th. Well, tomorrow we will be calling the buyer to let them know what happened. I am SOOOOOO SOOOOOO frustrated right now. I could care less that our basement flooded - it happens (well, actually it has never happened to us, but I know many a person has gone thru this!). The timing of it though is just so uncomical. I have so many questions to God right now. And I have voiced them to Him all night. Why? Why now? Why after finally having a buyer for our house does something like this happen. I mean 3 years on the market and we finally get a break. For what? For our house to flood. Ugh. I am so disgusted. I AM blessed however to have AMAZING family and neighbors. Everyone was trying to help where they could. Our poor neighbors also got flooded and they have a fully finished basement. My sister and her husband got some water in, but sounds like they mainly stayed on top of it. So I know it could be worse, and yet for me - this is the bottom right now. We pray that the buyers are understanding. We have NEVER had water in our basement, so we KNOW that this is a RARITY. They have every right to back out though. There is scheduled to be an appraisal and a home inspection on Monday, so we will see how everything pans out here tomorrow. We will call them and fill them in once we wake up and acsess the situation. My parents, Kyle's Dad, and our brother-in-law Larry totally worked MAGIC tonight - we are SOOOOO thankful to them for helping us - I don't know what we would have done without them! It is all basically dry already. The main part of the water was out already by 12:00am. I would say the water wasn't coming in until about 10:00pm, so only 2 hours and we had the water out at least. Our garage is full of all of our basement stuff now though. If the sale still does go thru though I guess we can look at it as our basement is almost all clear now - and everthing is moved up now - one step ahead of the game. Sorry - just trying to find the light in the tunnel. Hard to know what I want to pray for tonight. Kyle and I prayed so hard a while back that God show us what His timing is on this house sale stuff - just really voiced our frustration with it all and got in a pissing match with Him. Well, low and behold we had a TON of action on our house all of the sudden right after that. Then He provided a buyer for our house and we saw CLEAR answer to prayer. I guess I pray that He continues to show us clear answers. We have spent quite a bit of money already in the process of this purchase going thru that we would have to eat right now - making this even harder to take. Let alone the actual excitement of selling our house and getting our house plans drawn for the new house - we had just ordered all that and found what we think we will love. Today we spent all morning packing boxes. I sit here looking at 10 boxes all ready to go. So yeah - maybe just pray that the process somehow still conitnues - IF it be God's will. I do have pictures, but I can't even bear to show them right now - I am still too disgusted - LOL! I hope this blog post finds you all after a good nice long sleep - I think this helped me just enough to unwind and be able to fall asleep. Kyle is still gone, but should be back shortly. he took 2 truck loads full to dumpster already tonight. He's such a hard worker - I hope he can unwind too and sleep good tonight!

Changes

So we've had kind of a busy start to the week! Fun stuff going on here! Sat. we had 2 showings at our house, one of them being a second time thru. Kyle was here when they went thru the house b/c we don't have a realtor nor do they. They had told Kyle that we would have an offer by 3:00 Sunday and told him the amount. We pondered and talked all Sat. night! Sunday morning we did the church thing and lunch at my Moms, and by time we checked out email at my mom's we had the offer! So today my mind was just a whirling around. We had a million things to call on today. I am so fortunate that I have a little bit of flexibilty at work on stuff like that. So long story short, tonight we met with the couple that offered on the house and we signed the counteroffer and purchase agreement. Huge answer to prayers people - this has been a journey for us! We've learned a lot about ourselves and a lot about God thru this - His timing is PERFECT! So now we are frantically getting our next house plan ready and we will probably start packing boxes this week! We will be out of this house by June 27!!! 5 people and 5 years worth of stuff to put in boxes, yikes! Any moving tips from all you crazy mom's who move a lot - fill me in!!! (ahem, Amy Martin, Janet Phillips!) :)

Thank you all for your prayers for Kyle's Grandpa. He is such a gem, and so many people have so much respect for him, and I know many of you who live around here truly love him. I just spoke with MaryJo and she said that he went in for the biopsy around 6:30 and was out by 7:30 and the results will not be back until end of week. Grandpa is in a lot of pain MaryJo said and we would love extra prayers for comfort for him tonight and tomorrow and we pray that all the medication that he is on for pain does not upset his stomach. We are praying that the biopsy shows a benign tumer, however the reality is that it is probably melignant. If it is melignant we are hopeful that it is a tumer in the bile duct area and not in the pancreas. From what the Dr.'s expained if it is in the bile duct area that is a slow growing cancer and would be a better prognosis. So again, thank you all for your prayers and concern thus far and I will keep everyone posted! I hope I am getting the right information on here - if I am not MaryJo - please call and let me know what I should change! This medical stuff is so confusing at times.

I wish I had more time to scrap lately - I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with goodies I want to use and pictures I want to scrap, and I am just not getting the time to do it. I guess summer is like that, huh?! I have a couple pages to show you though!

I did this LO for my AAM page for Shabby Miss Jenn's creative team and I LOVE how it turned out. The picture of me is when I was in Florida with my girlfriends, and the journaling is just 28 random things about me at 28!

My little Gracyn. What can I say about this stinker. This smile is just so her! Her little tongue sticking out and all! This LO is done using the new Collab kit that Shabby Miss Jenn and Gina Miller put together called Frame This. SMJ has some other great new stuff available at her store too!!!

And finally this LO was done for the Digi Dares challenge this past week - yes - I always miss the deadline - but it was to scrap your favorite part of your day. To me there is just something so amazing about getting to go in and kiss my kids a final goodnight while they are sound asleep. It's amazing that after a long, hard, challenging day with them sometimes I can go in there and I forget any bad fights or qualms. Who can resist a precious sleeping child?! That is something I KNOW I will miss someday. I used one of Janet's new templates (hint hint - go grab that grab bag!!!) I also used the new collab at the Lilypad - A3 - put out by the three Amy's!!! And Amy Hutchinson's damask layered edge is still available it looks like at the pad - so get them while you can!!! I am so excited for this coming Fri. because the June BYOC should be available! I have not seen even one product for it yet - so I am anxiously awaiting! The color swatch lookd GREAT!

Ok - I'm off to get some of these LO's posted and maybe even start a LO!!!