FINALLY!

Just a glimpse of our new backyard. :)

After 8 weeks of looking at more than 80 homes and writing 7 offers...we have a house under contract!!!

We still have the inspection and appraisal to get thru, but we think everything will go just fine.

We saw this house on Friday and immediately thought "this feels right...so what's wrong with it?!" John, our realtor, and I all walked thru the house at least 3 times to make sure everything was OK..and we couldn't find anything wrong! We sent our offer over Friday night, received the owners' counter offer Saturday afternoon, we countered Saturday evening and by Sunday at noon we got the call that they had accepted our counter! That sure was fast! a nice change from dealing with banks that take 2-4 weeks to respond,

It's not "ideal" or "perfect", but of all the houses we've seen, it suits us the best.

The backyard is the best selling point, as you can see above. All along, we've found homes where the actual house is great, but there is no backyard....or vice versa..a great backyard with a house that just doesn't work for us. This house is the perfect marriage of a great backyard AND a good floorplan.

You can't really see it in the picture, but you can get a glimpse of the grass...the grass extends all along the side of the house giving the kids a HUGE area to run and play in...not to mention the awesome built in BBQ and fireplace next to the pool!

Now I'm knee deep in picking out paint colors and lining up estimates for pool fencing and tile guys (we want to re-tile the inside and I've talked John into at least thinking about doing it BEFORE we move in rather than after!). But at least this is fun work! :)

2 NEW NEPHEWS!!!!

It is with great excitement and joy that I can announce the referral of my 2 new nephews from Ethiopia! Go check out my sister's blog to see her announcement -and congratulate them!

She can't really post their pics, but let me tell you, they are PRECIOUS!! The older boy is 15 months old right now (about the same age Elizabeth was when we got her referral)..and he has the cutest pout in one of the pics. He'll fit right into this family! The baby was born on Becca's birthday this year...and he looks like such a happy little guy with the biggest eyes and smile. :)

Because Ethiopian courts close for several weeks, they most likely won't be able to go get these precious little ones until October/November...meaning they'll have to stare at their pictures for 4 months while they wait (just like we did with Elizabeth). Please pray that they get a very quick court date once the courts are back in session and they can travel quickly thereafter. With Joy being pregnant, the sooner they travel the better.

ELIZABETH UPDATE

(here's Miss E right after her "procedure" enjoying her 2nd lollipop as well as some toys she got for being so good)

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and comments and emails. What a blessing y'all are!


Elizabeth had a follow up appointment this morning and everything looks good so far. When I changed her bandage last night the burn was still in the blister-stage. By this morning, it had popped...so, in order to prevent infection, the pediatrician had to cut the dead skin away -exposing all new, raw, very pink skin.


As you might imagine, poor Elizabeth cried/screamed her way thru the procedure. And of course all I could do is sit and hold her hand, talk to her, sing to her...and try my best to not cry too. She'd look at me, point to the doctor and her foot and thru sobs say "mommy -owie owie owie"...I know she was trying to say "mommy, this lady is hurting me...please make it stop". ugh. I HATE those times that, as a parent, you have to sit and watch them endure pain because it's the best thing for them.


Now that the new skin is exposed, I need to change her dressing twice a day...and we have to be hypervigilant that an infection doesn't set in.


Praise God she's figured out how to walk again! When she first wakes in the morning or from nap, she really wants to be carried (I imagine her foot is just stiff from being still so long)...but after about an hour, she's up and walking on it. That's such a huge milestone that I didn't think we'd reach for a few more days!

I received more than one comment about how this was such a good lesson in obedience -for Elizabeth, but also for your kids..and for that matter, us adults! And it's so true...there are very real consequences when we disobey the Lord. Although I'd rather not see my baby in pain, I AM glad that some good has come from it and that we can look back and say "remember how bad your foot hurt when you disobeyed mommy?" :)

WOULD YOU PRAY FOR ELIZABETH?

"What's up with Elizabeth's foot" is what you're probably asking yourself. Well, let me tell ya.
She has a pretty bad burn on the bottom of her right foot.

Today, as we were leaving swim lessons, Elizabeth decided to "test her boundaries" with me and stood in the middle of the parking lot. She was standing right behind a car that was getting ready to back up. Twice I firmly told Elizabeth, "come here"..and she ignored me. I quickly grabbed her by the hand and started walking. She started crying...and then screaming. I just figured she was mad that she didn't get her way. After about 10 feet of walking, she picked up her feet and started hanging from my one hand. I made her stand on her own 2 feet and that's when I noticed she just had one of her flip-flops on. The other one was back where I had grabbed her.

So I went back, picked up the flip flop and instructed her to get to the van. We all get in the van and start heading home (thankfully, my parents live about 1.5 miles from the pool!)...and she just keeps sobbing...unlike I've ever heard before. I got more and more irritated at her because she wouldn't "stop her fuss". At a stop sign I turned around to tell her, one more time, to calm down...and that's when I caught a glimpse of the bottom of her right foot. It didn't look right...kinda like when you have a blister and it pops...the skin real white and loose-looking.

I felt terrible for being so upset with her!

So I stepped on the gas and got home as quick as I could, called the pediatrician's office (which was closed for lunch), and started soaking her foot in lukewarm water.

I put a real loose bandage on it, gave her some Tylenol, and put all 3 kids down for nap.

Wouldn't you know-within 5 minutes of Elizabeth falling asleep, the peds office called and they wanted to see the foot...and they had an opening in 15 minutes.

I had hemmed and hawed about whether I should have gone to the peds..and I'm so glad I did. By the time we were actually seen (burn happened at 1pm and seen by ped around 3:15) the burn had blistered and was pretty red around the edges.

Poor baby!

The doc soaked it, treated it, and bandaged it up. I get to repeat the procedure tomorrow and then we go back in for a follow-up Thursday morning...mainly to make sure an infection hasn't set in.

Now we have to carry her EVERYWHERE as her foot is too tender for her to put weight on ...and let me tell you -it has not taken her long to figure out how to milk this for all she can. :) Seriously! She has told me at least 20 times "mommy-owie" and points to her foot and kinda "snaps" her fingers at me for me to pick her up. That's not going over so well for mommy! I've noticed that, if I'm out of the room, she's perfectly content...but the minute I walk back in there is lot of whimpering and whining and fussing. Little stinker!

Part of me is already somewhat annoyed that she is turning the cry on and off...but then I have to remember that for the first 21 months of her life she was cared for..but not the same way a mommy does. I'm pretty sure her nannies didn't have time to kiss and cuddle every boo-boo away. And this isn't just any old boo-boo...this is a pretty bad one!

If you think of it, please keep us, especially Elizabeth, in your prayers. I'm imagining a burn to the foot will take extra time to heal since it's such a sensitive area.

**and if you're wondering what's going on in the last picture above, Elizabeth is writhing in pain and Andrew decided to pray for her right there, at her bed. What a sweet boy!**

taken about 30 minutes before "the incident". :)

SWIM LESSONS-AGAIN!

Andrew and Rebecca are back in swim lessons -last week and this coming week. This time around their lesson is 45 minutes long. Sitting out for 25 minutes in June was tough...but it pales in comparison to sitting outside for nearly an hour (by the time we get there, have lessons, and leave)in July! Friday it was 112..and this is our "monsoon" season so it's VERY muggy. I actually took a towel with icepacks in it and laid it over my chest the entire time!

Another way for me and E to keep cool while watching the kids swim is to bring a squirt bottle. :)

I bought a little travel Dora Aquadoodle for little Miss E to play with -it usually lasts about 10 minutes. :)
Becca and Andrew doing "superman glides" on their backs

Becca jumping and swimming.

Andrew jumping and swimming
if you listen -as soon as Andrew jumps in you can hear Elizabeth cheering him on. :)

Elizabeth is finally speaking words that we can usually understand. I was actually getting a bit worried cuz she chatters constantly, but we usually cannot understand her. Alot of the time it sounds like Chinese, other times like she's trying to speak English but we have no idea what she's saying..and sometimes we just have no clue!

My sister's 5 kids spent the night last night, so grandma and grandpa had a FULL house, especially since we're staying with them too! Here's all 8 grandkids eating breakfast together.

Today John and I took the kids to the same pool they have swim lessons at so they could show daddy their skils. :)

Little Miss Fishy!

Daddy and his little ducklings. :)

**on the house front...it's a REALLY long story, but the house we've wanted for over a month is out of the running now. The short story is that we DID finally hear back from the bank and we're SO excited! That same day we went back to the house just to make sure it was still what we wanted before we signed the offer....the basement ( a finished basement home) had completely flooded due to some major issues with the house..not just a leak. We feel so protected by God! **

We have an offer in on another house and should hear back from the bank this coming week on it...there may be negotiations, they may just not respond, we don't know. There are no rules right now in the real estate game out here..making it VERY tough for a family to "just find a home!" There are 2 more homes we'll most likely offer on if we don't the house we're currently offering on. We're hoping my parents can go with us on Monday to see all 3 homes to help give us some input.

I'm hoping that, between these 3 homes, we can secure something soon!

JUST A QUICK UPDATE

Just a quick post to let y'all know we are safely, albeit temporarily :), moved into my parents' house. The move went fairly smooth. We had the 2 storage units delivered last Monday and John and I loaded up a few things throughout the week..but the main loading happened on Thursday and Friday. John loaded up 1 whole unit ALL BY HIMSELF between Thursday and Friday. I'm so impressed with him! He worked SO hard to get as much done on his own as he could -so that when our friends came to help, they wouldn't have much to do.

We ended up having 6 guys plus John on Friday night to finish loading....they started around 6pm and were done by 8pm...and that included 2 of the guys (my dad and brother-in-law) loading up the back of John's truck with wood chips from our play area!

John and I spent Saturday doing all the last minute stuff -he did the yard work and I super-cleaned the house. We took the kids back last night (Sunday) so we could have one last look around and so they could say "good bye" to their house. We thought it was important they see it empty and "just a house" because they've kept asking "when are we going home?!" Our answer has consistently been "this isn't our home anymore -we are waiting for God to give us a new home"...I don't remember exactly how the moment went, but Rebecca said something about leaving our home and Andrew said "Becca, this isn't our home anymore. We're going to stay at grandma and grandpa's until God gives us a new home to play in!". It was neat to see that he got it.

On the "new house" front, we are still waiting to hear back from the bank on our one offer...we submitted it the Tuesday before the 4th. oy vey! That seems like forever ago! We've also found a house we really like (though it's about 15 min. further away than we'd like to be)...we think we'll probably offer on it as well. It's a 2 year old home that's never been lived in...the builder went out of business while in the process of building about 10 homes on this street. In fact, about 6 other homes on the same street, in the same situation as the one we like, will be going into foreclosure by the end of this month. Can you imagine your whole street in foreclosure?! It's a CRAZY time in the market right now!

That's it from here. Andrew and Becca have 2 more weeks of swim lessons starting today-semi private lesssons this time around -meaning no more than 3 kids in a class and it will be twice as long -so almost an hour. I'm actually pretty excited to see how they do. Both have progressed so much this summer, I'm hoping this final session of lessons will really help them be comfortable with the concept of swimming.

Hopefully I'll have some pics to post soon....and maybe some good news about us finally having a home! :)

IT'S OFFICIAL-WE'RE MOVING!

2 of these were delivered yesterday
as you can see -the kids think they're pretty cool! :)

I'm going to be sad to leave this -we poured alot of extra concrete right after Becca was born so did their tiny little footprints. Becca was 1 mo. old and Andrew was 18mo old.
IS THE CONTENDER READY? !!!!!!

American Gladiators -our new FAVORITE show to watch. :) The kids race all around the house pretending to be gladiators and Andrew will even throw himself onto the couches like he's tackling them! :)

We'll slowly be loading the storage units up this week, have some friends coming Friday night and Saturday morning to do the heavy packing, we'll clean the house Saturday afternoon or Sunday..and then we'll be done. The units get picked up Monday and the house goes into our buyer's name on Tuesday.

It's a bit surreal. I've never LOVED this house, but it does have some great memories associated with it. In some ways I'm going to be quite sad to leave it, but I'm also really excited to get into another house and hopefully stay there A LONG time. Moving is NOT fun..especially in the desert in the summer!

7 YEARS AGO TODAY.....

John proposed to me. :) I was expecting it on July 4th...so to have him pop the question on bended knee on the 3rd took me by surprise!

Do you want to know the whole story?! If you do, read on..if you don't it's OK. :)

We knew each other for about 6 months before dating...met in a Bible Study but never really had a conversation, just exchanged pleasantries. When he finally asked me out, it only took 3 dates to know "this is the one" for both of us. We started talking about marriage on the 5th date-just 3 weeks into the relationship. John proposed after only 9 weeks of dating :)

How did he propose might you ask?! As you know, I'm a flight attendant for Southwest (the only airline that isn't nickle and diming passengers to death by the way!!!). John got my best friend to look up my flight schedule and he got my parents to give him one of my passes so he could fly out to where I was flying. :)

The last flight of my 3 day trip was from Omaha to my home base. So, the night before, John flew out to Omaha, Nebraska. On July 3rd, he arrived at the airport and told the Southwest gate agents what he was going to do...so they allowed him to board first (remember pre-9/11) and he was able to brief the other 2 flight attendants on my flight. I was working in the back of the plane and they sat John up front and then NEVER allowed my past mid-cabin the whole 2.5 hour flight!

About 2/3 of the way thru the flight I somehow got past mid-cabin -at which point the flight attendant up front notified John I was coming. They cleared out the front galley area and John was waiting for me.

At first I panicked. What was he doing there? How did he get on the flight?What in the world?!

Then he got down on one knee, pulled the ring out of his pocket and proposed. Talk about being shocked!

Of course I said "Yes!" and a few minutes later the flight attendant working the front poked his head up and said "can we tell the whole plane what the answer is?! They're all dying to know!" There were lots of cheers, "congratulations", and "good-lucks" for us.

When I asked John how he decided to propose this way he sweetly said "I wanted you to have a great story to tell your friends..and our kids and grandkids." ahhhh..isn't he sweet?!

FINALLY-PIGGY TAILS!

is she cute or what?!