FINALLY-PIGGY TAILS!

is she cute or what?!

SWIM LESSONS!

Finally -a long overdue post! :)

Today is our first day without swim lessons! Not sure if I'm happy about that or sad. It certainly is nice to have my mornings back, especially since we're moving in 10 days..but the kids SO enjoyed their lessons the last 4 weeks-and they improved so much in that time.

The first 2 weeks Andrew and Becca were in the same class and Elizabeth sat with me, just watching them. The second 2 weeks was a bit crazier. :) Rebecca repeated her class just to gain more confidence, Elizabeth and I got into a "mommy and me" class at the same time Becca was in her class, and Andrew moved up to the next level after "beginner".

For the first 4 days Andrew's class was at the same time as Becca's and Elizabeth's class...but he wasn't doing well in it. He's a very timid kid when it comes to new things so I knew this next level would be a bit hard for him but thought he'd do ok. Unfortunately there were 4 other kids in his class and ALL 4 of them were much better swimmers than he AND his teacher wasn't the best I've seen. She really ended up working with the other 4 and leaving Andrew to just hang on the side of the wall. In a 25 min. class, I'd see him "swim" maybe 3 or 4 times.

I was getting a bit frustrated as well as just sad for Andrew. In 4 days he regressed so much because his confidence was shot. See, in the first session, Becca's and Andrew's teacher was Miss Vicki..I'm telling you-she's the best teacher EVER. She either really loves what she's doing or she's a great actress. :) To our surprise, she was also teaching Becca's class the 2nd session so Becca has absolutely excelled at swimming over the past month. I noticed that she was teaching the same level of class Andrew was in, but just 1/2 hour later. And-there was only 1 little girl in that class. Soooooo....on day 5, we switched Andrew into Miss Vicki's class...which meant we had to be at the pool an entire hour (in 110 degree heat no less!)-but WELL worth it to see Andrew gain his confidence back.

enough writing :) Here are some pics and video of the last 2 weeks. None of the videos are too long so they won't take up a lot of your time. :)

Andrew swimming to his teacher, Miss Vicki, and then back to the wall-so proud of him!

Miss Elizabeth jumping into the pool -her FAVORITE thing to do. All thru class she'd point to the wall and say "jump! jump! dat way mommy jump!"

My little fishy, Becca, showing us how she floats and swims!

This is so cute! Since Becca was in class the same time as E and me, Miss Vicki would swim Becca over to our side of the pool and "deliver" her to me. She didn't want Becca getting out of the pool without mommy close by -great teacher huh?! After a few days Elizabeth figured out this was a regular occurrence and by the end of class would start looking for Miss Vicki and Becca to start swimming to her. :) She'd forget all about her class and start yelling "Becca!" and then trying to swim. Elizabeth LOVED Miss Vicki too -so as you can see in the video, when they'd get close, Vicki and I would "trade kids". :)

I'm SOOO proud of how well all 3 of my kiddos did this past month! Becca has especially taken to swimming...able to stay under water for nearly 10 seconds, all the while swimming under water. She REALLY enjoys it too...we might have a future competitive swimmer in our family (no small surprise since I have a cousin who was a phenomenal swimmer in her CA high school days!).

this was the last day of class -the other kids in both kids' classes didn't show up so Miss Vicki said she'd just put Becca and Andrew together so we could leave earlier. :)

in her little swim shirt, and her hair slicked back -she totally looked like a little surfer girl..especially when we'd play with the kick board -she'd immediately sit on it like it was a surfboard -tooooo funny!

Last but not least -here's what Ginger thinks about moving! :)

we move in 10 days..to my parents' house. We found another house last week but before we could even put an offer in on it, it was sold. UGH! It went on the market Wednesday morning, we saw it Wednesday night, signed our papers Thursday morning, our realtor went right back to his office to send it -called the listing agent to say our offer was on the way and were told, don't bother, the bank just accepted another offer. We've now offered on 3 different foreclosure homes...and all 3 banks have handled it differently -VERY FRUSTRATING! We KNOW our house is out there, just a matter of trusting God to bring it to us in His perfect timing.

STILL NO HOUSE-PLEASE PRAY. :)

Well, we still have no house to move into. The 2nd house we bid on we didn't get either. We're the only ones offering on it and we've made a very good offer (and I'm not just saying that! We offered the same price/sq.ft as the comps in the area)...but the bank has basically refused to negotiate. The bank is on the other side of the country and apprently isn't listening to their agent about the market here -where houses are losing value daily.

We've seen a few other homes that would work if they absolutely had to, but we just don't feel a peace about them.

If we don't find a house by this weekend we'll be moving in, temporarily, with my parents.


We feel pretty defeated and disappointed right now. We truly did not think finding a home would be this difficult. We know we're being a bit picky because, after all, we want to stay in this house A LONG LONG TIME...but we do think we're being reasonable. We're overlooking weird paint colors (people -if you're trying to sell your house-repaint rooms with bright neon colors!), terrible, or literally no landscaping, even overlooking outdated things such as countertops and cabinets. We're trying to focus on finding the right floorplan with a decent yard in a decent location.

We KNOW, down deep, God has the right house for us and that He'll bring it in His perfect timing-but right now we both feel a bit hopeless.


Would you pray for us? Of course pray that He would bring the right house quickly OR that the bank would have a change of heart and negotiate with us (that would be a miracle!!). But also pray for us to be able to have peace about being right where God wants us. He's definitely growing our faith and patience right now!


This is the kids' last week of swim lessons so check back by the end of this week and I'll have some pics posted..maybe even some video! All 3 are doing SO great!

FATHER'S DAY AND OTHER STUFF

Father's Day was hopefully a good day for John. :) We started out the day at church, then hung out at home until dinner time. For dinner, we headed over to my parents house so we could ALL get together. 6 adults, 1 teen- ager, and 8 kids = a full house!

Below are some pics:

I thought the one above was too funny, it says "you people bore me!" :)

Here's pretty much the whole gang at my parents -minus me (taking the pic) and my dad who everyone is looking at as he opens his presents. :)
it's hard to tell in this pic, but Elizabeth is giggling and squealing as the fan blows her hair. We have ceiling fans in all of our rooms, and in the room the kids sleep in, we have another fan, but it's aimed "up". I don't think she's ever actually felt a fan blow on her. It was so fun to watch this unexpected "first". :)

Everyone has been asking how we're doing with our house hunt and all. We still don't know exactly where we're headed in a few weeks. Right now, it's looking like we're crashing at my parents for awhile..not optimal, but better than nothing.

We do have an offer on another foreclosure house and still have not heard anything yet -our offer went in first thing last Thursday morning. The bank has lost ALOT of money on this house, so our agent said it may take them longer to look at offers simply because they have to be really careful about who they select to buy it. Because we're considered a "very strong buyer", we're hoping that will sway the bank in our favor. Please pray for us. We would really like this house, but not if it's not what the Lord would have for us.

The kids seem to be doing fine with the idea of moving. They don't quite understand it, but I think they think it's a fun idea. Though Andrew has said on more than one occasion "it's taking forever for us to move into a new house!'.

Here are some pics of how the "move" is going:

the cabinets in our coffee table used to house toys on one side and school stuff on the other -as you can see -they're empty now. :)

I thought this one was too cute.

And if you can, pop over to my sister's blog to see her exciting news! I'll give you 1 hint:

A BIG ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR ME!

Only my family and very few friends even know about this, but I joined Weight Watchers exactly 4 weeks ago. Today, I weighed in 1/2 pound UNDER my goal weight! Yippeeeee! Now I just have a few weeks of "maintenance" and then I can be a "life time member"....but even though I'm supposed to just "maintain" my weight, I think I'm going to try to lose about 2 more pounds. :)

I felt pretty silly signing up as I only had 9 pounds to lose, but I've struggled with those 9 pounds on and off for 4.5 years -ever since Andrew was born. Over the years, I've done WW on and off and had some success-but I always did it on my own (my mom and mother in law are/have been lifetime members so would give me their booklets and such). Lately, I've REALLY struggled with the weight coming off. I knew what I really needed was to be held accountable -I needed the motivation of knowing I had to step on a scale in front of someone else!

I had set in my mind that it would take 8-10 weeks to get the weight off because, in the past, when I've done this on my own, that's about how long it has taken. This time, with the accountability, it only took 4. Today I'm wearing shorts that I couldn't even squeeze into 4 weeks ago -and today they're a bit loose!

I just had to share my excitement!

To celebrate -I went to Starbuck's to get a chai tea latte. :) Haven't had one in weeks! (and boy was it yummy!)

ANSWERS

Well, in the last 24 hours we've received 2 answers we've been looking for:

1)what's wrong with my ear? -I have Eustachian Tube Dysfunction -basically my eustachian tube is either blocked or inflamed and therefore causing me the pain I've been experiencing. Praise God it's an "easy" fix. :) I'm on Allegra for 1 week and if that doesn't clear it up, then I take a week of antibiotics.

2)the house -we heard this morning that we did not get the house we were hoping for. They called Monday morning and wanted our "best and final" offer -and we had already learned that our previous bid was not the highest they had received...so we upped our offer to what we thought was a fair price for that house -a non-foreclosure just a few streets away is being offered at not much more than we bid for our "best and final". The email our agents received regarding this house is that "although it was a tough decision, the bank, in the end, opted for the highest bidder". We know that the bank's agent would have taken our first offer but the bank wanted to see how high they could get people to bid, so we assume the bank was only looking at the numbers and not necessarily how strong the buyers were. If the person who "won" the house ends up not being able to qualify for their loan, then we will be contacted.

We're not holding our breath or sitting by and waiting for that to happen...so tonight, after the kids go to bed, we'll start weeding thru all the houses we can go see for this weekend.

To say I'm bummed is an understatement. I really wanted this house. The floorplan is great, the lot is great, the location is great, the price was fabulous...but I guess it's not where the Lord wants us. What's odd is that since seeing the house on the MLS last Wednesday night, I just had that gut feeling that this was "it"...and my gut is usually right 9 out of 10 times. Guess this was the time it was wrong. :) It just seemed to be perfect for us.

The reason we want a bigger house is so that we can add children. We both feel called to adopt again, which as we all know, isn't cheap. This house seemed "perfect" in that it would allow us to add to our family cuz we'd have the space to do so AND being that it was so cheap, we could afford to adopt again sooner rather than later. The other homes we're looking at will accomodate our growing family -but the price tag on them would mean we'd need to financially wait longer to start an adoption.

As I was praying over the "why didn't our bid win?" issue with God this morning, Isaiah 55:8-9 immediately came to my mind:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways declares the LORD.

As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Please pray for us in this endeavor. It's an overwhelming thought to have to sort thru MORE houses on-line and go walk even MORE houses. We have a list of about 20 more to sort thru for this weekend...we've already looked at them on-line and none of them look all that exciting-but we can't just sit back and do nothing either.

So, the hunt continues.

LIFE COULDN'T BE CRAZIER!

Well, here's a quick update on our house situation.

We are SO blessed to have sold our home so quickly, and to someone who's dying to get in. Her agent has called our agent about 3 times this past week to ask if there's anyway to move up the closing..which we could do IF we found another house.

Speaking of finding another house...we've spent probably 25 hours physically looking at homes in the last 8 days and about that much looking at homes on the internet (the links that our realtor sends us). We've walked close to 30 homes. 2 or 3 would do if they had to....2 or 3 would really work for us but are stretching our budget...and we're the type of people to live below our means and don't like being stretched!

We did write an offer on a house on Thursday..it's a foreclosure so would need some minor fixing up -but for the price we could do ALOT of fixing up and still be way under budget.

The bank is probably going to wait until Monday or Tuesday to see how many offers they get and how high they can get people to offer. So we wait. We don't have our hopes up too high..but we're praying. We fully trust God in this. HE sold our home in just 35 days in a market that's taking people months & months to sell....so if this house is to be ours, He'll make it so. And if it's not, it just means "our" house is still waiting for us to find it.

Please pray for us in this -that the Lord would make His will clear on which house is to be ours...of course, we'd like for the one we offered on to be "it"! :)

We decided to take this weekend off of "hunting". There are a few homes we could go see, but we're honestly just flat out exhausted. I'm now sick..not sure with what, but I'm SURE it has to do with all the stress we've been under the last 8 days. I just took a 2 hour nap and I haven't napped that long since I don't know when!

John's mom is visiting us this weekend...which is actually great timing. She was able to keep the kids occupied last night as our loan officer came and met with us last night (at our home no less -can you say "above and beyond service"?!) and with me feeling under the weather, it's been nice to have her spend time with the kids while I rest.

I haven't posted photos of the kids in so long -so here are lots from the last week or so!

the pics below are at our neighborhood park -and actually were taken during the hour we were out of our house when our buyer was viewing it..little did we know she'd like it so much!

oh -and there's a bit of a green tint cuz the playground has a giant green awning over it to keep it shady! :)

I decided to try out some features of our picture software.:)

Andrew and Becca started swim lessons this past week. They have them every day for the month of June. Elizabeth and I will do the "mommy & me" class the 16th-27th...am interested to know how that will go considering she screamed for a good 15 minutes the one time we swam at my sister's pool. :)
note -it's Andrew and 4 little girls. :)