Out of the mouth of babes

For my last blog of 2011 I thought I would write a few stories of my children.  One thing I appreciate about my family is that we laugh often and what they say and do contributes to most of our laughs :P

The other day at the dinner table Anna infoms us that she is in control of everything.  Hmm, sounds like there is no doubt that she is my child!  Hopefully she will learn soon that you are never in control to begin with (although I doubt it since I still try to control things)

While we were eating Christmas dinner Anna tried to cut her turkey.  She worked really hard but didn't get far.  My grandma said something to the effect that she had put a lot of labor into doing that.  Anna looks puzzled and replies "There are no pregnant women here so there isn't any labor".  We died laughing and she rolls her eyes and says "Mom, are you going to blog about that".  Oh my dear!

Tonight I learned that there are planets named Plato, Earthquake, and Marsupial.

Poppy A. taught Matthew how to go down stairs.  He learned in one day.  We do laugh at him because he will start backing up even if he is going the wrong way for the stairs.  I also found today that he has learned that it is much quicker to slide down the stairs than go one by one :P

He is a stinker and when brushing his teeth he gets an impish glimmer in his eyes and turns his tootbrush around.  He starts laughing and then will turn it around when you look at him.

He has learned to wave.  He is really into jumping lately and will "jump" by himself.  He also loves to pretend drive.  Sometimes he will even make noises while driving.  He has figured out that you need to grab the shifter.  Watch out world!  He has suprised us by showing us where our eyes are when asked at times.  He loves eyes and mouths! 

Sun sun come again another day

I love rainy days.  There is something calming for me in them.  I feel content for some reason.  Maybe it is the instinct to curl up in a warm blanket with a nice lukewarm cup of tea and relax.   All of life's cares are washed away with the rain.  I am enjoying this feeling of contentment today as I tonight starts our five days of craziness and I could easily be overwhelmed.  Maybe the rain is my Godwink of the day.  In my content mood I was thinking of how much I prefer the rain of Texas to the snow of Colorado during the winter.  The last few weeks I have come to the realization that I may miss Texas once we move.  (BTW...the countdown is 17.5 months before we have the ability to move)  I remember when I was dragged down here almost two years ago and thought there was no way I would ever come to like a single thing about Texas.  It has taken a year and a half to appreciate anything about the unorganized, egotistical, behind the times state I live in, but now I can see some good things.

When we first moved here I had exactly three things that I liked about living in Texas. One was that Brad had a job.  Thank you God!  A month before Brad would no longer have a job in CO, we found out he had gotten the job here in Ft. Worth.  That was a little nerve racking!  I am so appreciative that we are so blessed with a well paying job. The second thing that I was thankful for was the apartments we lived in had a trainer that had a class three times a week.  She was (is) amazing and it was one of the first times that I have looked foward to working out.  Brad and I both did the class and loved it!  There will be a blog about this sometime I'm sure :P  The third thing that was good about the move down here was that Brad and I were able to come closer in our relationship and really be our own family.  It is hard not to have family close, but we had to learn to depend on each other which is so important! 

When we bought our house here we started looking for a church. We really weren't having much luck.  One Sunday we visited the church we go to now.  That Sunday the sermon was on the detours of life.  The pastor at the time referred to how the Isrealites could have had an 11 day journey but instead they had a 40 year journey.  I wanted to learn the lesson that God was teaching me now so that I didn't have to live here for 40 years!  I'm pretty sure the lesson was that I need to trust Him in where He takes me and that I need to be content in the situations that I am in and praise Him.  I do feel content here although I still miss CO and do look foward to one day moving back.

I have found some wonderful friends who are able to put up with my wacky and unsocialable ways.  Anna has found some girl pals that she truly enjoys.  I love that Matthew has little baby friends and that Brad has guys that he can go hang out with.  Although it isn't my dream home, I'm very thankful that we were able to afford to buy a house (which there was no way we could have if we lived in CO).  It meets all of our needs.  I'm very thankful that we have pushed ourselves to get involved in different activities.  In CO, we felt that we were living life in a rut and the move most certainly pushed us out of that!  When we do move, I know that there will be a part of me that misses living here, but I know where I am that God has an adventure that will blow me away waiting for me! 

The queen of hearts

Tomorrow morning Anna has an appointment with a pediatric cardiologist.  I struggle to know what feelings to have about this appointment.  Since Anna was an infant she has had a heart murmur.  Our wonderful ped. then had asked us to go get it checked out but we declined at that time.  What was interesting was that it seemingly went away for a bit.  Obviously it did come back later on.  We have never been too worried about it and it really hasn't been a big deal.  At this last check-up for Anna, our pediatrician informed me that she would really like us to get it checked out as it had changed.  When she first told us that I was like, sure but I'm not worried.  Then after a week and some jingle of thinking about it my mind has convinced me that a part of me is a little concerned.  I think I wasn't really too anxious about things until I sat down with Anna to talk about what was going to happen.  She was very open about her feelings and wanted to know what was going to happen.  My mom explained to her some of the procedures that may happen and that helped.  When I ask her about her feelings now her answer is "I'm a little scared but I know Jesus is with me".  I think I'm sometimes plagued with guilt that I have two healthy children when so many of my friend's kids have had serious health problems this year.  What if it has finally come to us?  On top of being told that Anna's heart murmur has changed we were also told that Matthew has the same thing.  Apparently it isn't common at all for siblings to both have a heart murmur.  I know that God is in control.  I know that there is a 99.99999% chance that everything is perfectly fine.  My uncle has a heart murmur that he has had since infancy and he is perfectly fine (at least that I know of).  I will stand strong that things will be fine and take it that this is a new adventure (hopefully short lived and just the 2-4 hours that we have to be at the appointment :P).  Hopefully we can make some's day at the appointment.