If you can't beat it, join it!

It is so hot here. We are pushing 90° and while I am thrilled that we aren't drowning in the typical Midwestern drab and dreary, I guess I don't want to walk around the house sticky either.  We do have the air on, but we aren't at icebox temps yet and I don't suspect Tim plans to get me there either.  At any rate, since I can't beat the weather, I thought I'd take the kids to the park for a picnic and play time to wear them down for naps.

This is most of the park that we went to today.  The little kid's area is off to the right but my kids tend to stick to the big stuff.  There is a school that uses this park as their playground I guess, so there were lots of big kids running around but that didn't stop Titus or Micah. 

The rule that the school gives to its kids is for no more than 5 kids on the merry-go-round but Titus stayed on practically the full hour we were there, not including when we actually ate.  The kids got tired of him being on there and finally declared that "the little kid doesn't count."

Micah is a fairly brave kid.  She likes to climb and do what the big kids do and doesn't typically let the fact that she really is too small for things stop her from doing them.  Like this ladder thing.  She climbed it great, though she did get scared a little bit on the last 2 rungs (her confident stride started to wane), but the sweet, tender and compassionate mommy-of-the-year that I am, I made her finish the job-all by herself-and when she did, she was a happy little girl!

Now Micah doesn't typically do this, which is why there is a picture, but as she was running around the play set, she saw that I had my camera and she courteously stopped to strike a pose and send a cheesy little grin my way.  What a beautiful little girl we have!

Titus said that he wanted to "sleep down the slide" so this is what that looks like.  Of course.  Imagine the sound effects and you are right there with us.

This is a retarded picture but in the last few minutes of my camera's battery life and only enough memory space for one more shot (double whammy), I wanted to get the two of them on this teeter totter wanna be.  Titus will only ham it up and by about the 5th photo of him with his eyes shut tight and some goofy face I finally got him to look at the camera (perhaps with a little persuasion) but then Micah's eyes were shut.  Doggone it.  Camera batteries can only handle taking a shot and then erasing it because it is terrible so many times before they die altogether.  This is the shot we were left with.  Humphf.

Oh, and to give a tid bit of personality for my little 2 1⁄2 year old, a bigger kid around 7 or so was sitting on this teeter totter impostor and asked if she wanted to get on with him.  She said to me, "I don't want that boy.  He's not your fwend. He's not my fwend."  OK then, I guess that's a "no" kid.  Sorry.  I understand she meant he's basically a stranger, but she certainly has a way of putting things and clearly she was NOT having any of that boy and that teeter totter sham.  Yes, I like REAL teeter totters.  What is childhood without at least once getting your feet or ankles slammed under one of those, or biting your tongue because the other kid teetered too hard, or hurting your rear end because you tottered too hard?  They sure know how to take the fun out of playground equipment!  LOL!

Christmas in May. Why Not?

So a couple months ago my SIL Shelley told me that we had a package of Christmas gifts coming from them via "slow boat" and it finally got here.  I had actually forgotten about it until I saw it sitting on the front porch.  Now, I am not one to enjoy delaying gratification when a package is staring me straight in the face, but for the sake of my husband (who has once before been disappointed by my inability to wait to open a gift) I held off until he got home.  I'm not even sure if we ate dinner first, but Tim got everyone lined up on the couch and they took turns blindly reaching into the box to pull out the surprises.

Now, I did mention that these were initially intended to be Christmas gifts, but ultimately Tim decided that with all the ambiguity of where we will be living and that we would in essence be carrying this box with us wherever we went like a time bomb waiting to explode, we would open it now.  I did not protest.

What Micah pulled out, I was so excited to see!  Shelley had made a cloth doll for each of the girls.  They are super cute.  Micah's has short hair and Eden's has little pig tails.  The girls just "oohed" and "ahed" over these "cute" dolls.

Elijah was next (see Micah carrying her baby...she didn't put her down for a long time) and he pulled out a couple packages of candy.  

One package was of gummy hot dogs and the kids ate those up rather quickly.  The other package was of individually wrapped chewy candies.  The front of the package pictures something that reminds me of sea urchin, though it appears to be more like spiny coconut.  Eden loves the candy, or so she says.  The rest of us aren't too fond of it too much, to put it lightly.  It turns out it is durian candy.

Wikipedia says that durian is known as the "king of fruits" in Southeast Asia and is distinctive for its unique odor.  The edible flesh emits a distinctive odor, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust. The odor has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in southeast Asia.  Most of us are in the "overpowering and offensive" boat.  Ick, blech and spitooey!

She's still not letting "Micah" go.  I think she's actually suffocating her, but we won't tell Micah that.

Micah's doll, Micah, and Eden's doll, Eden, are kissing sisters already.  They pondered for seconds on the fabulous names they gave their new babies.

Our 2 Edens and 2 Micahs.  Who would have thought?

Now, I didn't intend for the whole post to be about the girls and their dolls, but they did sorta steal the show.   My favorite part of the package was the batik Christmas stockings that I will assume for now that Shelley made for all of us.  The boys each got a large Indonesian flag.  Each of the kids got a motorcycle license plate with their name on it, and we got one with SVOBODA on it.

Let's see...oh there were some goofy t-shirts that they sent...one of them says "Ridicule" at the top and then "C'mon girl, I just want to play hide-and-seek" at the bottom.  There was a "Mr. Tickle" a "Mr. Confuse" a smile face that said "I agree" on top and another one with something about neighborhoods on it.  They made us laugh for sure.  The kids loved them and wore them to school the next day.

I think that was all the goodies that were sent and it indeed felt like Christmas in May.  Thanks so much to uncle Phil, aunt Shelley and Nadia for doing all of that for us!  I wish we were as creative and thoughtful for them...then again, they know what's here in the states and none of it is near as interesting or meaningful as what they send to us, so again, thanks!

Updates

There are 2 updates around here.  First our little Toby (my mom's Schnorkie).  He stayed in the hospital all night last night, medicated, and the Dr. said Toby didn't sleep all night.  He kept watching the other dogs coming in and watch them to see what was going on.  He saw badly injured dogs that came in and went home and some that weren't so lucky.  Like I posted last night, he was a very lucky little guy.  Here's a picture of him.  He is shaved at all of his bite marks, though here you can only see his biggest one.

Right now he is laying in mom's lap, trying NOT to sleep, occasionally whining.  Hopefully he will give in to Mr. Sandman later on today and not try to "say hi" to him.  Clearly "saying hi" gets this little guy in trouble.  Either way, he is one tired puppy!

The other update has to do with our house.  There isn't a whole lot more knowledge about the buyer's buyer's financing, but we do have a request for another close date.  June 16th.  I guess the issue of this buyer's financing isn't dead, so we are praying that all our packing isn't in vain and that when time comes, we will know what to do.  Obviously we want the deal to go through, but I'm sure God is just busy paving a path that we can't quite see right now and it leads to the front door of whatever home we will live in.  One day at a time now.  The farm will happen regardless.  We just may be homeowners while we live there.  Not ideal in any sense, but probable.  Please pray for us when you think about it.  We could use all the wisdom we can get right now!

Happy birthday to our #1

On this day in history, 9 years ago, Elijah Paul Svoboda pushed his perfectly round, pink little head into our world. I wasn't digital back then but here's a nice scan of our baby boy.

Isn't he just the most precious thing you have ever seen? Yeah, yeah, so you say your kid is more precious...well this is my blog and my kid, so there.

It all started after church last night. We gave Elijah a birthday card with a poem in it that read:

Elijahboy we can't believe that you're nine

You're growing up fast and doing real fine.

For your birthday present how would you like

To go out after church to get a new bike?

He looked up at us and said, "Do you mean it?" It was really cute. So we were going to go to Walmart and Target to look at their bikes, but we have decided that we are tired of buying cheap and getting exactly what we pay for, so we stretched ourselves a bit and went to a couple sporting goods stores and even tried out Toys R Us for kicks but ended up at Dick's Sporting Goods for an "X-Games" bike. The entertainment book has a coupon in it for $20 off a purchase of $100 or more, so that, along with money from mema and poppy, grandma and grandpa and great grandpa (plus we sold his old bike and Tim and I pitched in a little) he had "over $100" to spend. Not much, mind you, but enough to get this bike and we are glad we did it!

He is so excited about this bike! I am so excited for him! I think it was so cool to watch him "shop" for this. He has never done something like it before and it was such a big boy responsibility, so-to-speak, he LOVED it!  We didn't get started until sometime between 7:30 and 8pm (right after the Saturday evening service) and we still had to eat dinner, so we didn't get home until just after 10pm. Earlier that day we told the kids they could sleep in their "fort" in the living room, so we had to get that set up. Who would've thought that 5 kids can't fit so comfortably in a fort made of blankets that span a few of the kitchen chairs with one reclined recliner? We had to branch over to the couch and a couple more kitchen chairs, then Levi couldn't handle Elijah's snoring after a while, so he moved ON to the couch and after 11pm finally fell asleep.

They were up at 7am. Good grief! Tim and I woke up to the front door opening and closing. Elijah was out riding his bike. Of course! Later he and I went to Tate's Place for his birthday breakfast where he, for the second year in a row, ordered the triple berry waffles and a kid's coffee (hot chocolate).

Last year he only ate half of it and was certain he could stomach the whole thing now that he's 9.  It turns out he only gained 1/4 of the waffle over last year's attempt.

What does he care?  He had dessert for breakfast!

Everyone came over for Elijah's birthday lunch.  His request was spaghetti.  We didn't have time to do gifts after we ate because Elijah had a make-up ball game and had to be at the field at 2:30.  Just before the game, we went to an open house.  Tim rode Elijah on the motorcycle and while we were inside looking at the house (which is perfect and we LOVE and will buy if they will gladly drop the price a mere $30,000) Elijah messed with the throttle on the bike.  When Tim came out to start the bike, he learns that Elijah messed with the throttle and apparently broke it because the motorcycle was stuck on "wide open" acceleration.  I guess the throttle cable was so thin that it could have broken at any moment which would have the motorcycle uncontrollably accelerating...with Tim and Elijah or Levi on it...and Elijah happened to break it.  Praise God Elijah did what he did!!!

At his game, Elijah didn't get to pitch like we thought he might, but as short stop he made a double play that awarded him the game ball.  What a birthday.  We were so happy for him!  After the game we went back for presents and cake and ice cream and then the real "fun" began.

We were outside with the dogs not really doing anything when Toby started to run in the backyard neighbor's yard where "Rocky" lives.  Rocky is a rather large German Shepherd who didn't so much like Toby in his yard and somehow managed to get a hold of Toby and shook him like a rag doll.  Tim and I ran towards the [now 3] dogs, as Kevin decided to come to Toby's rescue, shouting their names like lunatics trying to get our dogs to get out of Rocky's yard, but it was too late for us to get Toby.  At some point Rocky did let Toby go, and then Kevin ran after Rocky for some stupid reason....Toby's honor I guess.  Oh my word my heart was pumping and I was yelling and Tim was yelling and finally everything stopped.  Rocky was taken into the house and I apologized profusely to my neighbor for not having our dogs leashed, etc.  Mom and dad took Toby to the animal ER where $600 later they find that Toby is a VERY lucky dog with nothing much more than a severely bruised body with 8 dog bites on his teeny little body.  They are keeping him overnight to make sure he makes it to the morning, and if he does he can go home with his pain meds.

Mom, Ruthie and I were supposed to go to Shipshewana on Wednesday.  I guess we won't be going now, all because Toby thought HE could tell off a German Shepherd.  I suppose that works out just fine because I didn't have a babysitter for Titus and Micah as mine backed out.  That pool is VERY shallow for me.  Humphf. 

I am very tired and need to get to bed.  Tim kindly pointed out that I could blog a whole lot more regularly if each one wasn't so daggone play-by-play.  I can't help it.  On that note, goodnight!

That's a wrap...

So there has been a lot going on with us this past little while...I wonder if there is anyone reading this since I haven't been on since October. I feel like I am in a confessional booth.

"Forgive me, everyone. It has been 7 months since my last entry..."

I guess I have been more into Tim or the kids or something. I feel absolutely pooped. I don't know which end is up and don't think there is an end in sight. What mom doesn't feel that way, right?

There are no pictures this time, so I will just do my best to narrate this effectively, colorfully and quickly, though I will admit I don't feel very colorful.

Alright, here we go, and as a preface let me say that I know that what I have to say doesn't even tip the scale of "going through hard times" but for us, this is a lot all at once. Here goes.

So we have had our house for sale for 9 months with very little interest. We have the kids in Christian school and basically can't afford to keep the house and keep the kids in school, so we choose school. I did apply for a part time job at our church but after over a month, still haven't heard from them.

We lowered the price of the house a total of $30,000 and finally got someone interested in a second look. It turns out that we have what they need...a main floor master suite...a must in my opinion. The POD comes Tuesday (I'll explain later why we need a POD) and we close May 17th, though we barely have half the house packed up. Every time I get a weekend, it seems that it is taken by something else. Humphf.

The Thursday morning following the accepted offer on the house, while Tim was in Michigan for a week working, he called me at 6am to tell me that his grandma had just died. Wow! Ok, so we expected to hear that news of his granddad, but not grandma. Tim left Michigan early, came home so we could get the kids out of school early to break the news to them and then went straight to the farm. The 3 older kids and I joined Tim and his parents at the farm Saturday afternoon and stayed on through Tuesday.

Thursday morning I took the kids to school and instead of going home right away, which I ALWAYS do, I went to get some boxes from Ruthie at her work, then went to mom's for a bit and then stopped by a friends new house before going home. As I pull up to the house I see the front door is wide open. I have told the kids over and over again that I really like to keep the front door shut when we're not home and could they please remember that. As I get ready to turn into the driveway I see that the right side lite of the front door is shattered and Kevin is barking like a mad dog. Great Scott! Did someone actually break into the house?!?

So I get my front tires onto the driveway and parked it. Like a dummy, I get out to try and figure out what happened. What on earth I thought I could deduce about this break-in I cannot tell you. I figured that out fast enough when Kevin ran away from the front door barking and wouldn't come back, so I jetted back to the van to call the police. No sleuthing for me...not with 2 kids in the car.

Eventually we learn that we had some retarded burglars. They got my laptop and Tim's old work laptop but left a third [old] laptop. They took the cords to my external hard drive but left the hard drive and on top of all that, they took my computer bag with all the camera and ipod cords and headphones and such that were all in the bag. Darn them. They also took a cedar box (engraved with our anniversary date) from the top of Tim's dresser that had odds and ends in it and dumped it out upstairs in the computer room. Out of it they took 2 watches of Tim's but left several gift cards. They ended up taking my box too. I can't figure that one out. It made me mad!

After the police left and I was standing on thousands of pieces of shattered glass, the phone rings and of all times to find out I have an interview for the job at the church, it would have to be now. I am pretty sure I could audibly hear God chuckling at me!

Ok, so back to needing a POD for our belongings...upon the death of Tim's grandmother, Tim and I sort of felt led to take care of his granddad, who most of the time is healthy as an 83yr old horse, but needs someone around for the few times when he isn't. We saw that the timing of everything with the house sort of paved the way for us to move to the farm for the summer or however long is necessary to honor granddad.

There is now one little glitch that I'd love you all to pray for. Our buyer's buyer just got turned down for financing. This is not good, obviously, but we firmly believe that God is working everything out. We are mostly packed and certainly don't want to have to unpack and go back on the market, so for now we pray. And wait. And pray.

I know that was a whirlwind of info at one shot and perhaps I jumped around a bit, but that's what is going on. I do have some fun and even funny things going on, but in my current state of mind can't remember any of them, and if there is anyone left still reading this post, lengthy as it is, I wouldn't want to chance losing you now. I am in bed and I am tired. Let's hope the coffee I just drank won't keep me up. I have a garage sale at moms this weekend to get ready for and that is never fun! It's good to be back. I hope I can pick it up and keep it up fairly regularly!!!