All moved in...ALMOST! ;)

Wow, so the time has come. After months of thinking about it, talking about it, planning for it, and preparing for it the time has finally come! My mother is officially on her way back to the US! Her stuff all arrived on Tuesday & she'll be arriving tomorrow night! :)

For those of you that know me really well, you know that this has been something I have longed for, prayed for, wished for, and hoped for many many times over the last 7 years. However, it is very bitter-sweet. I found myself unable to sleep tonight & so I began to write...if this doesn't make much sense I'm sorry! ;) - In 100% honesty, I wanted this so badly I could taste it, and now it not only is something I am totally looking forward to, but something that scares me to the core.

I LOVE my mom. She is an amazing woman. All my life she has poured herself into being the best mother, wife, and preacher's wife she could ever be, and let me tell you, she topped the charts! Talk about a woman that could handle/manage 5 children, a busy church calendar, be always ready for guests & entertaining, and keep a perfectly clean and presentable house -- that's amazing to me! Memories of my childhood involve no frozen meals (no matter how much we begged because they seemed so special) but always home-cooked meals, baked goodies, and tons of games and fun. As we got older things turned from children's games to card games and stimulating conversations. I still remember coming home from college my freshman year to have "coffee" with my parents every chance I got!

Then why am I scared? Because that's the life/memories/dream I have...having that simple, safe, "perfect" feeling back again. For the past 7 years that is what I've wanted back (and my parents of course)... you know the age old saying..."be careful what you wish for"...its because how you end up getting your wish to come true may sometimes (and usually does) come at too high a cost/price! As much as I am longing for my Mom to be here...it makes me miss my Dad more and more.

After a bunch of wonderful people came and helped unload the 53 foot semi which brought my Mom's stuff here from Lethbridge, Sarah and I were left with the unreal task of organizing and unpacking it before Mom sees it and falls over - - (there is stuff EVERYWHERE, from in the house, to in the unfinished basement, to stacked and piled all over the 3-stall garage that Mom & Sarah & Jason share... which no longer fits a single car in it...

As we began unpacking over 30 years worth of stuff, memories came flooding back. Things I literally haven't seen in years have surfaced, from favorite mugs (which we now wonder why we even liked!) to egg holders to magnets and on and on. Its been great to see it all and cherish it, tell stories about it and laugh over it. However, as I lay awake tonight, I can't seem to get the memories out of my mind and instead of laughing, I find myself getting sad and then worse yet getting mad. Its awful but I keep having to resist the urge to yell and scream and throw a hissy-fit like a little child - - this was not the way my wish was supposed to come true!

All in all - I'm a grown up now (whether I like it or not) and I've accepted things are the way they are. Doesn't mean I have to like it all the time, but its life. So if you're looking for me over the next few days, weeks, well, better make that months, come to my Mom's house & weave your way through the maze of boxes...better yet - bring your wallet & make an offer if you see something you like! :)

Happy Birthday Alexa! :)

WOW! What can I say? My baby just turned 1!

I can hardly believe it...it seems like just yesterday I was in the hospital holding my tiny little girl --- now she's over 20 lbs, is above 75% for her height & her head & is walking, talking, and changing like you would not believe! :)

Here are a few pictures of our little "party" for her 1st birthday...

Joy & Sadness...how they mix!

So for the last few mornings on my drive into town I have heard numerous people read their "letters" to their fathers in light of the upcoming Father's Day holiday. Each time as I sit there trying to maintain my composure I have felt the flood of tears come pouring down. I can't help but wonder when these overwhelming emotions will finally stop...

This should be a happy time right? After all I have an adorable new nephew, I have an amazing little girl about to turn 1, summer is finally about here, and this week Sunday will be my husband's first official Father's Day. So why can't I seem to enjoy any of it? Why is it lately I'm completely cranky, irritable (okay so those of you who know me are going this isn't new but I mean more irritable than normal!) and my emotions go off the deep end at the most tiny of comments! As each new day comes & goes I find myself wanting more & more to be able to just pick up the phone a call my father, to sit down next to him & have a heart-to-heart or to go for a drive with him & listen to our favorite country music blarring at us through the speakers...I guess I just don't feel like anyone else ever understood me the way he did...no one really took the time to get to know ME, my thoughts, my fears, my likes & dislikes...not really anyway...its hard...I don't feel like I can talk to my Mom (who used to be my best friend) because I'm afraid of upsetting her or burdening her...but yet because I can't talk to her, instead of just loosing one of my two best friends I've in a sense lost them both and it sucks! I can't imagine how someone in my shoes without faith & without a relationship with Christ could possibly cope - HE is the only one who gets me through each day, his comfort & support & the love of my family - without that I'd probably be truly lost.

So after all these "letters" I've heard read the past week - I decided to write my own. Here goes nothing...

Dad,

I want to start by thanking you. Without the amazing influence you & mom had on my life I would not be as spiritually sound as I am today. Your lives set a shining example for what I can only hope my own life will be. Growing up I never doubted for one single moment that you & Mom loved each other wholly & completely, with that everlasting kind of love. Not only did you express it daily, but your actions, words, and looks shouted it from the mountain tops. Nor did I ever doubt your love & devotion to our Lord & Savior. For this I am eternally grateful!

-- You taught me to be discerning, to know right from wrong, to not just absorb everything I heard but to strive to understand it & determine how Biblical it is/was. You taught me to study and ponder His word, to engulf my life in it. You taught me to realize that our God is an Almighty, Sovereign, and Just God who is to be honored and revered. You taught me approach the throne of the almighty with reverence and awe. You taught me that God is not only graceful & merciful but powerful & almighty, that he will punish those who forsake Him. I can't express enough how grateful I am to have been raised in such a home. I will always treasure & miss our theological discussions, and of course, having a handy "spiritual reference guide" on speed dial! I love that you taught us to be honest, to be kind, to be merciful, to be patient, to be loving and to be trustworthy.

The fact that you taught us that life won't always go our way, that we won't always get whatever we want, that sometimes in life you need to bite your tongue and turn the other cheek, these are all valuable life lessons that I no longer take for granted. I look around me & I see a culture & generation saying how life can be however you want it, its a "have it your way" kind of world - - I am grateful that I know life isn't that way. Sometimes things people say & do will hurt us, upset us, or we will take offense to it, but that is life & its up to us to decide how it affects us, how we will react to it. Thank you for teaching me discipline. I am grateful that you taught us to have strong work ethics, to realize that we ultimately deserve nothing in this life and that it is by the grace of God we have anything at all.

I want to thank you for your unconditional love. From countless broken bones to sick days to sporting events and school plays, piano concerts, talent competitions you were always there. Holding my hand and supporting me no matter what. I was truly blessed to have a Father like you -- you truly were the shining example for me of my heavenly Father & now I rest assured that you are with Him in glory.

To my amazing & wonderful Father, never will there be another man quite like you upon this earth - - All my love, now & forever!

How time flies...

Wow, its hard to believe but 1 year ago I was lying on my couch (on my left side) stuck on bedrest! -- Now I have a little girl who is WALKING (well, she just started taking steps without holding on to anything on Saturday) and a brand new nephew who is absolutely adorable! My sister Sarah welcomed Luke Evan into the world on Wednesday June 10th & he is a heartbreaker already! All I can say is I'm thankful this year it was her & not me laying in that hospital bed! :)

Toys - Why bother? :)

What is the point of children's toys? Really? Can anyone tell me please?
We've been given a few adorable toys for Alexa - they're pretty fun, cute, and entertaining, at least for the first few times they're played with. However, I don't see any point in them. She'll crawl up to them, play with them for a short bit, as long as someone else is there with her, and then she moves on to the next one. We have even gone to a few houses where our daughter is thrilled & entertained by those leap frog & playschool learning toys - the kind pictured below that light up, make noise & she can stand up by...

So what do we do? We go and purchase the same kind of toy from a garage sale for Alexa (all our other toys have either been given to us or their from the happy meals or out of cereal boxes) so she can have hours of fun at home without needing us to play with her, right? - - WRONG - - she will stand by it as long as we're in the room but the moment we leave, she comes crawling out after us, and plays with the first non-toy object she finds. She loves to go over to the tupperware drawer, have us open it, and play with the stuff in it for hours - and she doesn't care if we're around or not! This child is truly crazy! - - I am 100% convinced that there is honestly no point in buying any toys for a child under the age of 1, maybe even 2 - - because she is thrilled to play with anything BUT actual toys!

For example - the child will try endlessly to get the tv remote in her hands or get our cell phones away from us but give her a fake toy cell phone or even an old non-working real cell phone - - it'll keep her entertained for maybe a minute! All she wants is the real stuff!

Well, there you have it, my idea of a lesson to be learned - save your money! ;) There's not much real point in spending it on toys at least!

My Way :)!

Did you know that sometimes, just sometimes, whining can pay off? Well, perhaps it wasn't whining, perhaps I just have an incredibly awesome husband! Either way, I GOT MY WAY! :) YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!

Forgive me, but being the youngest of 5, marrying a "dutch" man & living in Northwest Iowa, I have not gotten my way very often in my life. But it has finally happened & I am thrilled, no make that ECSTATIC!
I have been begging & pleading for months now (well, for sure since October) that we move our master bedroom upstairs to the now newly redone bedroom that has a HUGE (okay its average for most of the world) size closet & is directly across the hall from my daughter's room & has the bathroom with the shower that I use in-between the two rooms. Let me explain...I live a beautiful (in my opinion) but OLD house.

The main floor has an awesome kitchen & then a room that used to be the dining room but we found it was too small so we moved our dinning room to the other half of our living room & made the dining room just the entry room/ extension of our kitchen area ... and then it has one decent size room (9x12) and a dinky, teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy little closet under the stairs. Certainly not enough room for my clothes let alone Micah's as well. The bathroom on the main floor is really nice & cute but it just has a tub & I am more of a shower person than a bath person in the mornings. Plus you have to walk past the front doors to get at the bathroom so its not so nice for getting up in the middle of the night. (I know I'm lame but I get scared of what's outside & who might be staring in at me!)

So anyway, when we bought the house the upstairs bedrooms both had no real closets - only the "crawl-space" areas of the slants where the roof meets the house...if that makes any sense - I'm not big on the real/technical terms or anything! Back when we found out we were pregnant, we started gutting, insulating, and building a closet in the one room upstairs to make it the nursery. When Alexa was about three months old we moved her upstairs to her new room & she's been sleeping up there ever since. This is great except on weekends when we just really don't want to get up in the morning & yet we have to go all the way upstairs to pull her out of bed & bring her to us. So I decided to rip apart the other upstairs room. We spent most of October, November & December tearing everything out & insulating it all. Then we built a closet & finished the room off. This was all done by sometime in February.

So naturally I wanted to move upstairs to be closer to Alexa. Micah, who's not a fan of change, didn't want to go all the way upstairs every night & back down again every morning. He thought we should stay on the main floor. I begged, I pleaded, I threw probably every type of "tantrum" I could think of. I tried every reason I could come up with and explored pretty much every angle to convince Micah we should move our room. Nothing seemed to work. Finally I just decided to call his "bluff" so to speak & moved all my clothes & stuff upstairs. And it sort of worked. He'd come sleep in my room for a few nights & then he'd convince me to go back to our old room. After trying to fit our king bed upstairs with no success, we found a reasonably priced queen bed and bought & moved that up there. By this point Micah had pretty much given up on where we slept. His stuff, however, remained down on the main floor as did our king bed.

One would think I should have been satisfied with that right? After all, I got my bedroom to be upstairs, I had a real closet & a great new bed. However, I wasn't done yet. I had a bunch of toys (Alexa's of course) in my living room making it look very cluttered & messy. I do not like clutter & I certainly don't like things to be messy. My solution? To move the King bed to the room downstairs (which used to have my parents furniture in it for when they visited) and to make the main floor bedroom into a toy room! :) I again begged & pleaded & tried to show Micah all the reasons my idea was completely brilliant. He was convinced it wasn't necessary & things were just fine as they were. But then after unloading a U-haul full of stuff into my mom's house & helping my sister & her husband move some of their stuff into their new house he finally agreed. We picked up the monster of a mattress (NEVER buy a pillow top king size bed by the way) and carried it out the garage, around the front of the house & down through the walk-out entrance of our basement (the beast wouldn't find down the stairs inside the house!) A few hours later we had the house exactly as I wanted it...at least for now! :) Here's a few pictures of the new toy room & the new guest bedroom.

What price did I have to pay for getting my way? Simple...I just had to agree that the dog could sleep on our bed...good thing she's really small! I'm probably going to regret that but oh well, right now all I care about is the fact that I finally got to have something my way - it sure feels great! :)

Canada & back again!

So last week Friday morning my husband, my daughter, and I left on a "vacation" to my mother's house in Lethbridge, AB Canada. The purpose of our trip (at its origin) was to help her pack up as much as possible of her home so that it can be decluttered & shown to potential buyers.

Approximately a week before arrival, my mother decided she would rent a U-haul, pack up a load of stuff, drive the truck to Sioux Center and fly back home. All simple enough in theory. Right? - - WRONG! Oh well, life's full of "fun"-filled non-vacation vacations isn't it?

But anyway, back to the story. So we packed up our little family and headed west. We made excellent time, Alexa was a perfect child, happy & enjoyable the entire way. We arrived in Billings (our stop for the first day) around 4pm their time. We checked into our hotel and decided to find dinner. In hind-sight this would probably be when the trip began its downhill slope but who knows for sure! After searching all over the city for the restaurant Micah had chosen (when in fact it was on the same exit as the hotel) we finally ended up eating a quick meal at a Denny's (not so great) and heading back to our room. Since there was a pool and Alexa loves bath-time we decided to give her the first "pool/swimming" experience of her young life and it was GREAT! :) She was totally confused by the whole thing but had a good time anyway & didn't cry at all! After drying off, we heading back up to the room for bed-time (she typically goes to sleep at 7pm & it was about 7pm in Billings (8pm our time) We put her in her pack-n-play & shut off all the lights...normally she just lays down & goes to sleep - no effort necessary at all- she has been that way since she was about 2 weeks old...9 months later she decides she's had enough! She figured out how to stand up in the pack-n-play & thought that would just be the most fun ever! After almost 2 hours of crying, giggling, talking & screaming the child finally fell asleep! - - Mind you no great naps took place in the car - - she typically takes two 2 hour naps during a day - - but in the car there were about an hour worth of naps taken...and still the child didn't want to sleep. Apparently there was way too much to see & do in this new place!

On Saturday morning we headed for the border & although encountering tons & tons of deer alongside the road & one deer ON the road we made it to the border, got through it, & to my mother's house slick as could be. We immediately put Alexa down for a real nap & went to work on the house.

After three days of packing, lively "discussions" (known as many other names and described as statements of different opinions between interested parties, usually at very loud decibals in heated manners) and many numerous problems solved we were read to load up the now 17ft Uhaul & head to Iowa. (Apparently the 14ft truck we'd originally reserved can only hold 3,000 some lbs -- and when you're packing up a minister's library - - well lets just say that was NOT going to cut it!)

The border went really well - - I think the officer at the border said it best when we told him that we'd been visiting my mother to help her pack her house up & he said "Oh that lady in the Uhaul in front of you?" - -"Yes Sir the crazy lady in the Uhaul" I answered to which he replied "Yeah I noticed no one was willing to ride with her!" :)

We had left my mother's house around 1:30pm & had at first been planning to get as far as Great Falls, MT. When we got there so quickly we decided it was best to keep going since the forecast called for snow from Tuesday night through Thursday in the area. We quickly discovered however, that the snow/rain mixture was already blanketing the area. After traveling on several treacherous roads we finally reached Billings, MT at around 8pm on Tuesday night. The snow had turned to rain when we reached I-90 & the rain had even started to let up. We figured that no matter what the night would bring we wanted to get some sleep so we checked into the motel. After a tense evening involving several "supper option debates" and people just walking off on their own, we all tucked in for bed. This time it only took about an hour of Alexa babbling before she gave up & got some sleep! (Yeah for the small victories!)

The next morning we had some light snow around the Billings area but once we got on Hwy 212 (the awesome short-cut road) the snow was gone and the roads were great. Other than some light rain off & on we had a smooth trip back arriving in Sioux Center around 9pm so Mom could go see her house.

Despite several stressful situations & heated "discusions" we all made it back in one peace thankfully. What have I learned from the last six days? SEVERAL lessons. I have learned that different people have VERY strong opinions about things and this can cause many heated debates. Every family has their own way or method to their madness. If you don't understand someone else's method do NOT assume its wrong, just respect that its not your own & DO NOT tell them to change to your way - - accept the difference & live your own life. Do not judge what you do not know or understand. I have found that I do not handle very well having my way of life critiqued and criticised by those who do not understand it. I have also learned that certain people simply feel that they have to state their opinion frequently & bluntly & if you don't agree with it or do it, they feel you've hurt their feelings.

I have also found that events in life can dramatically alter a person. This alteration can affect not only daily activities, habits, and situations, but also personalities. For those around the people undergoing the alteration a word to the wise - tread carefully, everything & anything can cause conflict.

I have also found that when people do not take the 100% open mind approach to hearing each other out things can easily get misunderstood & blown way out of proportion. I have also found that stating the way YOU feel can cause many hurt feelings & animosity. Beware!

Please do not misunderstand me. I LOVE my family & my mother. I truly do. I guess its just hard to see the difference in how things are now & how they used to be. It truly shows how much influence one person can have over other people's lives. It honestly makes the relationships in life that are left behind change drastically & sometimes the easiest & most open of relationships can become the most stressful & difficult ones to maintain. Thankfully we have the grace of God to see us through. Truly amazing!

That's probably enough for tonight - - its been an exhausting week & its still not even over yet...