Laundry Day

When Caleb was born, he was as easy as they come! By a month old he was sleeping 13 hours through the night. When he got his first tooth I didn't even know he was teething until it had been in for a little while! He ate great, he smiled all the time and he played by himself really well! Dream baby!! (Watch out for those dream babies; they are lulling you into a false sense of "I totally got this"!!!)

One night, though he wouldn't sleep. He cried and just wanted to be held. He was only a few weeks old and I was still recovering from a C-section, and I still really needed sleep, so I took my shirt that I had worn that day and laid it on his bed and laid him on it. He slept the rest of the night without a peep!

The next night when he started to fuss, I once again broke out that shirt that I had worn and gave to him. Again, instantly he was quiet and slept peacefully the whole night. I don't know when it happened, but it became standard that every night I would take off my shirt and tuck it into bed with my baby. Gross I know, but when you have three boys, a husband who works two jobs, and your going to school, you totally do what works!

Well Caleb turned one. We were in North Carolina on a family trip with my parents, and we drove 4 hours to a beach house. It was so much fun! I also happened to be pregnant again. An hour into the trip, Caleb is screaming for my shirt. I had forgotten to leave one out of the suitcase and we were driving my dad's pickup, so the luggage was tucked into the bed. 

Kevin is pleading with me to make it stop, and Micah and Kyler are plugging their ears. Finally Kevin turns to me and says in desperation, "Just take your shirt off and give it to him!"

we are driving down the interstate with lots of people on either side of us, my family is following in a long line of cars behind us and you want me to strip?!? They already think I'm the crazy one in the family! Micah took his shirt off and gave it to him. Caleb chucked it to the front of the truck and screamed louder. 

Desperation, people, makes you do things you aren't necessarily proud of. Once he had that shirt, he slept like a rock for the rest of the trip. Thankfully we stopped shortly after that and I was quickly given a shirt from the suitcase in the back. 

We were at some peoples house once and this lady had a shirt on that was exactly like one I had. Caleb started tugging on her shirt and whining, "shirt". It was one of his first words and I am not even joking!

When we first started leaving a dirty shirt with out babysitter, we got weird looks. It only took us forgetting it once and they would always ask, where is the shirt?? When my mom came to stay with the three boys while I had Liam, she agreed to it on one condition, that I leave at least three dirty shirts with her! 

As he got older, Kevin complained that it was weird having a little boy dragging around women's clothing in public, so we tried getting him to take a blanket. He would waddle into my room, dump my hamper and choose his favorite shirt, leaving the blanket like....well like anyone else would have left a dirty shirt . I would find my clothing stashed in weird places all over the house. Laundry day was devastating for this kid! It was kind of awkward.

So I sat him down around the time he turned two and told him he could pick one shirt. That would become his shirt and he would have to leave all of my other shirts alone. It took him a little while to leave my other shirts alone, but after spritzing perfume on it a few times, Caleb finally attached to the one shirt. This poor shirt is torn and falling apart, but its the most important thing in the world to him! 

I actually had another shirt just like it, and so now every once in a while, Caleb and I will get in an argument over whose shirt is whose. I honestly never thought that scenario would happen until I had teenage daughters!

Today I did laundry and both shirts got thrown in the laundry. While I was folding this load, Caleb found both shirts. He lifted them both up, buried his face in them and said, "This one smells like mine!" I asked him what his smelled like. He said, "It smells like black!" (Both shirts are black) I said well what does mine sell like? "It doesn't smell like black, like mine does." and he danced away as happy as can be!

So I hope this blog could put to rest any questions you all may have had. Yes we are officially the weirdest family in America! Go home tonight and hug your family close thanking God for them!!

Toilet Paper, Pterodactyls and Pop Music

I can't sleep! I lay down and I watch my little red numbers on my alarm clock slowly change. I have seen midnight for the last several nights! Kevin blames it on the time change. Maybe so, but before the time changed I was ready for bed by 8!

The thoughts that usually occupy my mind at this time of night are rather long and random to do lists that I wake up feeling frustrated that I have forgotten, and then the next night I lay awake trying to replicate them! Its all rather exhausting!

Last night I was making yet another list of things that I need to send with Kevin when he leaves for Florida. Usually I am going through all of my kitchen dishes and appliances wondering what I can give up and what he can live without. The coffee pot is still a rather hot button issues, in fact I'm worried we might not make it to our 10th anniversary because of it!!

Anyway, last night I was once again going through the kitchen in my mind packing things up. Then I thought about what I could use to pack the fragile stuff in, and I decided bath towels would be great! How many bath towels should I send?? Will he go to a laundromat in the 7 weeks he is without a washing machine....and a wife?Well that lead me to wandering around mentally in my bathroom trying to figure out what needed to go from there. Thankfully I fell asleep before making too long a list of bathroom items to pack. I woke up around 2ish. All of a sudden I realized that I needed to send toilet paper along. Then I started worrying that I would forget to get toilet paper and I couldn't fall back to sleep forever! When I woke up this morning I thought, well he can go get toilet paper at the store if I forget, why did I lose so much asleep over that??? This is my current state of life; and its driving me crazy!

While we were in Florida, apparently a man went into his bedroom and while he was cleaning his sock drawer or some such activity, the earth opened up and swallowed him whole! I'm sitting on the edge of my hotel bed, mouth hanging wide open and terror in my eyes, but I can't turn away as they start telling stories of Floridians who have had similar experiences walking in their backyards or golfing.Then the blonde lady with too much red lipstick on states that Florida is the sinkhole capital! Did you know that there is a sinkhole season in Florida, and that we are coming up on it? How exactly does that work? "Oh the sun's a little to the east today, better watch for sink holes!"

Shortly after coming home, I heard that there are lots of sharks off of the coast of Florida and they are warning people not to go swimming. Oh great thanks for that! Caleb wanted to go to the beach for his birthday, but I think we'll just sit inside with a sinkhole meter and maybe some balloons!

Today my husband sent me a video from CNN that was talking about pterodactyl mosquitoes that are scheduled to arrive in Florida this summer. They are huge and can suck your blood through your clothes and it feels like you got stabbed by a knife when they sting. Right now I feel like I am sitting in that commercial for orange juice. The one where they are  telling her all of the things that will go bad that day and she responds with, "better drink my orange juice". Which right now might be the only entry in the pros column of Florida: they have lots of orange juice!

Think all of these things are bizarre and probably won't ever happen to us? Remember that we are the family that ends up in the ER from toilet injuries and because a kid has a rock stuck in his ear. Remember that out of 11 years of putting ear tubes in little kids' ears, ours was only the second kid our doctor had to redo because of weird circumstances.  And did you know that retaining placenta after a C-section is virtually impossible? And yet I know from experience that its not totally impossible......

When we were headed home from  the Dominican Republic, I was so tired and very ready to be off of the plane, but as we were sitting on the tarmac in Atlanta waiting to take off for Colorado Springs, life felt almost perfect. I had experienced God's incredible love and peace in a way that I never had before. I had just spent a week of being with my husband and being called the "wedding cake couple". I was headed to see my babies, and I had just met Kirk Cameron. The sun was setting and it was just so peaceful! The airplane had a song playing and it was totally not Christian, but some popular pop sing that I had never heard before.

Its weird how certain songs, or smells, or sights can be the keeper of such vivid feelings and memories.

While we house hunting in Florida, and I was hyperventilating just a bit, we sat in the Corvette in front of a house and I was upset because the first three houses we had wanted to see had just been rented and I was starting to feel hopeless that we would ever find one that worked for us. I was questioning whether we were doing the right thing by moving to Florida and I was feeling very anxious. As we sat there waiting for the realtor to come, the song that I had heard in the airplane that evening on our way home came on. It instantly reminded me of the overwhelming peace I had that night. And of course that's the house we ended up with!

Apparently God can use pop music!!

The Next Chapter

10 years ago this coming May, I married my best friend. We honeymooned in Daytona Beach Florida. We found it funny that so many people asked us if we were on our honeymoon. On the shuttle back to the airport as we were leaving FL, a businessman was the only other occupant of the shuttle. He had his briefcase next to him and was reading a very important looking business magazine. After a minute he looked up and nodded at Kevin. "On your honeymoon?" Kevin acknowledged that indeed we were and because we were sure at this point that the answer would be because we looked so in love, he asked him. "How did you know?"

The man glanced up once again from his magazine and nodded towards our entwined fingers. "Your rings are still shiny."

Well, talk about not what we thought we were going to hear! I have looked back at our wedding picture a few times recently and after seeing ten years of yard work, dirty diapers, mountains of dirty dishes and dirty clothes, and our rings aren't as shiny as they were then. Go figure!

I told my husband at the beginning of this year, that we had to do something special for our anniversary this year as its going to be our 10th! (Keep in mind people, that I got married when I was 15, so I am really not that old yet!!)

Well we decided to take Kevin's Compassion anniversary trip to the Dominican Republic and what an amazing trip it was! We learned a lot, to say the least, about faith on that trip! We came home and I started thinking, well we still need to make the actual anniversary of our 10 turbulent, I mean blissful years together special in some way. So I started thinking and going through magazines and dreaming about what we could do to make this day 10th anniversary worthy.

And then one day while Kevin was on a business trip in Florida and I was expressing my desire to do something different on our anniversary he mentioned a possible activity for that day. "Would moving to Florida be different enough?"

I'm sorry what?? I wasn't really thinking of major life altering things like moving, but that would certainly be different.

It turns out his old boss had approached him about moving to Florida to create an accounting department for his growing business. In less than two weeks from that initial meeting, Kevin and I flew out to see the sights and get a feel for the area. 

We had a rental car; A brand new Corvette. Kevin was feeling pretty good about FL!

I found Kohl's and I felt a little better, and as a plus I didn't see any snakes!

We got back last night from that little adventure; holding 2 year lease papers on a house, and enrollment packets for our boys for the school there.
There is so much more to say here about how God has made it very clear to us that this is the correct direction he wants our family to take at this point, but I don't have the mental capacity or probably even the blog space to go into it all right here. We have known from the start of this year that he is getting us ready for unknown adventures that require a unity between the two of us, and a strong faith in God to lead us. It hasn't always been easy, but God has demonstrated in such amazing ways his immeasurable love for us, and His incredible faithfulness! We have come to know God in a whole new and astounding way this year already, and its only March!!

So at this point  many of you may feel rather indignant that you are learning about this in a blog, but believe me when I tell you I couldn't even begin to imagine calling each one of you and crying through a rehearsed speech in which I tell you I am moving over 36 hours away. Everyone who is part of my Colorado life is so special to me, and I can't even begin thinking about not having you a few minutes away; not meeting you for a Chick-fil-a date, not swapping babysitting with you, or not running into you in the church hall way.

I do, however, hope that all of you will take advantage of the fact that you now have friends living close to Disney World and would love to have you stay with them!!

Our current plans include Kevin going to Fl at the beginning of April and the boys and I will follow at the end of May when school is finished. Until then, lets party people!!