just what you wanted - more about me.

Finally.

Sitting in the quiet with a cup of tea.

today has been a long day.

Actually, it has been a long and crazy week and I don't think I've ever admitted to feeling as stressed out as I am right now.  But...I am trying to take it all a day at a time.  And God has been so very good to us.  I am all around and in so many different ways overwhelmed.

We got the house we were looking at.  And a series of God events have taken place, I feel.

We met with our new landlady, Robin, last Saturday.  She is a sweet, sweet lady.  And she is so absolutely excited to have us in the house.  And she is only charging us $500 a month !!  Not only is that unreal for anything in this area, but this house is nicer than ours, has a garage, and on like 9 acres of land.  I was speechless when I heard the amount.  On top of that, she is giving us the first month free for painting.  Now, I wasn't really excited about painting, but turns out I may have to do very little or none.  We also found out that our current landlady is coming back early - on the 27th - so we were kind of worried about getting the new place painted and everything done before then.  Add into all this that Jeremy has been getting a lot of hours at work (praise God, but its hard to find time to do things!), there is a huge rummage sale going on at the church the same weekend we have to be out (which is also requiring a lot of work from us), and I go back to Mora to work this next weekend.  Which I really wish I wasn't, since now with our rent being so low, I don't have to work anymore!

Anyway, Jeremy and his boss and a few other guys were up painting the ceiling tonight.  Robin mailed some samples for us to check out for the wall color and hopefully we can get that by tomorrow night.  A man who decided out of the goodness out of his heart to paint the outside of the church, also told Jeremy's dad that he felt a real burden to help us paint our house.  So once we get the paint, he is just going to come and spend a few days painting.  I am just amazed.  I don't know why, is anything that far-fetched when God is orchestrating our lives?  But I just feel so blessed, and I'm so happy because Robin feels so blessed by it all too.  She is a single lady.  Her dad died three years ago, and the house has been vacant now for some months since her mother passed away.  This house has all of her childhood memories wrapped up in it, and she is so happy to have people in it again and having life back, and now she doesn't have to worry about doing all the upkeep on it.  There is also a family cabin on the property, so she is excited to have tenants in the house so she isn't afraid when she comes to stay in the cabin.  I guess in a way this all feels like a big confirmation that we are in the place we are supposed to be.

This tea is so good.

My new favorite treat before bedtime is a cup of stash mango passionfruit herbal tea with a teaspoon of honey mixed in.  Mmmm.  I read something recently about having honey before bedtime helps your body not produce as many stress hormones while you sleep.  I don't know if there is any truth in it (seemed like it when I read about it) but I did sleep a lot better the other night when I did it.  Any excuse to have honey is okay with me.

Anyway.

I have been spending my afternoons scrubbing down the new house.  I actually have almost the entire kitchen  cabinets full of our kitchen stuff, so it will be nice to just move over the last few boxes and have that all ready for our first day there!  The kids kept busy playing, and I was able to get all those boxes unpacked from the kitchen!  Oh and the last picture is of our backyard - we have an amazing patio and deck and that little black thing sitting on the planter box (kinda hard to see) on our deck is our puppy. She curled up and went to sleep on it, haha.

Hailey is growing and getting bigger and bigger!  Her newest thing she does is plays a game with me where I shake my head and say "noooOOoo" and she does it and then she tries to nod but she can't really do it, so she just does this funny jump thing.  Now when I feed her, some times she'll pretend she doesn't like the food and smile and shake her head and giggle.  But then she eats it.  Silly girl!

This is just my life.  Surrounded by boxes. 

It has been beautiful out lately!  I try and get up early enough in the morning to take Kaia for a good run, but lately I've been sleeping late (because the kids have!) and so the kids come with for our morning walk, since Jeremy is already at work.  Let me just add here that it is no small feat to take a 13 week puppy, a 9 month baby in a front pack, and a three year old on a walk.  It is getting easier as Kaia is learning to not jump up quite so much now though, and does pretty good with most commands.  

Shea insisted on bringing the umbrella the other day, but of course after a while he got tired of holding it and I had to carry it.

Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble.  This next week is going to be incredibly busy, and then my sister's wedding is around the corner, which I'm trying not to think about too much until we get into the new place.  I'm really looking forward to mother's day, because then ALL of this stuff will be over and hopefully life can resume to its old pace.