Pictures of John Stephens' mural - It took me almost a whole year to paint this.

Updates

I can't believe that I have time to post.

School started for us about a month ago.

Trey is going to public school now and is living with his mom and stepdad during the school week. He is still with us on week-ends. It has been a tough adjustment, but it really seemed to be the best choice that we could make.

Shelby is in third grade this year and is breezing through school at home. We had a rough first week or two because we couldn't figure out how to have school and watch a busy toddler. We finally learned that he would give us all the peace and quiet we wanted if he could touch me. So, the more complicated subjects are now taught at the kitchen bar where I can stand in the living room and John Stephens can hold my leg.

John Stephens is wild and wonderful now. He is a big boy and is busy, busy, busy. He is loud and rowdy.

I know that I need to post pics and such. Hopefully, I'll have a little more time to blog. Don't give up on me.

Baby's First Birthday

May 1, 2009, was a busy day. Superman turned One! We had a blast.

Baby's First Easter

The Cousins

Probably Rosy and III's favorite part of moving to our hometown is that they now live across the road from their 1st cousins. Tonya was baptized Easter Sunday morning by her new pastor, my Hubby, and Sviet sang a beautiful Call to Worship solo that morning. After church, we took pictures of the kids in the prayer garden outside the church.

Egg Hunt

Finally, I have my camera, my camera charger, clean floors (although it's still just concrete subflooring) in my school room, and a few minutes with Superman asleep. I can blog.

We went to his first Easter Egg Hunt today. He didn't really care to hang out with the other kids. He wanted to keep up with the 3 eggs that we had brought and hold on to them. He was sort of okay with other kids touching them, but he clearly wanted them back.

We stayed for about an hour and then noticed that he was getting a little too much sun so we headed home. I can't believe that I forgot to sunscreen him!

High Heel Waders and Mousin' Boots

Living in the country has required me to re-purpose some of my footwear.

I posted a while back that Hubby had seen a mouse in the laundry room. I didn't post the follow-up to that story. So, here we go.

The Monday night after the initial mouse sighting, Hubby was due back in St. Stephens after he finished his class that he teaches for the Baptist College of Florida. Class is over at 10 PM so we expected him around midnight. I had a terrible time getting kids to bed that night, so when I finally got the baby down and Rosy took her shower and got her thick head of hair dried, it was close to 11:30. She bribed me that she would do some of Tuesday's school work if I let her stay up to see her daddy. I gave in and let her. Then I went to clean the kitchen. I walked to the laundry room to toss a hand towel in the dirty clothes and I saw Twinkle in her pouncer crouch in the corner. I knew right away that it was the mouse!!!!! I quickly dragged a big box in front of the door so that the mouse couldn't get into the rest of the house. I hollered for Rosy to run upstairs and grab the boots I'd worn to church the day before - my brown, leather high heeled knee boots! Just as she came racing down the stairs with my "mousin' boots" as they are now called, Hubby came through the front door. He made it down the stairs just as I finished zipping up the boots and was about to head in to rescue Twinkle. He ignored the fact that I was dressed in my night shirt and "mousin' boots" and he went in to battle the mouse. He chased and chased, but the little vermin hid. So, the next morning I called the exterminator. I had tried to be nice, but enough was enough!!!! Forever, Rosy will refer to those boots as my "mousin' boots". (And, in case you didn't get this part, I needed the boots so the mouse couldn't touch my bare feet.)

In other exciting news, our house flooded last night. I came downstairs this morning at 7:30 and stepped in about 1/2 inch of water. Almost the entire bottom floor was covered. It has been a really long day of mopping, swabbing, drying, and trying to make intelligent choices in the face of some real stress. At one point, several men in the church decided to re-route the water flow through our flowerbeds. I looked out my window and I had 3 trucks, 1 front end loader, 1 four wheeler, 1 disc-er, and about 7 guys with shovels in the front yard. Momma and I stayed inside and mopped. Most of the floor is either ceramic tile (which is fine) or wood laminate (which is not fine), but one room is carpeted. We are still soaking water out of the carpet. I refuse to walk on it, so I dug out some of my platform high heels and I now have some high heel waders. As a matter of fact, my computer is in the carpeted room, so I had to put my waders on to get in here to blog.

I can't wait to show y'all pics. As a matter of fact, I dug out the camera today, but I still haven't found the charger, so it was useless. We're working on getting everything up and running.

My husband and I ask for your prayers. We feel that God led us to this new church field, but we feel very much that we are under attack by Satan and his demons. Please pray for our protection in the big and small things.

So Much to Tell...

...so little interest in reading long posts.

An update for those of you who don't know...Hubby and I have moved to our hometown for him to pastor our home church. On Christmas Eve this year after the Candlelight Service, one of the deacons at our home church asked Hubby to submit a resume for pastor of their church. We laughed about it and went on with the evening. Later that night, we discussed it and found that we were both feeling led to begin praying about the situation. We continued to pray about each step of the journey and continued to feel like God wanted us to move farther into the process. Ultimately, the church voted to call Hubby as Pastor.

Unfortunately we had signed a lease on a house in P'cola. We were scheduled to move at the end of February. We ended up losing our deposit and the partial month's rent!!!! (Huge bummer, but at least they didn't sue us for the rent remaining in the lease!)

The kids and I are settling in, but Hubby is still on the road. He finishes up at our old church this week. Wednesday is his last day and we will be taking a U-Haul down on Friday to get the rest of his library and to clean out our storage building.

Right now the digital camera is packed up, but I will soon start posting pics. Little Man is growing, growing, growing. He can take one or two steps and he is finally getting that first tooth! All of the kids are loving living in the country. We are right across the County Road from my parents' house. We see my folks almost every day. We have dinner every Monday night with my brother's family.

I have always asked Hubby how he as a Pastor knows when God is calling him to a new church, and he has always told me that he just always knows. I guess now I understand. We just knew. I'm extremely thankful to God that when he told us to "Go" that he was telling us to "Go Home".

I'll write more about the challenges later...so far we've had mice, sugar ants, centipedes, beetles, brown widow spiders, black widow spiders, wasps, yellowjackets, bees, one frog, and a hoard of ladybugs.