Undeserving

This weekend so far has been immense for Phil and myself!

Last night was the spaghetti dinner fundraiser for the junior mission trip this year. We went and took the boys and even made brownies to help out. We had a good time and felt so at home with our little church family.

I woke up this morning realizing Joshua had been up a while, but instead of waking me up, saw I was sleeping and went back to his room to play for a while. This hasn't ever happened before! Phil got up and was able to take a shower! It has been 5 weeks since he was able to stand in the shower because of his cast. Yesterday they cut it off. His foot is still broken (which was disappointing) but they were able to put him in a walking cast that he can take off. He can drive now and shower and scratch his ankle if it itches. What a blessing!

I went out to get donuts and a case of bottled water since we had a huge group of people coming to our house to help us get the new siding up. We had to leave early because of Josh's soccer game, but they stayed and got so much done! How could we ever repay that?! The garage looks so different and it will help the house sell so much more quickly which means wonders for us personally. What could we ever do to pay all of that back?? Nothing. So, a huge thank you to Al, Tim, Kurt, Andy, Jeff, Mike, Pete, Amanda and their boys!

Then we headed down to Josh's soccer game. He blew everyone away today!! He got in the way to defend the ball and actually kept up with the other kids and played so hard. There was even one time when all the other parents from our team looked at Phil and I and asked if we saw what Josh had just done. He changed so much in the 2 weeks since the last game he got to play!

We headed down to the Cardboard Boat Regatta that Phil's "ship" took part in. For some odd reason they decided to call the barracks here "ships" so he is currently working for the USS Wisconsin even though it is a building and not all that near the water. All that was to explain that each of the different barracks buildings put together a boat from cardboard and duct tape to race in this event. I'm pretty sure our boat didn't win, but boy did it look cool!

We came home to find everyone gone and so much progress on our garage!! Yes, I do realize I have to paint the door back there now. One project at a time! Well, actually we have several going right now... but all the more reason to not jump into that one quite yet.

We also go to go to Carriebeth's graduation party. She's the one who has been watching the boys during my working hours. The boys love her! Every day they are so excited to see her and never want to take her home.

All of this today has just made me so grateful for this life. Things are hard a lot. The fridge still leaks, the dryer still isn't drying our clothes, there is still a lot of work to do on the house, and I'm still homesick for Northern California but... the boys have been great today, the sun has finally decided to make an appearance in Illinois and we had a lot of really great things to do! Makes me feel like things will eventually all work out and we'll be able to move on to our new duty station.

Teaching Me

God has a way of teaching me things that I've come to recognize as His style for me. He usually brings up something through what I've read or a conversation with someone that really sticks with me and changes my way of thinking in one way or another. Then later that day or the next day or even the day after that, something else that will reinforce that change of perspective will come across my path. The other night I was reading from the second military wife book Phil bought for me for Mother's day and this idea hit me hard.
"It's important to pay attention to your interests and passions whatever they are-- and find ways to fit them into this life. It's important to live from the place of your own authenticity and uniqueness rather then trying to fit yourself into some mold that isn't you."
Wham! Right upside my head was the realization that yet again I have fallen into the trap of being miserable because I am not this way or that, failing to some silly expectation or idea that I've gotten into my head that God never put there. Just as I'm started to let this idea change my mind...
Tonight I decided to work on clearing up the HUGE pile of things in our dressing room that has been there since we had the floors redone. This was super helpful since I found our car registration renewal that is due tomorrow! I digress. I was sorting through huge piles of papers and found a scratch paper I have written two quotes on from some book I read at some point. I often make this mistake. I read a book, find a sentence or two I like, I write them down and find them later only to have no idea where these came from! So from some mystery book I have read in the past comes the quote that I think I should write on my mirror to read every morning before I start my day.
"Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God has made you to be. Anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it."
Could that be any more straight forward?? Oh the things I have pursued that have nothing to do with what God has made me to be or what He wants me to be doing!
So there is the idea God has been working on in my heart lately. Cutting myself some slack when I think I'm not measuring up to whatever standard I have gotten into my head and focus on following after this mysterious trail God has been leading me down for years and years that I have not even begun to understand!

5 Years and a Little Paint

Things have seemed so crazy around here lately. Someday things will go back to being a little more normal and boring, but for now, it seems like everyday something new is happening! I completely forgot to mention in my post from this weekend that Phil and I also celebrated our 5th anniversary on Friday. Our friend, Ramona, volunteered to watch the boys for us (I didn't even have to ask!) so we got to see Indiana Jones and go have dinner. Even though Phil hadn't been feeling well, we still had a good time being able to see a movie we were looking forward to and have time to sit and enjoy each other's company without all the constant distraction that comes with eating with two young ones.
House projects are coming along slowly but surely. Our friend Matt helped me take a two-truck-full load to the dump so we have gotten rid of a LOT of the old siding from the garage. I think we can get rid of the rest in our garbage can over the next couple weeks. Since there's not much else I can do on the garage without help, I've resigned myself to the majorly laborious work that awaited me in the basement. I've finally finished sanding the putty on the drywall tape and started painting. I'm using a heavy duty primer and even with that it seems it will need more then one coat. I'm starting to think this house might just kill me! There's a LOT more to do down there, but in the mean time, here is one before/after set to give you an idea of the change happening down there.
Hopefully you can see past the old couch and whatnot down there.
In other news, please be praying for Phil's foot. He has an appointment on Friday. He is experiencing some swelling still but we're really hoping he'll at least be free of the whole cast and able to drive himself. With all these projects and the upcoming job, we have been praying quite a bit for his foot to heal properly and in good time.
Tomorrow and Friday our friends Al and Tim will be back to help work more on the garage so hopefully soon I'll have some new pictures with more progress!

Chocolatefest

This weekend we went to Burlington, Wi for Chocolatefest. We at lots of chocolate and got a teensy bit sunburned. Overall, it is good to finally be able to run around outside and not get frostbite!!

Chocolate water... um... not so good, Mommy.

Lunch

The theme this year was Pirates of the Chocolate Be'an
Josh rode bumper cars for the first time ever! Spun a lot of circles and spent a lot of time against the wall, but he loved it!
He picked out this ride even after Mommy tried to convince him it went very high ...
Lisa giving Jeremiah his own free ride!
Big old Army truck at the recruiting booth. Um... no. Not yet, buddy!
Afterward we had dinner at our friends campsite.
Jeremiah in the campfire.To complete the event, I made a dark chocolate cheese cake tonight. It was so rich, neither of the boys finished their small pieces!

White Boogers

Joshua has been feeling better, thank goodness! His fever broke on Saturday afternoon and spent a couple days slowly recovering back to our normal bundle of unbridled energy. Much to my dismay, Jeremiah woke up this morning with a bonafide fever of his own. I keep hoping it is just teething even though it's really too high for that. I guess we'll see in the next 24 hours what develops. In the mean time, the pink eye didn't pass along to anyone at least!
Despite all the craziness in our house, I spent some time trying to sand the drywall putty in the basement last night. I figure I finished up about half of it. I was completely covered in white dust! I usually don't put pictures up of myself, but had Phil take this for my Mom, so I thought I'd share it at least. I still have to finish up the sanding and paint everything but the floor down there, so I have lots more of this look coming to me!

Not Much... But Something!

Yesterday our friends Tim (my boss) and Al (one of the guys in leadership at church) came and helped get a start on our garage! They laid everything out, getting the little part nailed up that runs along the very bottom and the pieces along the sides. It doesn't look like much progress has been made (thus why there's no picture) but we're well on our way to being set up to get most of the work done! Hopefully next week when they have some time again, we'll be able to make more progress and you'll actually be able to tell more by looking at it.
Something else to share, is a bit of what I overheard Josh saying in the other room a bit ago. Here's his recipe for a yummy treat. He made an invisible version for himself earlier:
1 teaspoon M&M's
1 teaspoon chocolate chips
1 teaspoon acorns
1 teaspoon nuts
1 teaspoon yogurt
1 teaspoon oil
mix in
1 teaspoon bells
Now we dump the cheese in.
Now you will eat it. Mmmmmm. Yum!

This and That

A quick update on Josh. We think today he might have had hay fever on top of the strep on top of the pink eye! As the day wore on he seemed to be doing better and better. I put the humidifier in his room tonight so hopefully that will help him (and Me!) sleep through the night.
Here's the baby shower cake I finished last night. I think it turned out really cute. The mom isn't a big fan of pink so we limited the pink and stuck with the purple for the most part. I heard it went over really well!We also picked up and planted a bunch of veggies in our back yard this week. I thought we'd have to give that up this year but when the move got postponed we decided to try and take it on for another year. It saves us money in the summer and I LOVE getting to cook with things I just have to walk outside to get, rather then making a list and driving all the way to the store and having to haul them all inside. Hopefully the boys are learning from this as well. I know they really like watching the plants grow and play in the dirt, at least!
Last, my folks had sent the money to purchase a fire pit for the backyard for Phil for his birthday this year. We took time finding the right one and took a while to figure out prices and all. We finally picked it up this week and got to use it with our friends Adam, Lyndsay and Kaylee tonight. We got to enjoy just a couple s'mores before it started raining. We're really happy with the decision we ended up with and are sure we'll get a lot of use out of it as it gets warmer. Thanks Mom and Dad!

My Brilliant Husband!

Our anniversary is coming up next week and my brilliant husband found just the perfect thing for me even though he couldn't get up and out to a store on his own. He found this new set of gumpaste tools (goes along with my cake decorating stuff I've recently learned) that aren't even available on the Wilton website yet!
For anyone curious, Josh is still sick. He's been on antibiotics both for his strep and for his eye since Thursday but is still running a fever and woke up with poofy swollen eyes this morning. We've been trying to make him just rest. He hasn't slept through the night since early in the week. I have a call in for the doctor, so hopefully we'll know more later today.

Sick Day

Today's plans were thwarted yet again. Poor Josh was running a fever yesterday. I moderated it with tylenol or motrin yesterday but this morning it was higher then ever so we took him to the doctor. Looks like he has strep throat and pink eye. Poor guy:(. Must be hard to have all the energy in the world yet have your body telling you it just can't go with you. He's pretty content under the blanket for now. He's on antibiotics and a gel thing for his eye. Hopefully we can get all this on the healing end before Jeremiah picks it up too!

Chocolate Guitars

Just a little project I came up with to help celebrate our friend, Jake's birthday. Happy birthday, Jake!
Jeremiah enjoyed his quite a lot!

New Orders

The official orders came in today. We will be leaving here early September to head toward Virginia. Phil will be in Mississippi for about a month for training so he won't be in Virginia until November. Phil is going to be attached to a Riverine Squadron. We'll try to put up information on here as we find it. It's a little exciting and a lot scary at this point, so please be praying for us! Now it's time to buckle down and really get the house ready to list so this will be as smooth a transition as possible!

Making Babies

Ha ha.. no, not at all what you're thinking! Just starting to work on my next cake that is due this weekend. The beautiful thing about fondant is I can make a lot of the pieces ahead of time. These two little twin girls will be nestled under a blanket of fondant with their teddy bear. I'll attach their bows once it all dries.

My Sailor

For Mother's Day Phil got me a few military wife related things. One is a magazine subscription and the other two are books. I've started to delve into the first called, "The Homefront Club." It's been moving and challenging making me laugh and be frustrated all within the first 15 pages! It's so refreshing to hear from a veteran military wife. Sometimes these voices all around talking about how hard this must be or how they could never do it can be disheartening. People get out all the time because it's so hard to find a balance between being a military family and being strong Christians or being a military guy and being a good dad. Unfortunately this discovery often leads to tones in conversation that come across as if it is impossible to be done, when in truth, it's not. Is it hard? Yes. Is it worth it? We think so... so far, at least. Phil has been in almost 9 years so far (almost halfway to retirement) and we've been doing the military thing as a couple for almost 7 (counting the couple years we spent engaged). You would think by now we'd have it down, but with new duty station and advancements and more kids comes different roles and perspectives and challenges. I'll probably be spending quite a bit of time thinking about all this coming up as I traverse these new books but for now, I just wanted to share my favorite quote from this first one so far:
"There is nothing easy about military life. But it's worth it for a worthy man. One who is kind, loving, hard-working , responsible. You can't commit yourself or your children to a life like this for anyone less."

Happy Mother's Day!

This is a cake made by request for a friend's mother-in-law for mother's day. Haven't decided if it needs anything written on it yet. That will be up to her. It's not perfect, but I'm happy with it and my little ladybug makes me smile. :) If it looks familiar, I made one just like it here.

AWANA cupcakes

AWANA is winding down for this school year. I know Josh will be so upset when he realizes we won't be coming back. Next week is the last week and it's just the awards ceremony. To commemorate the last week of actual class, we made these little mini cupcakes for Josh's class of Cubbies. Took a little work, but Josh said, " Look it's like Cubbie Bear" (the main character in their stories). Hopefully the other kids will like them just as much!

After note: The kids and adults all loved them! I made over 40 of these little guys and came home with an empty platter. In this pic are all the cubbies that were there last week. Jeremiah is closest to the camera and Josh is the one getting help to wipe up some spilled juice. I'll try to get a better picture of Josh in his cute little vest with all his badges next week. He really loves putting that thing on each week.

Blue Hair

This is not the first time we've done this, but seemed to be the most fun for some reason. Can you tell they're brothers or what?

Evening at the Kuhn's

Last night we were lucky enough to be able to spend some time at a little BBQ our friends had. They have a park right behind their backyard! Josh's little friend is named Faith. We've also gotten a nice break from things this weekend because of the rain. I did finally get my last coat of putty up on the drywall in the basement so now just to sand and paint! (Putting it all together like that makes it sound so easy...)

Stung!

As you can tell, we've all been pretty exhausted around here! With all this with the house and schedule changes, we've all been lacking in the rest department lately!
Josh got his first bee sting ever yesterday! He was trying to pick up the bee, but soon found out the bee was NOT okay with that! His thumb got a little swollen but that's all. He was pretty bitter at the bee, but has pretty much forgotten about it by this morning.