Our Quiverfull

Several weeks ago, right after my miscarriage, I mentioned that we were facing a hugely challenging situation, and that I was choosing not to blog about it until it was over. While I don’t feel any need to share every aspect of our family’s life on this blog, I also have a commitment to be honest and not to mislead in areas where I do share. So, in that spirit, here’s what’s been going on here – first assuring you that we are FINE.

If you’ve read this blog for long, you know that Jeff lost his job 2 1/2 years ago, and despite his diligent efforts, he’s been unable to find a regular job. We did OK for a long time and did everything we could to stay on top of things financially, even to the point of cashing out Jeff’s 401K. Jeff has worked hard at our homeschool business, started another small business, and has been helping a friend launch a company, but about a year ago we fell behind on our mortgage payments.

Jeff immediately contacted the bank in the hopes that they would work with us, but incredibly they told us we weren’t far enough behind. By the time we were “behind enough,” we couldn’t see a way to catch up! Earlier this year a number of friends in the homeschool publishing community held a fundraiser for us. We used that money to start the new business I mentioned above, infuse some cash into our homeschool company so that we wouldn’t have to close it, set aside some money for basic living expenses, and planned to use the rest to catch up on our mortgage.

What followed was a complete comedy of errors (except that it wasn’t funny at all). Turns out you can’t just call your mortgage company and mail them a check to catch up. We had to jump through zillions of hoops, and it was obvious that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing – for example, it took JP Morgan/Chase almost a month just to tell us how much we owed! We were told that we needed to restructure our mortgage, and again were given many hoops to jump through. We never had a dedicated account manager or single person helping us. Instead, we just called a call center and had to explain everything each time to a new person. These people often gave us conflicting information.

We finally reached the point that Jeff had about 80 pages of paperwork to fill out and fax in for the restructure. We were alarmed to be told that we were in foreclosure at that point, but were repeatedly reassured that as long as we turned that paperwork in on time, we would be fine.

Jeff faxed in all of the paperwork, and since he wanted to be diligent, he called to be sure the paperwork had been received, only to be told that no one could find it. He faxed it all in over and over, calling each time with the same results. The fax center wasn’t even in the call center, so it wasn’t like anyone could get up and look for it. We were told that we couldn’t not overnight the paperwork or even fly there to hand deliver it – it had to go through the fax center and then through a number of places to stop the foreclosure. Our house was scheduled to sell on a Monday morning, and by that Friday afternoon they had only found the first few pages and the last few pages out of all the copies Jeff had faxed.

We called that Monday morning very early and were told that they had found all of our paperwork, saw that it had all been sent in on time, but that no one at the call center had the authority to stop our house from being sold. We had a lawyer, but even he was unable to stop the sale at the last minute. He said that Chase is like a bunch of trains going different speeds on different tracks that never cross. (f you work for Chase, I’m sorry – I’m sure that there are many fine people there – but the SYSTEM is deeply flawed.) Our paperwork was on a slow train and the people selling our house were on a fast train. The different departments couldn’t even communicate with each other. It was truly unbelievable to be told that they KNEW we had done everything right but that they could sell our home out from under us anyway.

No one bought the house at the auction that day, so it just reverted to the bank. At that point Freddie Mac was handling it. Jeff contacted them the day after the auction and explained the situation. They seemed easier to work with and we had one specific person we could speak with each time. They sent out a real human being to gather all of the paperwork again in the hopes that we could still do a mortgage restructure and stay in the house. We were told that this process could take a VERY long time, and that if we were turned down we would have a minimum of 2 months notice to get out of our home.

We’ve been working with Freddie Mac for a few months now. Every now and then they would ask for additional paperwork, Jeff would send it, and they would confirm that they had received it.

In late September, out of the blue, we were given 10 days notice to leave our home. We had never received any paperwork or letter from Freddie Mac and didn’t even know we had been turned down. The person assigned to our case stopped returning Jeff’s calls. A lawyer was unable to help – since the house had reverted to the bank, they had a legal right to evict us even with no notice, despite any assurances they had made to us. The lady at the sheriff’s office persuaded them to be “compassionate” and give us 14 days because of our large family and because of Noah. She also scheduled the lock out as late as possible which gave us a few more days.

I called every rental agency, every apartment complex, every rental in the paper, and every word of mouth source available. None of them worked out. Anything running through any kind of agency had a policy of 2 people per bedroom . . . and there are 10 of us! Other places had no central air – not an option with Noah. Other people just didn’t want to rent to a big family, or the place had just been rented out right before I called, or the rent was astronomical. We were reminded of the Scripture that says no good thing will He withold from them that walk uprightly. I knew that Jeff had walked uprightly in all of this. He is a good, diligent, honest man who did absolutely everything he was told to do. We encouraged each other with that verse and other verses, and the Lord reminded us that His idea of “good” might not match up with our idea of “good” (easy, comfortable, pleasant) – but that His good would truly be better for us than anything we could arrange.

At different points it looked like we had a lead and had found a place to rent. One was in a truly scary neighborhood, and the other was teeny tiny – under 600 square feet. We were OK with those options, because we KNEW that the Lord would put us where He wanted us to be. Every lead fell through.

In the meantime, I was trying to pack up our home of 12 years and our business without knowing where we were moving or how much space we would have, all while trying to recover physically from my miscarriage. Just days before we had to be out, I was on the phone with a friend telling her that I was eager to see how the Lord was going to come in and show Himself since there was NOTHING else I could do – no more leads to follow, no more places to call, no more options. As we were talking, another caller beeped in. It was a landlord whose home had been rented out right before we inquired about it. Turns out that rental agreement fell through and the house was available if we wanted it. We didn’t know anything at all about the house, the location, or anything, but we said we would take it!

With a lot of help from family, friends, and church family, we were able to get the house all cleaned (it had been empty for 3 years) and get everything out of the old house into the new house just in the nick of time.

This new home is amazing. It is very large – larger than the home we left. It has a bedroom for Jeff and I, one for the boys, and one for the girls (this is the arrangement we had before). There is a massive family room just like we had before – but this one has a window seat. There is a large front room that holds our ginormous dining room table and our desk (like we had before( for a combination dining room/school room. There is a more than adequate kitchen about this size of my other one, and a laundry room/pantry the size of my kitchen!! There is a pretty, sunny playroom that is open onto the kitchen and the dining/school room, so my little ones are very close and happy to play near Mommy.

It sits on a gorgeous 1 acre lot with tons of fruit trees/bushes, beautiful landscaping, and all sorts of places for the children to play. It is immediately adjacent to a very, very, nice, quiet, established subdivision and we have met a number of our neighbors. There is no traffic and the children can ride their bikes, take walks, etc. While our town is small, and nothing is very far away, this house is VERY convenient to everything – 2 minutes to shopping, just around the corner from our children’s favorite park/playground, and even closer to church than we had been before. It’s even much closer to Noah’s doctor! The landlord has been amazing and is asking LESS in rent than we were paying for our other home! (I have to admit that it has been incredible just to call someone else about a leaky faucet or a problem with the air conditioner LOL).

Because we didn’t know where on earth we would be living, we got a POD rental container right off the bat and started dramatically paring down the things we hoped to move with us, then put everything else in the POD. I literally brought maybe 1% of our books, 20% of our games, and 20-25% of our toys. We limited the children to about 7 outfits each and 3 pajamas each (much more for Noah and Mary Faith since they often need more than one outfit per day due to spills, etc.). I am really enjoying having so much LESS to deal with . . . or I guess I am theorizing that I will enjoy it since we had only been in the house for maybe a week and a half when I got sick. We are storing our POD at our church and haven’t burned any bridges in our down-sizing since we can always go get something if we really have to. We thought and prayed a lot about what to bring, though, and I hope we won’t need to take much out of the POD for a long time. Getting the POD was an excellent decision and it made it more manageable to prepare for the unknown so quickly. Ideally we would have had a yard sale and so on, but there just wasn’t time.

I don’t want to give the impression that this has just been a happy, giddy, tip-toe through the tulips experience. It has been physically very hard, and my utter, bone-numbing exhaustion from the move almost certainly was a factor in how sick I got so fast last week. Out of our very limited number of days to move, several were tied up with big Noah appointments (some in Greenville), one whole day was spent calling different rental places, and a couple of days were spent just cleaning every surface of the new house. It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in terms of the volume of work compared to the amount of time we had. Our dryer died the day we moved it over, and while it was still under extended warranty (praise the Lord!), the part was back-ordered for almost 2 weeks which meant daily trips to the laundromat to dry several loads of laundry in addition to everything else. Talk about a time killer!! Of course, the washing machine proceeded to die next, while I was in the hospital, so we (meaning Jeff LOL) were back at the laundromat each day until that was fixed at last just this morning.

In all of this, it has been amazing how much peace we all had. There was no panic or despair. The Lord was very near, and we KNEW that He was good and was going to work this for our good. It’s interesting – several times a year Compassion International sends a group of bloggers to one of the areas where they work so the bloggers can report on things first hand. They had a group in Kenya not long before our house sold at auction, and they had a group in Guatemala not long before we got our eviction notice. We always try to follow the different bloggers during these trips, and as we saw and read about families living in garbage dumps and slums and boxes and lean-to’s, we found that we were simply not able to have pity on ourselves AT ALL. We were fully aware that even if we were in the tiniest, yuckiest rental in Greenwood, there would be millions of people around the world who would give ANYTHING to trade places with us. No matter what, we weren’t going to end up living in a box or a garbage dump . . . but even if we had, the Lord would have been there as much as if we ended up in a mansion.

I can honestly say that I never dreamed that we would end up in such a pleasant, abundant home. When we thought that we would be in various “less than ideal” situations, we were truly OK with that – completely at peace and eager to see how the Lord would refine us and use us through those circumstances. I consider this just a beautiful gift from Him, and Jeff and I were so thankful that our children grasped and embraced these truths. What a treasure! We’ve learned sweet lessons and seen God move in ways that we wouldn’t have seen if we hadn’t lost our home.

So – I share all of this to be open with you. I need to change the mailing address for Noah, and the observant among you would surely notice a different background in pictures that I post. I didn’t want this be fodder for speculation. Another reason for sharing in such detail is that I am certain that there are many among you facing similar situations. The whole JP Morgan Chase scandal broke during our move and we were amazed to realize that many people had their paperwork conveniently “lost” and ended up losing their homes as a result. Maybe hearing how the Lord showed His faithfulness to us could help encourage someone else.

The reason I didn’t share anything until now (well, aside from being ridiculously busy), is that I just wasn’t comfortable pulling you all along on this drama-filled roller coaster ride. While we were looking for a home, things were so up and down and changing so fast that it wasn’t practical to share, and I wasn’t willing to share with the universe that we still had no where to go so close to our eviction date. I hope you understand.

Noah has been doing well. He loves this grassy yard (our other was all woods) and frequently commandeers his older siblings to pull him around in a wagon or push him around in his loaner wheelchair. (Keep praying for things to fall in place for his “real” wheelchair!) He had a little anxiety when we were in transition and for a couple of days he didn’t seem to fully understand where his things were going. He was very confused by the fact that I was in the hospital and several times he expressed that he was worried that I got left behind at the old house even though we had been here for a number of days before I got sick. (Oh, and what a blessing there, isn’t it?? I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had gotten sick during the move!!)

I’m feeling better, but not AS better as I would like. I did a very short errand with Jeff late this afternoon and was stunned at how exhausted I was and how much I started hurting. Ugh. It is hard to rest with so much unpacking left to do – while every room is mostly unpacked and fully functional, several rooms still have at least a little left to unpack. Having a working washer and dryer is sure to make things start to move more smoothly, and of course the children have been a tremendous help.

Oh, and in the middle of all of this I had my birthday. I’m 29 again! My sweet husband knew what I wanted most of all, and he got his parents and my mom and step-dad to go in with him to get me a Flip camcorder – yes, a Kate-Proof-Camcorder! I’ve taken some cute footage of the younger ones and look forward to being easily able to share video here now. William also had a birthday right smack in the middle of all of this and turned 16, which I can hardly believe. He was a great sport about not getting a typical birthday celebration. We surprised him by taking him to Wal-Mart on an “errand” where we “just happened” to run into both sets of grandparents. We all went in together and let him pick out a new bike as his birthday present from all of us. He was thrilled and has really enjoyed his new bike . . . and I was thrilled that we were able to please him so easily in the midst of so much chaos that day. He is a great young man and I am so blessed to be his mom.

I’ve written quite a post – perhaps the title of “The Story” was misleading? Maybe “The Long Epic Drama” would be more suitable . . .

Thank you for your continued prayers and encouraging comments. You all bless me more than you can imagine.

Blessings,
Kate

NEW MAILING ADDRESS FOR NOAH:
Noah Estes
101 Sherwood Lane
Greenwood, SC 29649

I’ve been looking forward to sitting down this weekend and writing a fun post packed with photos from Noah’s birthday. . . that post is going to have to wait a couple days longer.

Last night when Jeff was getting ready to hook up Noah’s TPN, he found a small leak in Noah’s broviac.  This is a potentially dangerous situation as it allows bacteria to enter the line and it prevents us from being able use the line for life-sustaining TPN.

We called Dr. B immediately and after determining that no local hospitals could fix the line (worth a shot, anyway!), he told us to head to the Greenville ER.  I took Noah while Jeff stayed here with the others.

The line WAS repaired, but not without drama.  The repair was done by a very young resident who had never done or seen a line repair before.  It was a very difficult experience. The one bright spot was two wonderful friends who volunteered to sit with me in the ER since Jeff couldn’t come – thank you, Marla and Zachary!!

We’ll be following up with the surgical office next week to be sure the repair looks stable, and Noah’s nurse just left after drawing labs to be sure that Noah didn’t get an infection anywhere in the process.

While I was on the phone with Dr. B, he told me that there was a problem with the x-rays he had ordered several days ago.  (I think I mentioned that??  We saw Dr. B about Noah’s increasingly severe leg and foot pain, and Dr. B ordered some x-rays.)

It looks like Noah has Kohler’s Disease.  In a nutshell, it appears that the bloodflow to some of the bones in Noah’s foot has been cut off, and that the affected areas of bone have died as a result.  This would absolutely explain his severe foot pain.  We’ll be following up with an orthopedic surgeon to figure out an action plan.

It’s been a lot to digest in a very short period of time, and I am very tired.  My head hit the pillow just before 4:30 AM just for the alarm to go off at 6:30 because we had early morning plans in (you guessed it) Greenville this morning.  I think my car could make that hour++ drive all by itself at this point.

Noah seems OK right now.  He’s hovering right below an official fever and has a very “off” look which has his nurse concerned.  The labs should let us know if there is a real problem brewing or not.  His tummy is really acting up, which is often a warning sign of trouble on the horizon.  Monday we’ll set up dates with the surgical office and the orthopedist and I’ll be sure to update if Noah gets worse.

I promise I will get that very happy birthday post up once I’ve gotten some more sleep.    He did have a great time.

Thanks to those who prayed last night!

Blessings,
Kate

I am one tired mommy! Jeff left Sunday for Las Vegas for business, and it is no walk in the park to wear the Mommy hat AND the Daddy hat. He and I have an excellent division of labor and he is very involved in Noah’s hands-on care when Noah is home. I’m very blessed that the children are such great helpers and are chipping in around the house even more than usual. Jeff will be home late Thursday night and I can’t wait to see him again. You would think that it would get easier to be apart since I’m away in the hospital so much with Noah, but it never does get easier and I really miss my sweetheart. Please be praying for him while he is gone. We’ve had some questions about our business so I’ll try to explain in a nutshell. 1. We have our homeschool company, www.handsandhearts.com. We’ve owned it for more than 7 years, but thanks to the CPSIA business has been very bad. The current stay of enforcement for the CPSIA expires on February 11 of 2011 and we don’t know if we will be able to stay open after that day. 2. After the fundraiser held for us in February, we purchased a franchise for Guard A Kid. You can see their website at www.guard-a-kid.com. The short version is that we go wherever there are children (schools, daycares, camps, pediatrician offices, etc.) and do child safety events. We do very comprehensive child identification packages for the parents and do child safety and abduction prevention training for children. (Did you know that 1 out of 42 children will go missing in his or her lifetime??) This has been an excellent business and we have worked hard to get the ball rolling. Our initial training ended up being scheduled later in the spring than we had hoped, so we hit the ground at an odd time with schools thinking about end of year. Jeff has worked hard and we have a lot of large events scheduled for after the start of the school year, but things have been a little slow during the summer. We aren’t alarmed and were told to expect that it would take some time to really gain momentum. 3. Since Jeff lost his job more than 2 years ago, he has been working with (not FOR) a friend of his who was trying to get a new business off the ground. Jeff came on board to offer marketing and sales consultation and help with the understanding that he would be paid on a commission basis when the business began to bring in money. He had the time, he had the vision of what this business could become, and he knew the Lord was in this thing. For almost 2 years the business went nowhere at all, but Jeff kept helping as he could. This spring the thing exploded and this is the business that has Jeff in Vegas this week. It’s a little hard to explain – it is a corporate wellness program that can be offered to employees of businesses. It is being marketed to TPA’s. TPA’s are the “middle men” who interface between healthcare companies and clients. If I were a TPA and you owned, say, Sprint, I would be the person who came to your HR manager and offered him a menu of healthcare options including health insurance, dental, vision, wellness, etc. The healthcare companies woo the TPA’s and try to sell their program to the TPA’s so that they will be on the menu offered to you, the owner of Sprint. (Making any sense?) Wellness programs are the hottest thing for TPA’s and HR managers right now, and this wellness program is truly amazing. Everyone who sees it just loves it. One huge and very powerful TPA invited Jeff and his friend to Vegas this week for a big TPA convention, which is why they are there. This TPA promoted this wellness program in his keynote address and has thrown all of his influence behind Jeff and his friend. Please pray that God will really bless and that amazing things will happen. The strange thing about this business is that no money changes hands until after open enrollment (usually in October), since that is when companies will actually pay their TPA’s for the programs they choose. The TPA keeps a commission, Jeff gets a commission, and everybody is happy. We are praying for an abundant blessing and won’t have any idea of the money involved until the end of the year. I have to say that I am so proud of Jeff and his vision, faithfulness, and diligence. He saw the true potential for this thing when many others couldn’t, and he has brought amazing skills and abilities to the table. I know that I am blessed to be married to such a wonderful man!!! All three of the men involved (the owner, Jeff, and one other man) are deeply grounded believers – in fact, all three have been to seminary and/or have degrees in Bible/theology. It has been incredible to stand back and watch what has happened over the last couple of months – like I said, there is no money in hand at this point but after 2 years of no movement it is incredible to see the momentum. (I should point out that Jeff has not invested any money into this. He has just invested his time and talents to assist the owner. Conversely, the owner has helped us out several times and is the man who bought the plane tickets for me to go to FL when my father passed away.) Please join me in praying for safety, wisdom, and blessings for these men. They also need energy as Jeff told me earlier that they are absolutely swamped with people who want what they have to offer – a great problem to have!! Noah is doing as well as can be expected right now with no big changes or problems. He’s been complaining of a lot of pain in his feet and often says he can’t walk because of the pain. I keep hoping and praying that it will stop/go away but plan to make an appt. with Dr. B next week if there isn’t an improvement. Noah has been thrilled with the steady stream of packages arriving for him!! We had originally planned to save them all for his birthday, but since he has recieved several gifts we’ve decided to let him open one or two a day so he doesn’t get overwhelmed on his birthday. He is so good at playing and enjoying things and it seems to be working well to let him really enjoy one or two new things at a time rather than bombard him with stuff. Since my last post, he’s been blessed with a fishing set (the perfect size for the tub OR a basin of water), an incredibly cool How to Train Your Dragon dragon egg (I confess that it was SO fun for him that I got him another egg at Walmart yesterday!), a How to Train Your Dragon book (plan on reading that after he gets up from his nap), a magnetic dinosaur playset (he actually played with this until he fell asleep today), an adorable stuffed otter which he has been carrying around almost non-stop, and some very cute shark pajamas (being washed so he can wear them tonight). He is such a funny, fun little boy who will croon tenderly over a stuffed otter, feed it a bottle, and rock it – but then grab a dino or dragon and turn utterly fierce in the hopes that he can scare someone LOL. We also got a treat for our family – freeze dried strawberries and bananas. YUM!!! These are so good. (I think the brand is Just Tomatoes.) We had tried and enjoyed a small tub of this type of fruit once from Whole Foods but hadn’t splurged on it again. We were sent two huge tubs and the children have really, really enjoyed this. Thank you so much to all of you who have brightened Noah’s days in this way. It does my heart good to see him go from droopy and yucky-feeling to excited and distracted by some thoughtful gift. When we made his gift list we were careful to choose items that required a minimal energy output – things that he could play with on the couch or at the table. The things he’s gotten have been perfect for that and he is so good at amusing himself that he will sit and play with any given new item for a long period at a time. (I don’t mean he only wants to play with new things, or that he rejects things that aren’t new anymore – I just want those who sent things to know that he is really, really sitting and playing with them very nicely.) Please, please keep Cooper, Eithene, Kate, Rachel, and Samuel in your prayers. The links to their blogs are in the sidebar. All three are facing greater-than-usual challenges right now and really need our prayers (as do their mommies and daddies)! All of the children listed need our prayers, but these precious little ones are really struggling right now. Also, little Preslee passed away just a couple of days after I posted her link. I left it up because I know her parents need our prayers and it didn’t seem right to take it down. I know there are other moms of special needs little ones who read this blog and I want you all to know that you can always email me or leave a comment and I will be more than happy to include a link to your child’s site. I know how powerful prayer can be and how much we have been blessed by your prayers for us, so please let me know if there is another child I can list.

Blessings, Kate

www.prayingforNoah.com

Oh – and Hannah’s foot is pretty much all healed up now. Thanks to those who have prayed and asked about her!!!

We finally heard back from the GI nurse today and it seems like the MII test results were pretty inconclusive.  Noah does have acid in his stomach at times despite the medicines he is on, but isn’t having acid reflux so the Dr. doesn’t feel that it is worth overdosing him on acid meds.  The nurse said that the times when Noah did have (non acid) reflux didn’t seem to correlate with times that he complained of stomach pain, nausea, etc.  Jeff had commented that Noah had an unusually good 24 hours during the test period, so he and I are both wondering if the results would have been different if he had actually been complaining of reflux and choking during the test.

I’m sure we’ll be sitting down to discuss the results with Dr. B before too long and I’m hoping he can shed some more light on them.

Last night was Jeff’s and my 19th anniversary.  When I was a child, the benchmark for “being old” was having your 20th anniversary.  Not sure how I got that in my head, but I always figured I would be just short of an old geezer when I had my 20th anniversary.  Well, I don’t feel too very much older than I did 19 years ago – no geezerhood in sight for me just yet. 

Jeff and I have always wanted to go to the Melting Pot restaurant.  There’s one in Greenville and we actually walked in once . . . then looked at the prices and walked out.  I decided to treat Jeff to a DIY Melting Pot last night.  I made an easy dinner for the children and parked them in front of a new DVD with instructions to pretend that I wasn’t home.  (Yes, I used a DVD as a babysitter LOL.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.)    With some careful shopping, I was able to serve a 3 course fondue meal for Jeff and I to enjoy alone in the dining room.  (Full disclosure – we were MOSTLY alone.  Noah kept finding ways to slink in.)
I made cheese fondue and served it with cubes of French bread and Granny Smith apples, then we cooked bits of steak for the main course.  Dessert was a dark chocolate fondue of course, and I served it with chunks of pound cake, fresh strawberries, and fresh pitted cherries.  There was a lot of the cheese and chocolate fondues left so when we were through eating we invited the children to enjoy some.  I felt like a mama bird dropping tidbits into all of those eager little mouths.    The atmosphere probably wasn’t QUITE as nice as the Melting Pot, but the food was great and the price was right!

Noah has had a pretty good week.  He was delighted to receive two packages this week – one containing an autographed copy of The Dragon and the Turtle, and one containing an awesome mama alligator toy complete with babies.  He is loving both of them and we have had to read him his book at least twice a day since he got it.  He’s also loving the huge (really huge) squishy Great White Shark he got while he was in the hospital.  We’ve had some pretty epic shark vs. gator battles around here!  Thank you so much for your kindness in sending them.

If you’ve read this blog long, you know that I hate to write about wish lists and the like.  I’ve been asked to post a wish list for Noah’s birthday and Jeff and I have really struggled with this.  On one hand, it makes us both a bit squeamish to ask for things like that.  Noah does love to get things in the mail (who wouldn’t??) but we never want to come across like we think he is entitled to get things.  On the other hand, we’ve enjoyed blessing others in the past and it is easier sometimes if you know what the person likes/wants.  We finally decided to create an Amazon.com wish list for him but to only post it in a sidebar link rather than in a main blog post.  If you WANT to see a mailing address for Noah, or WANT to see a list of things we think he would like, you are welcome to click the link to the side.  If you don’t want to see it, that’s fine.  Like I said, he’s not entitled to “stuff,” and he is blissfully unaware that the list even exists.  The link is down toward the bottom under “pages” and says, “Want to send mail to Noah?”

I’ve reinstalled the Disqus commenting system and it should work this time.  You should now be able to reply to comments (threaded comments).  Lynette reminded us that we’ve had a VERY few times where things got a little, ummm, charged in the comments – usually in response to someone posting something hateful.  I don’t think that threaded comments will give anyone any more “power” to misbehave than any other sort of commenting system but it should make it easier to dialogue within the comments and will make it easier for me to reply to questions directly rather than trying to remember to address them in a post.  We’ll see how it goes!

Final bit of bloggy business – yes, I am aware that In Ruby Slippers (my new blog-to-be) is written in Latin.  This is because I am a highly intellectual homeschooler that simply prefers to write in Latin.  Not buying that? -) Fine – it’s in Latin b/c that is standard “placeholder” text for new websites.  It’s something the designer does to let a client see how the text will look on the page.  I promise that it won’t stay in Latin LOL!  If the Lord is willing, I’ll be announcing (in English)a launch date on the blog in a few days.  I’ll be sure to let you all know when that happens.

Blessings,
Kate

(PS – the link I mentioned is not on this blog – it is at www.prayingfornoah.com)

(I’ll be posting updates here and on the new blog for a while.   If you want to see the new blog, it’s at www.prayingfornoah.com)

We had such a nice, relaxing weekend.  In case you don’t know, today is National Ice Cream Day (my kind of holiday LOL), and our local ice cream shop had a big shindig yesterday.  One of the highlights was an ice cream eating contest.  Matthew won his age division last year and participated again this year – he ended up losing by a fraction of an ounce, but Sarah was able to enter in the younger group and she won!  She and Matthew definitely had the loudest cheering section in the place LOL.  I wish I could link to the newspaper article but they are only showing the first couple of lines of the article.  She actually told the reporter that “the competition was deadly” and that she “almost fainted” from brain freeze! (There’s a newspaper clipping for the scrapbook!!) That child is such a hoot and we never know what she is going to say.  The prize was pretty cool – a gift card sufficient to buy 4 box seats at the baseball stadium in Greenville.  She and Matthew also each got t-shirts, frisbees, cooshies, and coupons for free ice cream.  She is NOT a sports fan at all, so when she realized that the boys were drooling over her prize she offered to give it to them.  We rewarded her generosity by getting her a little bead set she’d been eyeing at Wal-Mart, so it worked out great for everyone.  (BTW, they have a policy of only one sibling per age group.  Sarah and Matthew were the first to ask if they could participate, which is why they did it but the others didn’t.)

Last night we had some friends over for dinner and had a great time of fellowship.  Noah is good buddies with 2 of their children who are close to him in age.  He had such a good time getting to play with friends and it was a treat seeing him enjoying himself so much.  The only problem we had is that he melted down when everyone else went outside to play and he had to stay in.  It’s not common for him to be bothered by this, but last night he wanted very much to be in the middle of the action. When the other children saw what was going on, they quickly agreed to bring the fun back inside where it was cool so that he wouldn’t miss out. 

Today has been rainy and stormy.  My mom surprised us by treating the entire family to the movies this afternoon right after lunch!  We saw Despicable Me – absolutely adorable and very funny.  I cried at the end . . .   We went back and forth about taking Noah decided to let him go.  There is no flu or anything running through town and we wanted him to experience seeing a movie in a theater.  He’s been REALLY wiped out today and didn’t enjoy the movie like we thought he would.  He wasn’t scared or unhappy to be there but pretty much just wanted to doze in my lap with his head on my shoulder with only the occasional peek at the screen.  He roused for the credits and laughed really hard at them.  He cracked us all up by telling us how much he LOVED the movie and wants the DVD.  It really was a very funny movie and I’m sure he’ll enjoy seeing it when it comes out on DVD and he can watch it while lying down on the couch.

Since we got home he’s been saying that he is “too sick to walk.”  He obviously feels bad but isn’t acting really sick per se – just totally wiped out.  We tried to keep things low key last night but maybe he played a little too hard with his pals.

I opted for a lazy, rainy day nap with Mary Faith after we got home (if you know me in person, you’ll know I seldom nap, but between the sleepy toddler and the rumbling thunder I couldn’t resist it!) and the dc have been hanging out playing chess and Uno all afternoon.  Jeff and I decided to go for a date night dinner together at home after the dc are all in bed – the perfect end to a great weekend.

The whole weekend just felt so NORMAL.  I didn’t really accomplish anything, but I’m fine with that.  It was amazing to walk away from all of the stuff on my to-do list and just have fun for 2 days straight.

We should get the results of Noah’s MII tomorrow, and I’ll try to post at some point.  Please pray that he wakes up perkier and not “too sick to walk.”  Also, he is continuing to really, really struggle with the tiny bit of g-tube feeding he gets.  The other night the feeds were backing up and leaking out of his stoma only a few minutes after we hooked him up, and he’s woken up drenched in formula for several days in a row now.  I’m guessing that the GI nurse will be the one calling with his MII results tomorrow and I hope to run this by her.

Blessings,
Kate