God's Will-Inside the Red Sea

We've been having a great week full of new experiences and making our house into our home! I have spent countless hours unpacking boxes, hanging pictures and wondering how it is possible that we could own so much STUFF!

 A bit of a spiritual note for those who have missed that in my last few posts. My husband has been thoughtful enough (and also learned from experience) to give me a morning a week that I can truly spend in God's Word & Prayer. This is something that aim for everyday, but as a mother who is rarely found without a 2 extra pairs of blue eyes peeking over her shoulder, it is nice to have a day that I know I can spend quality, uninterrupted time focusing on God's will. This week I headed to a Starbucks in Denver and settled in comfortably. I have a devotional that from time to time I pull out and add to my reading: "Great Days with Great Lives". I wouldn't say that I love it, but I often find it hits me right where I need it, or offers me several "nuggets" that I ponder throughout the week. Moses was the focus of this weeks passage. A story that I've heard since I was probably 3, but it amazes me that the Bible is so timeless and consistently relevant that I can always learn something new or see something from a brand new perspective.

God's timing is found all throughout the story of Moses and the Israelites. There are so many times that God could have intervened or answered the people's pleas, but He waited for His timing and His plan. God's timing and Plan are perfect and have nothing at all to do with our own timetables, a truth that often frustrates me completely. My frustration however comes from my total lack of understanding not only of what the future may hold, but also who God is. Where then do I find a peace in trusting in God's time and His will? - in what I do know. The Bible is true. God is faithful. God was amazingly faithful to Moses even when there was no easy solution. He parted the Red Sea!! If that doesn't show that God is willing to do whatever it takes in the right timing, I don't know what does.

This had me thinking about our own lives (my family) and the timing of our move and where God's will is taking our lives. God could have chosen to move us at any time but he didn't, he chose now. In God's will is an incredible place to be, like inside the Red Sea, it is amazing.

A little Blurry, but the boys new tape recorder

Other mentionables of the week include a cassette recorder with 2 microphones that I scored at Savers for a dollar. I knew it was perfect for our kids when I noticed It had 2 microphones and not one. The boys LOVE IT! They have been singing and recording and playing back and loving it. I had to round up some blank cassette tapes, but one call to my mom and she had several in the mail so we are set for a while. Church has been great and Joshua is really enjoying Awana. Jonas loves going to the nursery during the service and I cannot even begin to explain how great it has been actually getting to hear a sermon "live". The kids also had a super fun time at Chick-fil-a today. We stopped in to have lunch and they got to run around in the play place there. Joe was so sad when we left and Joshua has already asked when we can go back to "Chick-Way again."

We are settling in, making new friends and seeing where God's will takes us.

The New House- A Work In Progress

Many of our friends and family have asked to see pictures of the inside of the house. If I wait until it is clean and everything is unpacked I'll be posting the house pics along with Joshua's graduation pics I'm afraid. Be warned that the house is NOT CLEAN in the following pictures, but they do provide a good idea of what our new home looks like. I have just begun the task of moving furniture around and actually decorating while I'm unpacking so hopefully this will satisfy the wonderment for a while :) We haven't painted in any of the rooms yet. We are going to paint Joshua's room first and begin that this coming week.

These first pics are of the living room/dining room area

The next pictures are of the Kitchen. I love the Kitchen it has just enough counter space without being so much you're constantly wiping the counters!

Joshua's room is looking good but will be amazing when we get it painted and the wall words etc. up.

I did notice that in this picture there is underwear hanging from the ceiling fan. hmm....wonder what else Joshua does when I think he is sleeping

 Our bedroom probably needs the most work of any room in the house. We've only unpacked a few things. But my mom did just buy us this beautiful bedroom set that we LOVE!

Joe's room is going to be super cute and decorated with Robots but for now the fabric is just hanging out on the window :)

The family room use the be the garage so it is really a large comfy room for watching TV and playing with the kiddos.

I love this room, I'm not quite sure how to arrange everything in it yet, but I love it!

Luke has his office at the church, but the house also has a home office for him (so cool)

Luke's been at the church working all week so he is no where near being unpacked at home.

There is tons of room for storage:

This is baby clothes/ Christmas decor storage

Where we are currently stashing our empty boxes, not sure what I'll put here later

This will hopefully be my sewing/craft area once we move our bikes and other garage items

Lastly is The kids' playroom. I plan to really work on this area and make it supercute!:

This house is in no way small. In fact there is a laundry area, 2 bathrooms and an extra bedroom that I didn't even take a picture of because they're boring and I already had so many pictures!! We are loving the house and as you can see there is plenty of room for company so feel free to come stay with us!

Coloradians

There have been a few minor bumps in the road since we arrived at our new home in Colorado. The pirate room seems to be on plan C currently. Once everything got unloaded from the moving trucks (which took about 3 hours, many men and a few women who worked VERY hard) Luke set to work trying to maneuver our crib into a toddler bed for Joshua. The plan was to convert the crib and then build a mast and add a ship's steering wheel to the bed to "pirate-it-up a bit". Well, in actuality the Crib doesn't turn into a toddler bed it turns into a transitional bed which will not work for a child as large as Joshua :(

Onto plan B for the bed we looked into buying a twin mattress and box spring and maybe making the steering wheel at the head of the bed attached to the wall.....well the cost was going to be similar to buying an entirely different bed at IKEA so Joshua is getting a very cool Plan C. The bed we bought for him yesterday is a little loft bed with a little cove underneath to play in and it has a tent that goes over the top. We are still planning on attaching the steering wheel and I will post a pic as soon as Luke finishes putting it together. He is hard at work on it as I type this. The last obstacle with the pirate room...for now that is....is that the bedding I ordered was for a toddler bed and not a twin bed. Well, my mother has agreed to take a look at the sheets and see if she can add some material and sew something together. Also, last night at target I purchased a pirate red comforter for only 10 bucks! I think that will look pretty good with the pirate blanket he already has.

Things are coming together slowly but surely and I think that we will start painting his room late next week! I'll get some pics of the house up as soon as I get enough boxes unpacked. We are hard at work making Colorado our new home!

6 days to go!

Quick update. The moving truck is here! Joshua and Jonas could not have been more excited when the Giant moving truck pulled up with 2 huge trailers. I'm pretty sure that all of Joshua's dreams came true when the driver honked the horn for him. So far the day has been filled with lots of excitement and Joshua chanting Col-o-rado! Col-o-rado! I'm glad that everything seems to be going smoothly and we are all very excited. One of the highlights of my day so far has been picking up lunch at Subway and discovering that February is any footlong for $5! In fact I was so excited I bought enough for us have 2 meals of subway and bought lunch for the guy behind me too! For those of you who don't know- Subway is the only fastfood chain within 22 miles so this is big deal :)

Soon to be filled!

From now until the weekend you may not here much from us. We will be packing, loading, tying up loose ends, and saying our goodbyes.  I ordered a new wall saying for Joshua's pirate room but probably won't get much more done on that until we are in the new house. Can't wait to start posting pics of our new digs!

Soon to be on Joshua's bedroom wall!

Bittersweet, what's the point of that?

One week to go! Lots done and still lots to do. The best news is that we managed to get most of our checking account money back, and the rest has been temporarily replaced by wellsfargo pending their fraud investigation. In other words we were finally able to buy milk, trash bags and other much needed supplies :) Praise the Lord, I know that situation could have been much worse.

Packing is going well and the Moving truck is coming is a just a couple of days. The reality of the move will set in soon as we begin to empty our current home until it is no longer ours. Every morning Joshua asks how many days until we live in Colorado. He has become overly enthusiastic about the change and consistently talks about his new home. I'm so relieved that he is happy about the changes and not sadly dragging his feet. Jonas of course would be thrilled even if you told him were going to live in a tent somewhere, he is one of the most easy going kids I've ever met (a blessing for sure).

Today is Luke's last Sunday preaching at MBC, he is baptizing one of our dear friends this morning. When she asked to be baptized Luke was thrilled, "I can't imagine a better way to wrap up my ministry here". This last week has been a mixture of feelings for us. Bittersweet for sure, although I'm reminded of a quote from The Office when Michael says: "That's why I hate bittersweet chocolate. I don't even... what's the point of that? Why not just sweet? Who are you helping?"

So glad that in just over a week we will be past all the sad goodbyes and stressful packing and on to the fresh starts, new friendships & excited unpacking!

Disaster, murphy's law, or whatever you want to call it.

Chaos, utter chaos is what has become of our lives. Several people have been wondering how preparations for the move have been coming. Let me open with this vignette: Monday morning we were shopping at walmart when Luke's check card was denied several times. Impossible! I gasped since we have overdraft upon overdraft protection even if we were out of money the transaction should have been processed, not to mention that I had checked our account online before heading out and saw we had plenty to draw from. Thanks to modern technology I just logged on wellsfargo.com on my phone and found our funds depleted by fraudulent activity. Luke's card had already been deactivated due to the bank suspecting fraud. Needless to say this has been a very stressful week of dealing with phone calls, disputes and of course no money.

Yesterday was Luke's birthday and yes we did manage to have some sort of celebration. Luckily I work in advance on things and had already bought Luke's present, we ventured out for dinner at our favorite Mexican place and came home to out favorite Babysitter Morgan saying that we didn't owe her anything. That girl is such a blessing to our family not to mention the object of a 4 year olds crush. She will truly be missed by our family.

We are a little in limbo until the bank reimburses our funds so work on the pirate room has yielded for a bit. I did manage to purchase Joshua's bedding before all of this happened and it arrived today in the mail. Very cute and he caught just a glimpse of it when I had it out to match paint samples to, and he gave his enthusiastic approval. I also started work on a shelving unit that will hang in his new room and hold things like medications, Cds and other small items he frequently needs.

Bedding & Paint Samples

Shelf about half done

Our life is not without God's blessing though, just yesterday an anonymous person blessed us immensely knowing that we were in a financial situation and really helped us beyond what they know. 

We have been boxing things up and the moving truck will arrive a week from today! Hopefully by the next time I blog our bank account will have been resuscitated.  

New adventure...and a Pirate Room

We're Moving!!! I'm not a huge fan of change, but I am getting excited for our upcoming move. When Luke and I first entertained the idea of packing up our family and heading to new opportunities (after MUCH PRAYER!) both of us had the same concern....Our oldest son. Joshua much like myself doesn't function as well outside of routine and known outcomes. Luke and I brainstormed and we decided that if turned out that God's plan lead us to a move we would be sure to entice Joshua's excitment as much as possible. My first idea for this was to come up with a plan for a superhero bedroom. I thought that I would compile photos of possible super hero decor and show them to him. Well my idea worked!......sort of.



We approached Joshua asking him what he would think of getting a new house, and new bedroom. Things seemed to being going pretty smoothly and he seemed to be understanding there would be packing involved and a long drive and then I proposed the superhero bedroom idea. "how would you like your new bedroom to be a superhero room?" Tada, I thought, but he just looked at me solemn faced for a moment, then came back at me with an unexpected counter offer. His eyes were wide and excited as he announced it, "a pirate room mommy." Like any good negotiator I quit while I was ahead. "It's a deal."

Bag of soon to be pirate room decor

Well since I'd only researched hero decor it took me a few days and a lot of Google-ing to come up with some possible pirate room ideas. Believe it or not there are not that many great 'little kid' pirate room ideas out there, I have had to really stretch my creativity but I think that I am finally on the right track for designing something that I think Joshua will love. As we pack, move, unpack and decorate I know our families will be wondering what we are accomplishing so I plan to update this blog with our status periodically.

the finished banner for Joshua's new room

So far we have about 15 or 16 boxes packed up and have been hard at work throwing things away, and getting somethings ready to donate in hopes of downsizing some. I made the trek to Sioux Falls a day or so ago and got some pretty crazy looks when I asked for advice on what fabrics looked the most Pirate-y. But I have been able to round up some supplies that I think are finally starting to come together nicely for the much anticipated Pirate room. Even though Joshua asks repeatedly when he will be getting his pirate room, for now Luke and I are just glad that he seems excited to be moving and has yet to show any nerves about it.

Next Blog I'll hopefully have the curtains done!

A new ministry adventure is just beginning for us all!