Marriage in Kindergarten

Oh boy! And so it begins.....my Lainee is already joined in marriage to one lucky little boy in her kindergarten class.

So yesterday, in the midst of all Hailey's viral shenanigans, I received a phone call from Lainee's teacher. Totally expected it was her calling to inform me that Lainee started throwing up at school and I would need to come get her.

Returned her call to find out that silly me, it was just that Lainee was "married" to a friend of hers in her class and that they were holding hands today. My response....I laughed and told her I would speak to her about it when she got home. I guess I should be happy she "got in trouble" for lovin' on somebody rather than being mean or hurtful right?! At the same time I realized we must have allowed our girls to watch one too many princess movies and that they probably think they are living a fairy tale :)

When Lainee came home we talked about it. Lighthearted conversation went like this:

Me: Lainee I got a call from Ms. Langer today.

L: What did she call you for?

Me: Did you marry somebody at school today?

L: Mommy....NOOOOO! "Liam (not the boy she was married to) was telling people that Grayson and I were married.

Me: Were you holding hands with him?

L: noooo...

Me: Lainee, don't lie to me. You will get in trouble if you lie.

L: We were holding hands cause we are best buddies not because we are married.

Me: Ok well can we high five instead of hold hands?

L: Ok Mom.

I am dreading how this conversation is going to evolve over the next 10 years!!!

The third time around....

As a parent, by your third child you start to think of yourself as a "seasoned" parent. This doesn't mean you think you have all the answers, because we all know that every child is different and requires different parenting techniques. And truthfully, we have not even come close to beginning the dreaded teen years. But you become pretty confident in your instincts and judgments regarding your own children. And then just when you are confident you are really in tune with your kids and their needs, your 11 month old comes down with some crazy virus that sends you back into the "new parent" mode, complete with feelings of inadequacy, constant questioning of your decision making capability, and anxiety.

I spent last night in the ER with Hailey following 24 hours of vomiting, diarrhea and then a sudden onset fever yesterday afternoon. After speaking with her doctor, we decided to take her to the ER to make sure she wasn't severely dehydrated and in need of IV fluids. She went from 8 a.m until 6 pm without a wet diaper :( The concerns were increased because she also had cold symptoms prior to starting with stomach symptoms. So simultaneously she has a million symptoms including: vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy (slept all day yesterday...literally) fever, runny nose, cough, etc. Hailey's doctor was concerned about dehydration and/or infection causing sudden onset of fever. As a parent, I had obviously questioned her hydration situation and was worried about how "run-down" she was. Anyone who knows Hailey, knows that she is constantly on the move and rarely is fussy.

So of course I was pretty much worrying about her all day and just needed the words from her doctor to send me in. So we went....and three hours later the diagnosis...."viral illness". This comes with two conflicting feelings. The big one....relief... that it is not all of the terrible things that my brain went to when a baby is ill and can't tell you what is wrong. The second though is embarrassment/annoyance....as a mother of three, shouldn't I know that I just need to be patient and let a virus run its course??? Why is it that when we don't have a concrete answer about something we tend to go to the worst possible scenario??? And the dreaded "v" word means no medicine that will have her on her way to healthy in the matter of hours :(

So....today we are treating the fever with ibuprofen and Tylenol (which I didn't do yesterday because I didn't know if her tummy could handle it) and "letting the virus run it's course". Which every parent knows ...is the worst! The vomiting has subsided and she is eating cheerios and drinking pedialyte. She has been sleeping most of the day again, hopefully that is just what she needs to get better.

I would like to use this experience to remind myself that even with the third child I am still just a parent....a parent who worries and wonders and questions and prays. More than anything, I needed a reminder that God is in control and loves my children even more than I do. He will take care of them as well.

A timely kick in the rear....exactly what I needed to get back on my blogging horse!

Our First Home - March 2006 - September 2011

Moving Day

Well, well, well....guess who didn't stick with her blog?!?! I received a kindly reminder from a couple of our new friends in our growth group of why NOT to start a blog, only write three times, and then quit....because someday, someone might just Google your name and read all about how, when, and why your husband got his vasectomy!
So, this is the re-beginning of our family blog :) I wonder how many people are just like me and start a blog with the best of intentions and lack the direction to reach the desired destination ;)

Since my last post, we did in fact sell our home in Beaver Dam and bought our new house in Sun Prairie. The selling and buying process was one of the most stressful situations we have endured. I have so much to write about, but for today I will just share one part of this process that also happened to be our big "neon sign" from God.

Nathan and I have been focusing on growing our faith over the last 4-5 years. Both of us grew up in families that went to church, but my personal faith and my personal relationship with God never existed until we began attending Harvest E-Free church in Beaver Dam and met some of the greatest friends and Christians we know. Through these relationships I learned how to accept the bible as God's word and the only Truth in life.

I have always been one of those people that has to see to believe. And I was starting to understand that if you let God know what is going on, He will give you direction. For so long, Nate and I were unsure of the direction we were supposed to go in our life. By direction, I literally mean the physical direction we should move or not move with our family. We had had our house listed two other times in the five years we lived there. It was always our intention to move back to the madison area, we just were not sure how we could do that with the housing market in its current condition. So after having it listed two other times with not even one offer, Nate did a little work to our kitchen and we relisted it for sale Memorial day weekend 2011. Knowing that Lainee was going to be starting kindergarten and our house being too small for our new family of five we were praying it would sell quickly so we could move on. Growing frustrated quickly after a couple of weeks with little activity we started exploring other options such as refinancing so we could rent the house so we could still move closer to Nate's job and my family.

I was attending a women's weekly bible study at our church and one week I asked for prayers for guidance and direction from God with our moving/house selling process. Do we take the house off the market to refinance and rent it out OR do we exercise patience and wait for it to sell??? After a lot of tears and hugs from many great women I was assured if anything, God would hear our prayers!

Four days later we called our Realtor to tell her to take our house off the market because we were pretty sure it wasn't going to sell and we would refinance and rent it. She asked if we would give her one day to put together some numbers about what has and hasn't been selling in our area/price range. We were sure this was her last ditch effort to retain us as clients.

She called us the next day, but to our surprise, not with numbers but to tell us she had a couple that would like to see our house. Our thoughts...."WHATEVER" ....we want to remove the listing and all of a sudden she has someone that wants to see it??? We of course obliged, the people came the following evening and we had our first offer, a fair offer, the day after that! WE accepted the offer and all of a sudden we were under contract to sell our house! There were so many emotions involved in those days, but mostly I KNEW it was a huge neon sign from God telling us it was time for us to sell our first house and move on. The praying did not stop there, we had a lot of hard decisions to make about where exactly to move too, which house to buy, where to start Lainee in school because we wouldn't close before the beginning of the school year, etc....but one thing was for sure....God DOES in fact answer prayer and He will give you direction if you ask Him to....you just have to be silent and open enough to see it!

One and a half months later, we had already found our new home and had our finances all set when our first buyer's financing on our old house fell through. We were devastated....for about two hours....until our second buyers offer came!!! At this point we didn't quite know what to feel, all we knew was we were riding a roller coaster of emotions! This happened mid-August, two weeks before we were supposed to close. We closed in mid-September and it was wonderful! A close to one awesome chapter and the beginning of the next. It was extremely hard to leave our friends and church family in Beaver Dam but we were confident we were close enough to maintain those connections and thus far we have. We have also gotten plugged in at a new church in Sun Prairie, where we have met several fantastic people.

We are so excited for what God has planned for us! If I have learned one thing in the last couple years of my faith journey, it is that I am not in control. I am so very thankful that I have gotten to the point in my relationship with God that I trust Him to take control and guide me through this crazy world.

So here I am, wrapping up my fourth post. Hopefully it will not be another 6 months before I post again :)