Life in the Fast Lane

Well, we're not quite to life in the fast lane, but we've come close in the month of January. January is tournament month in high school soccer. Over the last 2 weeks, Jeff has been gone on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday nights, as well as Saturday morning for soccer games. We are also out of the house on Wednesday nights, so this doesn't leave much time for anything.



Last weekend we also had small group on Saturday night and I went to the Camp Longhorn Carnival in Dallas, where I got to visit with my aunt and uncle. It was such a good time as always, but it did cut a few things close since Jeff and I were both out of the house until shortly before we needed to leave for our small group. Rachel did like playing the games. If she ends up going to camp, she'll have lots of merits before she even gets there. I left my children a few merits, and if they give them David's merits, well, then they are raking in the orange! (Merits that is) We have to start a Camp Longhorn folder now so that we can keep up with all the carnival cards.



I have also managed to schedule something everyday this week. Jeff and I are went on a date last night. I had Bible study today, but thankfully Jeff doesn't have a game scheduled. We have youth group on Wednesday and I'm meeting a friend during the day. I get to WORK on Thursday and I'm meeting another friend on Friday.



I'm really excited about starting to work in the schools. I got 3 offers today to work. 2 were for this week and one is further down the road, but an opportunity none the less. I'm looking forward to this new chapter in life where I get to work

Manic Mondays

There aren't a lot of things that need to be done around here on Mondays and our schedule isn't so busy that we're running out the door by 8 or 9 o'clock, but Mondays just aren't my favorite day. Our house isn't true to The Bangle's song by the same name "Manic Monday," but for some reason Mondays are just no fun in our house.



Rachel, on the other hand, can be quite amusing, like my post from yesterday. It was just the other day that I forgot to post this video of Rachel. My parents got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas and we played as much as we had time for. Most of the time when we played, the kids were in bed, but just before we left, Mom and I played a couple of games that Rachel watched. In the video, Rachel is playing Wii, just like Mommy and Nana.

Rachel's Rememberings

Do you know the saying, "Kids say the darnest things"? Well, I'm here to tell you that it's true. Rachel does some of the funniest things.

Last night while I was feeding Rebekah on one couch, Jeff was reading/playing with Rachel while watching the football game. In the past, Rachel has found holes in the bottom of Jeff's socks and said they were dirty and proceeded to take the socks off his feet. Well last night she looked at his socks and said dirty and tried to take his socks off. Jeff insisted his socks were fine and that she shouldn't remove his socks. When Jeff realized that Rachel thought she saw holes in his socks he tried to tell her they were fine, but on careful inspection of his socks, there was a small hole in the sock. It may not be funny to you, but it had me laughing for a while, and it even gave me a good laugh after I'd gone to bed.

Even if I'm not the greatest housekeeper, it's good to know that my daughter can take care of it when I don't want to or feel like it.

When we got home from church today and were eating lunch, Rachel looks in the backyard and says, "Where'd the ball go?" The neighbor behind us moved out and we don't keep balls in the backyard, so we were stumped as to what she was referring. After a minute, I finally figured out that she probably was referring to an instance where the kids who used to live behind us were playing with one of those balloons that you tie a string to and hit it with your hand. Every once in a while you could see the ball go higher than the fence. It's so weird to have her remember things from a while back.

Right now her favorite things to talk about are race cars. She talks about wanting to drive a race car, and asked if daddy drives a race car. I'm not really sure where that came from but still interesting.

On our way home from having lunch with a friend we were going through construction where they are building a new road near our house. She asked what they were doing so I told her they were building a new road. She didn't like this, so she said , "My road". I said, no the people and machines would squish you. Then she said, "I want to help." Not real sure of what she said, so I repeated, "Did you say you want to help build the road?" and she straight-faced said, "Yes."

She's such a big helper and wants to help with anything and everything. One of these days she's going to ask to help with something so big that it's above her comprehension and out of a desire to encourage her helpfulness I'll do my best to make it happen. I don't even know if she'll understand the magnitude of her servanthood or even remember it happening, but she'll continue to amaze me.

Lost at Sea

We've had so many Christmases and we already had more toys than we knew what to do with, so we're swimming in a sea of toys.

We were so blessed by the people we spent time with during Christmas and we received some great gifts too! Some of the gifts we opened were:

White Christmas morning!

Globe

Camera

Musical Noah's Ark Piano

Tricycle

Walking toy

books

A very special ring from Aunt Grace (not technically a Christmas present)

Several cookbooks

and 2 disney princess tea sets!

Rachel also REALLY enjoyed playing with Uncle Robby and Aunt Deidra's doggies! It was very hard to get her to pay attention to other things besides the doggies, including going to sleep.

Left Behind

On Christmas Day I lost my dear Aunt Grace who fought a losing battle with cancer. She left behind a loving husband and 12 year old son. There's no doubt that they are grieving and may have a tough time coping in the next several months and I can't imagine what Christmas will be like next year for them, but we'll definitely be praying for them in the coming days. Thankfully she was a believer and is in heaven with my brother, enjoying the presence of God. We are thankful for the lessons she taught us and for sharing her life with us. We were blessed by her.

After David died, Grace's son (then 6 yrs old) said that David was getting to go to church with Jesus that early Sunday morning. It put a smile on our sad faces that day. A similar thing was said of Grace while we were there, saying she got to celebrate Jesus' birthday with Him instead of here on earth.

All my life my mom has called me Grace by mistake over and over again. It's just fitting that while we were in town for her memorial service, mom called me Grace. I turned around and said, "I'm not Grace." Most of me hopes that she'll keep calling me Grace so that in that moment I will be able to remember her life and smile.

Little Tid Bits

There are just a few things that the girls are doing that are new and sometimes exciting:

Rachel has said lots of words but for those words with 2 or more syllables she only used the first one. This was fairly difficult to try to figure out what she was saying. Luckily in the past few days she has started to use 2 syllables for the words that have at least 2 syllables. Toby now actually sounds like Toby.

Rachel's new favorite food is an orange. I've bought the small oranges called cuties recently, so she asks for them often.

Rebekah is crawling everywhere and pulls up on anything she can find, even if it's just Rachel's stool. So far, she is the shorty of the family coming in somewhere between the 50th and 75th percentile for height. She has 7 teeth and had 3 new teeth within 9 days (I think). She learned to wave at people, although she waves mostly at things she likes (i.e. the Christmas tree). She's even able to wave with both hands now.

In the last week Rebekah has eaten several new things. I gave her some of my orange the other day. She's also eaten a few crackers on her own. I also bought the Gerber veggie puffs to see if we could have a snack for her to eat on her own. I probably won't buy them again, but it was a good food to begin experimenting what she can eat by herself.

We are getting ready for Christmas and Rachel is excited. She likes her ornament and each ornament belongs to someone. We are hoping for a good Christmas with our families, though we are unsure of what it will bring. Please pray for my aunt who is battling cancer and it seems to be spreading and she was diagnosed with pneumonia on Thursday.

Late night phone calls

...or should I say early morning phone calls. The past 2 mornings and Wednesday afternoon, I have been receiving a phone call for a job offer for some stranger. The automated voice says they are calling to offer a job for Tari (long i) Laymoan? Knowing that this isn't my name I push 2 to have them not call me again today. Well, 5 AM Thursday, we get a call from the same number and a weird recording on the voicemail. They call at 6 AM again and I have my phone this time, so I push 2 to not call again.

Friday morning 5 AM....another call! I almost make it to the phone this time and after I listen to the voicemail, I begin to wonder...

Are these calls really for me and could it be the Aesop system for substitutes? By 6AM we figure out that, yes, it's really MY name they are saying. Our only conundrum is that I don't have knowledge of what my password is to prevent the 5 AM phone calls. After a couple phone calls, I found out that I'm supposed to have this said information in an email I was expecting but never received. This information is apparently floating out in cyber space somewhere! Let's just hope that I can get this straightened out so I don't have to be awakened at 5 AM every morning. Some of us need our sleep!

For those of you who don't know, I have been going through orientation and waiting to become a substitute nurse for the school district Jeff works for. Apparently, I've succeeded and am in their substitute system, but boy would I like to stop getting strange phone calls early in the morning.