Getting to Know You....

I'm home in MN again and have to admit that I loved spending the past 3 days getting to know Isaac without the compounding rolls of mommy to 11, wife, moving professional, neighborhood crime fighter and adoption advocate.

As crazy as it sounds, I would encourage other Moms to Many taking a 'Getting to Know You" break with newly adopted children/babies soon after their arrival. It's just so hard to focus on the new ones special needs and personality when everyone else is clamoring to spend time with the baby and fracturing your attention. Since adoptive moms don't have to recover from birthing a new child, the family doesn't build in a natural grace period where we are allowed to just sit on the couch and hold the baby. At least not in my house - the couch turns into more like a pig pile.

So wouldn't it be great to build a three or four day retreat into the adoption schedule where mom and baby get to be pampered at a B&B, do a little window shopping, sleep in, take naps when baby naps, enjoy tasty pastries in tiny tea shops and generally only be responsible for themselves and the baby? Having just been spoiled by spending the past few days at my moms house I can say I have a much better mental attitude and grasp of who Isaac is than I have had of the others at this point. What do you think?

A Quiet Few Days....Prayer Requests

For the next few days I am on sabbatical with my siblings, mom and grandfather and don't plan on blogging much. (But it is my life so that just might change.)

Please keep praying over C as her body heals from this delivery and her heart and mind grieve Isaac's absence. There is no question in my mind that she loves all of her boys and placing a child for adoption, much less two is never easy.

Another prayer need is for a family at church. Their son Joey was born with some very special needs and Saturday at the age of 14 months he unexpectedly passed away in his sleep. This is the link to their Caring Bridge Site for more specific ways to pray over them. (I am posting this with their permission and encouragement - that we might support them in this way.)

The Day After Christmas Hang Over....

For our kids who live with FASD/ADHD/Autism and mixed diagnosis of all three, the buildup to Christmas is almost overwhelmingly stressful. My friend Julie wrote a great post this week on how their family dealt with it this year using Drive By Caroling as therapy for the whole family.

It's now Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) and these kids are beyond exhausted, stretched way too thin and look like they need a 6 hour nap. Of course, part of their challenge is that they almost all have a hard time falling asleep so the recharging rest that is necessary to get their brains and bodies back on track is super hard to come by - at times impossible.

The way I see it we should be back on schedule just about the time New Years hits and we have to start all over again......though I am going to throw a huge wrench into everything and sneak off with Isaac to see my mom in Seattle tomorrow night so who knows how long it will really take!

Christmas Day Photos............

The tree before the kids got up - we don't do too many presents so it helps control the chaos in our home. One from each Grandmother, a family gift from Grandpa John and one or two each from mom and dad. Of course there are the stockings mom fills and the special things they make for each other.

Leah made these great dolls for the three little girls out of our fabric scrap bag.

Jesse is still working out what humor is. I thought it was great that he connected the fake noses from their stockings with this gesture....just as long as we don't transfer the joke to everyday!

Isaac slept almost all day in Grandpa John's lap - they were both really happy with the situation.

I will not freak out......

But I admit to having moments of panic sneaking into my schedule.

One month from tomorrow Robert starts his new job in Colorado - we will have arrived over that weekend and settled into the rental house for our 8 week stint before we can close on the new house. Unpacking shouldn't be hard - unstuffing sleeping bags and stacking the bins isn't very time consuming. But between now and then there is more than I can even begin to think through on the schedule - legal adoption details, fundraising for Isaac's bills, sorting life into piles, medical and dental appointments for every one. On top of it all I really want to slip off to Seattle for a few days to introduce Isaac to my brother Fred (home from Spain for a month) and my mom - she finished chemo and it's safe for me to visit again. If anyone sees great last minute flights please let me know - right now they are too expensive.

Christmas Eve......

Christmas Eve the 2PAC civilian advisory council hosts a dinner at the local precinct for officers, firefighters and anyone else who has to work serving the community through the holiday hours. We gather donations from the community and pool them on Christmas Eve morning to see what we can make with what we have. It's huge fun - I have fallen into the chef/coordinator role for the actual cooking and serving portions of the event. It feels like one of those reality TV shows where you get 12 ingredients and have to serve a special dinner to the judges. Except our judges are overwhelmed with our efforts and are amazingly generous in their praise. Isaac was the special guest this year at 48 hours old. I confess to letting two officers help hold him when he threw a fit while I was working with things in the oven.

Carol O is a special friend I will miss. She is the liaison between police and community for our area. We are a good team and have been able to offer her a safe place to be human when the rest of the community wants her to be more.

After dinner was well underway I headed back to the house and we bundled the crew plus grandpa John into the vans and headed off to church. Six singing in the choirs this year - Lydia and James in this photo. I love watching the little ones in their first concerts. Pastor Sam gave the message - here he is lighting off a firecracker with the 2nd and 3rd grade choirs fascinated. See my Josh under his arm? It takes a lot to get him interested in a sermon but pyrotechnics in the sanctuary is a pretty good start. I was so blessed to watch Josh as he sang tonight - it's a huge challenge for him to do this type of thing especially sugared up and low on sleep.

Isaac slept through the last minute wrapping and then woke up enough to make me really appreciate the 4 hours of sleep I did get when he settled at 1:30am. It snowed and snowed and snowed all night long.......this is more than a white Christmas.

Home..........

28 hours ago Isaac was born - four hours ago C kissed him goodbye - and two hours ago the screaming hoard fell in love with him. I have him in my lap for his safety, the little hands all want to pet and love on him to the point that fights break out. Jerry wants the baby BADDDD - I think he is ready to have someone smaller them him around.

See any family resemblance here? Joe on the left - Isaac in the middle and C's oldest son V on the right. I wonder if Isaac has that pointy chin hiding under his baby cheeks?

It's a Boy?

I went out to the garage to bring the bin of newborn clothing in and realized that all of us had assumed the new baby was going to be a girl. There are cute dresses and pink galore - but there is only about a shoe box full of blue. Drat. Guess I better run out to the thrift store this morning so we have more than two newborn sleepers for this little fellow! Not that I mind buying newborn things again..........:)

Announcing..........

Isaac!

Born safely this afternoon at 19 inches, 7 lbs 9 oz. Both he and C are doing great and I was amazed at how well she managed the delivery. Planning to have him home to meet the brood (Lord willing) ahead of tomorrow's storms.....just in time for our first dinner as a family of 13- which makes us a an even bakers dozen.

Please keep praying - tomorrow will be a hard day for C.

Headed Out....

No word to the contrary so I am headed an hour or so North West to meet C at the hospital this morning where she plans to be induced.....Hopefully I will be able to post from the road. No need to torture you all with silence if there is news.

Oppositional Defiant vs Impulse Control.......

Living with kids who have both Impulse Control issues and Oppositional Defiant tendencies can drive anyone to become confused - in our home we have several with this dual diagnosis and deciding from moment to moment which is causing a specific behavior is like walking the top of a split rail fence. Interpreting if those crossed arms and scowling face are part of the 'seemed like fun to me' attitude caused by the lack of impulse control or if they are part of the 'Don't tell me what to do!!! of the ODD can make my head spin. Then you add in the 'hu?' of short term memory damage caused by the FASD and well....it's a mess.

The holidays compound the issue. Too much sugar, loads of excitement, less sleep than usual, emotional ups and downs and a disrupted schedule might be the definition of a vacation to some people - but in our house it looks like a recipe for disaster. We work to keep things simple because of that and I try to focus on the needs of the child in front of me rather than the freight train of responsibilities behind me. It's hard, really hard. And often times I need to seek forgiveness from the child I unfairly criticised or placed expectations on that were above their abilities. Unfortunately I do it to all of my children - these unfair expectations - the hard words and actions I wish had never happened. What a relief it is to know that I am not supposed to be perfect, just obedient and teachable and trusting wholly in the God who blessed me with these children. Without Him I just couldn't do it.

Everyone Should Sell a House At Christmas....

Shhh.....even with the stress of moving and the anticipated arrival of new baby I have to confess I am loving the extreme order that showing the house requires we live under. Last week we had 6 showings of the house which basically meant we never really moved back in (as in brought out all the stuff we put in the garage) after any of them. Every corner is dusted, every shelf is in order and best of all 95% of all toys are locked in bins in the garage! Even the laundry is not allowed to pile up past a few loads because it's such a fright. Christmas in absolute order....quiet music playing....no nagging chores to catch up on....wow - it's a mommy dream!

Due to Ash Wednesday...

Life is not all stress and chaos in our home right now - last night I was returning a Red Box movie to our local McDonalds and encountered the following sign ....hastily written with a sharpie on a large (24x18) piece of paper and placed in the entry to the restaurant.

"Due to the fact that Ash Wednesday falls on February 17th this year, bingo will be held on the 16th instead - cake will be served and bingo will be played as usual on the 16th."

I read the sign, noted that it was a little odd but wasn't struck with the absurdity of it until I was half way home. Ash Wednesday? It's the week before Christmas for goodness sake! Why are they putting up this tacky homemade sign this week as if it is a last minute crisis? And since when has our McDonalds observed Ash Wednesday? Perhaps all the bingo players are Catholic and refuse to play on Holy Days? I don't know but the more I thought about it the more absurd it looked to me and it's still making me chuckle and think of signs I could post....

The Plan (As Things Stand Today)......

My life is constantly morphing - where I was 12 weeks ago is miles from where I am headed today. In reality it's nothing unusual, but everything is sort of focusing in on this specific two month time frame and it's a tad overwhelming.

As of today the plan seems to be unfolding like this:

Baby: Boy or girl will be born in the next four days and placed with us when they are released from the hospital. I'm thinking on or before Christmas Eve. In MN there is a 72 hour + 10 working day period where their birth parents can choose to revoke their adoption decision. That is the tense time when we tend to add the word 'foster' to our title of parents, just to ease through that breath-holding two and a half week period.

Praying/paying for baby is the next thing that is unfolding. Grant donations are down this year for many organization so fewer grants of smaller amounts are being given. We have paid for about $3000 of the costs through our overtime pay and savings. There is another $4000 promised through two grant organizations and a friend which leaves us praying over another $10,000 or so with two grant applications out and two more for me to write if there is time. It's sort of a strange place - we have no idea what the actual costs will be for the adoption because they havent settled yet so I am using my most educated guess. Something to be said for having lived through 7 other adoptions.

Selling the House: It's crazy busy. We have had 6 showings this week and at this point have two serious 'lookers' (second and third showings) but no offers on the table. I expect we will have an offer in the next few weeks. The good news is that with all this practice the kids and I have cut the amount of time that we need to pull the house together for a showing in half - it's 1.5 hours now vs 3. One more scheduled showing tomorrow.

Buying the New House: As of Tuesday we have our first choice under contract with the only contingency that the current owner find a place to buy/rent by 12/31. After we pass that deadline I will post photos and details. For now you can envision a 1972 walkout rambler with all the original light fixtures, carpet in the bathrooms, 5 bedrooms and a yard three times bigger than we have now. The closing date would be 3/26 to give her time to move.

Leaving MN: The best plan we have is renting a vacant house from the University of Colorado and 'camping' there with the bare necessities from 1/24 until 3/26 - about 8 weeks. That means we would leave MN January 22nd or 23rd with all our worldly possessions in a moving van and all our eternal ones in the van with us. Both will be crowded for sure and that puts us on a 4 week schedule for pulling all our roots up and saying goodbye.

Christmas: The presents have been bought for months, then stashed in the garage when we decided to move, and are now unearthed and thawing in the basement. The joke is on me that half of today's COSTCO run is stored in rubbermaid bins outside the back door as I forgot I have only one freezer - having given the other two to neighbors on Friday. See, there are good reasons to live in MN - endless freezer space 4 months a year!

I am looking forward to cooking for and cleaning up after my last Christmas Eve dinner for the Minneapolis police and emergency workers - that is one of my favorite volunteer commitments of the year. 2PAC (Second Precinct Advisory Council) gathers donations from the community, creates a wonderful buffet and serves dinner from noon Christmas Eve through to noon on Christmas day. Donations of anything are always welcome if you have extra Christmas cookies laying around! Just drop them by second precinct or our house and I will be sure the officers/workers get them.

Six kids are singing in the choir on Christmas Eve and we don't have plans for any big 'company' type events over the next few weeks as new baby settles in. Of course I have given up trying to stick to my plans as the Lords are always more interesting! Maybe I should plan a big 'leaving all my friends' party so that we can all say good bye.

Other than that ....my mom finished her chemo last week (YEAH mom! You did it!) praying protection over her in the next two weeks as her immunities are low. I really am hoping to go visit her with the new baby before we move - depends on airline prices and her health.

Got it!

Home study in my hands and I am flying off to the post office with grant applications! 7 days until Christmas - this is way more fun than shopping!

Inside, Outside, Upside Down...........

Inside - Christmas presents in from the garage to start wrapping at 4:00 this morning.
Outside- The remaining contents of two freezers that have been relocated to neighbors homes.
Upside Down - What I have to do to empty the rubermaid bins after each showing to just get us back to ground zero.

Ok Girlfriends....Baby News!

The call came that we have all been waiting for - news - any news about this potential #11 in our home. The word is that C is expected to deliver between now (EEK!) and next Tuesday - or they will induce her at that point. I'm trying hard not to hyperventilate over the fact that I do not have a copy of our home study yet so I can't send off any grant applications! I will not freak out about this - I will not be my usual A typical control freak self. Instead I am going to ask you to pray. Pray for the details - C would like me to be there when she delivers and I am all for it but there is a 2 hour drive between us so timing will be important. Pray for the finances - no home study to mail out = no grant applications before placement = no grants to cover the costs because the child is already in the home. Please pray for C and M - our joy in receiving this child is based in their pain in releasing them. Other than that....I guess I will run over to Target tomorrow and pick up a few bottles, a pack of newborn diapers and find the infant car seat frozen in the garage. Ready to be giddy with me? It's a new baby for Christmas!

The End of a Midlife Crisis.....

Five years ago we bought a used 2001 Neon for Robert to use as a commuter car. Compared to our full sized Express it looked like a sports car and satisfied his 40 something mid-life crisis. Not to mention that it was quite a step up from the 1988 full sized 'Goldie' we had inherited through our family the week the twin towers fell. Shoot - the Neon even had a tape player!

Today we officially ended his mid life crisis and handed him the keys to his own 2002 Grand Caravan - the same green as his Neon, but able to carry more than three of our children at once. The timing was perfect - we didn't want to take the Neon with us and then look for a car in CO due to the potential challenges of finding a pet-free vehicle there. Thankfully a close (and also allergic to animals) friend made it possible for us to have the van by buying a new one last week and only asking us to pay $1500 for her old one. It was fun to watch as he happily drove away to church tonight with all 6 kids safely buckled in - wonder if he noticed it has sliding doors on both sides yet....way cool in our outdated world!

Prayer Request for Maisy's Big Brother Aaron.....

Julie is back in the hospital with her teen son Aaron tonight. One of his shunts failed - thankfully they identified the problem and now can (or have) done the surgery to correct it. Here is the link to her site to find out more.....or as she posts I will update here.

Please be in prayer - especially that they will be able to manage his pain. Because of his challenges he can't just tell them how much it hurts.

Let's Dispell the Myth......

I am not the perfect mom. Do I hear a gasp, stunned silence, perhaps a paralyzing inability to accept this heart wrenching reality? It's true, and guess what....some mornings I just don't feel like changing all those diapers before a morning cup of coffee and so I don't. Or I can't find a ready smile for the child I had to visit 6 times over the 8 hours that I had hoped to sleep. I am often short tempered and hurried, forgetting to stop and look into the children's eyes as I listen to their complaints, so that I can seek the root of the argument - instead making a hasty decree and losing the chance to know their hearts.

Some days I don't want so many kids under my feet 24/7 - my eyes follow the school bus as it passes with a longing that in the moment is extreme. To just let their education be 'someone elses problem' looks so easy. After 8 sequential Sundays battling with an oppositionaly defiant child I admit to playing the 'remember when' game. Remember when I used to hear whole sermons, remember when all of my children smiled when the camera came out, remember when I could have a conversation with other adults while the children quietly waited for us to finish......remember when my life wasn't so extreme. When it wasn't filled with others who were destructive, dangerous, dysfunctional, delayed, and most of all angry.

I get to there- that list of the d's+angry and my heart starts to shift back to center. After all, they didn't ask to face the challenges they have. Be it heredity, prenatal exposures or simply God's plan, none of them said 'make me different, make me hard to live with, make my life 100% more challenging than the kid next to me.' They didn't, but in the process of adoption we agreed to walk with them through it - whatever it may be. I am not the perfect mom and they are not the perfect kids, but we are made for each other because we trust the God who builds our family one child, one crisis, one sustaining moment at a time.

Resorting to Bribes.......

We have been homeschooling for 9 years and parenting for 13. I have recently broken and am now wholeheartedly abandoning one of our guiding family principles for behavior modification - I am resorting to bribes. Yeah even worse I am using candy - I have simply lost the impulse in this chaotic season to constantly inspire the kiddos to complete their schoolwork because it's the 'right' thing or simply their 'job.' Instead I have a box of 30 full sized candy bars sitting in my cupboard and I am going to buy them off for tasks completed. The amazing thing is that once my ADHD/FASD/ODD kiddo caught wind of the new game they ran off and did 2 math assignments (correctly and voluntarily) in 15 minutes. WHAT!? It's 45 minutes of excruciating torture to get one assignment done on a normal day - I'm thinking Snickers are cheap if they give me back an hour and a half of my day and an extra measure of sanity. Cheap indeed.

A Little Lighter Than That Last Post....

This is the 5 foot tall book shelf that I have loved -but that is in reality a vintage wall cabinet from the neighbors basement (amazing what a little green paint can do!) My boys cracked the glass wrestling over the weekend and I passed it and the mirror on a few months early to Emily 5 doors doors down. It's been here in the neighborhood for 100 years - didn't feel right to move it out with us and I didn't want to damage it any further with our rough play.

Joe hiding. Not much else to say about that - the kid is the best at hide-and-seek because he likes small tight places.

John displaying the new hats my friend Mary Whitehead knit for all of us. The photo was fun - but the sneezing allergy attack he had moments later that caused them all to fly off was even better. I think Mary has a cat! :) (Thanks Mary - they are all, wearing all of them, all the time and at 0' right now that's fine with me!)

Carrie knows what this is.....it's her yummy Chicken Salsa Chili defrosting in warm water in my claw foot tub. I had so much sorting going on in the kitchen that it was my only option tonight for defrosting. It tasted wonderful and I heated both batches so that I will have enough to serve Millers lunch tomorrow - Speaking of which - Jan do you have chips to go with it?

For any of you who are adventuresome eaters we mixed in sour cream and guacamole and it was absolutely decadent!

Diagnosis Mill for Autism...

Hows that for an inflammatory title? My goal here is not to throw a fit about the particular clinic that we were accessed by yesterday but to shed a little light on the process by which they came to some startling and I believe inaccurate assessments of my child. At the end of three hours they were ready to recommend us for every service under the sun - from OT/PT to Speech Therapy, PCA services to Special Ed, and anything in between. It was creepy to watch them fit our life into the two kids, live in the suburbs, go to public school paradigm that the testing processes were designed to access. It scared me to watch how fast and inaccurately they made huge decisions about his IQ and abilities.

Some of the questions he 'failed' demonstrated how biased the testing processes are toward kids who are drilled into only one way of thinking within their classroom and can only think alone those lines. Things that other normal boys his age draw and talk about - swords, wars etc are considered signs of violence within this test process and when he dared give an answer that demonstrated global thinking vs selfcenterdness they classified it as a lack of self awareness - something that needed to be addressed. Please! You are telling me that a child who doesn't wish for toys and material things is messed up and needs intervention? If he had said he wanted legos instead of our new baby for Christmas he would have gotten a higher score. What is that?

Some of it was good - I learned some of the lingo for what we have experienced. That season where he was eating everything poisonous and dangerous he could lay hands on and I felt like I had to take dramatic measures to help him decide not to - was actually a normal and expected thing with kids who show autistic tendencies. I established a strong and negative cause/effect relationship between eating non food items and the throwing up caused by Icapec syrup. The bad taste of the items was not enough to make him stop - I had to escalate the situation so that he would make a concrete decision not to ever put non-food things in his mouth again. I did and it worked - but I have always wondered why I had to go there. It has happened in other areas also but that is the clearest one to explain.

Overall I am glad that we went but I am not putting much weight to their assessment. The child they are describing in their evaluation is not the one I live with. They took a three hour snapshot of him and then compared him to a standard suburban child - 180' from our life and when we discussed why his answers were not what they expected of a child his age they didn't even get the basics of what I was saying. These women had no idea what it meant to live in the inner city, to have a family of 12 and to NOT live a live focused on commercialism and the power of others opinions about what you do.

It was money well spent to learn that that is a pool of opinion and reality we don't want to go much further into. Not that I am in denial - but the child they were describing (and that they believed they saw) is not the one we all know. Not in my wildest nightmares.

Washer/Dryer and Christmas Candy....

The kids and I love to make Christmas candy and eat it! This week we made chocolate and vanilla peppermint bark and they all had a great time smashing the mints to mix in. Now we are planning for Boeing Balls (a type of rum balls), peanut brittle, English Toffee, and buckeyes - and I have a batch of fruit cake calling my name.

Yesterday was washer/dryer day. 6/1/09 we found this brand new set languishing in the alley and called the police. Six months later they were unclaimed at the stolen property warehouse so now they are ours. Isn't that a funny way for God to provide for this particular need? Even funnier? They are both electric which is not what I use in this house - but is what I would use in the one we made an offer on in CO.... and we should get an answer on that offer today.

Grandma birthday card. One thrilled 5 year old.

Moving Forward on Two Fronts....

Things are starting to shift and settle out around here. This morning we made an offer on a home in Colorado Springs and last night our social worker called to say that our homestudy was complete and being sent into the office today. Yeah on both counts! It feels like the iceberg of things 'to be done' is starting to move.

Not Dead - But Dead Tired!

It's odd for me to be so silent here on the blog - strange enough for girlfriends to start calling 'to be sure everything is fine' and for messages to start popping up on Facebook. Fear not, all is good here - it's just been a whirlwind 48 hours. This is the rundown:

Today is Lydia's 6th Birthday! Yeah Lydia! Tomorrow we will make a doll cake and celebrate her arrival into our family with gifts and excitement. I am always sobered when I think that another year has passed since April entrusted her into our care, and I am so thankful that we were in a position to receive her with joy. Lydia marked today by earning her yellow belt in TKD and breaking her first board with her fist. Great job honey!

Today was belt testing for all of us at TKD John/Jesse/Josh/James/Leah and I all moved to High Green, Lydia to Yellow and Noel to Orange. Everyone did a great job and there was only the slightest tint of any ODD, ADD, or anxiety manifesting in any of them. How fun is that for the over tired mommy?!A high point for us today was witnessing as our friend Pat L. AKA: Pit Bull (or in my off moments I have called him Mad Dog) received his First Degree Black Belt. Pat is a great leader, teacher and friend to our family. It will be hard to leave him in MN as well as our other friends at TKD. Not that we wont miss Master Griffin and Mr O - we will - but Pat is special.

Master Griffin, Pat L, and Mr O

House Hunting: The second day of power shopping for homes was better. The snow stopped, the clouds lifted and we found several in Colorado Springs that might work. One in particular we are looking into making an offer on - it's a classic 70's 5 bedroom rambler with walkout basement - in a moderate area -with a decent yard and best of all....no pets! I hadn't realized how hard it would be to find a home that wasn't full of pet dander until I tried. I love our realtor - Wynne Palermo of Wynne Realty in Colorado Springs. She invested two days orienting me to the city showing me houses and talking through what we are looking for in a home. Not to mention all the work we did ahead of time!

House Selling: Not much there. I had to turn down two showings in the past 2 days (darn!) one would have been while I was out of town -just hours after Robert got home from taking Joe into the ENT to have the legos removed from his nose under anesthesia because the ER couldn't get them the night before. The second call came as we left for TKD this am....nope there was no way I could pull the house together and get 8 of us to the belt test in half an hour - that just wasn't going to happen either! Good news is that people are wanting to look at the house - and that our schedule is freed up now to be flexible. Because of our trip to Colorado I am realizing the value of a 'pet free house' on the real estate market but I am not sure how to market that fact with ours. It's an allergic persons dream - no carpet - no pets of any sort for over 10 years and very little mold. Have to think on how to find those people who might find these things a benefit.

That's enough for today - I'm beat tired after arriving home in the middle of the night, fighting dehydration all day and making it through the reconstruction phase that follows mommy being gone for 48 hours. At this point church with the crew tomorrow is looking like a breeze - even with a split schedule and two of the kids singing in the services.

Update From the Road....

Before I left MN this morning my main prayer was that each house we looked at would be a clear 'yes' or 'no.' Silly thing that I am, I am now a tad depressed that of all the homes we looked at none was the right one for our family. My prayer was answered and I am pouting - Lord forgive me.

Last I heard from the home front, Robert was on the way to the ER with Joe who has a real problem with putting things up his nose. (Joe not daddy) I'm not sure what he got up there this time but neither daddy nor Pam could get it out so daddy gets his first solo ER run tonight.

I'm sure I will post again tomorrow - my prayer remains the same - a clear 'yes' or 'no' on each of the houses that we see and a thankful heart for either answer.