We're MOVING!
Finally! I've been taking loads of stuff over to the new place for the past week or so and when Josh has been off work he's done some of the things I can't do like installing the washer/dryer and closetmaid stuff. I think on Sunday we will start taking some furniture over but Im not sure if I want to start with the beds or end with the beds (which would take another week possibly). I hope the transition will go smoothly for the kids and I feel hopeful that it will because they are already there everyday and many of their toys are there already. (I'm not thrilled about not having a garage there, but we'll figure out something to keep things like the bikes safe.) We are eating some meals there as well and Megan is seeming to warm up to the changes that are coming. Yesterday we were there all day long doing stuff and it was hard on Dawson but I think once the beds are there and we are settled instead of going back and forth so much, he will do better. If he isn't adjusted soon I won't be surprised because I'm not sure I will adjust all that quickly. lol

When he wakes up, we are going to Target to look for a pantry cabinet to help me with the lack of storage this house has. I found one online that I like but I want to look in a store or two before I order.

My FIL had his prostate removed (I think totally) a little over a week ago and is doing better. He had a rough couple of days after coming home from the hospital but is out walking around in the nice weather a few times a day and is keeping busy by cleaning out all his drawers. I think they got rid of 1/2 their clothes this week. lol I've done a lot of that too lately. I think I've taken 4 van loads to Christian Ministries in the past couple of months.

Dawson has grown an inch in 2 months and looks quite a bit slimmer these days. He hasn't lost any weight though. His legs are way slimmer but his little gut still has plenty of baby fat. :) He told me this morning "moo" when I asked what the cow said. IT wasn't clear but I knew. :) He still doesn't say much more than "UH" though. ITs frustrating for me and for him too. I hope his little tounge will loosen up soon. Megan is the same. Shes way too smart for her own good though. ITs so funny to hear the things she says and the processes she comes up with for things. Something that I think is funny...the one tv personality (if you want to call him that) that she knows is "Benny Hinn Misteries" (ministries). lol

Well, D just woke up so its off to target now.

Wow! Its been awhile!
Lots has happened. Josh took that job in huntersville and when he got there, the job didn't even exsist yet and they wanted him to be a salesman for an undisclosed amount of time while they worked on getting it. Turns out, the owner was fighting the position, as was the Gen. Mgr. so who knows when it would have come about. Josh quit on Friday of the same week and went back to Valley. I believe God used that to get Jody out of J's life as well as to teach Josh what he was taking for granted at Valley. He has been back almost a week and is WAY happier than he was in huntersville driving that distance and not seeing us much. J's dad is having surgery on Feb. 25 for his prostate cancer so they want us in the house before then and that is another reason J didn't want to be working an hour away. I believe that we will still be out of debt at the end of the year regardless of where Josh is working so I'm not upset to lose the salary he would have made as a manager. There is a reason for everything.

Megan has decided she doesn't like black people based on 3 men who delivered some furniture to my mom yesterday. They weren't dressed horribly or anything, but admitadly they looked very different than what she is used to seeing. (not that she has been sheltered in the slightest, we just don't have any black friends...maybe we need to be like George on Seinfeld and look for some. lol) Anyway, they scared her and despite our trying to convince her that God made them the way they are and that they are just like us, she has her mind made up that they are scary. I don't know what to do. She has a black bible study teacher and today she said she didn't want to go to BSF because her teacher was black. She did go though and finally let my mom leave her in her class. SHe said she had a good time and will go back next week. How frustrating though. I hope she will forget about being scared of the men in mom's house. They were very nice and polite men and except for the peek-a-boo butt crack on one of them, there wasn't anything strange about them. (well, I don't consider the braided hair strange, but to a 3 year old it may have been...who knows.) I just hope she doesn't decide to say something in public like my older sister did when she was M's age..."My mom told me about you people!" (blushing icon needed here)

D has a piece of enamle that has come off his tooth in front. It was the strangest thing to see it gone when it had been there earlier in the day. All of a sudden it was gone. I'm not worried about it right now. Megan needs to see a dentist though soon. SHe is 3 now and hasn't been yet! Her birthday was fun and full of ballerinas and princesses. She got some Angelina Ballerina stuff. I called a local studio about classes for her and it will be about $200 to start up. We don't have that right now so thankfully she isn't begging for them. She still loves gymnastics. D isn't talking at all still. Besides mama and dada, his words are all baby blabber still. After my sister checked his hearing the first time and he failed, a few days later he passed when she checked again. SO, from that I can figure that based on the amount of congestion in his head at any time, his ears may be plugged up or not, possibly effecting his hearing. Thankfully its not a constant thing though.

I have baby lust and told Josh if he would take me last night, I could get pregnant. LOL He wouldn't touch me with a 10 foot pole after that. I know we need to wait...its hard. lol

I don't know who said that 2 year olds are hard. I think 3 is WAY worse! Her will is Iron strong and won't bend for anything when she gets her mind on something. SHe won't even stop long enough to listen to a compromise. All she hears is "no" or "not right now" and shes off the deepend. Its a severe pain. I try to remember all the good things about a strong willed child...are there any? lol

We just got back last night after spending 4 dyas at the beach. We had a great time and it was really relaxing not to have to do too much. We did cook in most meals in, but we got out some too. We went the first morning to the ocean and Megan took off her shoes and socks and we let her walk in the water some. It got really windy while we were there though so we left and went to Wendy's for lunch. The next day we had promised to buy Megan a new helmet since I ran her's over so we found a wal mart and got her a new set. That afternoon while D napped, I got to see "Two Weeks Notice" with my sister and mom. The next day my sister's family was leaving so we hung around all morning and then Josh took Megan to the Alligator Adventure Park. They had a really good time there too. The trip down was really pretty easy despite being in the middle of the night. I had to pee really bad once and couldn't find anywhere open so I peed in a diaper which was pretty funny. I sat there for several minutes not able to go because it just wasn't natural to pee that way. Then when I started, I couldn't stop and got scared that I would over flow the diaper. All was fine though thankfully. THe trip home was in the day time and was a bit more stressful but not too bad. I'm really glad we got to go. The last time we went on vacation was almost 2 years ago. We are planning to go to the outer banks this summer and then next year at this time we hope to go to Charleston, SC. WE weren't that pleased with the resort we chose this time because they didn't have an indoor pool or a pool available to us despite the fact that they told us there was one. The rooms were nice and big but the ammenities in the room weren't as good as others we have stayed in. I can't complain though. We had an almost free vacation.

Christmas was fun and not very stressful at all despite cleaning the house from top to bottom on tuesday because family was coming over for brunch on CHristmas morning. It was amazing how much mess just a small pile of presents could make, but flylady came out and got the house whipped back into shape on wed. night. I also packed up 2 garbage bags of stuff that no one plays with and there is more to come when I have more time. Everyone just left for Myrtle Beach and Josh and I decided to go down as a family when he gets off work on tuesday. Hopefully it won't be too late when he gets off. Mimi got in a fight with a cactus when no one was looking this morning and I keep pulling pokies out of her body. My BIL was supposed to be watching her and I looked outside and there she was...not that she hasn't been told before. Poor girl.
My sister is an audiologist and she checked D's hearing this morning...he has fluid in both ears and failed the hearing test in both ears. :( I guess if he fails again before they go home next week I will take him to the dr to make sure everything is ok. Josh starts at the new dealership on the 6th in the sales department but they dont think it will take long to transition him into the new position. THey have to convince the owner they need him, but neither manager feels it will be a problem since the guy doing it now isn't really able to give any attention to the store in huntersville because the store in Charlotte needs him too much. I'm not bothered by him selling down there though because the salesmen there make twice what Josh has been making, and it won't be too long...anyway, YAY! Another answered prayer.
After D wakes up, I'm going out to look for party stuff for M's birthday and 2 helmets. M's helmet was going to be given to D, but somehow it got under the van this morning and isn't worth 2 cents anymore. :( Always something. LOL

Well, we decided not to buy the Impala. There were too many reasons that I kept coming up with why I didn't want a car and low and behold, yesterday (after getting D's cast off) there were 3 2002 Chrysler Town and Countries sitting outside that had just been delivered. I told Josh to find out about them and call if it looked like something we wanted. Well, I had no sooner walked in the door and Josh was calling to tell me to come back. I put the kids back in the car and we flew back to the store and drove home a sage green one. :D Its just a little more expensive but I feel so much better driving it and it suits our needs more. Josh of course is happy that I am happy but quite dismayed that we are buying a Chrysler product. LOL (It is still under warrenty and has way less miles on it than the Impala had. It was a former rental car though as well.)

The other good news, and please pray for this to happen soon, Josh had a job interview on wednesday here. They just opened this new place and are going to need a manager to do only inventory. This move would really solve our problems. There are some draw backs, the biggest being that it will be an hour commute, but JOsh is going to ask if he can have a monday-friday schedule and be off on weekends. If not that, maybe he can have sunday and monday off and it would still be like a long weekend. It looks like the job is his, but we don't know now when he will start. All he knows is that it will be after the beginning of the year. He should get more info from his friend that works there now this weekend. I'm so excited and have already come up with a first draft of a budget. (we have never been able to plan a budget because we live from week to week most of the time) I am going to start a pretty heavy savings plan for us and one for each of the kids. We will also pay off our debt and other than the van, I know that will happen pretty quickly once we can actually throw a little extra their way every month. :) If he likes it there, maybe we can plan to move down there after we are out of debt and have some good savings to put down on a house. Mimi is on my lap now and wants to go look at maisy so I'm off!

As if we needed anything else to happen, we've had another trying morning. We got ready and went to church this morning and all went normally until we got into the big golf-cart shuttle that takes us from the end of the parking lot to the front door. We were riding up the hill and the air was blowing in so I reached up to pull the zipper down on the flap when Megan fell out the side. We think her knees were run over, but she is just fine and if we hadn't already checked in at the ER, we would have just left because after the shock and all wore off, she was running around and acting normally thank God! One of the ministers at the church tracked us down and came up and waited with us and filled out an accident report and now we're at my parents house because Josh is gonna do some yard work. THere was another Thomas incident though when we got there. Daddy asked him to be quiet while I brought Dawson in and he continued to run his mouth so I said "SHHH!" and then "Can you not just be quiet?" and he threw a big 5 year old temper tantrum and Josh tracked him down where he proceeded to call me a Bitch and Josh proceeded to throw him across the hood of his car. I wish that hadn't happened obviously but this crap has gone on way too long. He respects no one and doesn't care about anyone els'es feelings. I did manage to get D back to sleep but I wasn't sure I would for a bit and Megan did end up waking up. Ugh! WHat a day!

I've been thinking about the past 2 or so years online lately and have come to the realization that I have wasted so much of my life online. I'm not saying at all that noone matters to me and that I've wasted my life on you. If you matter to me, you know it. All my mama-sister's are not included, nor are most of the matrix mamas. WHen I say I have wasted my life on it, I am refering to all the drama, gossip and other garbage that has sucked so much of my time away from my family. I'm so glad I am able to come to the place where none of it matters. I have not officially left yaaps, but am no longer an active member there and I noticed some more has come up regarding the anon feature but haven't even cared to go look. I just don't have time to be sucked in to all of that. I have also suffered in my spiritual life and I like the way things are for me right now. This may sound strange to those of you who don't consider yourselves Christian, but I have been reading my Bible every day and feel a real relationship with my Heavenly Father now. I also am more involved with the kids in church than I ever was before and that is wonderful. Megan sang with the preschool chior on Wed. night and it was hilarious. I am sick of losing all that time I spent online and have more to give to them. I also feel my anger/rage issues disappearing. I stay more patient and I yell a LOT less. I'm not even sure I care about having the internet back on for the time being. I do miss being able to look up stuff on a whim (like the time D had hand/foot/mouth and I was able to get online and id it right away or study up on things like the Ezzo's to send to people like I did with my friend.). I also miss chatting occasionally with many of you, but life will change and settle down soon and I'm sure we'll get it turned back on eventually. I guess none of this really matters a whole lot, but I wanted to update on that part of my life.

Now to the fun stuff. There is a 2001 Chevy Impala sitting in the driveway right now. I am just test driving it at the moment but Josh decided to turn in an application so we should know something soon. Its pretty basic, but it drives nice, has a lot of room in the backseat and trunk and its priced well. I haven't heard back from Josh but I think its something we could sell easily or trade out of later on down the road. Oh and its silver. :) I really wanted a mini van but we haven't been able to find anything. THe one I wanted got sold by another salesman out from under me and everything else has been too expensive and since Josh is insistant that we buy where he works (which I can understand), there isn't much option. Anyway, I've prayed about this car and I feel at peace about it so if its meant to be, we will be approved and if its not, I'm not sure what we will do, but we will have something soon one way or another.