Has It Been That Long Already?

Since my wonderful dear friends are so curious about what's going on up Nort'...here we go! First of all I want to say how thankful I am to you that you make me feel so loved when you tell me that you miss me. Ahhhhh! Truly I do. Only Jesus knows how I long to see my dear friends that are so far away. It's still a bit strange and amazing at the same time that we are back in Chicago at our home church, but yet a part of us is still in Florida with our sweet loved ones there. The Lord knew that I always wanted a big family and He truly gave me my hearts desire with a huge one all over the country and around the world. What an awesome God we serve!

Hmmm, where in the world did I leave off and where do I begin...well, we are officially moved into our new place as of Monday last week! Praise God! I can't believe that we've been here almost two weeks already and are still not even close to being unpacked. I have the kitchen pretty much done which is the biggest deal to me so I am grateful for that. Today we just got all the living room furniture out of the kitchen so we could actually move the table into where it is suppose to be instead of smack in the middle of the kitchen and in front of the cabinet we are using as a pantry. Bryan has been working his tail off trying to get the flooring in. Oh, I probably forgot to mention that detail...the carpet that was here smelled so much like dog we had it cleaned by Stanley Steemer which is not cheap. We came back a few days later and it still smelled horrible so we made the decision to pull up the carpet in the living room and put down some vinyl flooring that looks like hardwood. Even when we put the carpet and pad into the car to transport it the whole car smelled like dog! Gross! Yet again our friends, Jerry and Karen came to the rescue and helped tremendously with clean up and prep work as well as helping Bryan lay the floor. Isn't God good? I will post pictures once we get fully done in the living room. It looks and smells wonderful.

Sarah is going to a friend's house to help her babysit a couple of the kids from church and then we are babysitting a precious little baby girl tomorrow named Amelia for a few hours. So that should be an adventure having a baby around this place for awhile. We are on the schedule to run JAM tomorrow and most of our team is gone b/c it's a youth retreat this weekend...so we are pumped to see what Jesus is going to do! We sure cannot do anything without Him. We've also started a class that meets every Sunday for 13 weeks called Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey. It's been so incredible b/c it's really put Bryan and I on the same page with getting our "financial house" in order. So that's been an eye opener to a ton of mistakes we've made over the past 11 years of marriage. But better late than never...

Sarah went on a camping trip for five days in an RV in Wisconsin with Jerry and Karen. She had a ball and didn't even seem like she missed us! So that made us feel bad, but good at the same time. HA! Being a parent is so interesting to say the least. Bryan and I went to a marriage retreat during that time as well as packing and moving. We were very busy so the time went fast which we were grateful for b/c we missed her so much. She is doing wonderful in school and needs a bit of work in math, but is doing excellent in Science. My kinda girl!!

There is so much I have left out, but that will be for another post next month! Just kidding...maybe! ;-)~