Sweet Life in the City

We have almost made it through this week of Jeremy being gone. His flight gets in early tomorrow morning and we are all ready for him to be home. Monday afternoon I started to feel bad. I had some tummy issues and spent a great deal of time in the bathroom. Thankfully it got better just in time to get the kids from school. Monday night ended with huge drama between Chloe and myself and ended with both of us sobbing and asking for forgiveness for our behavior. I mentioned a week ago or so that we have been seeing some of Chloe's poor behavior return. Monday evening about 30 minutes before her bedtime I see that she has a green pen (the gel kind so a little more messy) mark across her mouth and a little smudge on her cheek. I am not mad at this point, but I know from past experiences that this usually means there is pen marks on furniture, bathroom fixtures, or other places pen does not belong. I calmly ask her where the pen is that she used and that is now on her face. She lied to m...

We had a great weekend! We made it through Friday without any new emails from our lending company and we informed our landlord Saturday that we will be moving out at the end of March. It is a little scary giving our notice when there is still paperwork to do, but it is also liberating to know that no matter what happens the end of living in this apartment is finally in sight. We continue to pray that things continue to move along smoothly with the house and trusting that no matter what God will take care of us. Our landlord was actually really nice about it and congratulated us on the new house. I don't think he is aware of how much we dislike living here :). In telling him we were moving out I realized that I may need to start packing things up at a faster rate. I have not packed too much because I wanted to be more certain that all the paperwork would go through and I have been hesitant because I really do not want to live with boxes stacked up around me for the next few weeks. I...

Wow! This week got away from me. Thankfully this past week was a little less stressful than the previous week. We have some friends that have a couple of kids and we take turns watching each other's kids so we can go on a date. We had already made plans to keep their kids Friday night and since Jeremy was feeling some what better we went a head and kept our plans to keep them for a few hours. Their kids are ages 5 and 3 years old and every time we keep them I am reminded how much my kids have grown! Samuel and Emma were not too thrilled with hanging out with little kids so they stayed in their rooms most of the evening. Chloe played with the kids and Jeremy and I were entertained by the funny things the kids would say. Saturday we all slept in and then Jeremy and I took our kids over to our friend's house and we had a lunch date. After lunch we went to a couple of furniture places just getting some prices on rugs and a few furniture pieces we will need when we move. On Sunday w...

This has been a roller coaster of a week! From the very beginning of our house hunt and getting pre-approval we were given a dollar amount that we would need for the maximum price we were approved for. We were still working off of that number and that is the dollar amount we secured. We also believed that since the price was lower than our maximum approval amount that we were in great shape. Well, on Monday we get the papers to sign to present to the underwriter and the amount is over $4,000 more than we had been told from the very beginning. We kept getting different answers because the guy who is supposed to be the boss kept saying it would only be about $2,000 more and that we wouldn't be paying that amount it was just what the underwriter needed to see because the when they generated the loan information on the computer the computer is saying that we have to pay the taxes at closing which those will be escrowed and a bunch of other stuff that was a little confusing. We knew tha...

I want to thank everyone for your sweet words and sharing our happiness about our house. It really filled me with joy to see so many comments about your joy for our family. I also want to apologize for the numerous amount of grammatical errors on my last post. When I let the kids use my computer they sometimes download crazy games that mess up my computer. The last post I accidentally hit publish when I had not gone back to correct my errors and then it would not let me edit the post. You might think it is crazy that I am mentioning this, but it has been driving me crazy since I posted on Wednesday :). Of course it would have to be a post that hundreds of people read! I do not promise there will not be errors, but I do try to catch as many as I can before I publish. Whew, okay that is off my chest :).  We are slowly thawing out from all the snow. It is supposed to get up to around 40 degrees tomorrow, so hopefully that will make things a little better. Jeremy got home late Wednesd...

This is the post I have been waiting to write for the last 2 1/2 years. So many of you have been praying fervently for our family and our housing situation and I am beyond thankful for your prayers and encouragement. I know I have been pretty dramatic about this whole house hunt, but I wish I could fully explain the impact that not being in my own home has had on me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. 11 years ago when I had my hysterectomy my image as a woman and wife were dramatically altered. Jeremy and I had only been married 4 years and that surgery made me feel like I was less of a woman and that I had not proved myself as a suitable wife. NEVER in the our married life has Jeremy made me feel less than a woman and nobody has ever made an suggestion that I was less of a woman, but that is a struggle I deal with personally. To help balance these feelings taking care of my home became something that I took pride in and took great lengths to make sure every thing was in order. ...

We spent the entire day yesterday indoors. The kids begged me a few times to go outside and play in the snow, but I did not give in :). We spent a lot of time watching people and cars from our window. Lots of people shoving huge amounts of snow and lots of cars getting stuck in the snow. There was even a fire engine that got stuck trying to make a right turn on the next street. It was quite an ordeal watching neighbors and firemen trying to get the truck unstuck. CPS announced early yesterday afternoon that classes would resume today, so we knew early that the chance of another snow day was gone. Jeremy got home around 3:30 but did not get into the house until close to 5:30. He and Samuel spent the two hours clearing out the parking spots for our vehicles. It gets pretty intense around the city when there is a significant amount of snow on the roads. Parking is always a pain, but when there is snow it is a nightmare. So, when you spend the time cleaning out your spot you put any item...

We have had quite an exciting weekend!We have officially experienced a Chicago blizzard and our first official snow day from school. My poor hubby had to still go into school, but the kids and I are staying indoors today. Yesterday around noon I let the kids get out and play in the 9 inches of snow that that already fallen. The blizzard warning did not go into effect until 2:00 and the temperature was not too bad so I let them get out and have some fun. The last several times we have had snow it was just too cold for them to be out playing, so we took advantage of the bearable temperatures. It was snowing the entire time we were out side so we were all pretty soaked when we came back inside. Just like it was predicted, the blizzard conditions swept over the city and it was pretty amazing to watch from our living room window. The yard that the kids had destroyed a few hours before had completely filled back up with snow and there was no trace they had even been outside. Lots of people s...