9-5 vs. 24/7

Well, so much has been happening lately that it has me thinking about how different life is when your job is your life. It is strange being at work all day long, it almost feels like I don't work at all. However, the last few days especially have reminded me that I DO work. A day or two before Easter I thought I was getting really bad allergies. Turns out I'm pretty sure it was a cold. To most people this doesn't seem like a big deal. It sucks but doesn't really affect life too terribly much. If I were working a normal job, I would probably have taken a sick day or two and then started back up...However, I no longer have that choice. I don't normally worry about getting others sick. I try very hard to stay away from people but I have learned that when you have a baby in the house, you have to be EXTRA careful...and apparently I wasn't. On Tuesday the baby had a temp of 101 and we got a little worried. I took him to the doctor on Wednesday with his mom and we found out that (praise the Lord) it is only a cold and he will be fine. He has not ran a temp since that first day. This doesn't sound that bad, however, add that I was only able to get an appointment at a time when I had to pick up one kid from school (an hour away) and pick up the other from work (no choice but to pick her up early) and go home (a half hour away) to pick up the baby for his appointment and it makes a CRAZY day. It was all spaced out within a couple of hours. It was a fun whirlwind. However, this was not the end of this lovely day of WORK. The mother of the baby decided she wanted to cook us all dinner. So as she was cooking she bent over and began to have some pain. This seemed fairly severe and possibly appendicitis so I decided to take her to the emergency room. (she was still able to make us a WONDERFUL steak dinner...just in case you were wondering). After 2 hours of waiting the doctor was able to see her and told her that they could not find a reason for the pain so to call her doctor the next day if it continued. It was 11:45 by the time we got home. When I woke her up this morning she was still in pain so yet another doctors appointment was made. This appointment showed that she needed to have an ultrasound, however, they were unable to do one until tomorrow morning. SO, guess what I got to do the next morning?? Now, most people do not have to worry about taking one kid to the emergency room while the other stays home with the other parent. The perks of my job include a child that is very much a hypochondriac (we think) or just an attention seeker. So, she went on a hike the day after our visit to the ER and came home stating that she hurt her arm (we have many reasons to believe that she did but that it was nowhere near as severe as she stated it was) so we had to explain that we would not be rushing her to the emergency room. Every once in a while, I get slightly frustrated that I have to make several trips into town a half hour a way for different things that pop up. But it's amazing when I think of what I get to do and the way that God is able to work through me and these kids. The girl I took to the hospital the other night, came up to me the next evening and asked for a hug before she went to bed and told me that she loved me. I truly do love our "kids". I feel blessed by them and very much stretched by them. They have been encouraging, discouraging, manipulative, loving, caring, frustrating, disrespectful, rude, polite and so many other things. While working 40 hours a week allows you to leave work at work (most of the time), I don't think I would want to go back to it for a while. I love it here. I love that I am blessed to work with my husband all day long. I love that we have been blessed with these kids and a wonderful (still knawing) puppy. I love that I have time to take a nap (some of the time) and just read. Thank you for your many prayers.



PS. Easter was amazing. Most of the kids had a wonderful time. One of them stated that her previous 2 Easters had been horrible but this one made up for it. I was able to cook some amazing food (thank you Mom for the recipes) and spend the day with my new family.

**Pictures to come of UB playing with another puppy his size from today. He is definitely still a lover not a fighter :>

Happy 18th Birthday Erick!!!!!!!!

A few nights ago Jen was listening to the CD that I made a while back. A song came on that made me smile. I wrote this song about moving to the other side of the world. At the time that I wrote it Jen and I were considering moving to South Korea to teach English. The song was about how moving away was something that we felt we had to do but that we would still miss home. Well, we didn’t make it to the other side of the world but we made it to the other side of the country. We do miss home. In the song there was a line about praying for rain, of course because it would remind us of good old Portland, Oregon. No need to pray for rain in North Carolina. North Carolina has provided plenty of rain since we have been here. When we were thinking of moving here everyone told us that it never rains in North Carolina. This is a lie. It has been flooding our yard all day. There has been plenty of thunder and lightning as well. But it does remind me of home and so it hasn’t been all that bad. Although our planned trip to the lake today was definitely cancelled.
As Jen has said in past blogs we have adjusted here quite well. But every once in awhile something reminds me of Portland and makes me miss it deeply. I’ve seen the Schwan’s truck every once in a while and it reminds me of Jen’s family. Soon after arriving at our new North Carolina I also had a dream that we were hanging out with them and it hit me that I wasn’t going to be able to do that quite as easily anymore. My mom just got a dog and I want to go over to her house with our new dog but I can’t. It was also my brothers eighteenth birthday today and I had to wish him happy birthday over a voicemail message. I also heard a song online that I had sung and played guitar on for a Portland friend. It made me miss all my Portland friends a great deal and miss all of the music that we had played together. It’s hard to see them all going on with their lives and music with out me but of course I wish them the very best and I am very proud of them all.
Things have been going well here. The kids are on Easter/Spring break now and so we will have to figure out things for them to do all day long for the next week. It’ll be fun because there are times that their attention spans last about 30 seconds before they are ready to do something new. I’ve heard the phrase “I’m bored” so many times already and they have been on break for one day. I have started to appreciate my mom and parents in general in an entirely new way. Although they sometimes try our patience we have been really blessed with the kids that we have. They keep us on our toes but they are great kids. Some of the other foster parents have had some pretty intense struggles with their foster kids recently so we feel very blessed to have the family we have for the time being. A scary thing happened with our foster baby last night. He was in his high chair and was able to reach out and knock a plate off of the table. We looked down and thought he had cut open his hands with plate shards. It looked like his hands were covered in blood. Of course it was only ketchup. But for that moment we were terrified. The baby was terrified as well. The poor little guy was shaking. Today went much better for him. He is taking his first steps while holding onto things. Today he was also able to climb into a box.
U.B. got into an epic puppy battle with the boxer/lab puppy across the way. It was awesome. Up to this point U.B. had only been able to play with dogs much larger and older than him. The boxer was more of an equal match. I was impressed; U.B. did well. Usually U.B. is more of a lover than a fighter. By that I mean that when coming across another dog (or human leg for that matter) his go to move is usually mounting. They grow up too fast. Really they do. I can’t wait until we can nip that activity in the bud if you know what I mean. Yup, we are going to cut that habit short as soon as we can. Recently the girls discovered a way to deal with U.B.’s chewing, his other ugly habit. If you want to hold U.B. you can hold him in your arms like a baby and hold his rawhide bone in his mouth like a baby bottle. It’s pretty hilarious. Unfortunately at the rate he is growing this activity will probably not last us more than a week or two. U.B. keeps on trying to crawl through chairs and things like he was able to just several days ago. It’s not working like it used to. For him the whole house is shrinking and he has no clue why.
Well the kids are finally in bed (we had a late movie night) and so I am going to take this opportunity to do the same. Another full day starts in just a few hours. Blessings on you all, we love you and miss you.

Time of Reflection

Well, Michael was sweet enough to take the kids to an event at the gym tonight so I get to take a rare moment to breath while the kids are gone. It seems to strange to be in a house all by myself. I am loving the quiet. I have found that even when you have a house full of kids (even while they are at school), it never seems to quiet down. Lately it has felt as if we are consitently running from one appointment to the next. I feel like a taxi cab between transporting one child to school (35 miles away) and picking up others for appointments. While life is exhausting I feel so blessed to be working with Michael. I love my job. I love that I get to stay home (most of the time) and train the dog and spend time with Michael. We have been so busy that it almost feels like we don't get a whole lot of time to spend together but he quickly reminded me that if we were not doing this, we would be working 40 hours a week apart from each other. I think I prefer this quite a bit more. God has been so good to us. He has continued to grow us together and we are learning so much about parenting as well as good communication. I think the biggest frustration is getting this little (although not so little anymore) puppy to quit chewing on EVERYONE. I no longer have a pair of jeans that do not have holes in them. I was kind of in need of new jeans anyway so I guess he just helped me along in the process :>

Today was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and it was a little cloudy. However, it was EXTREMELY windy and cold (my favorite weather). It was so amazing driving home this morning after dropping off one of the kids at school that we are blessed to be surrounded by so much beauty. The mountains that surround us look blue most of the day. It is strange but it is actuallly supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow. Fortunately it will be too warm to stick but the school district will still close if they see any snow whatsoever. It is strange how much different things are run here. The kids have Good Friday off of school and rather then a spring break they get an Easter break next week. It is nice to see how beliefs come into play here because they seem able to acknowledge them without condemnation. I hope y'all (yes, the southern vocab is sinking in) have a wonderful Easter Sunday.