What's been happening lately

* Josh gave all the kids dried prunes tonight and told then they were giant raisins. They all loved them. As a bonus, we'll have some really "regular" children tomorrow.

*Kora finally cut her first tooth. She's been teething for awhile, but any mom who's been through teething can tell you that it lasts for months and you never really know when it'll come through. She was fussy last night, woke up about 8 times during the night and then was fussy all morning. I didn't even think about it being teeth until my husband said something. Sure enough, one broke through and I'm pretty sure the other bottom one is right behind the first. This is the part of babies that isn't much fun. Oh well, at least it usually passes relatively quickly-I can't wait to get my happy baby back without the use of infant Tylenol and ibuprofen.

* My 18 year old cat suddenly started using my house as her litter box instead of her litter box. She doesn't do it when we're around, only at night or while we're gone someplace. It's not like the litter box was dirty or too far away either. Yesterday it was a towel that was on the floor 3 ft from the litter box-we were only gone for 2 hours. Last week she started going out of her way, climbing through the box of shoes and back behind to use my front room carpet to poop and any paper that was on the floor there to pee on-3 days in a row. I don't like locking up my cats but she has made it so that we have to shut them both in the laundry room at night and any time we go anywhere in order for the litter box to be used. I'm sure she's trying to tell me something but I wish that she would just open her mouth and spit it out already.

*My house is so dirty all the time and it's frustrating. I just swept all the floors in my kitchen, dining room and living room 2 nights ago. I went in there this morning to find crumbs spread from one end to the other and covering the whole floor. I don't understand how my kids can make so much mess so quickly. If you come over to my house, I'm sorry for the mess but the front door has a sign to warn you. It says "My house was clean last week, sorry you missed it" and I stand behind the fact that you've now been double warned.

*Josh got a new job this week and we're moving. Rincon is the name of the company and we tried to get on with them a year and a half ago. At that time they wanted him but couldn't hire anybody so they lost out. His contract here is about to run out and they contacted him a few weeks ago asking for his resume. Within a week and a half they called him for an interview, flew him to Arizona, put him up in a hotel and gave him a rental car. They all loved him. The offer finally came through a couple days ago and it's nice. As well as a substantial raise, they're also giving us enough money to pay back the new home buyers tax credit, they pay for our medical and dental insurance each month and they have some other excellent incentives with 401k and the like. They'll pay for half our closing costs on this end, all the closing costs on the other end and will pay for movers to pack, move and unpack our things. I couldn't ask for much more.
Our plan is for Josh to go and start working while we start house hunting and the kids will finish this school year here. Josh will come home weekends as often as he can and then we aim to move mid-June of next year. We also plan to rent out this house rather than selling-just a feeling we have (if you know anybody who wants to rent a really nice house in SE Aurora starting next summer, let me know). I'm not looking forward to being a semi-single parent and I'm not looking forward to leaving our friends here, but I'm really excited to finally be back in the same state as the rest of my family again.

The Ten Virgins

I've recently come to love and appreciate the story of the ten virgins. It's one of those stories that, if you go to church as you grow up, no matter which religion, you're taught it time and time again. It's a parable taught by the savior to the people of the bible, ,and to us. The basics are that there are ten virgins who were waiting for the bridegroom to come so that they could go into his wedding. They each have a lamp that is powered by oil. There were 5 who had extra oil and 5 who only had what was in their lamps. They all waited a very long time and the 5 without extra started running out of light and asked the others to share. The ones with extra could not share what they had without running out too early so the others ran to buy more oil and returned too late to enter the wedding.
As most of you know, the oil is supposed to be what is within each of us, the bridegroom is Jesus Christ and his wedding is the second coming. If we aren't prepared and ready with enough "oil" within, then we will be left behind when Christ comes and gathers those who are ready.
I can only hope to be one of those who has enough within me to be able to power my light until the day and time arrives that I will need it. I know so many who were once on the right path and then decided that it just didn't matter enough anymore, and it makes me sad. I can only imagine being one who has enough and not being able to share with family and friends who don't. I can imagine the sorrow that those 5 felt when they were unable to share and then had to go in and celebrate without the others. I'm sure some of those who weren't prepared were their sisters, best friends and maybe even their mothers, daughters or aunts. I wish that I could share my desire with everybody around me.
We've all been given our free agency to choose what we want to do and how we want to live our lives. I hope that in the day we need it, myself, my family and each and every one of those I care about, will have chosen the right path to have enough to all go in. Can you imagine the celebration we would all have in there together? I imagine it would be quite the shindig, especially with the family and friends that I have. May we each strive to be the best we can be and live our lives so that we can all get into that party and bring the house down.

So much for that idea

A couple days ago I was sitting out front and watching the kids while they played. We live on a relatively busy street and, while most people drive slowly and watch when kids are in the road, there are still many that don't. Some of these kids are out in the street all the time and the other day one of them turned and rode his bike right in front of a car driving up the street and nearly got hit (Good think Karen was watching).

Anyway, as we were sitting outside, I was nursing Kora and heard a great big "pop" sound and turned just as the rock bounced off Josh's mustang. I was pretty sure it hit the glass but it was on the side and very well could have hit the door or side panel. As I was reprimanding Caleb for it (yes, my 3 year old was the culprit and thought he was pretty cool until I started yelling at him) Noah informed me that he had thrown 2 rocks at the neighbor's car sitting in front of their house. I looked over and could see a rock sitting on top of their car. This isn't a car they drive, this is one they picked up cheap from auction, have fixed up and are now in the process of trying to sell it to make a profit. I meant to go over and see if it had done any damage to our car or theirs, but couldn't jump up while I was nursing and forgot by the time I finished. The neighbor's mom was pulling her car out and I was pretty sure she had seen Caleb do it (which is probably why she was moving her car now that I think of it) and I actually expected her to come say something, but she didn't.

Fast forward to today. We're sitting and eating dinner when the doorbell rings and the kids tell Josh the neighbor wants to talk to him. He took a few minutes and hadn't come back to the table yet so I went to see what was up. I opened the door and saw them standing next to the car examining the front window. Turns out Caleb put a big enough ding in the windshield that it isn't something they can fix without replacing the windshield now.

So, I now have the year, make and model of their car and I get to spend the money we had set aside to replace Josh's windshield to replace theirs instead. At least I have the money but dang it, now I have to start saving all over again to replace the one on our car. Thank you Caleb.