journal: august & september 2008 no soapbox, i promise~

I'm going to keep this short and sweet. For anyone that has started reading (hi!) in the recent weeks, I try and do a recap of each month at the end of the month. My August one turned into a political detour, and I never quite got around to actually doing the journal. Here it is mid-October, so I need to play catch up. The journal is my way of journaling our life around here so that I can look back when I am old(er) and remember what life was really like. I imagine at some point I'll call them the good ol' days, but for now, I'm just calling them "the days are long, the years fly by days."

So, really quick:

August - Have no idea what I did the beginning of the month other than try and get the school year planned out and wonder if I might be pregnant. After awhile, and the arrival of certain events, decided I was not pregnant. Okay. Had a kind of crazy weekend and realized I was feeling off, and wanting naps every day. Surprise, surprise. We are having another baby :o) Quickly realize vacation is coming up super fast and when I return it will be time to start school. Plus I will be far enough along to probably not be feeling so great, so I spent the following week doing massive amounts of cooking. The following week we went to Florida, and other than me being freezing cold the entire time (it was hot there, that is just a very weird pregnancy symptom I get) we had a fabulous time. Came home, finished the school room, began school just in time for me to hit the stage when dragging myself out of bed and having children that were fed and not naked was the hallmark of a successful day. During August and into September, we were also making weekly visits to the orthopaedic doctor for Anna's tendonitis, and one very busy day running around to lots of different doctors making sure Moriah's black eye wasn't anything serious.

Side note. The day after finding out we were expecting, I got in a minor car accident. All it did was slightly dent the bumper on the Suburban. (Poor teenage guy that rear ended me though, it completely crunched in the front of his shiny yellow Mustang.) I had some minor back pain for a few weeks that was taken care of easily with a few weekly visits to the chiropractor. I mention this because I have now been rear ended in three of my seven pregnancies. Every time, there has been minimal damage, and it has resulted in getting large sums of money from the other party's insurance company. God completely used this when I was pregnant with Caleb and Ethan to pay for their births (we just accepted the offered settlement and used it to pay the medical bills instead of repairing the minor damage to the car.) This time, it helped us to finally pay off the rest of our home equity line of credit that we used to help get Glen's business going, and um...well, we used it to just kind of float along, but that's another story for another day. Suffice it to say that it was just ridiculous for us to let it sit around, so we finally got ourselves together to just pay it off. Once we committed to taking care of it, it was really cool to see the Lord provide in different ways. I should also add that Glen was ready to do it a long time ago. I wasn't really against it, I just wasn't motivated to deal with it.

September - Kind of a blur. It involved a scary hemorrhage, that thankfully was not a miscarriage. That sentence is a huge understatement, but all of you know that we are so thankful the Lord protected our little one. September involved lots of laying in bed, laying on the couch, laying in the bathtub, lots of reading, and lots of LOST reruns. September and October are kind of running together in my head, but I think September was when I was on complete bedrest, and it was around the beginning of October that the hemorrhage had shrunk enough to be allowed to do light activity. During this time, I became even more aware of how blessed I am. My children were sweetly helpful, and I am so glad we had spent some time teaching them to do things that ended up highly valuable during this time. The younger kids were all able to do general clean up and putting things where they belong, Moriah and Ethan took over cleaning the table area, while Anna and Caleb took over cleaning the kitchen. Anna also took over the laundry. I am so thankful that Glen's job allows him to basically set his own hours, and that he had recently moved his office back home. I am thankful that my mother in law cares about us and our children so much and was happy to keep the younger kids two days every week. I'm thankful for my Coocal (my aunt who is really more of a mom/aunt/sister in my life) who came out to stay with us two days every week, and for my sister Kristen who spent the night every Monday night, took the kids to their homeschool group, took the two little kids to play, picked up the big kids, and brought them home every Tuesday. But mostly, I am thankful to the Father for being faithful, for providing, and for healing me and preserving our little one's life.

During Septmeber, our church finally began having a Saturday night service, which we have wanted for such a very long time. We were able to go once before I was on bedrest. We missed two weeks, but have attended the last two. We are loving it. It is small, intimate, and allows for Sunday to be a real family day and day of rest.

I guess that's about it. We didn't take a family picture during September, so the one from August down at the bottom of the page is just going to have to last for another month or so :o)