House cleaning is the pits!!  I feel like I am buried in a pile of...ehhm.... yeah..... you get the point.  I have my 3 oldest in Humboldt with Granma (Todd's mom) and really am wishing I had taken my Trina up on her offer to stay and help with the babies and getting ready for Texas! Yikes! She is growing up sooooo fast!! So here I am leaving in 2 days and feeling a little overwhelmed!!

Yesterday I interviewed at Target for the Team Leader position. There are possibly 3 Team Lead positions open (Electronics, Guest Service, and Pricing) and I have no idea where they will want to put me. They have been bugging me about promoting to Team Lead from almost the first month I was there, however, I didn't really think it was a possibility schedule wise but now that Todd is going to be out of school for a month or so I can be flexible until they get my schedule more set. The raise in pay is becoming a must as we are just about to completely run out of money from our loans and bills still must be paid.  I tell ya... I really hate working and leaving the kids but what to do?? We have to keep a roof over our kids' heads and bills paid but poor Todd..... Just keep the guy in your prayers!! He HATES my working but we can't get the loans to live off of without one of us having an income. Todd studies every spare second.... even when we are driving (I drive us places) but he still feels behind, like he is competing with all these single kids who school to them is their whole life.... They don't worry about paying bills, making a mortgage, or keeping cars running; they don't have kids that need their daddy to play with them and talk with them, or help them put up a rope swing in the backyard; they don't have a wife who is working 5 nights a week leaving them with a hungry baby, a destructive 2 year old, and 3 busy little people who each one could talk the hind leg off a mule so therefore must be kept occupied for any studying to get done!!!! They don't have a large house with leaky faucets, burned out light bulbs, falling apart deck railings, and broken fences! Most of them have no idea even about life in the working world and then here we are trying to compete academically with them?! Yeah, it's really a hoot! Todd has to work so hard to keep up and yet he is making B's and C's and hasn't failed anything yet! He really is a completely brilliant guy but trying to do it all is definitely taking it's toll.... The kids and I are leaving for Texas so he can focus only on studying for the 8 (yeah..... eight) finals he has over the next couple of weeks and hopefully that will help. Then he will fly down and spend a nice long weekend in Texas with us before we all drive back to enjoy 3 glorious weeks Todd will have off before MBA starts in for the Summer. Of course I will be working full time during those weeks and Todd will be stir crazy playing Mr. Mom! Yuck... he hates that!!!!  PLEASE pray we survive!!! I know these next few months will be sooo hard but we only must hang on for the rewards to pay off!! I know that deep in my heart but it doesn't make it any less hard!

Isn't he beautiful?! Farewell, Dear Friend!

I am deeply saddened to report that my dear German Shepherd Dog, Conway, has died. It has been a hard blow as I was very attached to him! For those of you who don't know him, I rescued him from an abusive home when he was about 6 months old back about 5 years ago. He was a perfect fit with our family: loving, loyal, patient with the kids, well mannered, and just gorgeous. I adored him. When we moved to the city we agonized over what to do. Our farm was being rented and it seemed logical to leave him there where he was at home and they promised to take very good care of him. But I missed him tremendously! When we moved into this house we brought him here from the farm and he was happy until we had to go to Arizona for two weeks. He and Scamper, Trenton's Rat Terrier, began getting out of the fence so when we got back we reluctantly returned them to the farm where we figured they would be safer while we traveled. Then winter came and we didn't want to move them when it wasn't warm enough for the kids to play with them in the back yard so we waited for Spring. And now when we were just weeks away from going to get them again Conway must have contracted some kind of tick fever and died. Scamper must be heart broken as well as they have been inseparable since they met. We need to go get him before something happens to him too. Trenton would be devastated. These things are always hard to deal with with children. We are trying to find the right time to tell the children but Todd felt I needed some time to work through my grief before we told them. I think that was wise...... Anyway, I will try to find some pictures of him to share with you. I will just miss him sooo much! 

Our favorite neighbors, the Aikin's, are a retired couple across the street who are just precious friends. They leave each year for Arizona for the winter and return in the spring. We missed them so much this winter but now they have returned and brought gifts for the kids. I took pictures of the hats they got for them as they are some of the funniest things I've seen! They are made of thin card board, I think, so they probably are going to break before long but I managed to get some pictures. They can be worn a couple of ways and even squished out for a comical look! What fun....

 Spring is here!! I took these pictures of the kids today in our front yard. They are so happy Spring is Here!!

Tyler was loving the flowers!

Isn't she a doll?!?

Tegan is experiencing her first Spring!

Ok, crisis is over... Thanks for all your prayers and kind thoughts! Much needed! It feels so good to get everything back on the right track.... I know I've lost ground (and that this is really vague but it's the best I can do...) but it still feels so much better to have everyone back on the same page. Gosh, there is just so much to being a mother and wife and working is just about to kill me, I think!!!!!  Nonetheless, I survive....  amazingly enough...

And everything that’s new has bravely surfaced
Teaching us to breathe
What was frozen through is newly purposed
Turning all things green
So it is with You
And how You make me new
With every season’s change
And so it will be
As You are re-creating me
Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring!

Pain can come in so many strange forms.  It is funny how life can feel totally up one moment and then go plunging into the depths at seemingly a moments notice leaving one wondering, "Ok, what just happened??"  "Did I just miss something?" On those days I never know what to do and especially if I should even try to talk through it. I used to write in a journal for hours just pouring it all out but now I find that the words don't come and when I try to talk through it with a friend or the one I am struggling with I only feel like I get more lost.... So here I be.  I think I need a good cry too, Heather. I think that would feel really good!

Who told us we’d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It’s unfair.

This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.

From Held by Natalie Grant

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive."

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

I am continually amazed by my husband. For those of you who don't know him I would never be able to catch you up on all that he is in this one entry. I rarely read self-help books or "how-to's" but from time to time friends of mine send me excerpts or tell me all about some book they are reading and I am continually amazed by several things. First, that people are never so cut and dried as they seem at first. That what defines one man doesn't define all. And yet we are always searching for that one way of looking at everyone --of boxing people up to fit on our shelves so that we can go through our card catalog of "how to's" and know just how to act and react to each one that we encounter on a regular basis. The problem comes when people break their molds --when they act outside of their parameters and we are left frantically flipping through files trying to figure out how we could have miss filed them! I have come to realize that putting people in boxes limits my growth. It is frightening to realized that at any given moment the people I allow close to me may just totally jump the track and head off in some completely unexpected direction but that is reality. Relationships, successful ones that is, require wisdom, patience, love, and constant forgiveness and the knowledge that they are their own person. That they can and will grow and change as God develops their heart and prods and guides them. And sometimes the whole point is to prod and change ME at times through the reactions of others.

As Todd and I have tried to get through these years of education for him we have had some amazing struggles. I have tried again and again to put Todd in a box that I could understand... that I could know how to react to. And yet year after year he has succeeded at amazing me. Of moving off in directions I never expected him to go. His character has remained constant. His love of God and the children and I has never wavered (though I have worried at times that I had become so infuriating to live with that he must hate me! But I was always wrong...).  But we have had as our common goal to learn to preserve order amid change, as Whitehead so wisely says. We have not succeeded on so many occasions but we have kept trying. At times it has seemed that one of us was trying harder than the other but as the years have gone by we are coming to walk closer together in our goals. I love my Todd more than I could write here and I am seeing changes in him that I don't even know how to verbalize... maybe for fear that if I say anything those changes will evaporate as if they had never been. He is such a leader that he both frightens and infuriates those who fail to see his humility and deep love. But his servanthood has been a gently and quietly developing quality that I often missed it and abused it. I have come to see that he has such a tender servants heart and I just love him all the more for it!

I left Texas stressed to the max and one harried mess! I did enough laundry to clothe myself and the three littlest girls that I was taking with me and then dashed out the door leaving Todd with a disaster. I apologized up one wall and down the other but I just wasn't organized enough to get it all done before I left. However, when I returned home 10 days later the house was a show piece!! It was perfect from top to bottom!! Closets were organized, clothes where washed, folded, and put away, all the bedding was freshly clean, the bathrooms were scrubbed, the hardwood floors were mopped and polished.... everything had a place and was in its place!!!! Our house hasn't looked this good since I was nesting before Tegan was born!! 

I just don't know how to thank him.... I don't know how to show that I am grateful.... beyond words. All the trite things that I have learned about loving my husband seem just totally inadequate! He is just wonderful..... That is all there is to it! I am so glad that God gave him to me to be my husband because I have so much to learn from him.... It will surely take a lifetime!!

I read this book years ago when I was engaged to Todd and I came out different than I do now. I think then that I was ranked:

Physical Touch
Gifts
Quality Time
Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service

Even back then Acts of Service was so low it was non-exsistant really!
But here are my new scores...

The Five Love Languages

My primary love languages are probably
Physical Touch and Words of Affirmation.

Complete set of results

Cool, huh. Now to get Todd to take the quiz.....

I am trying to get everything ready for my trip to Texas (and yes, my laundry pile is still frightening...) on Sunday and I work tonight! I am getting ready to hole myself up in the basement with the laundry and Lost (there is some funny correlations between their predicament and mine, I think! LOL!) but I wanted to post some pictures of the "Budgie birds" as we call them before I leave. The girls named them: Molly and Mister. Cute I thought! Molly is the green one and Mister is blue. The picture doesn't do them justice... They are beautiful and sing so pretty!! They have been a delightful addition to our home!