Toad-ally cool!

Rowan and Nadine have been catching baby toads all over the back yard.  Yesterday, I found this big guy (or possibly gal) sitting at my garage door.  He was huge, as big as the palm of my hand! The kids were of course fascinated with him!

Not too much...

...out of the ordinary! Mom and Jim will be here in Ohio for about two months.  Because of that, I have tried to keep life as normal as possible.  There's no need to rush to get things done, to visit certain people, or hit certain attractions.  There really hasn't been much out of the ordinary around here!

Rob and I did have our niece Morgan's graduation party this weekend and tonight Jim and I went to our church's softball game because we were playing my niece Crystie's church.  Well, really Tim, Connie, Crystie, Timmy and Jimmy are all on that team.  But I wanted to go out and watch the game. Both of teams play for fun and while we would love to win, it's not the end of the world when we don't. But tonight Hope won! 18-2.  Yay! I did cheer for my family on the other team though.  Boy did I get some dirty looks!

My niece Crystie and her fiance, Ryan at Morgan's graduation party! I'm so proud of this girl! She's awesome!

Rob and his sister, Karen at Morgan's party.

So my team is in yellow in the outfield and my nephew, Timmy is batting! I didn't play tonight because there were so many people there to play and I wanted to be able to cheer and watch!

Mom and Jim were able to take Nadine over to my Grandpa Nuzum's today to meet Aunt Wilda.  They went to lunch at Wendy's before they got to Grandpa's. They apparently forgot the rule of "don't eat before you go to Grandpa's." Going to Grandpa's always constitutes a visit to Bob Evans.  Grandpa and Grandma love their Bob's.  So Nadine got to eat Wendys and then go to Bob Evans! But she also got to meet her Great Great Aunt Wilda for what is probably their only meeting ever.  So glad that mom thought to take a picture!

A morning at the zoo...

We headed to the Toledo Zoo today for a couple of hours! Rob is on midnights so he stayed home to sleep but the rest of us spent our morning on the west side of the zoo, visiting the polar bears and Africa! We have a new polar bear and a new giraffe! We were able to see both today! We also ran into my nephew, Curt and my great niece, Tatum. We road the train and the carousel! And then we went to lunch at Rudy's Hot Dog!

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Stand Firm

Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid.

Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord

will bring you today. 

The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. 

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."

Exodus 14:13-14

This is the passage that was brought to my mind today and that I am trying to process in my state of confusion. I'm not sure if I told you all, but I am not going to training this summer.  The process is still held up and incomplete.  It's a good thing though.  This gives me more time to adjust, take my summer course and with everything that has been going on, I couldn't have been away at training for a month. 

My mom and stepdad are on their way from Idaho right now. They will be spending the rest of the summer with us.  I'm looking forward to their visit!

 

I need you like a...

Back at the beginning of the year, I wrote about my need to recognize open and closed doors and to be willing to accept what they are. 

What I've been doing for several years is realizing that I need to make a change.  I'm good at knowing that something needs to change. What I'm not good at is trusting God for that change.  There has been progression though.  At first, when I knew this change needed to happen, I talked myself into all the reasons I couldn't or wouldn't make that change and I didn't make it.  Then I moved up to "Okay, I know the change needs to happen, but I can't just do it, I need to have a new plan." And I stayed in the comfort zone and made what right now look like the wrong plans as a way of escape. 

The sad part is that when I avoid this change I end up right back at this place of complete craziness.  Well, just crushed.  So now I'm praying that God would give me the strength and courage to just make the change with no 'back-up' plan or no safety-net...but to just trust Him. Not knowing what tomorrow will bring or next week or next year, but just getting back to focusing on Him and Him alone and allowing Him to work...to give Him control.

This is a hard thing for me...very hard.  I'm quite terrified.  So these songs have become my prayers over the past month or so...the first is about God tearing down my pride and fear...the second about Him just wrapping me in His loving arms and bringing me to the point of complete trust in Him...

Cherries & Snakes...

Sometime over the past week or so, I took this picture in our front yard.  Our cherries came in on our tree.  Rob, Nadine and Rowan picked several of them.  We didn't do anything with them because they weren't exactly ripe yet.  But the birds and bugs get them if we leave them.  This is one of my best memories of my grandma.  She had a beautiful cherry tree in her back yard.  We spent many summers picking cherries and making pies.  And countless weekends climbing that old tree.  I remember when it was cut down.  Grandma's backyard was never the same again. 

I captured this picture of Rowan's "wish flower" as well.

Last weekend, my kids and I went to my friend Heather's house for her son's birthday party. Jourdyn got to hold her pet snake "Ruby." She wasn't too excited about it. Really, she was just terrified, but she did it!!!

Rowan also held the snakes. Ruby was held in his lap.  This little guy was able to be on his shoulders. And boy, did he think he was cool!

This is the first project that has come from the broken pieces from the farm.  I made this for my mother-in-law.  I'm not sure what she is going to think of it.  But I hope she likes it.  The little ones helped me cleaned all the china. Nadine and Jourdyn helped to paint the frame.  Jourdyn helped place the pieces on the frame.  I still cannot find my pictures of the farm from when we lived in it.  So dad helped me get on Google Earth and find this picture, which ironically was from when we lived there.   It's not as clear as I would have liked but it's good. 

Picking up the broken pieces...

We've begun to pick of the pieces. The pieces left after the piles are gone.  Please pray for me.  I can't even begin to explain what's happened to me or the weight that has finally crashed down on me, but like us picking up these pieces, I need God to pick up my pieces...

Red Door

So I've been told by friends that our red door has made national news...I can't find it anywhere other than Sandusky Register but hey, I believe them. Here's the story of the red door.

Rob and I were the first on the scene yesterday morning.  Towards the middle of the pile of rubble we found the front door.  It didn't have things laying on it and there was nothing but mud and dirt below it.  The storm tore off the whole front piece that held the door. The door was intact in its frame, which was inside the wall that it was originally on. It was just about 100-200 ft away from where it should have been, lying face down. The glass was broken and there was a little damage, but the door was the only part of the house that was whole. Every other piece of the farm house was destroyed and yet the door remained. 

I, immediately told Rob to get it up. He wasn't sure why. So I explained that it was the one thing that remained in it's entirety and it shouldn't be broken by people walking on it.  He found some stuff to pull it off the hinges, removed the door and laid it near the front porch, out of the way.  I've always loved the door. Before we moved in in Dec 2005, it was white.  I'm a colorful person and a white door on a white house just wasn't doing it for me. It needed painted, so I figured what the heck! Red it is!

My mother-in-law (it was her home, we just lived there for a couple of years) wasn't as fond of the red as I was, but she just said she would paint it later if it didn't grow on her.  It must of grew on her because the red door is still red.

By the end of the night on Sunday, I'm not sure which brother had the idea but the door was lifted from the ground and raised to the porch, propped up and became a symbol of memories, a reminder of the home that once stood there.  We even posed for pictures as a family in front of the front door and were able to smile in the midst of tragedy.

I can't find my pictures of the home when we lived in it.  I found interior but not exterior pictures. I know I have them somewhere, but I just can't find them. 

Devestation...

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Saturday night our area was blasted with tornados.  Our home we live in now is safe and we weathered the storm.  When we awoke on Sunday morning though, we were not so lucky to say the same about my husband's family farm.  We lived in this home from for nearly 2 years, in fact we were the last to officially live in it.  We are praising God that no one was there, because anyone would have been dead. 

Yesterday, the family spent the day trying to salvage anything and sadly very few things were left to be salvaged at all.  We found a few photos and letters from Rob's grandmother, some of her china and those thing seem to make the search worth it.  After awhile we just began making piles of twisted scrap metal to take to scrap and wood that could be burnt. 

Brandon and Bethany came out to help us.  We were all struck with where do we even begin.  I can't imagine being a family that actually lived in a home that this happened to.  To have your current life scattered for as far as the eye can see.  The things we lost were so insignicant to the lives that were lost!

For my mother-in-law, I imagine she spent the night crying and beginning another mourning process over Jack. This was his childhood home.  For Rob, he lost a childhood dream.  His 64 1/2 Mustang was in the garage out there that is now a cement slab.  He and Jack bought the car when he was 15 with dreams of restoring her. They never got around to it.  For four years Rob and I have discussed and really thought about what to do with the car.  It's hard to let go of a dream. It's not the car, it's the plans, it's his dad.  The car now sits in the field. They are going to try to get her today. 

Through it all, all the destruction, we found 4 baby possom's scattered through the yard and field. We know there are more but we can't find them, we only here them.  When I heard the first one, the sound was very strange and all I could think is that it was someone's dog, so we started looking.  I am calling Nature's Nursery to see if they can take them.

This morning though our family is thanking God that we are all safe. 

They're Here.....

Living by the Great Lakes has a yearly consequence. Well, really more of a yearly nuisance--Mayflies! Every June we are swarmed with this pesky over-sized flies! They cling to just about anything, including people! And they congregate around any light source.  So if you were out by Catawba right now, you wouldn't be able to walk with out crunching the mayflies beneath your feet.  Or walk at night without taking the chance of swallowing one or two! In fact, out there they use snow plows to pile the dead carcasses off the roads and sidewalks!

The other night I was watching the news. Several storms had blown through the area and Blizzard Bill was explaining that they had moved on.  Of course, he then showed the radar, which appeared to be quite the contrary to what he was saying. There was a circle of yellow and green that stretched from the western edge of Lake Erie to well beyond Sandusky and crossed north/south nearly the entire distance of the lake.  It looked like one massive storm circling around to hit us again.  Blizzard Bill was quick to point out that this was indeed not a storm, but the mayflies on the move over the water! There are enough of these nasty little bugs to be seen on radar! Disgusting!!!!!

The good news: they have a 24 hour life span! They come out of the water, mate, eat and die because they can't poop! They have no anus!

They'll be around for several weeks and then we'll be free of them until next year this time! To me they seem almost as useless as the platypus, but with less humor! And they have attacked my house!

Happy Birthday Julie!!!

Happy Birthday Big Sis!!! Love you!!!!

Spring Recital

Jourdyn has been working hard for another year! She's finishe up the school year with her spring piano recital! She memorized "Here I am to Worship." I had her take her book just in case, and she misunderstood me and played from it.  It messed her up a bit.  However, she still did beautifully! I am so proud of her.

She definitely has the gift of music.  We are contemplating a change in venue for her lessons.  We love her teacher, but it seems that Jourdyn is in a funk with piano and saxophone. Just very bored and annoyed with having to play. We are wondering if a change will relight a flame in her. I don't know.  Of course, we know that this is the age that kids do this "I don't want to do anything" stage.  We've been encouraged to just keep pushing her. When kids quit at this age, they usually never pick music back up! So we are keeping at her and just trying to debate what the next step is for her.

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Playdate

Nadine, Rowan and I went to the park for a play date today with several of our friends.  It has been rainy for several days now, so it was about time to get the kids out of the house! We packed a lunch and headed to Pearson! Rowan found some clover. He was quite impressed with them for some reason. 

They also found this spinning thing. It is much like a merry-go-round, except very small. It took everything they had to share the space between the three of them. 

They played for only about an hour and a half and were both sweating like little piggies! They got dirty and they got thirsty!!!

It was quite a day of playing for them! Nadine has been wearing dresses nearly everyday for several weeks now.  She is such a girl! :)

Kindergarten has ended...

Well, the Kindergarten adventure is ending today for Nadine. She is a little sad, but not as sad as her momma! She will be moving onto first grade in the fall.  I can't believe how much she has changed in the past months.  She's a reader now! She loves to read. She reads all the time! And she reads chapter books! I'm so excited that she has the same passion as her sister.  While reading you can go anywhere in you want to, you can learn anything you want and you can see what it means to dream big!

I'm very thankful for her teacher this year. She has been fantastic! I'm excited about next years adventure in Bible Quizzing, since first grade is the year she can begin that. 

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For Memorial Day we had friends and family over.  It rained all day but we did get a couple of games of cornhole in and the kids didn't mind the sprinkles too much! I didn't take many pictures of the day.  It was fun.  This Memorial Day was a little bittersweet.  Well, really all of them are. This year Memorial Day fell on what would have been my father-in-law Jack's birthday.  When he was with us, Memorial Day weekend was always a huge thing.  He was a Navy veteran and very proud of his country and our military.  But it was also a celebration of his birthday.  I believe this is the first year since his death that Memorial day has fallen on his birthday! He is truly missed!