Real Estate stinks!

Well, I've hit rock bottom in the hope department, as far as real estate goes. We're actually toying with getting a new realtor, even though we'd have to pay them more. We're really not sure what to do and this talk of the impending recession has me a bit panicked. I know-Christians aren't supposed to be panicked, right? Easier said than done. Any insight from anyone out there would be appreciated. Or any buyer out there!

A-OK

So my CT scan came back fine. Mild fatty liver, but no worse than a thin person who eats a lot of fatty foods. Nothing to be concerned about. I am seeing a new primary care provider and she sat with me for an hour talking about what my side pain could indicate and we made a plan from there. She's awesome!

So bottom line--I'm not dying of cancer and I don't have some other terminal or life changing condition.

I'm still doing great on Weight Watchers. We still love Mike Huckabee. And Teddy is addicted to our PS2 snowboarding game. Seriously.

Also, we lowered our house price and we just hope that someone buys our house. Just not tomorrow, unless they want it sight unseen, because it's messy.

Stacie

Weight Watchers Week 1

Down 5.8 pounds! Whoo hoo!

Happy New Year!

So we've been so busy we haven't been able to update the blog. Or too tired. Either way, it hasn't been done. I'll give a quick rundown of the events happening lately.

1. We went to a Seahawks game on the 23rd; saw our old associate pastor from our old church while up there; recieved confirmation from him that we were right in leaving our church; got word that we had an offer on our house; had a blast at the game and drove home in our rental Mustang that ROCKED!

2. Offer on house fell through. Just way too low for us to accept.

3. I had a CT scan of my abdomen due to some liver porblems I'm having. Won't have the results until next week. Could be nothing. Could be fatty liver. Could be cancer. Pray please!

4. Still no word on the house we have an offer on. Feel like we should rescind the offer and look for a cheaper one, especially in light of our financial troubles we're digging into.

5. Teddy's car broke down again.

6. One of the pastor's from our old church wants to meet with us to rectify the situation concerning our leaving. We will meet with him and appreciate the offer; however, I'm still so full of anger that I get sick to my stomach thinking about it.

7. I have been saying for 4 years, since Sophie was born, that I'm as big as I was the day she was born. Then I saw this picture from my 10 year class reunion back in 2003 and realized that I'm BIGGER than I was the day she was born. Way bigger. At my reunion, I was trying to look good, in spite of being 8 weeks post-partum with the child that nearly killed me during her birth:

This picture shows my huge post-partum body; at least, huge by normal standards, but compared to what I'll show you next, I looked pretty good.

Fast forward to 2007.

New Year's Eve 2007, four-and-a-half years after the pictures above.

October 2007

Okay, so my next biggest thing I've done lately is to join Weight Watchers again. Why am I being so transparent about this? Because I made the decision spur of the moment this morning to do this and I'm scared to death that I'll fail. Again. I feel like if I'm accountable to people (although who I'm not sure, as I don't think we have any readers yet) then I'll make a better effort at getting healthy. Also, I'm sure there's people out there who see these fat shots of me and make fun, or snicker. But at some point during this journey, I will blog about the reasons behind weight stuggles.

So, anyway, that is what is going on here. We've got lots going on that is stressful, so we can just pray that soon we will get some answers to prayer on some of this stuff. And hopefully, there will be less of me to blog about soon.

Stacie

In case you couldn't tell, this is a post about our next president. Are we really that confident, that cocky, that hopeful, to assert that Mike Huckabee will be our next president? YES! Actually, we don't know what will happen and we know there's a lot of variables here. However, we also know that we get tingles when we think of him as our next president. We get excited when we hear him speak, when we read his website and see what he stands for. We love his authenticity, his real faith, his humor, and his tough stand on the major issues that we care about. We don't support him because he's a Christian, or a former pastor, or a white male. The fact that he's a Christian is excellent, but we love that being a Christian is just who he is, not something he does. We love that he plays the bass guitar. We love that he's lost weight and is into a healthy America. We love Mike Huckabee, more than we ever did George Bush (or Billary Clinton, back in my very liberal Democrat days).


Seriously, if you haven't looked into the candidates, we urge you to do so now. Check out http://www.mikehuckabee.com/ and read up on him. Even Chuck Norris supports him (hey Uncle Chuck--remember me? Fun story there for another time.)--check it out the link to see the proof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDUQW8LUMs8

At any rate, Republicans are divided right now, we believe even more so amongst each other than with Democrats. The time seems to be right now to come together and unite and we believe MIke Huckabee can be the man to bring our country back to a point that we can be extremely proud of. Check him out!

Church this morning

So we're attending a new church, after attending our old one for 14 years. Without going into delicate details, I'll just say that we left our old church feeling wounded, bitter, and wondering if we wanted any part of this religion stuff or even God. I know--placing our faith in people and not God; equating faith and intimacy with God to church--never good ideas. But still, that is how we felt.

We immediately started going to a new church where we know quite a few people, but still feel anonymous enough to blend in and test the waters. Now, at our old church, we loved the pastor. He counseled us, baptized us, married us, dedicated baby #1 and #3, and just last summer baptized that baby #1 who is now 9! We loved that his sermons most of the time seemed to address something in our lives directly, as if he were reading my diary! I knew it was God, but still, it amazed me each week.

Well, at this new church, I've been experiencing the same thing, but on a deeper level. Today was emotional. The pastor was talking about how so many of us yearn for that deep, spiritual "God" experience--you know, like when you meet someone who is on fire for God and you want what they have. But you don't have it. So he went from there talking about how we have 3 choices--shut ourselves off from God but still go through the emotions of Christianity (dead faith); we quit God; or we open ourselves up to Him. He expanded on that idea, and I was into what he was saying, it was working for our situation, but wasn't exactly hitting the sore spot in my faith. Then he said something that pertained exactly to how Teddy and I are feeling right now in terms of our faith. I can't remember exactly what he said word for word, I just know it was prfound to me. Even my sis-in-law who was with us looked over at me with this shocked look on her face--she couldn't believe how much it was speaking to our situation. But I nearly started sobbing at one point. He made a comment similar to this:

Maybe you feel like God has left you. Maybe you've been hurt so badly by the church or by other Christians that you're just ready to quit--quit life, quit church, quit God. Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, God didn't want that situation to happen to you? That maybe He didn't want you hurting like this? But He does want to pour His spirit into you.

That spoke to me. The last few years, at our old church, I felt like God left me. I felt like He favored other people, even ones who did things that were un-Christian. I felt like if you were a leader, you could do anything you wanted, even if it was un-Christlike. It never occurred to me that MAYBE GOD DIDN'T WANT THOSE SITUATIONS TO HAPPEN TO ME! Maybe He allowed them to happen and allowed them to shape and mold me, but didn't want it to happen. Kind of like a natural disaster, which the situation that really hurt us was kind of like a natural disaster! The main point I do remember him making, though, was in those times when you feel all alone, you need to hang on to what you know is true. How do we know what's true? By spending time with God and in His word. He then challenged us to give something up this week--exercise time or computer time or TV time or a meeting--anything. Give it up to spend an hour with God.

Anyway, I know that this is probably not a revelation to a lot of other people, but it sure spoke to my heart. Even my SIL was crying, and later I found out it was mostly because she was thinking of our situation. I'm excited to go to church again, because each week, I feel God working. I can never remember point for point what the sermon is about, like I could before, but I always can remember the parts of the sermon that spoke specifically to my situation

First post!

So after having a blog over at homeschoolblogger.com that I haven't used since April, I decided that it makes more sense to have a family blog that focuses on more than just homeschooling. So here we are! If you know us well at all, you'll know that most of the posts will be from me, but I'm hoping that Teddy will post occasionally if I get him logged on! Oh, and just because I had that other blog doesn't mean I actually know what I'm doing here--I'm very blog-illiterate!

So let me introduce us, if you don't already know. I am Stacie and I am married to my best friend Teddy. We've been married for 11.2 years and are high school sweethearts. There's so much more to the story than that, but it'll make a good story for later. We have 3 little ones--M. who is 9, B. who is almost 7 and S. who is 4-1/2. We are homeschooling family; a busy family; a Christ following family; a loving family; a sports family; a musical family.

Hopefully we can document our adventures of family life and actually make it interesting!