What just happened?

Where on earth has the time gone?  It seems like everything has been a blur.  How is it the middle of November?  Bart has been sick for a while.  This week finally seemed like a normal week for him.  I'm on a two week stretch of not having stomach issues.  I am beginning to wonder if it was stress related like someone mentioned.

I think the team is still trying to figure out how to manage this thing called stint.  Adjusting to a new place, a new language, a new culture, new people/teammates/roommates is all really challenging.  And I see it a lot when I sit down with the girls and have conversations about how they're doing.  It's a lot to take in.

But overall I think we're all doing well.  We're trying to get ready for our fall retreat this next weekend. We're hoping it's a really exciting time for students and staff.  It will be an interesting weekend with two other groups being at the retreat center while we're there.  Hopefully it won't be too messy!

The kids are starting to get a bit restless.  Their new phrase is, "what can we do today?"  It's a little difficult to spice up life here.  We've completed 12 weeks of school so the nostalgia of it has worn off.  They're still doing pretty good with it, but it's a lot more work/time for me than I would like most days.  Discipline is key at this point.  That might not be one of my strong suits.

On a positive and completely random note, hams have started appearing in the stores.  Since the president moved up the Christmas season (see here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/11/05/243196191/for-the-sake-of-happiness-venezuelas-maduro-moves-up-christmas), which actually seems to have changed nothing, there are hams in the store!  Ok, I know that sounds weird, but since I haven't been able to find a ham since last Christmas, I'm pretty darn excited!  I've bought a few and frozen them.  I love to put them in the crock pot and our whole family loves them, so it's an all around great investment.

Bart and I are working through a lot of junk right now.  We haven't had much time at all to talk this week, so we're itching for a date night and some time together.  Having conversations about our future, where to live, where to do ministry, adoption, kids, finances etc are just a little taxing.  I'm not enjoying this period of waiting.

In the meantime, I'm staying busy helping coordinate our national conference in April.  There's been a lot of details we're getting ready so we can present everything at our staff conference in December.  We're getting the ball rolling so we're not all stressing out in March and April.  That's the hope at least!

That's all for now.  I haven't really taken any pictures lately.  We're just exhausted and kind of treading water right now.  We need rest, rejuvenation and joy.

Oh and on a REALLY positive note, we broke down and invested in a Christmas tree and some decorations last weekend.  Yeah, they're all up.  That's how we roll.  We're ready.  More on that later....

Family day

Today is a family day.  Normally I would go to campus, but Bart convinced me to stay home today.  He persuaded me.  It really didn't take much.  Anytime my husband asks me to stay home and spend time with my family, it's pretty much impossible for me to say no.  I mean, how often does that happen!?!?

But thus far, it's been productive.  Bart is doing school with the kids while I fix our door.  It's back on.  Temporarily.  We'll need to buy some good fat screws for the one hinge, but it's there for now.  It will be nice to not have as many mosquitos.  And not feel like everyone can just walk by and look into our apartment.  It will for sure be quieter too.  Oh the blessing of a door.

I have a messy kitchen to clean up, 2 dirty bathrooms, a leaking shower (which I discovered this morning that I for sure cannot fix) and toys and books everywhere.  Somehow in the madness of life here, Bart and I have both gotten pretty lax with making the kids clean up, at least clean up well.  The result is a mess pretty much everywhere.  So lately it has just been maintaining the mess.

Noah has officially started reading.  He gets stuck every once in a while.  We have some fun books with a bunch of 3 letter words that make it really easy for him, so that helps a lot.  He seems to be enjoying it.

The kids keep talking about wanting a baby brother or sister (you can take an easy guess as to which one wants what).  Ha!  Good luck with that.  I had a really healthy conversation with someone last week whom I love and respect about how having more children at this point in our lives would be so stressful.  We have enough transition coming up in our lives with figuring out our future and then adjusting to the States for however long, we don't really need to add a baby to that.

And I honestly would have to lose my marbles if I was ok with that.  It took me 3 years to feel like I even loved or liked Noah.  3 years.  It was terrible.  Post-partum depression with the kids just kind of killed me.  I don't want to go back there.  Amongst other reasons for not wanting to physically have another baby, I feel like maybe that's enough for now.  Bart is grieving this, but ok with the idea that we might not physically have anymore of our own.

Yes, random, I know.  I'm all over the place.  There have been so many conversations lately about these things.  Life, our future, kids, school, etc.  We're still trying to wait until December to make a decision about what happens after this school year, but I'm pretty sure my heart knows.  We talk about it, but we don't want to make a decision.  We want to wait on God and not just do what seems best.  Maybe it's actually not the best, so we wait.  It's not very fun playing the waiting game, but we're managing.

When I sat down to write this, thinking oh, I'll post on the blog and be productive and not waste my life, you all just end up getting my word vomit.  Sorry about that!  This is my life.  I'm a mess and I'm working through it.  We need prayer!  For our family, for our sanity, for our physical and emotional health.  Bart has been sick with some sort of strange cold for a while now, so he could use some prayer.    The past 4 days I've felt good.  No stomach stuff, so I'm hoping whatever has been plaguing me for the past month is all done.  Either way, one thing we know....we remain here whether it's hard or easy, happy or sad, vomiting or diarrhea, milk or not, crazy or sane.  We are committed to staying.

Deep breaths

Whew that was a long week.  I gave the talk at the weekly meeting again yesterday.  Why?  Again, a moment of weakness when Bart asked me if I wanted to, back in August.  Sure back in August it doesn't sound like a big deal.  But jeez louis I'm running on empty.  So I'm really glad it's over.  Even though giving the talk isn't that big of a deal, it just takes a lot of time to plan for it with two kids.

The trip to the park last weekend was a success.
Leah was frolicking all over the place!

Squirrels do exist here!
And people feed them.  It's weird.

Tuesday night this week was a lot of fun though.  The guys decided to have a nice evening planned for the girls.  They had little encouragement books for each of us where each guy wrote a note.  So they had us get dressed up and led us out into a sitting area and they each read their notes to us.  The kids ran around like wild banshees.  They even had a little booklet for Leah.  She had a little trouble focusing when they read it to her though!

The team on Tuesday night

The best part about the encouragement booklets was that Noah said he wanted to write something in Leah's booklet.  Here is the picture of what he said.

And the 2nd best part, he wanted to write in mine, so yesterday when I was on campus, he had Bart write in mine for him.  Here's my note from Noah.