My Boy

Noah has an ear infection.  It’s really quite sad… he’s super snuggly when he’s sick and kind of lethargic in general.  He had his first dose of antibiotic (hopefully this doesn’t become a pattern) which means that by bed time tonight after having two doses he should be feeling much much better.  Ah, the wonder of modern medicine.  Praise God for it!  I can’t imagine what it must be like for the mom in Haiti right now who has a little 15 month old with an ear infection, high fever, and who is refusing to eat and drink.  Wow.  reality check.

not even half way – but we’ll make it

Iammissingmyhusband.  He won’t be back for another 6 days.  sigh.  Things are going pretty well with this whole single parenting thing I suppose, but really… I’m ready for normal life again.  My Becca just doesn’t seem to listen recently and has major whiny attitude, my Grace is being quite argumentative and refusing to eat her food at least once a day, and my little Noah boy is now sick.  He caught a nasty cold from his sister and is just not doing well with it.  It’s 6pm and he’s in bed already.  Poor boy.  Prayers are welcome for sure.  Thank you ahead of time.  On the other hand, I’m also enjoying these three little blessings.  There have been moments of laughter, joy, and silliness.  Thank God for those moments, because I think I would go CrAzY without them.

The next day

Rich and I watched The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe last night on the Disney Channel.  I love that movie.  C.S. Lewis was a brilliant man, although I do wonder what he would think of the movie.  I bet he’d like it for the most part.  I mean, it’s probably the only “christian” film out there that isn’t cheesey.  Anyway…. here are some random photos from the fall and winter so far.

Noah enjoying his first taste of cake on his first birthday.

Cousins!

Grace and Becca at Linvilla

I need to download my pictures from Christmas… until then!

Life with the Andrews

Life has stayed fairly busy since Noah David turned 1.  Let’s see….

1.  We had to post pone Noah’s 1st b-day party until the beginning of November because all kids were sick with gross colds.  Surprise, surprise.

2.  We hosted Thanksgiving this year for a few friends.  My Gramma came too.   It was my first time making Thanksgiving Dinner and I loved it!  The turkey was beautiful and tasty… I wish I had taken a picture.  Oh well, maybe I’ll get a chance to host again in the future.

3.  I started a worship and prayer group with a couple of friends at our church.  We’re calling it Nightwatch since we meet pretty late at night.  It’s so worth staying up for!   The Holy Spirit is starting to move more at our church, and I love having a front row seat.  The group has grown from 3 to 12 people in a short amount of time.  So exciting!

4.  Christmas Eve was fun.  My mom and Jade came over to give the kids gifts.  We then went to church for the kid friendly candle light service.  Always an adventure!  I don’t know how Mark did it… I think I would have flipped out with all the noise those kids were making – but from a parents point of view, they were all pretty cute and well behaved considering they had to sit through a mini sermon.

5.  Christmas Day started off nice – at home with my family.  The kids opened their presents and stockings.  They were such a delight to watch.   Noah of course was more interested in ripping the paper than what was under the paper.   We then headed over to Rich’s parents for the day.  It was a fun relaxing day, and when we got home around 8pm or so we all slept soundly.

6.  The day after Christmas was fun too.  We had a relaxing morning, and then headed on over to the Blizzard’s and my Gramma’s for the afternoon/early evening.  I love them so much!

7.  I went to Kansas City, MO for a conference through the International House of Prayer (IHOP) called Onething.  There was a group of us from BRV who went…. it was an amazing week.  The Holy Spirit was moving and I believe still is moving there.  I’ve never experienced such Holy Spirit power before.  I loved every minute of it.  I was there through New Years Eve as well… it was absolutely amazing to ring the New Year in while worshiping God and dancing.  So fun!  Seriously the best party I’ve ever been to.  Can you imagine doing that with 16,000 other people?  It was such a small glimpse of heaven… just beautiful.

8.  I came home in time for Rich’s birthday.  We went out to dinner and saw Sherlock Holmes.  It was a really fun evening, except for the part at the end when I started feeling ill.  I then spent the rest of the night writhing in discomfort and throwing up.  Thank you stomach bug for the start to a New Year.

9.  My birthday was 3 days later and I was feeling much better by then.  Rich is so loving and let me go out in the morning to Burlap and Bean for some journal time and decaf coffee (I’ve decided to stay away from caffeine).  I then had a pretty normal day with my 3 wonderful and spirited kids.  We then ordered queso burritos from Qdoba and I scooted off to youth group and then of course we had Nightwatch afterwards.  Seriously, I loved spending my birthday loving on people and being in the Lord’s presence.  My friends are awesome too.  They baked me a cake and gave me a gift certificate for amazon.  I can’t wait to use it!

10.  Rich and I were able to go out on a date yesterday.  We went to the Olive Garden (with a gift card from Christmas) and then went and saw Avatar in 3D (again, thank you Christmas gift card).  Such a fun movie which was made so much better because of the person I was with.  I love my husband so much.

So there you have it.  Ten glimpses of our life since Noah’s birthday which was at the end of October.  I’m sure I’ll have some exciting things to write about after my week of being husbandless comes to an end.  Rich is going to Bolivia in a couple of days…. prayers are most definitely welcomed and needed!

Noah David is 1!!!

Today is my baby’s first birthday.  Happy birthday sweet boy!  It’s amazing how quickly a year has flown by too – it seriously feels like he was just a newborn.   Noah has grown so much in his first year of life.  He is looking more and more like a little boy now, and I’m loving it.   Sadly we aren’t too celebratory today because everyone but Rich has some sort of cold/cough.  Fun times.  But I will be making a cake for tonight, and will get the obligatory pictures of him taking his first bites of birthday cake.  Gotta love traditions.  I have been planning a family party for him for this Saturday, but I just don’t know if it’s going to happen because of the illnesses floating around.  We’ll wait and see I suppose.

Coughing

Grace coughed in my mouth 2 nights ago.  It was gross.  But now I’m finding it even more gross because I realize that she coughed little germs straight into my body and I feel like I’m getting a little bit of a sore throat.  Blech.  I’m going to go pop a couple echinacea capsules to see if I can beat whatever I’m coming down with so that I will be able to enjoy my weekend getaway…. I’m going to the Poconos with a bunch of women from church.  Can’t wait!

Mrs. Woolworth

Saturday was a bitter sweet day for our family.  We were reunited with our children after a 5 day separation.  Rich and I were in Colorado Springs (gorgeous!) for a mission leaders conference and the kids stayed behind with two amazing families.  What a gift it was to get away for that long!  So, Saturday was a good day.  I missed our kids and was unbelievably excited to see them again.  We did lots and lots of snuggling… Grace has turned into quite a snuggler and I love it!  Saturday afternoon I had to make the decision to put our family cat, Mrs. Woolworth, to sleep.  It was a very sad decision… and it was painful.  She was part of our family from the very beginning.  We loved her dearly and miss her.  Grace cried.  She was so sweet and loving about it all.  The finality of it all hit her hard and she just wept.  Genuine mournful tears.  It broke my heart to have my girl feel such pain for the first time.  After our friend Sue came and picked her up for us (she works at a veterinarian office) Grace was sitting on the floor flipping through a book with constant tears streaming down her cheeks.  A real picture of raw pain.  Becca didn’t understand.   Today she was asking me when the cat was coming back.  Poor girl.  It was definitely for the best though.  I loved that cat.

Mrs. Woolworth

she was a sweet cat despite the "evil eyes" in this photo.Grace with Woolworth 2006

Woolworth allowing Becca to try to eat her fur. She was good with the kids.

Haha - Becca put her in Noah's jumperoo. She just laid there until I picked her up.

Woolworth being protective of Noah when he was a newborn.

so cozy

I’m in the middle of painting my bedroom this amazing warm shade of brown.  It’s called gentle fawn…. I LOVE it.  I’m not done with it, but I’m hoping that by tomorrow night I will be.  We’ll see.  But seriously, I’m loving it.  And Rich picked Grace up at the bus stop – sort of,* and he saw the room with the new color and he loves it too.  Yippie!

*Rich was on his way to the bus stop when Grace walked in the house.  Thanks to neighbor Lindsay who rides the bus with Grace for walking her home.

Yep. Still here.

I have been so busy recently – sorry for not posting anything since August.  I find that it’s hard to blog when I have a spare moment because those times are so far and few between.  That’s what it at least seems like.

So Grace is in school.  Yay for afternoon kindergarten!  She loves it and seems to be thriving.  I knew she would, but it was still hard to let go initially.  That first day when she got on the bus and the doors closed behind her…. I thought for sure I had just cut off my right arm.   The separation was so real and raw.  But, I had to suck it up because Becca was hysterically upset that Grace got to go on a bus and she didn’t.  Thankfully school started a week later for Becca.  Still no bus for her yet, but she’s happy to be going to school too.   Oh, and it was so easy for me to have Bec go to school.  She’s my little social butterfly and I’m not worried one bit about her confidence in that area.  I am however nervous about her being developmentally behind the other kids since she’s by far the youngest in the class.  Time will tell I suppose.

One bit of exciting news is that we are redoing our bedroom.  Yippie!   We took EVERYTHING out of our room… and all that was in our room is now in the hallway and Noah’s bedroom.  I can’t wait until I have my hallway back.  Anyway, Rich pulled up the carpet which the cat had decided to pee all over and sanded the floor.  After the 3rd coat of polyurethane I am beyond thrilled with how it looks!  Good job Rich!   So I decided that we might as well paint the room since it’s empty.  It’s something that I’ve wanted to do and it’s the perfect time.  I picked out a brown color.  It’s a lighter brown – but still definitely brown.  I am going to paint the inside of our closet an orang-y red color (called new penny) and then throw in some other vibrant colors with decor.  I can’t wait for the room to be done.  My goal is to have it all painted by Saturday.   Can’t wait!

I am also planning on posting some recent pictures soon.  They are still on my camera and I don’t have time at the moment to download them.  But there are pics from first days of school for both girls, our day trip to Dutch Wonderland, and our fun day at the zoo and aquarium – we went to both places yesterday.  So fun!

ill.

My husband is sick.  Tomorrow will be one week since he started to not feel well.  I’m not sure what he’s sick with, but it’s beginning to seem more serious to me with each passing day because he isn’t getting better.  In fact, I think he’s getting worse.  This is pretty tough for him and for our family in general.  I’m taking him to the doctor today and  I hope it’s something that can be treated.  Please pray.  Thanks.