Watch this and your adrenaline will rush!!

I am going to mail in my teabag.

Introducting Elizabeth Arabella Rose

Born June 11th (on Jesse's mom's birthday) at 1:36am, 8 pounds 14 oz.
She is a real chubby girl and nursed right away. Big sister Maria was there for the birth. While holder her for the first time she confidently said, "She'swiggly, that means she wants to stand up."

Whoa, not so fast big sister, we'll let her just rest for a while.

Kid version of Go Fish

Tonight we played go fish with the kids. Here's a few of the interchanges.

Joshua, "Sammy, do you have nemo?" "Yes". "Can I have it?" "No".

Maria, "Sammy, do you have squirt?" Sammy, picking up one of his pairs, "I have two, which one would you like?"

Also, all 3 of the kids just had to blurt out what card they had drawn each time they went "go fish".

Running lots lately

I have been keeping track of everything on my livestrong.com account but I ran 6 miles today while pushing kids in the chariot and I am feeling pretty good about it. The iPhone follows my run with GPS on trail guru. I know that technology is annoying to many of you, but I think it is fun to be able to see the blue line on a map showing where I ran.

Emily ran the first 3 miles with me too. We plan to run a half marathon in August and my Dad agreed to do it as well. This will be my 3rd, Emily's 2nd and Steve's 1st! Who will join us next year??

We went to a reception following the funeral mass for Anna's Grandparents (more on that amazing story later).
Joshua has been really confident lately. As the reception was coming to a close a friend of the extended family that we had never met before came to me and told me that Joshua suprised her. He said in a very "matter of fact" way: "did you know that I am smarter than you?"
Thankfully she was a school teacher so she took no offense, she simply responded that he was probably right.

Update and Prayer Request

We had a test of faith that we are being challenged with right now. The buyer's mortgage company sent an appraiser who gave them an appraisal that was fantastically low. $46,000 less than it appraised for last spring--over a 22% decrease. It is no use getting our own appraisal done because the mortgage broker does not have to accept it. Furthermore, the buyer works for the Mortgage Broker so he doesn't want to apply at another institution.

I am sure that God will take care of us...it is just difficult in the "now."

Photoshop not good enough for Obama Government

Obama's team wanted a picture of Air Force One with Manhattan as the backdrop. I can't understand why. But lets assume it was for a sane reason...if I was given this photographic task I might have used photoshop to avoid scaring the heck out of the entire city. Can you imagine how many people fled their workplaces for the day?

I am no greenie, but what about the carbon footprint, jet fuel, and man power used during this presidential plane photoshoot! What a tremendous waste!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

In the Blink of An Eye

Many parents tell their kids that "God always answers prayers," but then qualify it saying, "but sometimes he doesn't answer them the way we want, or as quickly as we'd like." Well let me tell you that while this is true and may protect against disappointment, that is not always the case. Sometimes God answers prayers fast...so fast that we cannot doubt His action.

Our story starts some time ago. Our goal was, and still is, to move out to the 52 acres in the country that our family bought together, but we have never had a clear time-line. We contemplated selling our house two years ago, and certainly the timing in the market would have been much better then, but the timing for our family was not. So it was not until last spring we put our house on the up for sale. Everyone would agree that this was the worst possible time to sell a house. Only 10 couples came to see the house over the entire summer of 2008, from that we got only one low-ball offer which we quickly refused. Our hearts were really not set on selling it, partly because it is a lovely home, and also because it is hard to sell a house for less than we paid for it. Part of us felt it would be better to hold off until the market made a recovery. So even when we prayed that God would help us sell the house over the last year, it is safe to say we didn't really commit our hearts to that end.

As you probably know, my parents travel a lot, and for the last 6 months or so we have been house-sitting for them and renting our house to one of Anna's sisters. The plan was to move back into our house before the new baby arrives in May. But surprisingly, my parents, and my younger sisters didn't seem too thrilled at the idea of us moving back to our house. Nonetheless, we began following our plan and taking some belongings back to our home in preparation to move back in. But neither Anna nor I felt peaceful about it.

The Saturday before Palm Sunday we talked to my parents and came to the decision that our ultimate goal of building a home on the land would be better served by staying at their house, saving money faster, and keeping my younger sisters company during my parents long absences. We really have enjoyed the situation here, and it is nice for the kids to get to know their grandparents a little better (when they are around:) So we all held hands together, including our kids, and prayed to God that he would help us sell our house quickly because we were ready now to move on to the next season in our life. There was nothing extraordinary about the words used, but there was something very decisive about the whole experience. It was as if we were saying, "ok God, we are done waffling in our own hearts, this may not be the best time to be selling our house in the world's eyes, but we are ready, and if you want us to take this next step please help us to sell the house quickly."

We do not get to pick which family we are born into, but had I been given a choice I definitely would have chosen my parents over again. This whole scenario would NOT be possible without their supreme generosity and the fact that they are great people to be around.

We began setting up an area in the house for the new baby, and unloading the car that was full of boxes that hours ago were slated to go back to our house. It was only moments later that we got three separate calls from the realtor's office asking to show the house. The next day, Palm Sunday, more people saw the house in that single day than had been to the house in months. One of those couples fell in love with the house and saw it again on Tuesday and again on Thursday, they put an offer in on Friday, we countered back and forth a bit and by Tuesday after dinner we had a deal.

I am sure if you have read this so far you don't need me to state the obvious, but I will for the record: this was a miracle. This was a true example of God answering a prayer moments after it was uttered. The neat thing about this whole experience was that God waited for us to be ready. Once we finally planted our flag and put ourselves in a position for Him to act, He did.

It is so amazing to have our children see prayers get answered in such a real way. I hope this blog will serve to remind them of God's active presence in their lives as they grow older.

Mutants

At nearly 5 years old, Maria has been obsessed with babies and marriage lately. It would make sense to marry someone you know well, and who she know better than her brother? Anna and I tried to help her to understand why it was not allowed to marry relatives. A few days later we heard her interpretation of what we said:

"Sam, if I marry you my babies won't turn out right. They will have squiggly heads and squiggley arms and legs."

Anna was explaining Good Friday to the kids and how we sort of re-inact the crucifixtion to remember it.

Maria asked?

"Who is gunna nail Fr Ed to the cross?"

Kids Say the Darndest Things

All you Saints we don't know

Part of our nighttime prayers involves singing a litany of the saints. Now Maria is the most musically inclined when it comes to singing, so she has pretty much internalized the pattern of saints we go through each night... many are the ones the kids got their middle names from: Thomas More, Faustina, Tarcisius, and also Anna and my confirmation saints. Typically after we get through these standard ones we open the floor to any other saints the kids want to add in. After these I’ll close it all down with Roger Holtz’s tune of “all you holy men and women pray for us.” Well this evening, Maria took the initiative and closed it down singing confidently: “All you saints we do know pray for us. All you saints we don’t know pray for us.”

Like Clockwork

This phenomonon has been occuring nearly every morning and we have only now thought to document and share it. More often than not between 5:30 am and 6:30 am Joshua giggles in his sleep. It is quite funny to be around for, and it is so consitant that we are going to try to record it.

"What if she says 'no' "?

Aunt Emily told us that one of her friends had three people ask her to prom. Well Joshua happens to have some romantic interest in this particular 17 year old girl, so he asked what prom was.

After our simple explanation he, wanted to know about dating, marriage, liking, loving and how it all works. The following is the discourse that we have NO IDEA where it come from ,but it had us all in stitches.

Mom: "if you like someone you ask them to go on a date, and if they like you back they say yes. Then you get to go places together. After a while if you start to love them ad want to marry them you ask them to marry you and if they say yes than you can get married."

Joshua: "What if they say no?"

Dad: " Than you can't marry them."

Joshua: " And you tell them to pay you $20 back."

Helping her brother out

Maria finished her dinner last night much faster than the rest of us. Sam was hungry but dawdling--Maria sat next to Sam with fork in hand and said, "if we eat together we can beat Josh."

Either way they will burn you

The hashbrowns were sizzling in the oily pan when I slid them onto the kids plates. I warned, "these are hotter than boiling water." 
Maria blew on one and said, "they're not hotter than boiling water, they are warmer than boiling water."

From the mouths of babes

Yesterday as Sammy was trying to get my attention he said, "Mommy." Mommy!" "BIG TUMMY!"

Well, for better or worse that did work to get my attention.

Home again, Home again, Jigity Jig

Precisely two hours after my last blog post late Sunday night. I felt a rumbly in my tumbly, and spent the rest of the night getting to know the toilet better. I don't know for sure but I must have lost 10 pounds in  four hours. I don't mean to be too graphic or anything, but I think I set a new record for tossing cookies the most times in four hours: 13. 

Anna was the best, she made me a bed on the hotel bathroom floor with the extra pillows we had and I did not get up from this cozy spot until late the next morning. 

(sorry no pictures, you'll have to use your imagination).

Luckily, it was only food poisoning from the Bean Burrito I ate at taco bell, so nobody else shared my agony. After a day in bed, Tuesday morning rolled around and I felt much better. But the Ripley's Believe It or Not Aquarium had not been checked off Joshua's "Road Trip To-Do List" so even though there was a 10 hour drive ahead of us we went for it.

Boy was it fun: huge Sharks, giant Jelly Fish, jumbo Sting Rays, a big Sea Turtle and a little tiny sea shell filled with deadly poison (not kidding). Best of all everything was designed for maximum kid enjoyment.

We pulled in the drive way at 12:30am early Wednesday morning, just 31 minutes later than planned. The extra 31  minutes may have been the Italian dinner at Buca di Beppo we enjoyed in Cincinnati. 

You know what? the it seems we have had some great chefs on our trip. The chef at Buca brought us out a free Calamari (out of the blue) so all the kids got to eat baby squids. Thanks to God for that nice touch: after looking at more sea creatures than you can shake a squid at we get to eat some too.

The Appalachian Mountains are Beautiful

We got up extra early this morning, partly because there was an 8AM mass at St. Paul's in Seneca SC that we wanted to get to. But also because we could not wait to get out of our ultra crappy hotel room. It was what you would call a "dive" and it was abysmal...we now have both a good and a bad experience from using Priceline.com.

Our plan for today was to get from Seneca, SC to Gatlinburg, TN which google maps said should be about a 2.5 hour drive...it took us 

10 hours.  

We stopped at practically every spot to pull over and with the GPS set to "shorte

st" instead of "fastest" route we also found some beautiful back roads through the mountains, including some dirt roads with steep drops and no barriers. 

We found breath-taking untouched land, an

d stumbled upon some of the most gorgeous building sites 

with waterfalls in their ba

ck yard and mountain v

iews. And some of the scenic communities that we passed through lead me to feel

 that I was in Switzerland 

(except that everyone talked with a souther

n drawl instead of French). 

The Smokey 

Mountain National Park Road was the last park of our journey today. I cannot imagine taking the trip on a foggy or snowy day because mountain motoring 

is so challenging on its own. Someday I would like to do this drive again in a Mini Cooper or Porsche with a stick 5 speed stick!! 

Anna was a

 real trooper through the whole trip

 as she was not feeling good yet hardly complained that I was taking sooooooo long.

We are now safe at a comfy hotel in Gatlinburg. The kids went straight for the pool when we got here. 

Maria has been pushing the limits of a 4 year old trying summer-salts under water, trying to touch the bottom

 of the pool (5 feet down) and swimming with great strength across the pool and back many times with no assistance. 

Samuel has no fear leaping into the pool, wanting to go completely underwate

r without plugging his nose, and only then can I lift him up. He is also very close to swimming on his own. 

Joshua has a desire to swim, and he is overcoming his fears bit by bit. He was venturing out on his own where the water came up over his mouth. 

We crossed strom thurmond dam onto south Carolina

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