Thank you, Mumma Mary, for saying yes!

Magnificat anima mea Dominum,

et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salvatore meo,

quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae.

Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes,

quia fecit mihi magna, qui potens est,

et sanctum nomen eius,

et misericordia eius in progenies et progenies

timentibus eum.

Fecit potentiam in brachio suo,

dispersit superbos mente cordis sui;

deposuit potentes de sede

et exaltavit humiles;

esurientes implevit bonis

et divites dimisit inanes.

Suscepit Israel puerum suum,

recordatus misericordiae,

sicut locutus est ad patres nostros,

Abraham et semini eius in saecula

Well, we were this weekend. We went back to Indiana to get the rest of our stuff out of storage as well as to visit people that we know. We planned the visit to go from Saturday to Monday, so that we could see my sister in law (Joshua’s brother’s wife) and their new baby after he was born on Monday morning.  My SIL delivered by c-section at 8 something a nice little boy named Blaine Nathan weighing 7 lbs 11 oz (just like his big cousin, Caecilia.)

It just so happened that this weekend Laura had her little baby, a girl and Annie had her baby too, another little girl. (Check thier sites for more details!) I was excited to be able to see both of them and thier babies while visiting Jeremy and Gavra. I know Annie reads my blog sometimes and I read her’s all the time, but we don’t really know each other in real life. We went to the same church and we used to be neighbors. (Heck, J and I used to live in one of her dad’s rentals when we first got married). But still, I didn’t think I knew her well enough to just go knocking on her hospital door. My youngest SIL, Mary Ann pointed me in the direction of Annie’s room. (And if anyone can explain to me how she knows Martin, that would be great). I knocked on the door and Annie had a wide smile and seemed happy to seem me. (So even if you were thinking “What the heck is SHE doing here”, you did a good job covering, thanks!) Seeing Laura was a bit easier, Dan was standing in the hallway eating ice cream and he called her out to see us. We had been told at the front desk that they didn’t have anyone by “That name” regisitered, so it was a pleasent surprise to see him eating away!

After all that we attended to the moving things and got that all settled. The truck is parked in our back yard and I can’t wait to start opening things I haven’t seen in two years. It will be like Christmas! We found a box labled 3T & 4T clothes, so thankfully we don’t have to go out and spend money on new pants for my growing son. 🙂

Oh, and this post would be nothing if I didn’t publically thank the Newcomb family for letting us crash and bring craziness to their house. I always find Michelle a good friend to talk to and a great source of advice.  I did love watching Ken and Joshua make cheese. That was too funny.

Of course, we got to introduce Caecilia to her godparents this weekend. I love the way Mary ohhs and ahhs over babies. I am excited to see them here in a few weeks! Yea!

We got to see Nan, Karol’s godmumma while we were there for a few minutes at the Rectory. She is a wonderful person and we love her so much!

Today I had the kids color pictures to send to their godparents. Karol drew some letters and Ohio for his godfather, Brother Basil as he won’t get the picture until after Easter. The other godparents got pictures the kids colored of Mumma Mary.

I should get back to things, but I wanted to post before I forgot and things got crazy here again.

Good news!! While it has been confirmed as cancer, it has also been deemed treatable and curable!! Praise God! Please continue the prayers for my uncle as he faces a road of chemo and radiation!

I just found out that my uncle, my Godfather, has cancer. Please please pray for him! Please.

…from Joannie.

I predict that the Dow will drop another 500 points this week after Pres Obama reverse Federal Funding for embryonic stem cell research.

What does that add up to? Lots of moving! Six “homes” in 4 1/2 years of marriage!  At least we will be here for a long long time.

On a whim, shortly after C was born, I picked up one of those home magazines at the grocery store. While flipping through it, I found a house in a decent neighborhood going for $15,900. Yes, you read that right. With that home, we were introduced to the world of bank owned properties. That house was not to be. It needed so much work, I was willing to offer $1000.00 for it. However it did open our eyes to what was available in this area. We set out looking at houses that were in our price range.

We found one that was pretty cute and totally redone on the inside. It was in our price range, however, the neighborhood wasn’t the best and the view out of the back door wasn’t too pleasant. So we decided to put that on our list but to keep plugging along. At this point, we contacted an agent and she helped us out quite a bit.

We spent part of an afternoon looking at houses with her. The first one we looked at was nice, 4 bedrooms and huge. However, the current owner just rented it out but was trying to sell it as a “move in now” deal. What? So we crossed that one off of the list. The next few were pretty crappy and one had train tracks in the back yard. There was one that was awesome, but the owners didn’t seem to be interested in making the house available for showing, so we crossed that one off the list.

The last one we looked at was this house. It was bank owned and we knew from experience that those homes tended to need a lot of TLC. Joshua decided to just go in with the agent. I sat in the the car with the kids and a few minutes later, the agent came out and said J wanted me to go in and look at it. One walk in and I was “sold”. It is old old and beautiful. Sure it needs some work (and got quite a bit of it as we moved in and discovered plumbing issues!) but the price was right and when we get the little things done, it will be awesome.

I will post some pictures eventually of the house (like when boxes aren’t all over the place). I do have a question though, how is it that I more than doubled my kitchen space and still don’t have room for all the stuff. Oh well, this is the time to clean. 🙂 More later!

This past week we were blessed with near sixty degree weather. It was very nice and then it got cold again. The cold was ushered in by, get this, a cold front. There were servere thunderstorm warnings for all over the area. We had some wind and about three flahes of lightening. Bummer. I LOVE thunderstorms.

A few years ago, a dear friend of mine, Rick, passed away at the young age of 40. Rick worked as a researcher at the Byrd Polar Institute at Ohio State University. For a few weeks each spring, he went storm chasing. Yes, just like you see on television. We were supposed to go storm chasing sometime, but he died before we could get a chance. (And no, he did not die chasing storms.) Now, whenever we have svr wx, I think of him and have a great urge to go storm chasing.

It was nice to take the kids out with just a light jacket on. So much easier to get out of the house. Speaking of getting out of the house, Johsua jumped the Mitsubishi and it runs again. Praise God that a dead battery is all the problem was. So now we don’t have to share a car. It wasn’t that big of a deal, except on Sundays when he would have to stay after mass to teach Confirmation Class and I needed to pick him up just an hour and a half after getting home. For some reason, that was just hard to do. Now today, he will drive himself home! Also, it saves wear and tear on the van. For some reason, because it is new to us, I don’t want to put a bunch of miles on it.

I think this is probably going to be long blog post.

Joshua turns 30 tomorrow. He doesn’t like to have a big deal made about his birthday, so we aren’t going to do much. I will create some yummy meal from food we have in the kitchen and go from there. I might make a cake, but I don’t know. I have bananas that need to be used up, so I just might make banana bread.

We are hoping to buy a house soon, so I am starting to box up things we don’t use much (like dishes and bathroom items). Last night I boxed up our wine glasses, so we need to buy a house soon!

I have discovered NCIS. Last weekend when J was in NYC, I was bored and found NCIS on cbs.com, so I started watching it. I really liked it. So now I watch season six on line then we borrow season one from the library. The library charges $1 per DVD for certain DVDs, and in our desire to save money, that dollar is a lot of money. I guess it is a good thing that they only have season one.

Something else I have been interested in is the economy lately. I have become fascinated with how this all came about. We try our best to live debt free and for the most part do pretty well. We don’t make much money. (We actually make so little that our government pays us, really) However, we try our best to live within our means. We have internet, yes, because of Joshua’s business. We don’t have cable though. We have a newer car, but that was because the little green car needed some major fixing. We shopped for the best deal around and got it. We eat well, but don’t go out to eat often, if ever. For grocery shopping, I go to Aldi for our canned goods and at Kroger, I buy mostly manager special things. (I only buy meat if it is on sale or manager special). With that being said, we get by just fine. Our kids have clothes and are nicely dressed. Our bills are paid on time each month.

I don’t understand how it is that people who make twice as much as we do or even more, have a hard time paying their bills. If you can’t afford something, don’t buy it. New cars aren’t a necessity. Television is not a necessity. Going out to eat, while nice once in a while, is not a necessity. Buying a house? Buy what you can afford! Really.

Off my soapbox now!

Have a great Sunday!