Dreams

We found our dream home. It's here -

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/5047-Rock-Hill-Rd_Aubrey_TX_76227_M82478-75249

Unfortunately, we aren't planning on moving for about three years and we strongly doubt it will still be for sale at that point. If we had any way at all to make it work now, we would, but we have to wait at the very least until I'm getting paid. I don't want to hope that the house doesn't sell for another year for the sake of the current owners, but, man, that would be awesome!

It has every single thing on our wish list. We sat down one night and made a list of everything our perfect home would have:
2+ acres of trees
3000+ sq ft
5+ bedrooms (preferably 6+)
4+ bathrooms
3 car garage
pool
double oven and countertop stove
huge kitchen with lots of storage
lots of closets
less than 45 mins to both Rob's job and to mine
not in a subdivision, out in the country
not new construction (we think the older houses have more character)
room for Rob to build a man cave (in this house it would be over the garage)

This house has it all. The first time we looked it at it, I wasn't horribly impressed with the exterior, but it's growing on me. We absolutely love pretty much everything else about it. So much so that we've wracked our brains trying to figure out a way to buy it now. Oh well.

We've decided to use it as our goal. It makes it much more concrete as opposed to knowing that we want a house that meets most of the stuff on our wish list. Moving is horrid, so we only want to move one more time in our lives, if possible. We want to be sure that the house we move to is absolutely what we want. If this house isn't available when we are able to move, then we'll find one that is somehow even better, even if that's hard to imagine. We want to move within the next 3 years if possible so that Megan will be able to spend all four years of high school in the same school. If we don't move before Meg starts high school, the next break that would allow us to move without having the kids break up their high school years would be after Jack graduates in twelve years. We also want to move before the kids move out of the house so that they all have friends and memories to return home to during holidays.

We'll have to see how this turns out :) Either way, getting financially prepared to move and getting more organized is never a bad thing :) We want to have something to shoot for. If it's not this house, at least we should be ready when we find the one it will be!

Test Results

I had my MRI earlier this week and my colonoscopy and biopsy today. Although preparing for it was not the most fun I've ever had, it went very quickly and recovery was much easier than I expected. Rob's favorite part was the talk the nurse had to give me regarding the need to (how can I put this delicately?) allow the expulsion of the gas they use to inflate the intestines during the procedure. Being the mature male adult that he is, Rob laughed for ten minutes at the image of a recovery ward full of individuals having to do that.

The procedure started at 10am and by 10:35am, we were walking out of the building. The best news was the results. Before the procedure, the doctor told me that the MRI showed two small lesions on my liver. One is a hemangioma and the other is a small cyst, both are benign and neither require any intervention. Yay for no cancer! The colonoscopy results indicate that the GI bleed was an isolated incident, probably acute food poisoning. Yay for no cancer and no long term problems! We will have the results of the biopsy back next week, but he doesn't expect to find anything.

Swimming

I always forget to bring the camera to the pool. Now it doesn't matter as my razr takes photos that are usually as good as our camera. I have two cell phones now, one personal one and one for work. Betsy says I look like a drug dealer carrying two cell phones :) I LOVE my new smartphone!!! It is amazing!!! I can access both my email accounts from anywhere, keep track of my schedule, and even create spreadsheets to keep track of babysitting hours. It also means I can work anywhere. And I do. On the way to the pool tonight I spent the whole drive (Rob was driving) sending texts and emails and stuff for work. I feel like a workaholic!

Anyway, enough about me. We went swimming tonight because we won't be able to make it this weekend due to my romantic date with Rob on Friday morning at the surgical center. At least I can't complain that he never takes me anywhere expensive :) As always, we had a wonderful time swimming! Laura fell asleep in the car on the way there, so I got to do laps before she woke up. Last time I managed 12 laps (about 600 ft). This time I did 20 laps (about 1000 ft or 1/10 mile) :) Yay for feeling better! I hope it keeps up and they don't find anything chronic Tuesday at the MRI or Friday.

Beth practiced jumping into the deep end last week. It really scares her. This week we only had her jump in twice. Jack practiced swimming without any floaties this time! He jumped off the diving board and swan to the side multiple times, swam from one side of the deep end to the other several times, and jumped off the diving board then swam about 2/3 of the way across the pool!

Eva and Beth -

Meg and Kylie -

Kylie and Jack -

Kylie, Megan, Beth, and Jack - 

Beth and Laura (she had a swim diaper on, but Eva stole her bathing suit as Eva likes Laura's better than her own and Laura really couldn't care less) - 

Beth, Laura, Kylie, Jack, Eva, and Megan - 

Rob - 

Thank you so much Jojo (and Dan) for letting us borrow your pool all the time! Jojo wasn't home tonight, but Dan was there. Jack remarked "Oh, the Jojo's are home" when he saw Dan through the window :)

Quick Update

Well I no longer think we used to be busy. Life is crazy now. It's amazing to me how working just a few client hours a week can take up so much freaking time!

I have clients now. My very own :) Just a few. I haven't actually met them yet, but we have our first sessions set up for this week. I have five hours of direct client contact set up for this week, but, of course, none of it is anywhere close in time to the rest of it. I have to be at my office for 4 blocks of time and none of them are closer than 8 hours apart. And my office is 35 minutes away without traffic. Not fantastic planning I suppose, although much of it is based off of what times the clients are available. It will be an adjustment. Plus, at least for right now, I'm finding that for every client hour, I spend about two to three hours doing research and planning and other stuff. Hitting my minimum of ten hours a week is not difficult.

We've also been reevaluating the two of us working. The original plan was for Rob to quit as soon as my income could replace his (a few years down the road). That plan is now shot to heck because with my heart condition, no private insurance on the face of the planet will ever cover me. On the plus side, at least I developed this now, rather than several years from now when we were trying to get private insurance!

It has also just hit us that with my internships starting, we are now a family that has both parents working. I recognize this may make us seem a bit dim, but I don't think the idea that this would be the case really crossed our minds. It made me a bit upset. It's always been really important to us to have one parent home. Then we talked about it and realized that we have always had to have two sources of income. Either we've both had jobs, or one of us has been in school and has received grants or loans to help with expenses, or Rob has had two jobs. So this isn't new. Plus we really feel like this field is where I am supposed to be.

My dream job is a stay-at-home-mom. I can't imagine anything more wonderful than getting to be a mom and raise my kids. I know this is all spiritual and personal and stuff, but we feel like being a therapist is what I was meant to do with my life. As if God said that He knew how much I wanted to be a mom, so He let me have six amazing children (and we were told multiple times that we would never be able to have children) and have over a decade of getting to focus on just being a mom. Now it is time for me to pay Him back for the amazing experiences He has allowed me to have by helping His children who are lost and need someone to help them find their way back. I'm not saying back to Him in a religious sense, I mean back to peace and happiness in whatever way that client decides is best for him or her. I feel so amazed that He is allowing me to go along for this ride. I sit in sessions and work with clients and feel like I am getting to be a spectator to the incredible process through which clients heal and find happiness.

Anyway, I know this has rambled a bit. I just wanted to get it down for me to read later :) Jack has a check up this afternoon (just a yearly physical), then I have a million things to do to get ready for my client tomorrow. Jack and I are going to turn his appointment into a mommy date. He'll go shopping with me for my office stuff and then I will take him to dinner. I got to do the same type of thing with Megan last week. She had her yearly check up, then we went out to dinner together. I love one-on-one time! It is nice having a nanny so that I can do more of that with each of the kids. Hopefully things get less crazy as we adjust to this and figure out how to get things to work in the best way possible :)

Another Specialist Visit

I got to visit a gastroenterologist today. I'm getting to see so many fun doctors this year! After examining the test results from the ER two weeks ago, he decided he needs to do a biopsy of my large intestine, which is done through a colonoscopy. Yay. He hopes it was just a random infection, perhaps somehow related to food poisoning or something. No one else in our family got sick though and I hadn't recently eaten at a restaurant or anywhere that my food wouldn't have been the same thing everyone else ate. He said it was a pretty significant bleed. Anyway, I get to go have that procedure done next Friday. We scheduled it on a Friday so Rob would be home for the next few days just in case I don't feel fantastic. He has to be there with me as they sedate you and the doctor said driving after sedation is not the best idea ;)

He also checked out the lesion on my liver they found in the CT scan at the ER. He says he thinks it's a hemangioma, which is benign, but he wasn't sure based on the images he had. So I get to have an MRI within the next week too. I feel like that meme that is floating around pinterest and facebook that says "buy ALL the things!" or whatever, except in my case it's "do ALL the tests!!!"

Other than that, life has been super busy. My practicum officially started last week, along with the class that goes along with it (mostly peer support and educational supervision). I had my first official client call and got to do a phone interview intake with her, which was awesome :) Figuring out my schedule and developing a client base is one of the more stressful things I've dealt with, but it's exciting to finally be able to work as a therapist! 

The kids are enjoying summer. It's been raining all week, which I've loved. It cleared up today for a while, so we picked up KFC for lunch and had a picnic at the playground with Ashley. The older girls have set up a "preteen club", which the younger ones aren't a part of, so the younger ones made their own club. Eva is the cutest two year old ever and has reached a stage where she repeats everything other people say, so the older kids will respond to some question and Eva will repeat their response as if we asked her. It sounds so funny to have mature phrases come out of her little mouth! Laura now has three teeth and spends as much time as she can with Megan. 

We try to go swimming once a week, although the weather hasn't been horribly co-operative this summer. Beth went off the diving board for the first time ever last Friday! I think the pool is Rob's favorite place now :) We are keeping busy, but looking forward to Rob's birthday, then Megan's, then Jack's, followed by our anniversary. Somehow in all that, I need to fit all my practicum hours. Life stays interesting :)

The 4th of July

Usually we do lots of fun things for the 4th. Due to what was going on with me, we didn't do pretty much any of them. We had Kiki and Dan (Rob's best friend) over for dinner on Wednesday, or rather Rob and the kids had them over for dinner and Kiki made all the sides and I slept and didn't eat as I can only eat things like applesauce and bananas at this point. I did get to spend some time talking with everyone towards the end of the evening, which was a lot of fun.

Jojo brought sloppy joes over for dinner on Wednesday, but since Kiki and Dan came over with the other food, we saved Jojo's food for Thursday. All we did Thursday was heat up the sloppy joes for dinner (thank you Jojo!!!) and let the kids watch fireworks on the tv. We did manage to get our cake baked. Every year we make a cake and decorate it with whipped cream and red and blue fruit. We used to decorate the whole cake, but the kids always have different plans regarding the decorations, so we've started dividing it up and letting each of the decorate their own part.

I decorated Laura's for her :)

Laura had three servings of blueberries and only ate a few bits of cake.

We didn't even do our annual family photos in flag shirts. We'll have to get to those this weekend :)

10 Months Old!!!

I missed the 9 month mark and don't even have any pictures of Laura from that time period. It was the last week of school for the four older kids and it was a rough week for me and they just didn't happen. We got 10 month pictures though!

Laura got her first tooth the day she turned 9 months old. She got her second tooth last week. It figures that the child that would take the longest teething is the one I'd have to wean early . . . :) She's been standing on her own for over a month. She walks as long as someone holds on to at least one of her hands. She could definitely walk on her own, but she hasn't figured that out yet. She shoots up the slide in our playroom at lightning speed and has figured out how to slide back down again on her tummy. She pretends to talk on cell phones and cracks us up with her fake laughs. She has figured out how to climb up things (like the chairs in the kitchen and the rungs on the play structure in the playroom), but hasn't figured out how to get down again. She excels at sneaking away from whoever is watching her and climbing up the stairs when the gate isn't up. We used to us a wagon to block off the bottom of the stairs, but she figured out how to get past it.

She has the cutest smile and the most beautiful dark brown eyes. Her hair is the lightest of any of the kids and has a definite red tint. Her favorite person is Megan, with Mommy coming in a close second. She has started reaching for Daddy and Kylie too now :) She loves playing with each of her siblings. Her very favorite thing is the roku remote, but any remote is awesome. Cell phones and pencils are also on her list of favorites. Her favorite foods are blueberries, avocados, and bananas. If we put her in her high chair at dinner and start setting down the other kids' plates, she screams bloody murder until she gets some of whatever is on their plates. She may be the sixth child, but she will never be overlooked :) Her very favorite song is "the Reason" by Hoobastank, although she loves pretty much any music.

She is an amazing little girl and we are so glad we have her as part of our family!

She kept trying to crawl into my lap, so I gave her the remotes to play with.

Seriously Mom? Haven't you taken enough pictures? (Yes, she is standing on her own.)