I'm a day late.

I am late, but I have a good excuse. I was waiting to hear from our Realtor so I could update you on the house. He called this afternoon (yeah!) and told us everything looks good. They haven't signed the papers yet, but they asked for a copy of the earnest money check and the pre-approval from the bank. So, if they want us to put the earnest money down, they must be willing to agree to our terms and pay the closing costs. Woo hoo!!!! We're going to go see the Realtor tomorrow with the check and letter and then possibly stop by the house and take some measurements for the new carpeting we'll need to get.

Another blessing this week, Nick passed the written portion of the driving test, and they waived the 6 month waiting period for the driving portion. He'll get the permit in the mail, and they said he could come in a week or so later to take the driving test. It's good news for me, but Nick says he's not looking forward to driving to school and eating lunch by himself twice a week. I have to say I will miss the chats we have on the drive.

I took pictures last week at the church snow soccer game, but Nick still has my memory card so I haven't downloaded them to my computer yet. God was really nice and dropped a few inches of snow for us the night before, so we had plenty for the game. It was a lot of fun. Mike was supposed to take pictures of the Lippizan stallions for me that day, but they wouldn't allow him to take the camera into the building. Oh well. Angel said it was a neat show and that they had a good time. Grandma was a bit disappointed that they weren't the stallions from Austria, but some place here in America.

Well, it looks like the next few weeks will be our chance to help stimulate the economy as we shop for things for the house. We will need a washer, dryer, stove, and, as I mentioned before, carpeting. I'm sure there's a few other things we're going to need, but those will have to wait a bit.

I guess I should be going. I was working on a cake I'm making for church Sunday, which required kneading blue food coloring into some fondant. This is not a neat process, and my blue stained fingers and nails are driving me crazy. I think I'm going to go soak them and see if I can find a way to exfoliate it away. Till next week...

God's love and blessings!

God is so good!

Someone mentioned last week at church that it is a good idea to be specific when you pray, so that's what I did this week, and God was so good to answer. First off, we made the bid on the house, and my prayer was that we would hear back quickly from the bank as to whether or not they accepted. We heard back the next day! They didn't drop the price as far as we wanted, so we counter bid. Again, I prayed for a quick answer and that it would be within our budget if it was His will that we have this house. Mike did the paperwork for the bid yesterday afternoon, and we heard from them this morning--and it seems to be within our budget. We dropped by the bank this afternoon to make sure and got our pre-approval letter so Mike is going to the Realtor again tomorrow to give our final offer and see what happens.

Secondly, we were concerned about $5000 we had put down on the modular home we originally wanted to build. Our paperwork said that this was non-refundable. We fretted about it for a while, but we finally prayed and gave it to the Lord. If it was His will that we get the money back, He is more than able to take care of it, and He did! We're getting the entire deposit back! God is so good!

In other family news, Mike, Angel and Grandma are going to St. Paul on Saturday to see the Lippizan stallions. Grandma is so excited she can hardly wait! The rest of us will be going to the church that morning for some snow soccer. Yes, you read that right. Apparently this is a yearly thing at our church to play a game of soccer before the snow melts. It seems that the snow kind of equalizes the playing field for everyone. It sounds like fun. :o)

I spent several days this week working on a Birthday present for Michelle's best friend Helen. I designed a set of drawers for her to organize all her hair bows and barrettes. I made one for Michelle as well. I'm hoping tomorrow to get my camera out and get some pictures of it to post on my craft blog.

Well, I just heard Darlene call us all for supper, so I better close. Till next week...

God's love and blessings.

This is Going to be a Long Post.

Wow, what a week! Yes, I missed posting on Thursday, but I'm making up for it now with lots of news and even a few pictures. :o)

I'll start with the pictures. The library that the girls and I hang out at while Nick is at school was hosting a Fancy Nancy party this Wednesday. For those of you who are unaware, Fancy Nancy is a story book character who does everything "fancy". Michelle was so ecstatic to go. They fancied up the children's section of the library with lights, tulle and ribbon. They had pink lemonade in fancy cups, and of course, lots of accessories. The girls even got to have a little make-up put on. I will post most of the pictures I took on our Picasa page tomorrow, but I wanted to post a few here. I love this one. Notice the pinky...
And doesn't she just look marvelous? That's her Fancy Nancy doll she got for Christmas.

Nick took this shot on the way home. Our Marvelous Michelle pooped out. :o)

As for other news. After going through tons of floor plans, and getting bids on the well and septic, and talking to I don't know how many people about different types of houses, we decided to put in a bid on the house next door. It's the property adjacent to ours, and it's been foreclosed. We had taken a look at it back in November, and I wasn't real thrilled with it then, but the longer we are here, the better it is looking. The listing says it has a walk-out basement, but apparently they forgot to dig a hole for it, so it's actually the first floor. Which means the kitchen and living areas are upstairs. Not sure why they did this, but on the bright side, maybe I'll lose a few of these extra pounds lugging groceries up stairs all the time. :o) It's definitely not my dream home, but the price is pretty good, and it will work for us. Maybe once Mike gets his teacher's license and gets a full time job we'll be able to pay this one off sooner and build the big house on the hill. We'll see. So for now, we're waiting to hear back from the bank on our bid and we'll go from there. Please pray that we'll hear back soon. There is a bit of work that will need to be done before we could move in. The carpet will need to be replaced, and some of the rooms need painting. The listing also stated that it has a fireplace, but apparently the previous owners decided they should take that with them, so we'll need to get the hole in the wall fixed as well.

I spent all of today working on a cake for our church banquet tomorrow night. I would love to have a double oven so I could bake more layers at once, but I think by the time we can afford that, my back and hands won't be allowing me to make cakes anymore! Oh well. Here's a picture of the top of today's cake. I'm going to try and get a picture of the whole thing tomorrow, but it was so big that I couldn't get high enough to get a better shot. I don't like writing on cakes and, par for the course, I ran out of room and had to scrunch the last of the reference on there. Oh well.


One last thing, if you are reading this before Valentine's Day, please pray for Mike and I. We were asked to do a skit at the banquet tomorrow night and we're still trying to memorize our lines! Thanks!!

I better get going. I'm tired and need to get Michelle into bed. I believe I'm going to be crawling into mine shortly after that. Till next week...

God's love and blessings!

Blame it on the Floorplans!

Well, Mike and I stopped by the bank yesterday and got an idea of what we can afford, and the banker really frowned on the idea of a manufactured (formerly known as mobile) home. I guess there's a bunch of additional fees the banks put on those, and they don't have a very good resale value. So, she sent us off to a custom home place where we were given even more floor plans to look through. I've seen so many floor plans the last few weeks my head is beginning to spin, and that's my excuse for not posting yesterday--because I had my head buried in house books all evening. :o)

The girls and I have been busy with school work. Grandma didn't have to work at Meals-on-Wheels, so Angel went with Michelle and I to take Nick to school and we got a lot of her stuff caught up. Sometimes home schooling can be so frustrating and we get behind, but then there are days like today where everything just clicks, and we zoom right through the day. I also enjoy the opportunity to talk with Angel. We have conversations about all kinds of things during the course of a school day.

As you can tell by the fact that I'm still taking Nick to college, he still doesn't have the bank statement, so he still doesn't have a license. :o(

Well, Mike will be home from work soon, so I should close for now. Till next week, don't tell God how big your "storms" are, instead, tell your "storms" how big your God is!

And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush, be still." And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. Mark 4:39

God's love and blessings.