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!