From Corn Toss to Broken Arm!!

Caden                            

Carter

Parrish

Last weekend we enjoyed sharing time with some sweet neighbors.  Riley went and visited with her friend Isabel while Parrish had her brothers, Carter and Caden over to play.  The boys enjoyed some corn toss in the front yard and other random games!  Only a few hours later after playing football at EL park did the big incident happen.  Poor Caden was playing on the monkey bars and fell and broke two bones in his right arm!

From August to September!

Parrish and Riley playing in rocks of basement!

The past two months have just flown by with so much going on in our family.  Parrish started his first week of school the beginning of August and the rest is history.  He is going on Tuesday and Thursday to a co-op program for other homeschooler!  This was a huge blessing to get a phone call that they had an open spot the week prior to classes starting! Wearing the hat of "teacher" has been interesting but yet rewarding.  I have been humbled as I  have discovered sin within myself as we work together!  I have struggled with focusing specifically on him rather than the chores of everyday life.  For those of you that know me, you know I am easily frustrated by a cluttered or dirty house!  I am realizing that I have to balance my life better and let go of my addiction to cleaning up!  Not always an easy task!  I am so thankful for the teachers that work with children on a daily basis too!  How in the world am I to teach a child to write his letters a, o, & g starting at the two o'clock position and go clockwise?  Does he have to do it this way? So many hours of erasing and rewriting but still not much improvement. Is it worth the battle?  Some days I think so and others I would rather just tell him it is beautiful writing and be encouraging.

As for the house it is coming along great.  I had wanted to post more pictures but could not find the cord to the camera.  Today I was kindly informed.."You don't have to have the cord."   So sorry for the late posts!  It has all been smooth except for the excavator hitting the concrete wall and having to redo the walls! We now have the roof and first layer of exterior paint.  The porches are due to go on next week after the last part of the front door (the transom) is added.  Interior the electrical, plumbing, and insulation has been completed.  We lost one of the large trees on the left side of the lot in the last set of storms.

Cinder blocks for the basement are in place.

The first floor being framed up.

Loved how the sun was setting on it this day!

It is starting to look like a house!  

The roof is now on with most of the hardiplank too!  

The kids have enjoyed watching the building from the foundation up. Brings a better understanding to "The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock."  I will be more diligent as life goes forward now that I realize I can just plug the camera disk into the computer!

Riley in her room!

His Provision

As I sit this morning in awe of what I am in Christ, I can’t wait to see others learn of their infinite value in Him!  Currently,  I am in a rainbow of emotions as I praise God for ultimately having a plan for us and moving another time.  He has orchestrated our lives down to the very second!  Over the last couple of months we have made multiple trips to downtown Birmingham City Hall and Courthouse.  Yes, my children are very familiar with the beautiful “swimming pools”, as Riley calls them, that rest in between the two buildings.  Of course, I never imagined The City of Birmingham would be cantankerous about somebody building a home in East Lake.  Little did I know!  So in order to build you have to obtain a permit.  And of course we do everything as cheaply as possible so I am the “contractor,” who has to obtain the permit from “One Stop Permitting.”  Need the sign above the door say more?  I will not recount the number of trips that I drug my tired children in that office thinking this was it, only to find out they needed one more vital piece of information. But God reminded me one day as I was walking across the court yard after a failed mission that it was not about the permit; it was ALL about HIM.  As you walk from one building to the other there is Lynn Park adjacent to the fountains.  If you stroll down that sidewalk filled with benches you notice men and women, many who are homeless.  This particular day we had a chance to play on blow up toys with children and talk with other mothers.  It was not about my mission for the day; it was a way of God teaching me His ways are better than mine.

After obtaining a resurveyed mylar map of the lots with city officials signatures, we finally obtained a permit to build at 8014 9^th Avenue South Birmingham AL 35206!!  The process has begun and we are so excited.  We left on July 2^nd to vacation at the beach just after the clearing off the lot and digging the footings.  The following Sunday our house shows, Monday night we have an offer, Tuesday we counter, Wednesday we agree on the offer, and we move out of Riverchase on the 28^th.  Yes, I have 8 days remaining!  I should be packing right nowJ  Through a family in EL God has provided us with a place to live temporarily until ours is finished.  Thanks be to God for his provision and timing!

Before I have asked that you pray for our neighbors!  I don't have their pictures but have their home pictured to the left!  We saw Audrey a couple days ago and she is so excited to have new neighbors.  She is a cook at a nursing home here in Hoover!  She seems very open to welcoming us into her life!  Can't wait to get to know her more!

  

The Beginnings

The Giving Tree

Hello to all our friends and family!  As you know we have been anxiously waiting to see what God had in store for us when we decided to leave our home, family, friends, and jobs in Montgomery and follow what we believed was the Spirit redirecting in our lives.  I never doubted Kristen and his desire to work directly with people and wanted him to be happy in his occupation but more than that I wanted him to answer his calling.  I recall us initially telling family and needing a crane in order to pick their jaws up off the ground!  Of course, they did not understand why a father and husband would disrupt his family's security and put his wife back to work so that he could go back to school.  Especially after he never finished the course work for his MBA.  My idea of staying home while my children were small was tossed out the window. Kristen had no desire to do school work but God placed a new desire in him for PT school.  The past several years of course work have really flown by and now he is working at St. Vincent's East in Birmingham.  Oh, how I wished I would have started sharing our story four years ago when Kristen first went with me to Malawi, Africa!

So, now I have finally figured out how to post on this blog spot!  However, don't fancy your eyes by looking at the page because I have not figured out how to decorate it and make it pretty!  That will come with some instruction and time.  I want to share the process of our lives through yet another move.  And no, I did not realize when I told Kristen that I supported his decision to go back to school that I would move four times and make my child (PZ) sleep in a closet of a basement for 2 months! So our final move will be to East Lake (EL). Or maybe I should not ever declare when and where I am going!  I never thought I would be doing this.

The process officially started today or would you say in September of 2010 when we purchase the property? The white oak tree top left sat in the middle of the lot and sadly had to give of itself so that we could move in. I pray that our life in EL will be as beautiful as this tree, just a small piece of God's creation!  We plan to save a large portion of the trunk to make a piece of furniture! As time moves forward I will share more of our story and how we ended up here.  But for now I pray that you would support us on our journey for HIM.  Of course you can pray for our family but even more than that you can pray for our new neighbors.  Soon I may have pictures for you to see their faces but for now...Thelma, Demarcus, Kenyata (directly across street), Bridgett (across street diagonal), Audrey (corner house that backs up to us), Paris (5 year old beside us), and Peaches n Harold (beside us too).  A special thank you to our families who have spent many hours thinking about this process and praying for us!

The daunting task