Is July already over?

At this moment I sit here with Naomi on my lap and type with one hand, we watch the light rain fall and we are enjoying the peace in our home. As I watch outside I am humbled in my heart to realize that I need the rain in my own heart in order for me to grow spiritually. I must admit that the past year or so I have allowed my life to be consumed by everything other than what I need the most in life. I realize I have three young ones now but I don't feel that should be an excuse to where I am spiritually. I need Him more now especially since I have young ones because if I am not where I am supposed to be how will I teach them in the ways they should go? If I am not teaching them then who will? Anyways this has been on my heart for the past couple of weeks but this week it has affected me the most.

Other than my spiritual life so much has happened since the last time I posted. As I mentioned in our last post, Alex's conversion status has been approved. With this new development we were able to finally put in for orders. We are just waiting for the papers to be finalized and then we will share where we are moving next. If everything goes as planned (what we have been told) we should be not far from our current area.

We celebrated Nathanael's second birthday this past Sunday. The day before his birthday we pulled the clippers out and the bar stool and we gave both boys a haircut. The significant change was Nathanael's haircut though because this was the first time he really got a haircut. He no longer has a bowl cut and no longer looks like my baby. I put off haircuts until two years old because I want them to be my babies as long as possible. I was not ready to admit that until Isaiah's got his first haircut and then his baby features all faded away and he began to look like a big boy. I remembered this so I held on to Nathanael's baby look until the day before his second birthday the way we did it with Isaiah. When his hair hit the ground I almost shed a tear because I realized that my little baby boy was no longer a baby. He is my little boy now. He is so handsome and I am so grateful for the gift that God gave me which is also the meaning of his name. (Nathanael = gift of God) We celebrated the birthday by going to Chuck E Cheese and letting the boys run around having the time of their life.

This week has consisted of much cleaning and preparation for our vacation. We are going to be having a three week vacation which is so exciting for us. We are doing it for that long because this is our last big trip before our move. Our plans are to go to Corpus and visit for a few days before we head to Amarillo to visit my brother. We are actually vacationing with my parents but my dad's vacation doesn't start until Sunday so we will be in Corpus until then. After visiting my brother we will head to Colorado for about a week and then we depart from my family and will visit the friends in Albuquerque before we head back to Maine. We plan on taking our time and enjoying every moment of it. Now I must go and finish packing. I am actually almost done with the gathering of things that we need for this trip and tomorrow should consist of cleaning the car and getting it loaded so all we have to do on Sunday is pick up Alex from work and then head to Texas.

Maybe we will see some of you during this trip.