Expectations

I haven't blogged again in a while. I have lots of stuff to blog about but I just haven't sat down to type in a while. So, instead of coming up with something original tonight I just thought I would copy and paste an email I sent out to the girls in my small group a few days ago. It tells a little about what is going on in my life right now. I will blog more, with pictures from ummmm, let's see... Abigail's birthday up to Christmas, etc soon, just not tonight. But until then, here's that email:

Guess what... that verse I was telling you about my expectations being from God alone is in the Bible and guess what? it is from Psalm 62 (ever heard of that one? ) [Psalm 62 was the song of the month in November at church] in the NKJV it says "My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him." So..... how did you do on Christmas with your expectations being on God alone? huh? I have been praying for all of you. Please reply with your report on your Christmas and how you did.

here is my report: We had a pretty good Christmas. The kids were thrilled with all of their gifts and had a really fun morning. It was fun to watch them this week as they were not only excited about the gifts that they were going to be getting but they were also very excited about the gifts that they were going to give each other and to see their siblings' reactions. Glenn and I don't usually buy each other gifts. Over the years we have both been hurt by the reactions from gifts that we have bought that were not well received so it has just been easier to not get gifts than to get hurt. I wasn't expected to get anything for Christmas and wasn't disappointed so that was good.

BUT... I have had a horrible attitude lately and have allowed myself to wallow in depression and have justified it by the fact that I have no parents and I have no idea what my future holds and that I am just a messie, etc. I was convicted of that this morning in my quiet time. I should have been convicted of it 3 days ago but of course I have been neglecting my time in my Bible because I would rather wallow than do something about it. Last night God told me to get out my Creative Counterpart book and start reading it again.... ouch! Then this morning in 1Tim 4:16 I read "Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching, persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you." I have not been paying attention to myself or persevering. I have been holding to my "Woe is me" attitude and that is not right. Please pray that I will find my hope (what my Bible say for expectations) in God alone and ask me how I am doing about it.

Boxes

Long time no blog. Glenn told me that we got internet at home so I would blog more but we've had it over a week and I haven't blogged. Well, I'll write a quick one this morning. I have an old one that I wrote somewhere here on this computer that I will have to post too but for now...

I think that I will write about boxes. Boxes have been the bain of my existence. OK, not really but I have become very familiar with them. Our favorite boxes are Baxter boxes. If you are ever likely to move often you really need to become friends with someone on dialysis that is done at home and ask them to save their boxes for you. That is what we did. When my dad was doing dialysis at home we saw his boxes and asked him to PLEASE save them for us because they looked perfect for nomadic people like us. They are just the right size because no matter how full you make them or how heavy the stuff is that you put inside of them the average adult can still lift them. With light stuff inside them even the kids can carry them! They are also great because they are all the same size and therefore stack very nicely into moving trucks, the back of the Burb, horsetrailers, or whatever else you decide to use to move with. They also stack nicely in storage units when you are between places. I am getting better at moving. As I have unpacked this time I have kept the Baxter boxes together by type (kitchen, books, misc, etc) and have put them into piles of 10 then surrounded them with plastic wrap before putting them into the shed for our next move. I think that this will make our next move easier because when I decide to pack books I will just look for the stack of boxes marked "books" and start filling them instead of sorting through a pile of boxes for a box marked 'books." Then I will not have to use the big black marker as much because the boxes will be already labeled. I have tried to do this in the past so very few of the boxes actually have much crossed out on them. I am trying to remember how many moves these boxes have helped us through....  I think that our Baxter boxes have survived at least 7 moves so far and they are still going strong. I think that I am a snob in many areas and boxes are definitely one of them and Baxter boxes are my boxes of choice. 

We have discovered another use for Baxter boxes... they make a fun Christmas tree. There are a couple of banana boxes that we got from the Lilites and the box from our computer speakers but it is mostly Baxter boxes. Our "tree" looks best in the dark but it is fun and the kids have had fun decorating it yesterday.  I thought that it was appropriate to make our tree out of boxes this year since there were still so many in the downstairs of our house and because we have been filling them and emptying them for most of the year. There are more pictures of our tree in progress (with the amazing Baxter boxes) on a photo album that Glenn made on facebook here but here is a picture of it in the dark with the lights on.

Happy Thanksgiving 2008

We decided that everyone had to share one thing that they are thankful for for every year that they have been alive... here are our lists from youngest to oldest accumulated on our trip home from Aunt Ruth & Uncle Jerry's house:

Abigail:
1.Mommy & Daddy & Lydia & Caleb & Hannah
2.Puggles
3.My friends

Lydia:
1.Daddy & Momma & my sisters & brother
2.that we could play around at Aunt Ruthie's house
3.that Hannah is letting me sleep with her sometimes
4.Matt and that we gotted to go sledding with Matt

Hannah:
1.we got to see Kyle & Ehren
2.that yesterday was Abigail's birthday
3.that we get to see the Files tonight
4.me and Ella got to be back friends together again
5.AWANA
6.we went sledding with Matt last year

Caleb:
1.God provides
2.my family
3.AWANA and church
4.my friends – Will & Drew Dudley, Levi, Gabe, Josiah, Benjamin, Hannah, Lydia, Abigail, Ehren & Kyle, Shandon,
5.Miss Emily (Sunday School teacher)
6.God's Word
7.Brian & Kristina Lishawa
8.Ben has changed
“I can't wait until I have 10!!”

Glenn:
1.Sonja- all her support and love for me.
2.Caleb and that he is growing spiritually and learning scripture
3.Hannah and that she is such a people lover
4.Lydia and that she is so indepentant and entertains herself well
5.Abigail, the one that makes me smile and laugh and cry sometimes, more often smile & laugh
6.That God wants me to grow and is helping me grow
7.Brian & Kristina letting us stay at their house for 2 months
8.our little house
9.my job, that I have one
10.church
11.small group
12.my parents
13.my interview at SUNY Upstate on 1/21/09
14.all of my secondaries are done
15.the Files
16.the Cronks
17.That our Suburban is still running and has been a good though gas guzzling vehicle
18.God's word
19.How God places reading material in my life that I need.
20.That Sonja has the strength and desire to homeschool our kids.
21.For the sermon series at Church on fighting fair.
22.Monroe library system
23.That God is in control in this crazy world
24.Friends that let us mooch wireless
25.I can walk to work
26.my Mac
27.we are living more simply and finding some good deals that help us live simply
28.God will be with me this year just as He has been in years past.

Sonja
1.God is faithful and keeps His promises
2.Glenn
3.How helpful Glenn has been, especially the last few months
4.Caleb and what a great help he is with and how much he loves his sisters and his love for reading
5.Hannah and what a good helper she is and her servant's heart
6.Lydia and her love for her siblings
7.Abigail and how she makes me laugh
8.our little house and that we don't own it :)
9.that Glenn can still walk to work
10.North Baptist Church
11.our small groups – old and new and the friendships we have developed through them
12.Brian and Kristina Lishawa (who are part of both our old and new small groups :)
13.that the Lishawas let us stay at their house for 2 months
14.the right to homeschool our kids
15.God's Word and what a help and a challenge it is to me
16.the Fighting Fair series
17.getting to visit the Middle East vicariously through David Whiting's blog
18.that I will get to see my parents again someday because they trusted Christ as their Savior and I have as well
19.God is a Father to the father-less
20.facebook and how I have been able to catch up with old friends through it
21.our kids play so well together
22.Monroe County Library System – particularly having 4 libraries within 2 miles of our house
23.“He sets up kings and deposes them.”
24.I'm learning to live more simply
25.my Wegmans bags – I love those things! I have only taken home about a dozen plastic bags all year because of them!
26.free wireless at libraries, coffee shops and friends' homes.
27.my new business and especially the difference that all of the free products I have earned have made in my kitchen!
28.my blog and how writing in it has helped me and others this year.
29.God always provides for us
30.my godly heritage and the privilege of passing it on to my kids.

what is new

Here is a blog that I wrote last week. I finally am able to post it so here it is belated...

11/20/2008
8:45pm

Well... what is new? Why is Sonja not blogging? Does anyone out there miss my blog? I miss blogging. At this point we do not have internet at home because we haven't found space for it in our budget that hasn't been looked at since FPU (sorry Dave Ramsey! - oops! we're working on that but that is another story) so Glenn checks his email at work and occasionally glances at mine and I check mine once or twice a week before or after small group (all of the homes we've met at so far have wireless) or at the library. The budget thing is true but it is not the real reason that we don't have internet. Getting rid of the internet for a season is something I really needed to do. Sure, we could have called up Time Warner as soon as we moved in but I knew that would not have been good for me. I am struggling with so much stuff right now both emotionally and school-wise and box-wise that I knew it would be easier for me to hide on the computer rather than deal with real life that really needs to be dealt with. I had way too much of an internet addiction (can anyone say facebook??) and it really needed to be broken. This fall I have been doing Beth Moore's study on Daniel at church and I have been amazed as I look at my pretty unmaterialistic in my opinion mindset how much I am influenced with our “Babylonian” society's mindset. It is everywhere – you can do it all, be it all, have it all... you deserve it, you need it. “I am and there is none besides me.” How God has had to break me and make me step back and realize that it is NOT all about me. We do not have to buy into this world's mindset but “godliness is never accidental.” So I am trying. Someday we will have internet at home again and my treatment of it will be different. I am reminded of that song “He's still working on me, to make me what I ought to be, it took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth and jupiter and mars, how loving and patient He must be cause, He's still working on me.” And I am so glad He is.

Well, enough of that. What is new? Maybe I can come up with a list of 10 things. We'll see how far I get:
1.Our new small group. We loved our small group from last year but we were getting so big that it was time to multiply. We split off with the Lishawas to start a group down in the south part of the city on Monday nights. There are 6 couples that regularly meet together when our doctors and nurses are not at the hospital. We have decided to take a sermon discussion approach since it worked so well during the relationship series during the first 6 weeks and it has been great to grow and pray together and hold each other accountable. I am so excited about the work that God is doing in all of our lives and the victories that we have made. I could go on but I am going to try to keep this short.
2.Fighting Fair. Our pastor did an amazing series on Fighting Fair at church this fall. If you are in a conflict with anyone right now or ever have been or ever will be (did I get everyone?) this is an amazing series for you to listen to. Go to www.northbaptistchurch.org and look under sermon archives or something like that and look for messages from September 7-October 19. Download all of them and listen to them!! It totally changed my life and perspective on conflict. There were messages about asking for forgiveness (a lot different than just saying 'I'm sorry'), confrontation, the cost of forgiveness, church discipline, overcoming evil with good. To sum it up quickly:
1.Sinful people respond sinfully when they are sinned against.
2.Your goal in conflict cannot be to win the conflict or to avoid the conflict, your goal must be to please God.
3.God's goal in conflict is to make us more like Him.
4.My biggest enemy in conflict is ME!
3.We have resumed school. Our “one week off for fall break/moving” turned into almost 3 weeks. It was bad. I was so overwhelmed with trying to find places for stuff and not finding places for stuff and sitting amidst boxes and pulling my hair out trying to figure out how and where to do school in this house but it has gotten better. Glenn helped me to come up with a schedule for our day and encouraged me to stick with it and it has gone much better. Some grumbling to start but we are enjoying it again so that is good.
4.Our CLA (Couch Like Apparatus). Space and storage is of the essence when you are living in a house of less than 600 sq feet with 5 other people. Glenn wanted to make a couch for us that the seat lifted off and we could store our camping stuff or off season clothes in it but hadn't made progress on it and we were all longing for something else to sit on besides our one recliner. Yes, all 4 kids can sit on my lap on it while we are reading a story but it would be nice to spread out a little so we started looking for a couch on craigslist. I thought we would just find a love seat or something else that would work for the time being but we found our CLA. It was homemade by the people we bought it from with really heavy pieces of wood but it has storage under it and we have been able to put some stuff that we wanted to keep but didn't want out or didn't need this winter under there. It is huge. When sitting on it my feet do not touch the floor. I am thankful for it though it was not exactly what we had in mind for a couch.
5.We have sold some stuff on Craigslist (we are not just buying this time). We sold out roll top desk (which we had no room for), our sleigh bed (which, if you remember, we could not get the boxsprings up the stairs for), and Caleb's old white bmx bike. It seems like there was something else but I can't remember what it was. There are a few more things that need to be posted and, I think, one thing still out there but that is a praise!
6.Glenn and I have both gone out this week with other people without any family member. On Tuesday I went out with a couple of ladies from small group to Phillip's European for dessert because I had been stuck in the house all day on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with sick kids so couldn't go to church or small group or the library. It was fun getting to know them better and sharing our lives (until 11:20 – yikes!). Tonight Glenn is at the Distillery with some people from work because it is the last day of three different employees from his unit. With Glenn at small group on Monday and me at AWANA last night and the opposite person staying home with sick kids we haven't really seen each other much. I think that we need to go on a date. We haven't been on one in several months. Somehow I really need to start making my relationship with Glenn a priority again!
7.Speaking of Glenn.... he has been offered an interview at Upstate on 1/12/09. Yeah! His first one. I am praying for more, specifically for U of R but God knows what is best.

October Pictures

Well, I haven't posted in a long time because we don't have internet at home but here are some pictures from the month of October. There are pictures from our Sparks hike for AWANA, moving into our new place, Caleb's best friend Will's birthday party, our last trip to Seneca Park Zoo before our membership expired, Halloween fun at Brighton Library, Strong Museum of Play and trick or treating, and cleaning up around our new house.

A quick update

Here I sit at the Brighton Library checking email and letting the kids play. This is a fun library! (one of the 4-5 branches within 2 miles from our new house). 

Here is a quick list of updates:

1. Our mattress is no longer on the floor. Lishawa's to the rescue again. They had a platform bed in their attic that they didn't need and let us use! It is great to have our bed off the floor and to be able to store our camping stuff somewhere!

2. Our storage unit is completely empty!! Yeah! Special thanks to Fray for coming over to watch our kids for a little bit yesterday and let us borrow her van to make that possible!!

3. We have lost 78 pounds. Glenn took a load to Goodwill yesterday. We have lots more to lose though!!

4. We have lots of stuff on Craigslist. If you know anyone who wants a roll top desk, a twin sized bedframe, a large dining room table with 6 chairs, a bike or two, a cherry stained double bed frame, a double boxsprings or anything else that you remember us owning let me know. We are trying to get rid of lots of stuff to be able to fit in our tiny house. 

5. I measured our house today. I am not sure how exactly square footage is measured but I am pretty sure that no matter how it is measured our house is less than 600 square feet. (Hence the reason we have to get rid of so much!)

6. Sunday was the last message in a 7 week series on Fighting Fair at church. It has been an amazing and life changing series that I am so thankful for!! If you want to listen to the messages  (which I would highly recommend!) the church website is www.northbaptistchurch.org and you can listen or download the messages.

Well, I need to get home and get supper going. Until next time.

Am I home yet?

written 10/9/08

We have spent a bit of time yesterday and today over at Brian and Kristina's packing up, cleaning up, checking internet and loving on Sampson. I always wonder when our new place will feel like home. Though we had slept at our house for the first time on Monday night I had my first taste of "home" on Tuesday when we took a walk through Highland Park to get to Highland Library so I could move my voter registration again. It was so fun to wander through the park and play with the trees and pick up buckeyes. It made me feel like I had come home. We LOVE Highland Park and have missed it living on the other side of the river :). On our way home from the library we saw "Miss Betty" and chatted with her for a while which was so much fun. We have missed her! We also saw Bill and Felix, our old downstairs neighbors and said "hi." They all asked if we were picking up Daddy from work and we said, "No, we are just walking home from the library." They were excited for us that we had gotten our own place again.

Today I baked bread and brownies... does that mean I am home? I still haven't prepared a decent meal for my family yet unless loaded nachos, bologna sandwiches, or fried potatoes and PBJ count :). I will get it together soon, hopefully! Tomorrow is Friday – pizza night! Is that a decent meal? I don't know but at least there will be leftovers so I don't have to worry about lunch on Saturday.

One thing I always worry about when we move to a new place is if the kids have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I am always afraid that I will find puddles in the morning or hear kids crying in the middle of the night because they can not find the bathroom. So far, that has not happened this time but something else bathroom related has happened. Our bathroom is on the first floor off the kitchen. At Brian and Kristina's house the bathroom is on the second floor near the bedrooms. I actually like that set up better but that is a different story. Yesterday (I think, the days are all running together) Abigail went running up the stairs. She got about half way up and then said "Silly Abigail" and turned around and came back down and went into the bathroom. We cracked up. I love how much she talks and how much of a little person she is. "Silly Abigail."

Well, I have lots more unpacking to do. As I picked up our scale yesterday I decided that I am going to weigh how much stuff we give and throw away and I will keep track of it here. We need to get rid of a lot of stuff! We have kept and moved way too much over the last 9 years/ 13 moves. I want to have a simpler life and that means less stuff :)