The one with the flood

I have no idea who invented the "Terrible Twos" saying, but they led me astray. After Caelen turned 3, I'll admit it, I thought, "Awesome! The terrible twos are over and that wasn't so bad, phew, glad we made it." Okay, whatever!!

This new 3 year old is more stubborn, strong-willed and challenging than I ever thought I would have to deal with. It began when I told her to go to her room for yelling at me and she said NO! and went into the living room. When I (calmly) took her hand and began to march her into her room she disolved into a screaming mad woman on the floor. She kicked and spat and yelled that she would not go on time out. I swatted her bottom 3 times and she looked at me and said, "So?". This chain of events repeated itself a few feet further down the hall. "So? So?" she said and I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry! We finally reached her room where she stayed for 20 minutes and I told her she could come out when I felt like dealing with her attitude.

But this past wednesday was by far the most challenging day. When Tyler was over Caelen couldn't share a thing and she was dragging him to the ground by his hoodie and they were yelling and screaming. She spent 15 minutes on a self inflicted time out because she didn't want to share with anyone. After everyone was cranky and Adria was loading her car Tyler started talking about how angry he was because Caelen was grabbing him. He went into extensive detail (as preschoolers are known to do) and finally Caelen, getting impatient, interupts with her feelings of not wanting to share. Tyler says, "No I was talking!!" Caelen replies with her hand in the air, "No it's my turn to talk." Tyler begins clapping his hands over and over saying, "Lalalalalalalalalala..." to which Caelen, with another assuring hand in the air says, "That's not helping." and continues on. It was a nice respite of laughter in the midst of a very frustrating day of pounding her sister on the head, refusing time outs, and blatantly disobeying.

Luckily after a few days of this, she woke up one morning and announced she was going to have a good attitude and she pretty much delivered. It's been better since, maybe it's the eye of the storm...

There's my precious girl, that's right she's precious, and I know she's going to turn out amazing!

Addison is a tornado obbsessed with graham crackers, walking everywhere, rearranging the house. When she talks, she nods her head up and down as if what she is saying is really important (which I'm sure it is!!) :) She LOVES baby dolls and real babies, she knows that a monkey says, "Ah ah ah" and when she sees puppies in one of her favorite books she says, "Puh-puh" When I finished vaccuuming a couple of days ago she asked me, "Ah-da?" And everytime Daddy walks in the house she says, "HA Dada!!" and goes after him with her hands twirling in the air and reaching up for him. I don't get the same reaction LOL!

We have had nothing but rain for weeks and as usual our street flooded. But not as usual, it flooded big time. Yards that have never seen the flood waters before got a taste of it and the creek behind us was rushing past about 1.5 feet from my backyard.

I hosted a clothing swap this weekend. I'll admit it, the last thing I spend money on is clothes and most certainly clothes for myself. I get it from my mom :) So the best way to get awesome free clothes is swap them out with girlfriends! There were 9 of us with way more clothes, bags, and accessories than I ever expected we could come up with.

Two things amaze me:

1) The amount of clothes we all had just sitting in our closets that we would never use again. After everyone took home some pretty good loot I had almost 2 huge yard size hefty garbage bags full of stuff left over to donate.

2) The fact that "one woman's trash is another woman's treasure"!! The stuff people got rid of was amazing to all of us and I think many women came away happy with their new (free!) stuff.

Headbanging

She gets her moves from her dad

He showed up with a Bang!

One month before it was due our property tax bill arrived in the mail and my heart hit the floor. We had not planned well enough or even come close enough to having money to pay the $4200 bill, and we were committed to living debt free, which meant we felt led not to acquire any more debt as we were paying the existing burden off. And since the credit cards have been cut up for months, there wasn't much turning back.
I took the bill to Thomas, holding my tears back and gave him a look, a look that says, "What in the WORLD do we do?" Then I remembered all I had been studying in God's Word about believing He is Who He says He is and can do what He says He can do and I looked at Thomas and said, "I'm not gonna cry, I'm gonna look at this as an opportunity for God to show up in a huge way." And starting that moment, God granted us the faith and the courage and we both began praying. Others prayed too, many others, to whom I am so grateful. We prayed for the money to pay the taxes and tried not to put God in a box.
Then the little miracles started happening:
*All too often I have would have the exact change in my purse for groceries I had been concerned about affording.
*Thomas found $6 tucked into his windshield wiper.
*On multiple occasions charges to us ended up being reversed or dropped for no understandable reason.
*Thomas' client gave him a monetary Thanksgiving bonus, something that has never been done in the 1o or so years he's been in construction.
*At our impromptu garage sale, God answered our prayers and multiplied our junk and the income from it.
*Twice, anonymous gifts were sent our way.

Overall the Lord provided almost $600 in one month. It was all so obviously from Him that I couldn't now doubt that He cared about us in such a tangible way or that He had my situation completely handled. There was nothing to stress about and I got to witness His glory!
But, the due date came and went. I had some concern now, let's be honest, and had kind of expected God to act by this point, while at the same time reminding myself that He doesn't do things on our timetable. So I relaxed as Dec 10 slid into Dec 11th and kept praying.
16 days went by and things stood still. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening, no more money flowing in, but He had reassured our hearts so greatly during that month, that doubt was quickly thrown out. Now we were just horribly curious as to the ending to this story, the final answer to our prayers. Were we going to be able to to look back and say, "That was it, right there, the moment when God paid our taxes."?
My friends, that moment came when a seemingly awful, inconvenient and bizarre event took place 16 days after our taxes had been due. When I stood in my street staring at my house, Thomas' truck and the damage done to that drunk drivers car and I said, "Okay Lord You don't do anything just randomly, so what's this about?" And as the police began to talk insurance with Thomas and I, it struck me, could this be it? The answer we'd been praying for. When we asked God to show up big, well, no one could deny this as being pretty big.
Today the entire front of my home has been redone and resided, we should have a new garage door in a week or two, and we are paying our property taxes (plus late fee!!!) in full hopefully as soon as next week.

"Then Jesus said, 'Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?'" - John 11:40

Happenings

I'm a little sick, it's not the flu or the pink eye, it's that I just deleted some pictures my computer SAID had been uploaded but apparently weren't. I'm going to take a few deep breaths, try to accept that I can live life without the adorable pics of the girls in their new matching PJs and the video of Addison doing her squatty dance to the music table. I will try to recreate them later and just move on with my life.
My Addison is a fulltime walker now! On New Years Eve she decided to just go for it and now there are no more rugrats in the Kline house. We play a lot of dress up these days. Right up until Caelen's birthday I told people not to get her dress up clothes. She's super finicky about clothing and shoes and wasn't interested in dress up in the least. Then her birthday came and went and now she's all about it! We play almost everyday. Usually it could be titled "Fairy Godmother". If Addisons awake she is subjected to the game whether she likes it or not. She's usually her easygoing self about it. In this shot she had been trying to dress herself in Caelen shirt as well.



It's just too much fun to have an offical "toddler" and, I suppose, preschooler! They interact, play little games like sqwaking back and forth too each other, or peek-a-boo. Look at how old they've gotten :)
Just this morning, after church but before I had a chance to get lunches started, I had Caelen coming at me with a jar of pickles and Addison with a cereal bar from the snack cupboard, both asking for each item. My children are hungry and apparently I'm not keeping up.

Today might be my first healthy day of the new year, I rang it in with the flu starting up and then finished off the flu with a bout of pink eye. But through it all, the rest of my family has been healthy! And for that I'm thankful. There's lots going on and even more to blog about, but I gotta start somewhere, so Happy 2010. I can't wait to see what you bring.

Four Christmases (Part 2)

.... continued from previous post.
Saturday after we visited with Eddie and had a very unsuccessful trip to get me a new cell phone we headed out to Thomas' Aunt & Uncle's house for another dinner. His cousin Mike and his wife were in town, so we all got a chance to visit and catch up. After begging Thomas to take us home for about half an hour I finally told him at 8:45 that we had to go. His Auntie's house is like a museum and my kids are like bull's in China closets. I figured enough food had been smeared on the nice table cloth and the mirrored walls.
Just about then Thomas' phone rings. He didn't check it until we were in the car and all I could hear was a official sounding female voice saying something about an "accident" with the "residents of 281 Burton Ave." I said, "How can that be? All the residents are in this car!?" He called the RPPD back and they said there had been a "traffic accident involving our residence at 281 Burton Ave." Since we were just around the corner she said we'd see when we arrived. And boy, did we.....
There were two firetrucks, two police cars and many of their occupants roaming about the scene. My knees were just a-knockin' as I stood in the street and looked at my house..... Thomas' truck.... When one fireman saw my face he said so sympathetically, "This is your house isn't it?" Thomas just got out of the car and burst out laughing.

Thomas' front tire used to be in the dirt here. This guy, whose blood alcohol level was 3 times the legal limit to drive, had been going at least 40 down the street toward our house and never hit the brakes. There was one eye witness to the whole thing and then 3 other neighbors came out after they heard the collision to see the guy fall out of his truck to the ground. The newspaper says he sustained "minor injuries."

That crack above the header was new. And the building inspector posted a restricted use sign on our garage.

It didn't take long for us to gather ourselves and count our blessings. Well, once we figured out how to crawl through the hole in our garage and get in (we weren't carrying a front door key because we only ever use the garage to get in and out of our house, dumb I know.) Better our empty house than a car full of people! We were thankful we had homeowners insurance, thankful for the helpful officers (even though I swear some were younger than me). Thankful that we weren't home when it happened which we very well could have been, then my car would have been trapped in the garage or smashed as we were backing in. Thankful it was only our garage and not our living area, or were the power to our house was. There was so much that could have gone badly. This was the best case scenario and I know the officers must have thought I was crazy as I shook my head, raised my hand and muttered, "Thank you Jesus!"

I still can't convince Caelen that it wasn't the firefighters who crashed into Papa's truck. She's still mad at them. The first thing she said when she saw the entire thing was, "Papa will never go to work again!!"

But things settled down and we headed into the insurance process and over to Mom-in-laws to celebrate our last Christmas.

"Um, guys, I can't reach my food!"

Merry Christmas!!