Pastor Ben Binger recently posted this on his blog. I have found myself going back and viewing it several times, so I decided to post it again here. I am constantly amazed at all of the incredible things God has done and is doing in my life. To me, there is nothing more exciting to see God work. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.
In the last week David has gone from taking a step here and there to walking all the way across the room. In a couple of days crawling will be a thing of the past for him. He is almost eleven months now and weighs a whopping 15 pounds. All of the Budd children (except Daniel) were such little things. Everyone who sees him is just amazed that such a little guy can walk. It seems normal to me - they all were pretty early walkers.
Walking, of course, will open up a whole new world for him. He will be able to reach, grab and spill everything in site. Michaela is just coming out of that stage now. (I am glad that I married a carpet cleaner!) If he is like Michaela, he will be climbing the fence in no time at all. Although, he seems to be much calmer than the average Budd child. (Elissa was my other calm child.) I have done my time with the wild ones and earned another calm child. God knows how old and tired I am. It is true, even at my age, that part of me still really does enjoy the noise and chaos. My house is full of life and it shows, all the time. But, I am not objecting if God has seen fit to give me a quiet, compliant one.
I started a diet on June 2nd. I am just ounces away from reaching 25% of my weight loss goal. If you think losing weight after you had a baby in your twenties is hard, try losing it after having two in your forties. But I am getting there and am very excited about it.
I am so scatter-brained lately. Because I haven’t been able to find the right person to work in our office, I have been forced to attempt to run both our household and our business simultaneously. This really isn’t working very well for me at all. My heart definitely is in the house while my body is in the office and my mind is on vacation.
Last Wednesday, I ran a customer’s credit card. There is a box where you are supposed to input the address and one where you are supposed to input the amount. Instead of putting $400 in the amount box, I put her street address - 11277. This transaction settled, they took the money out of her account and instead of putting it in our account, it is now floating around in cyberspace somewhere. The customer is really unhappy (and I don’t blame her) and I am unhappy because they also are refusing to put all of the credit card receipts that we have ran after than into our account. I did not become aware of this situation until today. I have been writing checks on money that was supposed to be in our account. I shudder to think what this will do with our checking account.
We have spent all morning receiving and sending faxes with our merchant account to try to resolve this. They guy who is in charge and can make the final decision to set everything right, will not pick up his phone. His underlings have done all they can do. I have done all I can do. It is incredibly frustrating.
Five-year-olds beg to sleep in the bathtub. It is an adventure. All a child in the Buddhouse would have to do was express a passing desire and I would throw her a pillow, blanket and turn out the lights. No questions asked. This was no great feat on my part. Easy as Pie. But . . . at some point they outgrow that.
Today something miraculous happened. But let me back up. Space is a very precious thing in a house with eight people. As even our frequent guests can attest, privacy does not exist in any way, shape or form here. Since we homeschool and run a business from our home, we want to provide as much sanctuary as possible for everyone. If we are all going to be in the same house all the time, let’s at least give everyone a small little corner they can call their own.
Stina will be home for the summer in a little more than a week. We are all ecstatic about this but the question remains, “Where will we put her?”
I was planning on putting the younger ones in the same room and giving one of their rooms to Stina. She complained that the bright colors on their walls would hurt her eyes, give her headaches and she would die. (Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a bit here, but not much.) So that wasn’t optional. None of the older children wanted to bunk with a toddler either, go figure.
Daniel had already sacrificed his room on two different occasions for almost a year each when we had house guests living with us. So he was starting to whine when that looked like that was where we were heading again. Elissa gets up really early for work and is very particular about her things, so everyone is afraid to share a room with her. Stina and Sarah don’t share the same level of cleanliness and putting them together threatened to disrupt the peace in our household.
There are absolutely no more rooms in our home. Before our fifth child was born, I even put up walls in my laundry room so Daniel would have a space of his own. Sure it is only 9×10, but it is his. So I am searching out every square inch of our home, trying to find a solution - wishing for the days when they would beg to sleep in the bathtub.
And then it came to me: The closet underneath the stairs! Who could I gently convince that inhabiting this 6×3 space for his or her room was almost as fun as sleeping the the bathtub. Now, sleeping in there every night wasn’t really an option but the girls in our house have an every night slumber party anyway. (Girl talk is pretty much a 24/7 thing here and they wouldn’t dream of missing those last few moments together each evening.) I really needed a place where one girl could just put her precious belongings and have a little sanctuary.
So I picked the right moment and started in on Sarah, our twelve-year-old. After we spoke, she wanted to do all that she could to make our summer magnificent. (It does help that living with Christina is pretty much just a constant party anyway.) So she eagerly and happily agreed to move into the closet under the stairs for the summer.
The problem was. This is what it looked like:
So we spent the night getting rid of boxes and boxes of stuff that we will probably never miss anyway. As you can see, this closet had become the place that the children would stuff things instead of finding the correct place when I told them to put it away. Then Sarah chose the leftover gray paint from the bathroom (it must have reminded her of her bathtub sleeping adventures) and I painted it. I got some wood and we put up a couple of shelves and . . . this is what it looks like now.
Less junk and more room. Happy, peaceful children. Who could argue with that?
One of the most difficult things that I have to manage in my home are socks. I am so happy that it is almost summer and flip flops (we ALWAYS referred to them as thongs growing up, but my children want to die everytime I say that) rule. Everyone makes fun of Elissa for wearing thongs (aka flip flops) in the winter - but it is truly a gift not having her raid my sock drawer as often as she would if she wore normal shoes. Anyway back to socks. . .
We have a place in our home called lost sock world. I was going to take a photo of how pathetic it was and post it here, but I can no longer do it because ELISSA tackled the enormous job of sorting through it, throwing away the socks with gigantic holes and adding dramatically to the availability of this precious resource for every member of our family.
I was actually quietly savings this terrible chore for the next child that really made me angry. Elissa did this without me even starting to complain about it. She is truly amazing.
Now, my big problem remains . . . what will I use for punishment the next time someone really deserves it? Any ideas?
Sunday night, Brian and Jeanie Kochis hosted an incredible passover supper for around 30 people. It was a wonderful experience that I will always remember. Almost the whole family (not sure about little Phoebe) spent hours and hours cooking and preparing for it. Sure, I have gone to church Passover celebrations before but this was the first time I have ever celebrated it as a guest in someone’s home. They celebrate it every year together as a family and this year they blessed a lot of people by sharing their normal experiences.
The children searched the house for little pieces of leavened bread. (The leaven represents sins.) When they found the hidden pieces, they used a feather and a spoon to scoop it up. Then they took it outside where the fathers helped them burn it.
A piece of matza bread was wrapped in a cloth and hidden from the children. (This represented Jesus.) They searched the house and Sarah and Michaela were the ones to find it. As a prize, they got five coins.
We ate the things that were Biblically prescribed. One of the Kochis children asked Brian all of the traditional questions and Brian answered them. We drank all the cups and sang the blessings as we did so.
Laurel Cohen explained everything that was happening and the meaning behind it as we went through. She is one of the most amazing women that I know. Her heart belongs to God first and Israel next. I am excited to see what God will do through her in the future.
She had a power point presentation that included a lot of different depictions of the last supper. We spent a lot of time analazing discussing them. (Yeah - Annette actually got to have an adult conversation!) Of course, there was Davinci’s portrayal. Which we are all so familiar with so I didn’t post it here. Then we looked at some very old artwork. And Laurel explained why so many of these images are so offensive to the Jews. I had never thought about that before. She showed us the following three images, which I find very offensive.
After looking at these, I understood why many Jews are so offended by Christian art. Much of the symbolism in portrayals of the last supper are as offensive to Jews as the above photos are offensive to Christians. It really made me think. I had never understood it before.
To end on a more positive note: She also showed the photo below to us. I love it. It is such an incredible understanding of who Jesus really is.
Sure the Budd children mildly resemble other normal children . . . but behind closed doors they are all really quite strange.
You would think that I could leave Michaela’s bathtub crayons within reach of my 13-year-old son, Daniel without too many problems. But this is proof that almost nothing is sacred to them. Even the toilets in our home aren’t safe.
Dan Hoff just sent me this photo -
You know that it is almost spring when the girls start to show off their belly buttons!
I found this link on youtube - if you are any younger than I am (42) this will probably seem pretty odd to you but it gives me warm fuzzies! My family didn’t have many albums but we did own this one and we listened to it all the time.
