A day in the life: March 2005

Prayer Warriors Needed!

Hopefully most of you know Hans and I are expecting another baby in September. I've had some concerns with this pregnancy. I went to the doctor today and he did not have very good things to say. He wants to monitor me very closely. I have an ultrasound scheduled for next week.

The doctor said there was a young lady recently that had a very similar situation as I do and she ended up having to spend the last several months of her pregnancy in the hospital.

Not exactly what I wanted to hear. Okay not at all what I wanted to hear. I hate the thought of a hospital birth in the first place but to spend weeks or even months in the hospital would be . . . I don't even want to think about it.

So I'm asking friends and family to rally around me with pray support. I admit feelings of fear are all around me. I feel fear for myself (physically), I feel fear for my unborn baby, I feel fear for my precious little girls, I feel fear for my husband. I know God has not given me that spirit of fear, but it is all around me trying to devour me.

Please pray for mine and my baby's physical safty and health, and our family's emotional stability.

We serve a big God and I know He has a plan. I look to Him for peace in the midst of this time.

If you want further detail about my complications you're going to have to contact me. It's not something I want to post on the internet.

God loves to bless His kids!!!!

Okay Emily this is it!

I was e-mailing a good friend the other day and I thought to myself other friends and family would probably be interested in knowing what I was saying. So I was going to be tricky and copy and paste the e-mail to my blog. Unfortunately, the e-mail got lost in computer never land. Now I have to try and compose it all over again. This was several days ago, but because of Elizabeths potty training I haven't had the time to do it. She goes to the bathroom more than her pregnant mom!

Which reminds me (sorry for the rabbit trail). Last night I was so out of it. I got up to go to the bathroom and on my way there my head ran right into the wall. I couldn't believe it. I started to laugh and Hans couldn't tell if I was crying or laughing. I couldn't believe I walked right into the wall. Even now I'm laughing. Maybe it's one of those things that you had to be there for. I'll be more careful from now on.

Okay back to the point of this entry. Our lives have been rather chaotic since we moved to MI. We never really got into a schedule. And I function the best on a schedule. Plus we had my aunt living with us, which was a huge adjustment. Plus every road we tried to go down in regards to realestate investing seemed to be a dead end. We were running out of money. "God why did you bring us here?" (We are so much like the Israelites. God forgive us for our faithless hearts!) At that point God opened the door for us to buy our first two deals. This was shortly before we went on vacation. God reassures us that we are where He wants us and He will take care of the details. Anyway, since my aunt moved back to Washington we are exclusively functioning as the Stol family again. We have realized that God has blessed us with the thing we really wanted the most. That is TIME! Ever since we got married it seems that most of our time was already spent for us. Between Hans' job (which thought they owned him and could make him work at their whim), our side business and our remodel on our house, not to mention Church and family functions, we had very little time left. We desired to have more time with each other, more time to spend with friends and family, more time to spend in ministry at church, ect. ect. ect.

We've realized since we've been back that God has blessed us with the very thing we desired. We have more time now (literally) than we know what to do with. (or should I say Hans does) For me not much has changed in the way of my job - taking care of my family. Actually it's gotten more difficult. It's not easy vacuuming 2800 sq ft. But for Hans, he went from having almost no time to having 24hr a day. So we are trying to figure out how to deal with this new found blessing. We are praying that God would give us wisdom to spend the time He's blessed us with wisely.

We are speechless when we think about all the ways God has blessed us recently. About all we can come up with to say is "God you are so good!"

Last week we implemented a schedule - kind of. It goes like this:

-We actually set our alarm for 7:00 AM.
-We spend time reading the Bible and praying together.
-By then Morgan is usually awake so I tend to her and Hans goes to the gym.
-After Morgan has had her bottle I let her loose in Elizabeths room to wake her sister up.
-We play the rest of the day by ear but end up in bed by 9:00.

It feels so good to be on a schedule. We have no idea what God has in-store for us. We know that whatever it is, He is trustworthy. Everything and anything we accomplish has very little to do with us. It's all God! He is amazing!

Potty Treat

All I have to say is THANK YOU JESUS! Elizabeth has had great success going to the bathroom on the potty. She is diligent about asking for her potty treat after each time she goes. She will go on her own and then she calls me and says, "My did mom" and that is my cue to come and wipe her. She is so precious. We did have our first outing today. She told me several times that she had to go but she never was able to get used to the foreign toilet. So she had two wet accidents while we were gone.

During the whole process she has only had (not including the ones while we were out) two pee accidents and unfortunately one dodo accident that just happen to be on our light colored carpet.

Oh I forgot to mention. . .the other day Hans found Elizabeth in the bathroom with a bottle of fingernail polish that had broke and splattered all over the floor. He called for me to come with the camera. What a mess. I thought of my Aunt Ruth "we just made a memory". Yes there are several traces of it left. Fingernail polish (red no less) just doesn't like to come off grout. Rats, Hans hadn't made it in time - He was on a mission to seal all the tile floor. Oh well, we didn't really like that floor anyway. I'm sure is was a completeeee accident.

Bye Bye Diapers!

Today Elizabeth is saying bye bye to her diapers. Since nobody took me up on the offer to come and potty train her. I've finally desided our lives were mello enough for me to roll up my sleves and do it myself. So far it's going pretty well. I'll keep you posted on her progress.

It's good to be home!!!!

As most of you know our family traveled to Washington for three week in February to spend time with friends and family. It was a great idea but it just didn't work out. When we got there it took a few days to adjust to the time change so we felt pretty out of it. To add to the exhaustion, our girls were having a terrible time sleeping through the night. By the third or fourth day we were starting to feel pretty good. A week into our vacation Hans went to sign on a house that he was buying (in Michigan). When he got back he said he wasn't feeling very well . . . To make a long and miserable story shorter . . . We all ended up with a very nasty flu. I can't even remember ever being that sick with just the flu. Puke and snot were everywhere.

Well that somes up our vacation. We spent almost two weeks of it with the flu . . . doing nothing. There are so many things we wanted to do and people we wanted to see and it just didn't happen. We were very much disgusted.

We returned home to 8 inches of snow. Our driver had to let us out at the street and we had to walk down our long driveway through the snow to the house. Hans broke out our snow blower (even though it was after 9:00 pm at night) to clear a path so he could bring in all our luggage that was out by the road.

We had turned our heat down to 50 while we were gone. I was concerned that we were going to freeze before the furnace would heat up the house. But after walking through 8 inches of snow in 20 degree weather, 50 didn't feel so cold.Things are starting to settle down here.

Before we left for vacation we moved to Southfield. We got the majority of our stuff unpacked and put away, but there are a few things that still need to be done. We are starting to regain our strength. It's amazing what a good nights sleep will do for you. (We didn't get to sleep much while we were on vacation thanks to our darling little Morgan!)

It's so good to be home!!!

Payton welcomes Morgan!

My beautiful niece! Elyse

We had a slumber party with Aliyah

Morgan pulls her pants down while pulling herself up on the chair

So happy together

Aliyah's silly face

Elizabeth's silly face

This is the only picture of the last two weeks of our vacation. Notice Morgan doesn't have any clothes on. It's because it was a lot easier to change out the blankets after she throw up than to keep changing her clothes.

Back on Track

These pictures are from January and early Feb. We didn't hook up the internet when we first moved to Southfield because we knew we were just going to leave for three weeks. Anyway now that we are back on line I'll keep the pictures coming.

During this time Grandma Jan came to visit and help with the move. While Grandma was here Elizabeth got so used to saying Grandma Jan that she would accidentally can Hans Grandma Daddy. He would ignore her until she would call him Daddyo.