my house....

This is the house that Paul built. Paul and three of my brothers. We were on a low budget, and wanted a functional house. It is on 2 and a half acres, in the country, and it is a "raised ranch", so the front downstairs is half-way in the ground, but it opens up totally in the back, with full sized windows downstairs. When I drew up our house plans (I drew a rectangle and filled it in), we were expecting our fifth child. He was a year old when we moved in (and I was newly pregnant for Aaron) We obviously didn't know we would end up with this many kids, but I am glad we can fit them in. A few of the rooms downstairs were playrooms when the older kids were little......

Anyways, our house: it is leaky. The plumbing in the main bath leaks sometimes into the bedroom beneath it. It has been fixed, but not fixed enough, apparently. Now a new trick is happening, when someone turns on the hose outside, it leaks into the downstairs. We did not know of this new trick when we let the kids play with the hose and fill the little pool last week. The downstairs carpeting is WET. Today we have lots of windows on and a fan running down there. It can and will be fixed, it is just part of being HAPPY HOMEOWNERS. Our windows need replacing. Over by our door there is a spot of bare floor where my dearly departed brother Billy neglected to finish the tile, covered by a few throw rugs, now starting to deteriorate. Not the rugs, the floor. So we cannot just slap a few more tiles, we have to replace the floor boards. And our screen door got broken or bent in all the snow, and doesn't close all the way anymore.

Is this a complain-y post? It isn't meant to be. I just want to be realistic. Paul isn't such a Mr. Fixit, but he is a great daddy and a wonderful husband. I do not mean to complain about him, either. We are just busy with a lot of things, and things here just don't get done. I did vacuum and mop today, I am not talking about those kinds of things. (If we lived in a great big spacious new house like the Duggars, I wouldn't have any trials at all. ha.)

Most of the time it doesn't bother me that there are so many things to fix up. But every once in a while, it really gets to me. But it takes time and money to do things, and.....

So why am I writing about this? I guess I want to be honest. We all have our trials in our life, and there are things we cannot control, and cannot automatically fix immediately, so what shall we do? We can plan and do our best, and be at rest about the rest. Ha, I poemed that....

Today my computer is at work with Paul, he is having a guy look at it for me. Yay. Because if he can fix it, I can put pictures up again, and sit in my nice comfy chair with it, instead of this awful chair at the computer table. And I am hogging this, there are at least three kids who want a turn. The kids are all home from school now, and they have things to talk to me about so ......(and I had SO many things to say!)

But one more thing: Joni, that "twilight baby" that you speak of is my secret hope. Paul said a while ago that if I get rid of all the baby stuff, I would surely have another one. So I got rid of most of it, like 90% of it. Wouldn't that be a double bonus, if I had another and had to get all new stuff too?