S-U-M-M-E-R!

It's that time of year again that I absolutely LOVE! Summer!! I've always loved this season the most. Of course it helps that I don't have to work, but I love being able to be outside, go camping, have bonfires, go to the lake, have the windows open, and wear tank tops and flip-flops. Lots of people complain that it's too hot or too humid. But I don't really mind because after being cold for so long, it's nice to be hot for awhile! :)

It was so wonderful to be able to spend Memorial Day weekend with friends (the start of the summer season!!). Since Matt was gone all weekend catching "monstrous fish", friends were so hospitable in inviting me to go out on the boat, cookout, scrap, play games, and hang out. The weather was finally decent enough to be outside and it is so nice to hang out with such wonderful people: John, Jessica, Greyson, Amos, Jess, Grace, Tyler, Jenn, Scott, and Melanie.

What's your favorite summer activity?

We're moving!!!

well...barring any unforseen problems, anyway! :) Our counter offer was accepted today! So they need to get an inspection and appraisal on the house in the next two weeks. As long as both come back ok, then we're good to go! We've set the closing date for June 23rd and then we have 7 days to move out of this house and into our new house!! How exciting! It doesn't really seem real yet. I'm sure it will once we start packing though. God is good. Things have moved along quickly and it's been hectic, but we are super excited!

Look for an invite to a cookout later this summer!! :)

DUH moment

Have you ever just had a "duh" moment? (And you better all say yes! :) ) There are times when things just aren't as clear as you'd like them to be and you say or do something that isn't the smartest! :) Well, I had a duh moment yesterday.

We got a call from our adoption counselor that said our letter was received by one birthparent for the month of April. Whoopee! One WHOLE person in the WHOLE month! :) Not that we were that surprised because that's been about the average over the last 6 months. So I finally printed off the papers we'd need to complete to change our adoption profile to include children of races other than Caucasian. And after I printed it out, I thought and prayed...is this really what we should do? Am I just getting impatient?? And I thought of the verses I have been reading in the Gospels, "Oh ye of little faith..." And I thought, "DUH!" Do I really think that God would give us something we couldn't handle? He has the perfect child for us, have we been holding back because we didn't have faith enough for Him to choose the child for us? Yes.

So we took the leap, filled out the papers, and sent them in. Why did it take us 6 months to figure it out? Maybe we weren't ready, maybe our birthmother wasn't ready...who knows? But I just keep thinking, "duh, Alicia." It seems so obvious now, but I guess I just wasn't ready to see it before. So, not that I miraculously expect to get a child next week, but I do feel a lot better about trying to trust God to choose our child, instead of us trying to limit His power to do so! :)

What's your latest "duh moment?" :)

Appreciate Mom, Home, and the Cubs!

OK, just a warning that this will probably be a lengthy post as a lot has happened recently :) So start with the appreciation part of my title. This last week at school was Teacher Appreciation Week and with all of the nastiness of trying to negotiate a contract (for the school year that is basically over), it was nice to take a moment to let others know that we notice they do a good job. That is just what happend to Matt at school on Friday. The middle school kids took a survey where they were supposed to nominate teachers for certain things (smartest, nicest, etc.). Here is a picture of what he won:
If you can't tell, that is Matt in cake form with a tiki glass. He was nominated as the teacher to most likely win Survivor! :) It was so cute and I know someone took A LOT of time making that cake for him! So thank you to the anonymous person! It was very creative.

Secondly on to the mom part of the title. Today is, of course, Mother's Day. And we had my mom and dad over for lunch and an afternoon of playing cards and watching tv. It was very yucky outside (cold and rainy), but we still had a nice afternoon catching up and celebrating my wonderful mom! :) Matt's parents were in Michigan with the boat. I hope it was nicer there than it was here!

Third, the house is showing quite a bit. We've had 5 showings over the past few weeks. One family has even come back again and has asked more detailed questions about the house. But as of now, we haven't had any offers yet. We're not getting too worried because we have until the beginning of June to sell, but it would be nice to be sold before then! :)

Lastly, the Cubs! I went to my first Cubs game yesterday with some teacher's from Matt's school (and John and Jessica who bought the last 2 extra tickets). We had a great time. It was SUPER cold. I had on 3 layers and was still cold. Next time, I would definitely bring a blanket to keep warm. It was still fun though, watching the game and all the people. And you can't beat ballpark food (even though it is expensive!!) :) And it made it even better that the Cubs won! We took a Cardinal bus up to Chicago so we didn't have to worry about driving or parking in Chicago. That was nice. And I never realized how nice a warm shower feels after being cold all day! :)

Update on house/dog

Well, we did it. After 3 full days of continuous work, cleaning, organizing, throwing out, etc. we are completely exhausted! But we are living in the cleanest house we've ever been in! We had a showing last evening and it sounded like it went pretty well, but the family doesn't know if it's the right house for them. I just looked up our listing on the hahn website and it is totally weird to see your house listed for sale with pictures and everything! :) So, I guess for now, we just wait (something that we've become quite good at lately :)).
Logan seems to be doing ok. He is SO determined to lick his leg that we've ended up putting 2 different cones on him plus an extension (made out of a Rice Krispie box) :) to deter him. He pretty much has to have the cones on at all times and cannot be left alone or he tries to lick it. It's becoming quite difficult to be patient with him because he is so much work and you can only yell, "NO LOGAN!" so many times before you start to get frustrated. He is healing, which I am grateful for, and he is using his leg more. So, hopefully everything will heal quickly and this will all be a memory!

News

Well, I guess I'll start with bad news first... ...even if you don't like dogs, this picture has to make you sad. This is our dog in his current state. He had surgery on Tuesday for a torn ACL. Turns out, it was torn and now he is in the recovery period. It is really difficult for all of us. He is restricted from any running, jumping, or using stairs! He also is constantly trying to lick his wounded leg, so he has to wear a cone. :( Poor guy. And more bad news is that he is on restricted activity for 8 WEEKS! His poor leg, and I can't imagine that he likes us much now! :)
On to happier news though, we have experienced quite the whirlwind recently with this new house. We looked at it last Thursday, made an offer on Sat., got a counter offer on Mon., and made another offer today that got accepted (with a little tweaking from them)! So as soon as we can sell our house, we are first in line for this new house! We have our first showing on Monday evening, and we've got about 5 1/2 years of junk to organize by then!
So, we've a LOT going on, which calls for some stressful times and decisions (YEAH... DECISIONS!! :( ). Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers!

Possibilities

With spring, comes many new possibilities...new plants, new flowers, warmer weather, etc. We also have some possibilities that have come up within the last couple of days.
1. Logan will probably have surgery. :( We thought maybe some medicine, less food and exercise, and taking it easy would help. But within the last two days, he has gotten much worse and will go in on Tuesday for an x-ray and perhaps surgery if the x-ray shows a torn ACL. He'll have to stay at the vet's overnight to heal.
2. A new house!?!? We looked at a house in Goshen and REALLY love it. It's an '05 ranch with 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and 3 acres of land. It's on CR 38 right off of 119. So, we made an offer today. Crazy right? Well, the offer is contingent upon us selling our house so we're trying not to get our hopes up, but it is a really nice house. Here's a link to the Hahn realty website and a picture of the front of the house. Once you get to the wesite, search Goshen, and it's listing 071.

http://www.hahnrealtyandauction.com/realestate.php?PHPSESSID=7e6043b79dd6194ee5ee7818ae044563
So we could definitely use some prayer as we look for God's guidance on these new possibilities! :)

Baby Berger Growing Big

Ok, well maybe BIG might be an exaggeration looking at how tiny Jessica still is with only about 1 month to go! :) But I couldn't think of a catchier title...loved all the B words! :) Yes I am a teacher! I had such a nice time getting to visit with Jessica and all the Berger relatives yesterday. Erin, my cousin, was such a gracious hostess as always. We played some baby games (I would NOT recommend mac and cheese baby food to ANYONE [babies included! :) ] because that stuff is nasty!), ate lots of wonderful food, and saw all the amazing gifts Jessica and Mikel received for their new baby. It always amazes me how much stuff a person that little needs! :) Anyway, just thought I'd share the joy of babies to come!

Out with the old

The green carpet is finally gone!! Yeah!! We have finally updated and got rid of the ugly green, stained, pieced together carpet. Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad, but compared to our new tan carpet, it seemed pretty bad. :) We had the carpet installers here yesterday from 7:30 to about 1:30 working on the living room, dining room, and two sets of stairs. They said the stairs took quite a bit longer than usual. There were remnants of pink and dark brown carpet stuck in the nails on the stairs that had to be removed. The new carpet is so soft and makes the rooms look a lot lighter!
Below are some before and after shots:

On a side note, you can see our new patio rocker, in the first shot. And since we decided to be productive while the carpet was being installed, we put together the outdoor table yesterday. We then noticed that the four glass pieces that are supposed to fit in the top of the table do not fit. The table has rounded corners while the glass pieces have square corners. So back to Menards we go! :) But since it was so nice out yesterday, we ate lunch on the patio with our new chairs and uneven table anyway! :)

3rd graders??

Ok, did you all hear about the 3rd graders in Georgia who planned to kill their teacher?? I just heard about it today at school. Apparently, a group of 3rd graders had a pretty detailed plot made, weapons brought to school, etc. in a plan to kill their teacher for yelling at one of them to get off of a chair. Here is a link to the story I found: http://www.live5news.com/home/17210311.html
Wow! That is quite shocking to me that 8 and 9 year olds would think that that is a good way to solve a problem. Gotta love being a teacher! ;) Although, being an elementary teacher, I thought I was a little safer than high school or even middle school. You've got to wonder where they got the idea and why they thought it would work. It's pretty sad and scary! What do you think?