In the morning

It's very quiet here at the moment.  Definitely at the moment.  I haven't peaked into Eliza's room to see if she immediately dropped off to sleep or not, for fear she's lying there playing with her Bunny Tracks and will pop up and want out if she sees me.  But I can hope.

Our mornings often seem to go like this: a frenzy of getting Eliza up, nursed, fed breakfast, bathed and freshly diapered and dressed all before she's ready to crash for that morning nap.  Somehow, she seems far more ready and willing for that ready nap (as short as it lasts) than she ever is for the afternoon one.  And I'm always torn as to whether to enjoy the quiet, easy moment, or hove-to and get some work done.  Today, the living areas desperately need tidying: it was a busy weekend and the only free moments I was too tired to contemplate cleaning the kitchen.  It must be done and done today!  So maybe I'll go off to work as soon as I'm done with this post.

The busyness boils down to that, with the help of a small handful of friends, we almost emptied our storage unit into the apartment and the basement.  The basement is far more full than the apartment.  It is stacked with boxes and furniture that will never fit (or be able to get through the door) into our apartment.  The apartment has furniture all set up and ready to go for us when we get to move in.  And somehow it still feels empty.  It needs some lamps and some pictures hanging on the wall, hopefully, eventually, some nicer shades on the windows and some curtains, and then maybe it will feel homey.  At the moment it doesn't even feel complete enough to pass for a staged home for sale.  It is my darling hope and wish that the bathroom will be done this weekend and that we will start to move in.  We shall see.  Dad has been very hard at work at it, though, and he and his friend who is working on it as well have made wonderful progress.  Hopefully, soon, the floor will be laid, the plumber and electrician invited back.  Thinking on that... it will likely be closer to two weeks before we move in.

And then, I hope to start a new routine.  I am trying to train myself to get up early in the morning with Nick and get going on the day.  To have my quiet moments then.  The only problem is that Eliza often gets up earlier when I do that, thereby cutting quiet times short.  How does she know?  Which makes me want to enjoy all these quiet moments during nap time all the more.  More on what I'd LIKE to be doing during naptimes another time, maybe.  For now, I need to decide: enjoy some reading or get to work.  Sigh, never an easy decision.

Oh, Fall, where art thou?

It's going to be hot today: 93.  Ridiculous, I say.  Did you know the average temperature for my part of the country at this time of the year is in the upper seventies?  We are well above that.  I'm so tired of summer.   I'm tired of sweating just walking outside.  And imagine what it's like in the South!  Fall officially begins this Thursday and currently the temperature for that date (four days out) is the lowest of 80's.  I'd love to believe it.  But I can't.  Here's the deal: I'm so desperate for cool, crisp, fall weather, I've been checking the 10-day forecasts for more than a week now.  And every time, four to five days out they are predicting 70-80-degree temps.  And as we get closer and closer to those dates, I watch the temperatures rise: now it's 83, now it's 86.  Next thing you know, I'm staring a day at nearly 90 degrees in the face!  How aggraviting!  Especially since last Wedensday was cool and gray and rainy and gloomy... and so like late Fall.  I could have gotten used to that.  Oh, please, Lord, bring on the autumnal temperatures!  Please!

In other news, the wood floors are refinished in our apartment and they look wonderful.  They do, however, make those old painted, scuffed and mistreated base boards look like... well, crap.  Someday, someday, we'll take care of those.  For now, we await the bathroom's finish to move in.  This weekend, however, we intend to move in our furniture and empty our storage unit so we don't have to pay for it another month.  That will be nice.  We can get the apartment pretty close to set up, so that when the bathroom is done, we can just  move anything that we have here at the house in.  Won't that be nice?  I'm hoping for early October (nothing like a month late), but we shall see.  Seems whenever I start to hope for a deadline, it gets moved back.

And in other, other news, do you realize it is less than two months until my baby girl turns one?  So weird.  The party planning has started.  I don't think it's going to be a huge affair. We might have pizza, because it seems to be her favorite already.  We shall see.

Have I told you that there's a hole in my bathroom floor?

Ok, so it's not the bathroom I live in, but it's the bathroom I hope to be living in.  Someday.  Turns out more plumbing needs to be replaced than we thought.  So Dad has pulled up the floorboards.  The more we work on this bathroom, the more things my dad finds to do with it.  If I didn't know better, I would think he doesn't want us to move out.  (But I do know better.  He does.)  I know what he really wants is for the bathroom to be in good working order for us and to do what is necessary so that we don't have to do MORE work once we've finished.  And I can respect that.  I wish it didn't cause a little groan inside that it means things will get pushed back even further.  Sigh.  Maybe we'll move in October?  But hey, if I've ever learned anything from my dad, it's that work should be done right.  (I wish I was better at that.)

But let me say this while I've got the chance: I couldn't be more grateful to my parents.  They've put in a lot of work on this place, even when Nick and I haven't been able to, me because Eliza get's antsy because she can't play on the floors (too dirty!) and I end up taking her home, and Nick because he's been putting in so many hours at work.  They have been generous to a fault, they have been dedicated, and they are true gems.  If you don't them, you should.  If you know them, but not well, you should get to know them better.  You'll be hard pressed to find better people.  Of course, they're not perfect.  I'm not perfect.  (Who, besides our Lord, is??)  But they're fantastic.  And I find it really hard to just express how deeply grateful I am.  Words rather fail, and so I sometimes can't say more than a weak "Thank you."  So, thank you, Mom and Dad.  You're the best.

D-group update

We're starting a new series in d-group, and let me tell you, I have no idea how it's going to go.  It's a new group of girls in the group.  All my regulars up until the start of this school year had been one group of girls, who this past May graduated from high school and are now in college.  Now, I have a few juniors and seniors who are coming, fairly irregularly.  In the hopes to get them invested in whatever we were doing, I let them decide what we would be studying, and they all seemed very interested in doing some discussions on defending the faith.  So, the next few weeks, months, whatever, are going to be about apologetics (basically, defending the faith) on topics like the existend of God, Christ, Creation, and the Bible.  I think there may be one more topic, but I can't remember at this moment.  I'll have to dig up my notes.

This is NOT my forte, people.  Not even close.  I took one "apologetics" class in college, and it was an Evangelism and Apologetics class, and the emphasis was more strongly upon the Evangelism and methods for such.  It's never been something I have felt convicted to pursue because I truly believe it is the Holy Spirit who convicts someone on matters of salvation and that He is instrumental in drawing them towards Christ.  I have never really felt arguing or debating in anyway helps the cause.  However, I do see the need to know certain things that can confirm your faith, especially in the face of debate, and which also can provide an opening for honest discussion.  I do believe there is hard evidence that supports our faith and our Scriptures.  I just don't know all the random and assundry facts off the top of my head.  Hence, I need to study more.  A lot more.

This is going to be interesting, folks.  And I'm on the hunt for resources.  I'll keep you posted as to how it's going.

Christmas Specials and More on the House

Do I sound like a broken record lately?  Does it seem that all I have to talk about is the house, house, house?  Yeah, to me too.  So, to deviate for just a moment, let me have a word about Christmas specials.  I am SO READY to watch me some Christmas shows!  Yes, it's true.  I love Christmas movies, sitcom episodes, specials, etc.  I've said it before and I can say it again and again and again, but Christmas really is my favorite time of year.  And that includes TV programming (for the most part).  Now, to be fair, I think many Christmas movies and such are pretty good shows in their own right and should be enjoyed as such.  Examples: White Christmas (fantastic classic any time of the year), Disney's Prep and Landing, which was just so stinking fun and, yes, cute that I enjoy it even now (I watched it the other day to distract Eliza from being grumpy), and even The Santa Clause, which I find very funny even now.  I have a whole list of these types of shows, but I won't tax you with them.  There are few that I only watch at Christmas for the nostalgia and tradition, such as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reinder, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original), etc.  The thing is, I enjoy these enough that I have a hard time waiting until Christmastime to watch them again.  And you must understand: I have a sister who is incredibly strict about the Christmas season.  Putting on Christmas tunes or watching a Christmas special is only acceptable the night of Thanksgiving, after you're done with your turkey dinner and Thanksgiving traditions, and even that is pushing it.  She has always asserted that Thanksgiving deserves its own recognition and rites.  So, daring to watch White Christmas in October just because you want to here Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye cutting each other up is not acceptable.  Me, I could start Christmas decorating, songs, and pulling out Charlie Brown Christmas as soon as Halloween is over.  (And that, my friends, is still two  months away.  Sigh.) 

So, dare I go ahead and watch Prep and Landing because I enjoy it just as much as Finding Nemo or The Incredibles, and I've watched it far less?  After all, it's only September 1st....  I will try to show some restraint, because even though we're not sure we're going to celebrate the Santa Claus tradition in our house, just seeing the Big Red Guy might get me a little too excited prematurely.  But man, December takes forever to roll around!

As for the house, here's the latest update (because it's pretty much the majority of what's going on in my life.  If I can steal another few minutes tomorrow or Friday, I hope to write an update on d-group).  There was a bit of a scare that now that we've pulled up the nasty carpet that was going to go no matter what, that we might not be able to refinish the wood floors.  They are, for the most part, in excellent shape.  However, there is one corner of the dining room where the floor has risen above the rest.  It was recommended that we might consider carpet.  I was devastated.  Seeing the rooms with wood floors for the first time made me feel like that apartment was mine.  However, yesterday we met with a guy who had a solution and said it could be done.  Praise you, Jesus!  It's a small thing, but to me, it was rather important.  We're still waiting on the bid.  We're waiting on one last bid from a window company to decide what we're going to do about replacing the windows (have I mentioned what bad shape those are in?).  And the bathroom.... The bathroom is moving from a small update to a complete renno.  No joke.  We thought we would replace the tub surround and put in new flooring and repaint.  Now we're tiling the bathtub (it will look awesome by the way), putting in beadboard on the bottom half, replacing all faucets and fixtures, replacing the overhead light, putting in a new light over the medicine cabinet, replacing the medicine cabinet, replacing the floors, redoing some plumbing, new towel bars, etc....  Did I forget anything?  Likely.  It will be a completely new bathroom.  Makes me wish I'd taken more and better pictures of the "before" so we can fully appreciate the change.  It's the bathroom that's holding us up from moving in.  We had hoped to move this coming weekend.  No dice.  It may actually be a few more weeks before we do.  But I guess that will give me time to get our things here cleaned up and in order for the move, when it does happen.  And we will have a practically brand new, beautiful bathroom when it's all finished.  Can't complain about that.