Eli at 6 months old!

So, I know this is old. But I don't care. He's just so sweet. Here is Eli at 6 months!

By the way, Eli is currently 9 and a half months old!

Cozy Cottage

After leaving my parents house at 18, I moved around a lot!!! I was in different dorm rooms, apartments, Thailand and Ukraine. I never lived in the same place for more than 1 year and 3 months consecutively. Wow, that's a lot of moving!
But, (drum roll please.....) we have now lived in our apartment for 1 year and 8 months!!! So, I missed the anniversary a little, but the points still remains, I have finally put down some roots! I feel good about this. However, I never, out of all the places that we have moved to, would have thought that this would be the place where my roots would grow.
I mean, I don't really love everything about this place: it's far from town; it's got an "open floor plan" which many prefer, but when you have little overall space it's nice to have it seperated out a bit; we have caught a lot of mice, gross; and there are many other little querks about it that I could live without. However, our neighbors have been a huge blessing. Even just tonight, we had a neighbor friend of Nikita and Noah's over for dinner. And as I'm typing, the neighbor upstairs is down here fixing one of our light sockets. (This same neighbor shovels our walk and the cement in front of our garage in the winter and puts down sand so we won't slip. Huge blessing! :)
Many people have come to our house and said that they thought it was "cozy." I guess as I think of it, they might be right. Maybe that's why I have grown to love it. It is cozy. It's our little cozy cottage in the middle of what can be cold, grey Ukraine. It's a place where we can have a cup of hot chocolate, watch a movie (the kids' favorite is a toss up between Mighty Ducks and Little Rascals right now) and just be together. It's our home, and it feels great! Praise God for some roots!

Life to the full!

Jesus said in John 10:10b "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

I've always wondered what Jesus meant by life "to the full." I guess, in my fast paced American mind, I thought that meant busy. Lots of good stuff always scheduled in my dayplanner. I have certainly lived quite a busy life, lots of activity. These activities have changed in nature as I've grown. It's gone from youth group and high school soccer, to Salt Company (our college ministry), to being the Ukrainian version of a soccer mom. (Which I totally love, by the way. I even have my soccer mom European, diesel minivan!!!)

Anywho, I was thinking today about some friends who are enjoying a wonerful new chapter in their lives. They just started dating! This event, although completely having nothing to do with me, has brought me so much joy. Other events recently have done the same thing. A friend had a baby who is healthy and wonderful. Other friends got married and started their life together as man and wife. Another friend is learning some of the most amazing lessons in life, while through some pain, it's truly awesome to watch him grow into the man God wants him to be. I had nothin' to do with any of that!

What struck me today is that this what I think Jesus meant. I have a life, filled with people. I get to share in their joys, their pain, their day to day happenings. I consider it one of the greatest blessings to have these people in  my life and to be allowed to be in theirs. What a joy to live in the body of Christ! What a life, life to the full!!! 

Home Sweet Home

Some of you have been asking about our new place. Well, here's the story of our new place, which became our old place really fast. Then there's the story of how our old place became our new place again. 

Ok, let's start from the beginning (I hear that's a good place to start.). We decided to look for apartments more centrally located, since right now, we're kind of in the outskirts of town, still accessible by bus, but not super convenient, especially when our car would break down. We finally found something at the end of July, and made plans to move in at the beginning of September. We told our current landlord that we were leaving, and he was sad, but what could he do. 

We went to Poland on vacation, and had a wonderful Polish time, bought a few things at Ikea for the new place. Then we came back, got Nikita ready for the first day of school (Sept 1st) and started to pack. We got a phone call on Monday (August 29th from our old landlord asking if we were for sure moving out, because he had someone else that wanted to live in the apartment). We got our keys on August 31st, and went in to check things out. We realized that we wanted to paint a few places and needed to make a few "minor" repairs. Since we have a few friends that can do those kinds of things, we were ok, a little disappointed by how much work we didn't see the first time we came in to check out the apartment. Oh, and the landlady told us that she had just been fired from her job. Stink. 

Well, the next day, Thursday, we came back to the apartment to figure out what colors and what else needed to be done. We went to the store and bought the paint. 

So, Friday, the day it all hit the fan. We had gathered a small army together to help us paint the apartment, move our stuff and generally just help us with the process. We started at 10am and by 1pm, we realized we had some major problems. All the little stars that had been put on the ceiling were all covering wine spots. We had thought they were just there for decoration. All the other decorations on the wall, were all there covering holes. Then the tub in the bathroom would fill up with water when someone upstairs used their bathroom. (Not comfortable bathing my children in a bathtub like that. Just saying.) Then we found it...mold. Yup, a piece of random wallpaper had been put over a huge infestation of mold! We were shocked! 

Andre called her up, and he told her about all of these problem. She said that she didn't want to fix anything. She wanted to sell the apartment anyway, and if we wanted them fixed we'd have to do it ourselves. Then she said that we could only stay a year maximum, which was not what we had agreed, so we told her we were out! We're not renting an apartment with mold, so our 3 kids can have issues. No thanks. 

Well, that's when we decided to call the agency that we used to find this gem of an apartment (did you catch the subtle sarcasm?). We looked at one apartment immediately, but it was small and super expensive! So, we called our current landlord. His cell was out of service. So, we kept calling.. and calling..and calling. Friday turned into Saturday and then Sunday... it was getting weird. We thought that maybe he was in the village working in the garden. It's the time of year for that. However, when waiting turned into Tuesday and Wednesday, we figured that there's no way he has that big of a garden.

So, he must be on vacation, or something else. We found his home number and his wife's cell. His wife's cell was out of range also, and nobody answered the home phone. So, we just waited. Finally, Friday (a full week after we found out that we couldn't move) he called. He said that we could talk that weekend about the possibility of us staying. He had found a guy that was willing to pay almost twice as much as we were paying.

Sunday morning, Andre met with him. Praise God!!! We were able to stay here. We have to pay a bit more, but not nearly what that other dude was going to pay!!! We are so thankful!!! 

Honestly, through this time, I've really come to appreciate where we live. Although it's not perfect, it really is home. Since, I have not lived anywhere since I was in high school for more than 1 year and 4 months, I am thankful for the chance to put down some roots. We are planning on staying here for a while. We have rearranged the house, and I'll show you pictures when we are done. We can't wait to just enjoy this great neighborhood, which the kids really love. They have tons of friends and can play outside all the time. There's also a new missionary family that has moved in not far from here, so it will be fun to hang out with them. Plus, now we have 2 cars, so we can get around easier. I feel good about being with boys out here. We have our handyman neighbor upstairs that can and has fixed pretty much everything you can imagine. We are truly where God wants us to be. I am confident of that! Praise God!!!

Don't Want to Miss Anything

So, about 4 and a half years ago when I became a mom to Nikita, I was so sad at how much I had missed. He was almost five years old, and although I had known him since he was one, I still felt sad at all that I had missed: his birth, his first step and word and just him being him for the first 4 years and 10 months of his life. I was really grateful for the time that I had been able to spend with him, but I had this weird regret about the time that I had missed, as if it had been my fault somehow that I hadn't been there.

Then after a few years, I realized that I had been spending so much time regeretting all the time that I had missed before we got him, that I had missed his life since then. Then we had Noah and the same thing started to happen. I was always living in the past, regreting "missing stuff." Even when I got pregnant with Eli, I told Andre that I wasn't going to miss it this time. I wasn't going to take it for granted.  

Well, I sit here today, and I realize that by regreting, I'm missing out on today. If I live my whole life in the past, I won't live my life, and that's how I can really miss stuff. My boys are growing, each day they're learning more and getting bigger. Although Nikita doesn't need my help to take a bath anymore, he still wants me to help him with his homework. Although Noah is going to be starting pre-school and will have his own thing now, he still says that I'm Sally and that he's McQueen. Although I missed taking newborn pictures of Eli (I hear you're supposed to do it before they're 10 days old.) I still get to smell that wonderful baby smell when we cuddle.

I refuse to regret anymore. I will not be robbed of today by regretting the past. I love my boys, and they deserve my whole heart today and everyday. May God give me the strength to live in the present.