Hold Tight

My heart broke last Friday for the families affected by the tragic shooting in Sandy Hook, CT. I sat through church yesterday holding my dear nephews and crying for the little ones who weren't there to sit through church with their moms and dads, aunts and uncles just two weeks before Christmas. My husband looked at me after church and asked what was wrong and did I want to leave. The tears were running down my cheeks at that point. I made it to the truck before I started sobbing. 

I am so blessed. I have six wonderful nephews and two nieces. I nanny part time for two other amazing, spectacular girls. Of these ten children five are between the ages of five and seven. The oldest is only nine. All these kids who died three days ago were either six or seven. They were excited for Christmas. Their parents were probably done or had at least started their Christmas shopping. Everything in the houses they lived in are going to remind the hurting families of the little light that was snuffed out so suddenly. 

How do we make sense of the tragedy? Do we blame God, or do we run to Him? Do we call for gun controls, or say that if some school staff could be armed, maybe some loss of life could be avoided? 

Here are my answers to these questions. 

1. Something like this doesn't make sense. I can't imagine losing one of the precious children I love, let alone a classroom full of them. It makes me proud of our country that there are still a few heroes left--women who were willing to risk their lives to try to stop the gunman. These women offered the ultimate sacrifice. They died protecting the children entrusted to them.

2. I do not believe that God is to blame for these atrocities. He is in control of the world but he still gives us free will. We can make choices--right or wrong. If he wouldn't allow it to happen just because the choice is wrong, it wouldn't be free will. If you take away the options it isn't really a choice any more. So I run to God. I don't understand. God help me, I don't understand. But I know that those kids aren't in pain anymore. They aren't afraid anymore.

3. Gun control or not. Well, I guess I say look at drugs and alcohol. Do people who aren't supposed to have those still get them? YES! Underage? No big deal. Have someone else buy them for you. Use a fake ID. Go somewhere where they don't card. Use the black market. Find a dealer. Do we think that instituting gun controls is going to help anything? What will for sure happen is that law-abiding citizens will not have access to the guns that the unscrupulous will. Drugs are illegal. Does that stop anyone in any high school in the nation from having ready access to them? NO. What we need to do is stop idolizing the shooters in these cases and stop making them household names. We need to teach our teachers and school officials disarming techniques and maybe even if we don't arm them with guns, give them a taser. Let them paralyze the people trying to kill others for a short while so they can disarm and subdue them.

 But please, don't take the guns from the law-abiding to punish the criminals. 

I pray that the families of the victims and the children (and adults) who were in that school that day receive comfort and peace. That they will know they are not alone. That all the country mourns with them the loss of those precious ones. That the victims will never be forgotten and that the person who committed these terrible things will. I pray that even when we can't make sense of a tragedy, we run to the arms of the One who can.

Wow...

So we have a slab and walls. And as of 8 AM this morning, the trusses were going up. WooHoo! More than anything, this year has been a year of transitions and I'm looking forward to the next two months as the transitions continue. Hopefully more next week. :)

H/G/B *House/Garage/Barn

Ugh. That about sums up my feelings on building.

We have great credit, minimal debt and make payments on time for the debt we have. Is it good enough? Just barely, or so our bank says. (Excuse me credit union). It took 2 full months to get approved and close on our construction loan. Then our mortgage officer asked if we were going to make a draw at closing--after not returning calls and putting us off for a month and a half when we started pressing for a closing date. Uh, no Scott, we are not going to make a draw. We couldn't start because you wouldn't tell us when our closing would be....

Anyways, we made it through that. Thank God. And now we are going to get our slab poured this week. Basically, this is how our building project has gone: Hurry up and get our part done because the contractor is on a tight schedule. Wait an inordinately long time for the contractor to do his part. Contractor tells us something he needs done before he can even start. Hurry up again. Wait again. After really long wait, contractor goes on vacation. Will do it when he gets back. He gets back and pushes it off to next week.

As you can see, I'm frustrated. We are at the end of September and I don't even have a cement slab to call home, let alone four walls and a roof. My birthday is next month and we will still be living with my in-laws. (As I've mentioned before, I don't mind living with my in-laws, but it's my birthday and we are still newlyweds. Plus, for those of you who know me, I'm quite independent. *Deep Breath.

Ok. Now that I've ranted. Supposedly, we will at least be able to camp out in sleeping bags in our new h/g/b by Thanksgiving (aka Hunting Season). This is good. Also, we are finally seeming to make progress. I will post a progression of pics from the past month or so at the end of this post.

Other than that there is one contractor we have worked with that I will recommend with no qualms whatsoever. PGA out of Weston, WI. I cannot say enough good things about them. Quick to send out our estimate, on time with work, very reasonable prices. I would steer any and all business their way that I could. They are awesome. They call to check on where we are if they haven't heard from us in a while, and answer my questions when I get confused--they even steered us to our well driller. If you need a quote for anything related to plumbing or septic (the two things we had them do) go to this website. They also do heating, cooling, electrical, excavating and insulation. They are amazing.

Hope you have a great week. I'm planning on it. Meanwhile, duty calls to the Annie Nannie. :)

ps-what would you think if I opened a bakery? Let me know. TTFN. :)

The Summer of 2012

Well Summer has come and gone. It was so busy. We took two trips out of state. One to North Carolina for my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary--this is Me and A with them at their party. Us married for almost exactly a year and them at 60! WOW!

We had super fun in North Carolina--it was the first time A had met most of my Dad's family. We also got to go the the museum of Natural History (Museum=Love for A) and got to explore the Battleship North Carolina. This next picture was the following weekend back in Wisconsin. We went up to my favorite place on earth...AKA the Cottage...for our first wedding anniversary. 

This gets us through June. The last weekend in June/first weekend in July we moved from our house. We actually moved in with my in-laws (don't worry, I don't mind living here--and we actually moved in to my old room--long story). During July, we closed on our construction loan, FINALLY! We also put our house on the market and as I mentioned before, Moved. Busy month. 

August was busy too! First weekend, one of my very good friends got married in Milwaukee. Above is the picture of me and A at the Milwaukee Zoo! I had never been to a real zoo before so it was really really exciting! Below is my hairstyle from the wedding--LOVED IT! (I stood up in the wedding in case you didn't guess.)

The last hurrah of summer was our trip to the UP of Michigan with my brother. Yes, my husband and brother are wearing matching clothes. No, it was not planned (or so they say). :) Anywho, this pic is at Miner's Falls in Pictured Rocks National Park and is basically the only picture from my camera from all of vacation. It was super fun, but when you are having that much fun, who has time for pictures?

As  you can see our summer was crazy busy and now we are moving on into fall. Hopefully, next week I can catch up on blogging the progress of the h/g/b (House/garage/barn for those slow at picking up on acronyms). We are actually making progress! Woohoo! Until next week, TTFN. :) Tata for now.

The MCAT

So the reason that I didn't blog for a month was that I took the MCAT on April 5th. I basically had spaghetti for a brain for the entire month of April. I will be finding out sometime this week how I did. I am SO nervous. My husband and my brother were the only people who knew before I took it that I was taking it.

April was the longest month ever. It takes 30-35 days for the scores to come through. This means that I have been waiting un-patiently for 32 days and have not gotten my results yet. :) I really have been checking the website multiple times a day since about the two week mark. I'm starting to feel like I'm proving the old adage that a watched pot never boils.

Top Three Tips for people who have never taken the MCAT:
3. Someone go with or at least drop off and pick up the person taking the test. Driving while that nervous or that noodle-like isn't much fun.

2. Send snacks like Teddy Grahams. I was so nervous the only things I ate before my test (which was a 1PM exam) were animal crackers and Teddy Grahams. I didn't want to get sick.

1. Please don't ask afterwards how the test taker thought he or she did. The scoring on the MCAT is scaled. So the raw score is important, but you don't have any clue after a 5 hour test what any of the questions were let alone how you answered them. :)

I drove home in noodle-mode and wanted to sleep for two months. However, I did not. I worked the next day. :) My exam was on a Thursday so I just took that day off. I left at 8AM and was home by 8PM. I was at work at 5:30AM the next morning. Yes, I'm most likely crazy.

I made it. I survived the MCAT and am hoping that I don't have to take it again. Ever. Well, I am on to the rest of my day. Hope you have a great week. TTFN.

Nephew Night

This week my sister's youngest son is coming to visit. I'm getting him Thursday night and then we are just going to play, play, play. The kids take turns coming one at a time--one on one time with Aunt Annie! :) It's got to be a good time!

First, we will have dinner. Personal pizzas on English muffins for dinner. Watching Despicable Me, playing Lego Batman on the xBox. Sleeping, making and eating blueberry muffins, swimming, picnic-ing in the park for lunch. Maybe a play-date! Yes, it is a good time.

Probably the last time we will have a niece or nephew over before we move to the house-garage-barn! Which by the way we just got our address yesterday! :) So excited! We don't have a mailbox yet though--so we have the perks of an address with no junk mail!

Unfortunately, I have to go--it's volunteer day. I was working on the kitchen and didn't start early enough to write an entire epistle today. :) Hope you have a great week and hopefully, it won't be a month between posts this time.

ttfn.

Great-Grandma

My Great-Grandma was one of the most amazing women I have ever known. I guess I should start at my beginning. 


I was born the day after my great-grandparents 50th anniversary. This made it very easy for me to keep track of how long they were married (Me + 50). I know some people don't know their grandparents, let alone their great-grandparents. I am very blessed.


I was homeschooled, so there was some flexibility in our daily schedule. I don't know where the idea came from, I just know that my mom decided when I was little that we would go to the library once a week and then go see my great-grandparents. 


So once a week, we went to the library and filled the duffle bag we called the "book bag". We really did fill it. It was big. Then we would go to Great-Grandpa & Grandma's. Grandma always had a pot of coffee on--she made the best coffee in the world, but I think it was the company. 


They always had pop in the fridge for us. Great-Grandpa & Grandma knew what flavors we liked and made sure there was one in the fridge when we got there. We knew we had to wait until they asked if we wanted a pop to get one. Once in a while we would ask. :)


Sometimes Grandma would make a cake when we were there. She cut very big pieces because she didn't want there to be leftovers for just her and Grandpa. We always whined if she asked Mom to cut the cake because Mom cut small pieces. 


If we got to stay for lunch, Grandma always had great things. She kept the shaped macaroni-n-cheese on hand. Super Mario? Check! Scooby-Doo? Check! Sometimes there would be what seemed like hundreds of TV Dinners. There was a different one for everyone. Once in a while there were personal pot pies--I always took a chicken and broccoli one of those. Whatever it was we were always excited. It would be a treat because we wouldn't normally get it at home.


My great-grandparents always had time to tell us stories from the past. I wrote a biography on Great-Grandpa my freshman year of high school. One of the best things I ever did, because now I have those stories to pass on to my kids some day. My favorite story of my great-grandma is from long ago.


One year Great-Grandpa was working on a barn (I think it was out at a Christian camp not far from where they lived). It was April Fool's Day, and Grandma decided to get the guys good. :) Everyone loved when she made chocolate covered graham crackers, so she did. All the guys tackled them and soon found these were some special cookies. Grandma had dipped cardboard in chocolate. :) What a surprise for them! :)


When Great-Grandpa & Grandma got older and had a hard time getting around, they moved to a nursing home. It was a normal nursing home with two beds to a room. The great thing was that Great-Grandpa & Grandma shared a room. There was a picture on the wall in their room (it is still above the bed that my Great-Grandpa has in the same nursing home). It was from a family reunion we had at their house several years ago. There were pictures of them with all their kids, then ones with their grandkids and kids. The one that I love--that I still cry every time I see it--is the one of just Grandpa & Grandma. They are sitting in lawn chairs in front of their house. Grandma is leaned over kissing Grandpa on the cheek. That picture is a snapshot of their whole relationship for me.


My Great-Grandma went to sleep 3 years ago this week. She didn't wake up. My great-grandparents had been married for 71 1/2 years. There is still a hole in my heart. Some days I miss her so much that I feel like I can't breathe. I keep telling myself how blessed I am--I knew her. But I can't wait to see her again.


That's all I've got. Have a good week. Be thankful for the people in your life.