When the Peace of God....

As usual, our life has been kind of crazy these last few weeks. From birthday parties for the girls, to finishing up kindergarten, to the planning of summer activities.

But it seems like a couple of things have been weighing heavily upon us for a while.....

Russell was feeling the need to look for a new job. He was feeling led to give up coaching football and focus on basketball more, so he had more time to be at home with his 3 girls. After 5 job interviews from varying places, Russell has accepted a new position. We are totally thrilled about it. It is kind of funny to reflect back upon it. As with all of his other job hunts over the years, we have had a peace about the new job (possibly before we even make it to visit the new city for an interview) but somewhere along the way we begin to fret and worry and stress ourselves out about the job hunt, or possibly having to stay put for another year. And of course this time around was no different.

However, the day he came home and told me he had applied here for a job, I had this "strange" peace about it. And then we got the interview scheduled and the whole family loaded up and went with him, and again, I had that peace that God was in control. And for the week after the interview the same thing, peace. And then the call came to offer the job and of course our only answer was YES.

God's Peace....It is as sure as a morning dew that covers the ground... as secure as your loving husbands arms, as comforting as a warm fuzzy blanket...and it leaves you wondering why you worried all along.

The next chance I had to experience God's peace also came this week. As many of you know, Claire takes a medicine that is not yet available in the US, so we have to get it from Canada. Well it was time for our refill (we call with a 10 day supply left) so I called our Canadian pharmacy to refill. Only to find out that due to some government regulations in their province, they could no longer fill our prescription. So they transferred us to another Canadian pharmacy. And this is all fine with me. So I call that pharmacy to set up our account and find out that it will take 21 days for the medicine to reach us. yikes! I may be 11 days short of medicine. So I immediately call our doctor to see if there is anything we can do. And yet during this time I had a strange peace that some how this was going to work out.... Claire would not have to go without. After 4 days I finally speak to the doctor and what do you know but he has an unopened bottle of this medication that another patient could no longer use, but that he was willing to send to us! Amazing! Again, God's peace covered over us.

Maybe next time, before I begin to fret and worry when the future might seem dim, I will remember these 2 times...... I would hope so.....but I'm not holding my breathe!

3 and 23

Wow! Turning 3 can be so busy! First Claire had to say goodbye to Julie, our therapist for 3 years! What a sad day that was.

Then it was on to party time. Like all people, Hope thinks we should actually celebrate our birthday on our birthday. So we had cupcakes for Claire on Thursday and saved the cake for her Friday night party. We had our close friends over again and Grandmommy and Grandaddy got to make it for the big day! What fun. This was the first party Claire had that she made it through the entire celebration from presents to cake without a seizure! yeah!

Yummy yummy cake! We couldn't feed it Claire fast enough!

Then all the girls got to enjoy the new ball pit! Good times! Balls everywhere!

Now aren't those girls pretty! Claire is sporting one of her new birthday outfits!

And to top everything off.... we went to the doctor Monday for her 3 year check up and she now weighs 23 lbs! She has never weighed 23 lbs before! yippee! After narrowing down all the causes to her fussiness and fixing what we could, we have decided that feeding her does make her quiet and so we think she is just hungry a lot now. So we are getting to feed her on average every 2-3 hours (hmmm...just like a newborn....including in the middle of the night.) The doctor just thinks that she has finally decided to grow and is HUNGRY!

Stay tuned to hear of Hope's exciting adventure to Kentucky!