Currently Watching The Great Escape By Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, Charles Bronson see related

We've held off making an announcement for a little while to make sure everything looked like it was going through in an orderly manner, and things are looking up -- Lord willing, we're going to buy a house!

This has all happened very suddenly, although we've been praying for the opportunity (but not looking for it).  We'd like to be able to open up our home to kids in foster care with physical disabilities (like Shalom's), and we just don't have the space in our house.  We think God is opening the door at a property not too far from where we are.  It is a pretty good little house that (due to foreclosure) was in our price range and was actually bigger than the house we're renting.  So many of the houses in our price range that we have looked at were the same size or smaller that we began to wonder if we'd ever move into a bigger house (without a lot of work).

The house will need a little bit of work, but nothing that can't be done over time.  We hope to move in around the end of the month.

In church news, Free Life has started up and we're heading in the right direction.  We've got some students that actually like to sing!  What a nice change of pace!  We've really noticed a good turn-around in the respect level and the participation of kids in our group.  Hopefully that will start to translate into students coming to outside events besides Youth Group, but in the meantime, we'll take what we're getting.  We still don't have a high school pastor, but we've got people covering the bases for now.  We also just got a new senior pastor.  We've enjoyed having Pastor Mike Neely (most recently from Columbus) join the team this Fall.  We certainly miss Curt and Fay as well, and we pray they're finding fruitful ministry out in the Scottsbluff area.

Calvin is FOUR MONTHS OLD and growing quickly.  He's got great head control and is a very happy boy (except when he's hungry!).  Shalom is still doing really well as a big sister.  She is experimenting with food by mouth and will consume a little more, especially liquids and things like drinkable yogurt.  Other than landing a full-body rash and an ear infection these past couple of weeks, she's been healthy.

Shalom is excited about the new house and has connected the fact that we could potentially get a dog now.  I wonder if Mommy prompted that thought at all...  Anyway, she has come up with some great ideas for each of us getting our own dog and just knows that our cats will love the new family members.  Shalom will also be able to have more of a play room in the new house.  Hopefully her doll house and puppet theatre can be somewhere useful instead of just tucked out of the way all the time.

People sometimes tell me that they still go to this blog to find out what's going on with us... so I'll try to keep updating it :)