"How To Learn-- The Hard Way" (October, November, December)

Wellllllll... I'm not sure where to start. Guess it's been since the beginning of September since I blogged. Whoops.

I could say something like "I haven't posted recently because we were floating on the winds of Fall,  soaking in every moment of the changing leaves and sipping pumpkin spice lattes before the bitter winds of Winter arrived". But that would be a lie. Actually, starting early October through early December was a pretty tough time for our family. There was very little "soaking in" of Fall and very few pumpkin spice lattes. But, as you will read, God taught me quite a bit through it all.

So here's how it went- we found CRAZY amounts of mold growing down (like stalactites in a cave) under our house in late September. Shortly thereafter, we found out that the underside of our home has been a little apartment for nasty, dirty, poop-eating, stinky, disease-ridden opossums for who-knows-how-long. Ick!

Honestly, for being so stinkin' nasty, it's pretty cute.

So we started to make a plan. An extremely expensive and time-consuming plan. Roger would rip out the entire "belly" (as Roger refers to it) of our  house and replace it. Yea- I know. (God taught me a lesson in trust and faith.)  Because we wouldn't want the kids or I to be in the house when the mold spores were flying, we decided to move out. "Where to?" you ask.
To the only place where you can learn to jump between beds and play with an "antique" phone-- the cheapest hotel in town! :-D

Although this was fun for a night, we left the next morning. We moved into the Halbgewachs house for the weekend while they were out of town visiting family. We would never have been able to fix our home if it wasn't for our best friends. Seriously, they are amazingly generous, understanding, serving, loving, etc.

Love. Those. People.

We also had a surprise guest-- Grandma Cindy came for the weekend. This was super helpful.

After a weekend of making LOTS of meals to pack in the mini fridge and swinging on their SUPER COOL tree swing and jumping on their trampoline we headed out. We moved into the Ramada and lived on those previously spoken of meals.

We lived there for. a. week. Yes. A week. Seven. Long. days.

The up side to living there? The UH-mazing breakfast every morning. Waffles or pancakes with strawberries, blueberries, syrup, marshmallow creme? Check. Oatmeal with fresh fruit? Check. Made-to-order omelets with your choice of add-ins? Check. Eggs, toast, french toast, bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy, cereal, milk, juice, bagels, scones, croissants...... the list goes on and on. God taught me a lesson in finding the blessings in a mess.

So we ate. A lot. We tried swimming but the pool was UNBELIEVABLY cold. ... I get the shivers just thinking about it! Brrrr!

We made lots of forts, though.

While the kids and I hung out at the hotel, Roger and Justin Halbgewachs ripped out the underbelly of our house. Roger has been in some disgusting situations throughout his long construction career but he says that one topped them all. They had to lay on their backs under our house (about three feet from the ground to the bottom of our house) and pull moldy, poop-and-urine-filled insulation onto themselves and then onto the ground. They couldn't wear safety goggles since they would only fog up and make it impossible to see. Which meant that insulation, dirt and other nasty things were falling into their EYES! (commence heeby-jeebies). Roger said he pulled some insulation out and moldy poop-filled water came splashing down on him. He also found a dead and rotting opossum. I almost threw up at that thought. UuuUUUuuuuuhhhhh...

Speaking of throwing up-- I forgot to mention the fact that we found I found out I was pregnant three days before we moved out.  Roger found out the day before. Uhh-- yea. It was God's perfect timing (but it sure didn't FEEL perfect). God taught me a lesson in His timing.

Ok- back to the story. So Roger was spending EVERY WAKING (and should-have-been-sleeping) moment working on our house and trying to work at Kearney Moving as well. He would go to KMS in the morning then when he was done working he would go to the house to work on it until about 4am. Then come home and sleep for a few hours and back at it again. I have an UHHHmazing husband. Seriously.

We got out of the hotel as often as possible--
this was our picnic at Fort Kearney just before we splashed around in the river
(Thank you, Lord, for fantastic weather in the middle of October!)

Enjoying the sunshine

So word got out that wet were living at a hotel and friends started calling like CRAZY offering meals, homes, basements, living room floors, etc. We were SO SHOWERED in not only help at our house but help with meals, places to stay, places to play, laundry services, etc. The Clark family (I would go into their generous, Christ-focused, servant family but that is a different post. Let's just call them amazingly generous and sweet for now) offered for us to live in their basement. But this isn't just ANY basement. This was FULL apartment. Bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom... DISHWASHER. Yea. I was on board 100%. I thought it would be strange living in someone's basement but this family is seriously amazing. Not only did they offer up this giant space from their home they also dropped off sweet treats randomly and made us feel SO at home. God taught me a lesson in service and an open-handed view of what I have through the Clarks.


The kids were pretty comfortable there, too. Since there was one bedroom, Titus slept in the crib, Roger and I slept in the bed and Brinley slept in the "special girl spot" (aka half in and half out of the closet)

 But most of the time she made her way into "the big bed"....

Moving into the apartment I gained some sanity back but I gained something else, too--- morning sickness. Yay! So, no longer able to hide the pregnancy very well, we announced it to our friends via facebook on Halloween:

My costume:

So now we had an apartment (a space of our own), lots of Qdoba (medication for morning sickness), and friends to play with (the Clark's have twin nearly-four-year-olds and a ten month old)! It was much easier on this pregnant mama.

Roger's hard work at the house allowed the discovery of: rotten subflooring in three of the four rooms of our home, plumbing that needed replaced, and moldy duct work. It was going to be a looooooong expensive project. Good thing I only packed enough clothes for a long weekend, right? HA! I thought I could always run back home to get more stuff but when he had to replaced the flooring in the bedrooms and bathroom he had to pack everything into boxes and store them in th e living room. Although inconvenient, God taught me a lesson in simplicity through this. I need what He supplies. That's it.

We had SO MANY people help Roger work on the house-- SO MANY! Family, friends, strangers all came to help. Our family was so blessed by people who were willing to take time out of their day, money out of their pocket, time away from family, and get dirty for our family. With all that help, slowly our house started to get put back together. THANK YOU to everyone. We feel surrounded by love. God taught me a lesson of humility and gratitude.

The second our house was ready to move back in, we did. We had (and still have) LOTS to unpack and organize but we were ready to sleep in OUR bed! :-)  Brinley wasn't as thrilled. She cried because "I want to live at the apartment, Mommy. I want to live there so Emma and Claire can come down and we can play in the sandbox and we can all be friends. I just don't think this house is ready, Daddy. I think we should head back to the apartment, ok?" She was a little more excited when she saw that she actually has a CLOSET (her closet before was our laundry room) and a room to share with Titus. I'll have some "after" photos in another post but here's a picture of them sleeping in the same room for the first time (Titus was in our bedroom until now-- and please ignore the mess)

We moved back in the day before Thanksgiving. We went to see Grammie Gorn and Grandpa Jiggers (Roger's grandparents) for Thanksgiving-- what a treat! We told Grammie not to make a big supper and wear herself out be we, of course, had ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, bacon-wrapped little smokies, bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers, and SO MUCH more. She's an amazing cook and we appreciate her hard work.

Shortly after Thanksgiving we had another outpouring of love, support, and encouragement as we made this announcement on Facebook:
                 "It is with heavy hearts we announce that during our ultrasound Monday we learned that we will not get the opportunity to hold our third child. This baby is now standing in the presence of our Lord. We wish to remember him or her as the child we love, not a secret to be kept silent. As you can expect, our hearts will take time to heal and we would appreciate the opportunity to talk about this loss when we are prepared, which is not quite yet. Please, please pray for our family."

We buried Jesse Shalom Baker on December 6th, 2012 and are thankful that the only thing he/she will know is Heaven.

I will probably have a post in the future about what this loss did to my heart, my family, my outlook, my relationship with the Lord, and my relationship with my children but, for now, let me just say that it was the hardest thing I've ever done to bury my child. The. Hardest. Thing. To all who have been through this, you understand. For those who haven't, please take time to praise God today that it hasn't. But through this loss God taught me about grief, entitlement, and His plan for life.

So, as you have read, October, November, and the first part of December were tough times for our family. But I hope that you were also able to read, throughout it all, that God was at work in our lives. He is continuing to teach us, guide us, grow us, mold us, and, most of all, love us. If it wasn't for Him, we'd be lost boats out on the water with no lighthouse to guide us through the rough waters. We are thankful.