Praise the Lord!!!

So, those of you who know the changes Rob and I have been going through know that we're probably crazy people!! :) We moved into a new house (didn't sell the other one...renting it out to 2 college kids), are having a baby on Monday and are planning on beginning demolition of our new house in a month or so (we're re-doing the kitchen, family room, adding a bedroom, re-doing both bathrooms, new flooring, new appliances, etc.). Basically the most stressful things a married couple can go through all within a month to two months. We're been handling it very well actually until just yesterday. We've been planning on our renters moving in today, June 5th, but we haven't heard from them in weeks! They are supposed to be moving down from New York and after calling their cell phones a million times this week, Rob and I were convinced that they were scamming us and weren't planning on showing up. Soooo...I made a final phone call and told them that we would be putting the "For Sale" and "For Rent" signs back out and we'd be canceling their contract for rent. Rob came home tonight and we decided to resort to the last and final piece of action...going to the house where the college girl's dad lives to get to the bottom of things. Come to find out, they just got back into town today and had lost our phone numbers to contact us to open up the house and move it. PRAISE JESUS!!! So, the girl is supposed to call me tomorrow to get the keys and move in. We're so glad because the last thing we need right now is to worry about paying two mortgages, payments for reconstruction and hospital bills.

I will admit, since I've been a stay-at-home-mom, I've always thought that my contribution to raising our kids has been the most important thing I could be doing. However, at times like these when stress is high and money is tight, I feel as though I'm not contributing. The most important thing that I have been involved in as far as providing financially for our family has been to make sure we had good renters in our house (making sure the mortgage is paid) and I felt like I let Rob down. He was so understanding when I told him this and said that I should never feel like I'm not "contributing". Childcare for two children is EXPENSIVE and would basically be my paycheck as a teacher, therefore I stay at home. I know that every mother goes through a time of having to decide whether or not they want to stay at home or continue to work and everyone is so different. I decided to go back to work after having Avonlea and loved being back teaching my precious middle schoolers, but after finding out I was prego with #2 baby, for us, the best decision was for me to be at home. All mothers are different and we all raise our children to the best of our ability and whether you're a mom that works full time, part time or stays home, the love that we have for our children is what we all have in common and we do our best at raising them the way the Lord would have us to raise them. Three cheers for moms!!!

Sorry there are no pictures tonight. The pictures I do post are always blurry anyway due to the fact that I use a video camera and the camera that takes my good pics is a Minolta still camera which uses film (I will still continue to post them though). We're hoping to save up for a good digital someday that I can throw in my purse and snap shots anywhere although I've heard it can be addicting and hard to choose pics you acutally want to develop and throw in scrapbooks. Speaking of scrapbooks...I'm off to finish up a page in Avonlea's book. I have yet to begin our Bates Family Album and hope to start it tomorrow. I know that the chaos is about to begin in a few days becoming a mommy to two beautiful children. (Yikes! Two right? Did I say that? I'm still letting it all sink in.) I hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday (two more days until Friday-yipee!).

For those of you who need my new e-mail address, it's we4bates@tampabay.rr.com