Monday Ramblings...

About Everson:

Besides teaching his son how to shave this past weekend, he has been busy sending resumes, scheduling interviews, and doing interviews.  He is in the slow and time consuming selection process of some very good and large companies.  It is the waiting game mostly.  Like most of our lives right now.  Like life in general!  My sweet husband has also done all the doctor and physical therapy visits for our daughter, which has been a huge help to me as it is also an extremely time consuming routine. And that brings us to

About Chloe Maria:

You may notice that her right arm is a little skinny and she is unable to completely straighten it out after 7 weeks in a cast but she is CASTLESS!!!!  We are so excited to be able to bathe her without the whole plastic-sack-lots-of-tape gig.  Here she is singing to me...inventing the lyrics and music as she goes.  I actually filmed this one.  I am usually too late with the camera but i asked her permission and she sang away for over 5 minutes.  She is capable of composing music in the moment that almost always rhymes as well.  We wonder if she will write music and lyrics like her Tio W someday.

She started physical therapy on her arm today.  Here's to celebrating the (hopefully) last leg of this adventure!

Some funny comments from Chloe recently:
"Mommy, I have chosen my husband.  His name is Gustavo.  He is a boy in my class at school and someday when he grows up he will love Jesus sooooooo much!"  wow.  okay.  good to know!
"Mommy, I have decided I am not a monkey so I am not going to hang from the monkey bars anymore so I won't ever break my arm again!"  excellent.  good to know you aren't a monkey.  let's hope the lesson has been well learned and not to be forgotten anytime soon!

News break of the week: Chloe gets to go back to school on Friday after almost 2 months away and she.is.so.so.so.excited!

About Noah Miguel:

Baby in a Box

This little monkey (and he is a monkey!) is giving his mother regular and powerful near heart attacks on an hourly basis now.  He is INTO EVERYTHING and CLIMBING UP ON EVERYTHING and that is just scary.  He finds blender blades and scissors and breaks glass on a daily basis, regardless how much I put away, hide and put up (honestly in a tiny apartment you can only put UP so much stuff!).  He is FAST.  He can scale the chair and onto the table faster than I can blink.  A whole world has opened up to our little man: he now has access to the windows (his favorite pastime!), computers, oven.  If the front door opens he is out in a flash and it is my greatest fear he will tumble down four flights of stairs and I won't even have known he had escaped.  I know he has extra legend of protective angels and that they ALL work 24/7 on his behalf: yesterday he very nearly split open his left eyebrow...only a miracle saved us from an ER visit.  Today he tumbled off the chair as I was rushing to get him off and landed flat on his back.  Lord only knows if his little brain will survive all the tumbles and falls he takes.  I wish you could see him in action: it is truly amazing how fast and completely carefree he is.  Danger is not even on his radar...yet!

Everson and I are in an intense and very dark night of the soul and we ask for your prayers.  I cannot share more at this point but please, if you find us on your minds a lot, there is probably a very good reason for that. I find myself more and more in God's Word, where truly the only lasting comfort comes from. God has been challenging me greatly from the book of James the past few days.  This is my mantra today: mercy triumphs over judgment!  How I want this to be true of my life.  How I want my life to be marked by mercy and grace, not judgment, harshness and cruelty.  Someone shared this with me last week and I cannot get it out of my head: the greater the trial, the greater the victory!  We are still waiting for that victory and until then, the trial is painful but HE IS SUFFICIENT.  HE is ENOUGH, even when we are not.  HE is good, even when we struggle with very human and often ugly feelings.  We have been challenged to worship and praise in the midst of the struggle and so we do just that:

"Glorify the Lord with me and together let's exalt His name!"

Have a blessed and productive week!

Jama