Aug. 10, 2008
Exciting News and One of Those Days...
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So, dear friends, guess what?? NO, I'm not expecting a baby!! (This is the most common reason for exciting news in our household, but not this time;) My most wonderful and amazing husband was selected last week for command! For those of you outside the military culture, this means that he will be in charge of group of Marines in his case, a battalion. This is quite an honor and certainly not something we assumed would be in our future. It's an amazing responsibility and greatly humbling to think of such a thing. I have full confidence in my Love and know that he'll do a great job. This also means that I'll be in a position of leadership among the spouses. It's important to make sure that everyone is doing well and being cared for, especially as their husbands (and sometimes wives, as the case may be) are called to be far away from home. This is a totally new role for me as well, and I'm just trusting in the Lord's wisdom and care to be able to be the person I need to be. Now, the best news in all this, is that come this spring, we will be moving back to North Carolina where we will reunite with family and friends, church and wonderful fellowship. We are thrilled at the prospect!! It was the first time that when we told the children we were moving, that they felt like they were going home. As a parent of military "brats" (one of whom has moved 8 times in 15 years), it's great to let them put down roots. It's also wonderful to be close to my mom and dad and a drivable distance from Darren's parents. Now, on to the other topic of this update. We've all had them. Those days that we can only laugh or else we'd find ourselves in the fetal position hiding in a far corner. I had one of those days, a few weeks back. The day began like most any other day. As a matter of fact, I had been able to pull my bones out of bed early enough to snatch a few minutes in the Word and felt rather refreshed as I descended the stairs from my bedroom. I'd noticed a funky smell in our house, particularly in the garage area the night before but I figured that perhaps something had died near our trash can just outside the garage door. Since Darren was out of the country and the light bulb was out in the garage ceiling, I'd only glanced around the room. Now we don't actually park in the garage since our Suburban doesn't fit, so we use it for storage and have a spare fridge in there as well. I had made sure, on my patrol the previous day, to check that the fridge was in proper working order since my first thought was that the power was off. Everything was fine. In any event, when Grace went to the basement to exercise that morning, she couldn't stand the smell and called for me to check it out. The stench of rotting flesh was over-powering when I opened the door to the garage from the basement. I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW BAD IT SMELLED....I was seriously afraid that I'd find a cadaver of some sort in a corner of the garage. Had someone committed a heinous crime and hid the body in MY garage?? Did we somehow loose one of our pets and it starved to death in the garage? What WAS it? I was disgusted and afraid to find out and yet I HAD TO KNOW what was causing the horrid oder! I opened the door to let the sun guide me in my stinky quest. I almost missed it...there in the stroller (the new, expensive, double jogging stroller) was an unobtrusive little sack. And in the sack was the two kilos of freshly ground beef I had brought four days earlier (4.4 pounds, for my American friends). The ground beef that I assumed had been carefully placed in the freezer. The same beef that I later learned had been dropped off by a little visiting friend who was helping my children put away groceries and who got lost in the task. I won't tell you just how much it was moving when I peered into the sack. Just where those maggots come from is a mystery I don't care to solve. All I know is that my house smelled like a first century tomb (sans spices) and I was one, unhappy mama. I'd like to tell you that I was nonplussed by such a thing, but that would be a big fat lie. I was ticked off every time I took a breath and had a very hard time being the cheerful teaching mommy that I want to always be. Many, many candles, matches and open-windows (in the 90 degree weather) later, and our house was livable again. Then enter the snake. Well, it was rather small but a snake nonetheless. And the little, slithering body was in my house, in my living room, on the floor under my coo coo clock. I tried to let it be a science lesson of sorts, but I'm not fond of snakes and I didn't like to think of where he came from and what kin might be slithering around looking for him. I directed the older children to catch him and put him in a jar so my grade school kiddos could enjoy seeing him before we let him go. I then took off to go pick up my "middles" and left the two oldest kids with the two youngest. I heard the baby crying from his room as I was grabbing my purse and asked Grace to go free the little fellow. She called me to let me know that he was locked in the room and the key was no where to be found. (Each door has it's own lock with a key usually hanging outside the door.) To make a long story short, half and hour or so later, the poor little tyke was finally out after the kind services of a neighboring friend and his tool box. It was quite a day and I was one tired mommy when I climbed into bed that night!!! I was thankful that all had ended well and for the graciousness that the Lord lavished on me during such a crazy day. Anyway, that's the scoop from our little home. Our last bit of news is that Darren, Samuel and I are heading to Germany tomorrow, for the week. Our housekeeper will be staying here at night and many friends will be helping out and making sure Grace doesn't go nuts:) Pray for us all if you think of it. Traveling like this is all new to me but I'm very excited to get some down time with my sweety. He'll be in a conference during the day, but we'll have the evenings to relax together. Anyway, I've got to finish packing and get a few more things lined up for school. Hope you all are well and enjoying the final days of summer. Love, Maggie |
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Aug. 10, 2008 - Untitled Comment
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