We did it!  We passed our final inspection.  We are finally moving in tommorrow.  I can't believe it's finally here.  We are so excited.  We will be moving in with no electricity or hot water, but we're moving in.  I can live with candles and cold showers for a week.  We sold the house we're living in now and we are supposed to close escrow in 2 weeks.  Isn't it amazing how God works.  We were so worried about sellig this house, and getting the other one done, but in God's time it came together perfectly. 

Megan turned 7 this week.  Normally I throw a big party and combine all the kids birthday's into one day, but there is just too much going on this year.  We had a small family dinner, and it was really wonderful.  The following day we went to see the ballet Cinderella.  It was a fantastic performance, and afterwards we went to a park to eat our picnic lunch. Friday we celebrated yet again with several families for a park day, and brought ice cream cone cupcakes.  They are so fun to make!  Andrew got up 3 mornings in a row and kept saying, "I'm going to make Megan's bed for her again since it's still her birthday!"  It was so cute.  We finished up the week by going to pray the life size Stations of the Cross outside at the new chapel.  A very fun, but busy week. 

Oh yeah, we passed our drywall inspection, and the outside has been stuccoed.  We're getting garage doors next week, and soon we will be ready for paint, tile, carpet, and cabinets.  We are hoping to be in the house by the end of May or maybe June!  Please keep us in your prayers that we will sell the house we are currently living in. 

OK, I have no idea how long it has been since I posted.  I actually forgot how to post and have been searching the website trying to figure it out.  I finally found it! 

We have been so busy lately, I can barely catch my breath.  Chris started at a new office in February and he really loves it so far.  His new schedule has been so wonderful for our family.  He has 3 days off every  week, and 4 days off every other week.  Couple that with the fact he is driving half as far every day, and it seems like we see him so much more!  The kids are really enjoying having Daddy around more, and so am I.  We get to eat, pray, and play as a family again. 

The house is coming along.  We are getting ready to drywall and stucco as soon as we pass this next inspection.  I was thinking of getting a central vacuum installed before it's too late.  Does anyone have any experiance with these?  Any opinions good or bad? 

We are getting so excited to get into the new house.  The chapel behind our new house is finished and the priest has moved in.  He is already having Mass there.  It will be so wonderful to be able to walk to Church every day!  It seems like a dream come true. 

Chris and I talked about it, and we are hoping to get chickens when we move.  I can't wait to plant my garden, and have fresh eggs!! 

I will try to keep up with this again, although my computer time lately is sporadic at best.  Hopefully, as the house is finished I will have a few more minutes here and there.  When I figure it out again, I will post a new picture of the house.  God bless you all during this Lenten season.

We were eating spouted grain bagels the other morning when one of the grains fell out of the bagel.  Megan, noticing the seed on the counter picked it up with a look of excitement in her eyes.  She turned to me and asked, "Mom, can we plant a bagel tree?  Oh, please, please can we?!?!

Well, I've had an extended break from the computer due to illness in our family.  The kids contracted some horrible intestinal bug which did not want to leave our family.  There were no fevers, aches or pains.  In fact, the only symptoms were spontaneous projectile vomiting followed by stomach cramps that rivaled labor pains.  It only lasted one day and then seemed to be gone.  A day or two later it would return with no warning.  This cycle continued for 3 weeks!!  We had to go on a liquids only diet for 2 days to finally be rid of it.  It is finally gone and now I have a few spare moments to try to catch up.

We are still doing the prep work to pour the slab.  It is very involved, and California has so many rules and requirements, we keep running into problems.  It seems that there may be light at the end of the tunnel, and we are scheduled to pour two weeks from today.  That should give us time finish everything, get the inspections, and add in the radiant heating that I desperately want!  Here is a picture of the lot being graded.  When I find my camera, I'll add one showing where we are now.

Now that I can add pictures, I am so very excited!  Here is a picture of Hannah with her best buddy, Charles Witherspoon.  They are so sweet together.  Hannah treats him like a little baby doll.  He really seems to enjoy her company most of the time, except of course when she steals his bottle, which she is quite fond of doing!

Thanks to my dear friend Michele and her abundant wisdom, I may now be able to add pictures!  If this works you will now see a picture of Hannah in her new dress.

You may be wondering why I chose this as the title of my blog.  The words "Dues Caritas Est" translate to "God is Love."  This is the title of the first encyclical written by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.  As I was reading this encyclical, one of the first points he touches on is Christ's call for us to Love our neighbor as ourself.  This has been a tough one for me lately, especially since we have had so many problems with our current neighbors.  They threatened us, threatened family members, vandalized our car, and as things progressed the hatred in my heart festered and continued to grow.  I thought terrible things about them, but never realized it was only harming me and my family.  They didn't even care.  The turning point came when I was watching a movie with my son Jack the other night.  It is called the Buttercream Gang.  We received this a gift from our friends the Witherspoons over a year ago, but never watched it (we don't watch too much TV these days.)  It was about a group of boys who go around helping others.  One of the boys moves away, joins a gang, turns bad, comes back and keeps being bad.  The old friends try to help him, but he wants to be bad.  It culminates it the old friend being nicer, and nicer no matter what, until the bad boy has a breakdown and runs away.  A year later they find out that he returned to his old bad gang, but turned them into a Buttercream Gang doing good and helping others.  The moral of this all was that God tells us to love our neighbor as ourself, and goes on to tell us that our neighbor includes our enemy.  If we love our enemies, we can make a difference in their lives.  Jack and I were discussing this, and he says to me, "Mom, maybe that's what we should do to our neighbors."  To which I replied,"Honey, I don't know what we should do about them."  Not to be dissuaded he replies, "No Mom, that IS what we should do to them."  So I decided we should give it a shot.  The next morning when I was leaving the house the husband was out in the front yard.  I smiled and said, "Good Morning."  To my surprise, he smiled back and said, "Good Morning."  This was from a man who was cursing at us just a few weeks ago.  My kids were in the car, and they were so excited.  We will continue praying for them, and maybe one day, they will be sitting next to us in church!    

So, God IS Love, and if we are going to change this world we have to take His love out into it.  Not just to the people in our home, or family who are easy to love, but to the very people who cause us the most strife.  After all, they too were created by God, and He will's that all should be saved.  It's not for us to decide who is worthy, only to decide if we are we willing to answer His call to love.

Here's a link to the encyclical.  It's worth reading.

 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

Saturday was Megan's ballet recital.  Hopefully soon I will be able to upload the adorable pictures of her in her sailor suit.  She had a great time, and the kids were so cute.  Her class did a tap routine to The Good Ship Lollipop.  It was so nice to have so many friends and family members in the audience.  Megan was overjoyed and felt so special.  We will be taking a break from ballet until the house is built.  Trying to get to lessons in the midst of all the other chaos has been too much for me to handle.  Does anyone else compulsively eat junk food when they are stressed out?  One of my weaknesses.  I may gain 50 pounds by the time this house is built if I don't slow down!   

Well, I haven't yet figured out how to add pictures, but I'm trying.  Things are progressing with the house, although slower than expected.  We are hoping to pour the footers next week and then the slab.  Hopefully things will pick from there.  The kids and I are taking a break from the lot to catch up on lessons this week, and recover.  (The little ones came down with a nasty cold after Megan's ballet recital.)  I realized that we were not getting much done being out at the lot every day with four small children.  In fact, as the children ran through the trenches and knocked all the dirt back in that would have to later be dug out, it seemed we were possibly slowing things down a bit.  They sure did have fun though!  We will go out at the end of every week and help to clean things up until we are further along in construction.  That way we can keep up with our lessons, and the laundry!! 

I just got the neatest thing in the mail today.  I was reading a book called Homeschooling with a Meek and Quiet Spirit from Titus2.com.  This is something I pray for daily, as I tend to have a loud, yelling sort of spirit.  Anyway, in the book was a recommendation for something called an If - Then Chart.  I ordered it from a website called Doorposts.com and it just came in the mail.  I know I could have made one myseslf, but this was quick and easy and only cost about $5.  So, I took it out of the package and I just love it.  It is a chart showing a bad behavior in the first column, a Bible verse that tells why it is wrong or why the opposite behavior is right in the second column, and a blank third column for you to write in the consequence.  It seems so simple, but I never thought of it.  I often get frustrated at the time bad behavior takes place and I can't think of what the appropriate punishment should be.  Now it's all laid out and I can just take the child to the chart, show them their bad behavior, where in the Bible it says it's wrong, and the consequence.  Hopefully this will help me to curb my yelling a bit, and to be more consistent.  I'll let you know how it goes.   

Today I embark on a new adventure.  I am going to attempt to actually keep up with this blog so friends and family can know what is going on our lives, even if we are too busy for personal updates. 

We are in the beginning stages of building our new home in Oak Hills, and up to this point it has been quite a ride.  We first bid on the property, a 2 1/2 acre parcel, way back in April.  It has taken this long, but last week the loan finally funded.  We had our doubts, but it looks like God knew what he was doing!  He, in His infinite wisdom, forsaw the problems we would have with our plans, and stalled the closing of the loan so that not a day would be wasted.  In fact, the seller of the lot was kind enough to allow us to grade the property before it recorded, so we wasted no time, or interested payments.  The plans were approved, and the loan recorded with in one day of each other!  Isn't God good.  He is so good!! 

So here we are beginning construction of our new house, at our new lot where we have the most wonderful neighbors, who God surely has hand picked for our family.  We are so excited! 

I will try to add pictures as we go, so everyone can follow along with our progress, but we'll see how that goes.