A second chance

We are back online! After a brief time of limited access to the internet and no cable we are back! It was interesting how much time I had to fill in without the tv or internet to distract me. I actually sat down one day... and thought to myself "I have nothing to do!" A rarity these days.

This week has been a big week for us. I moved everything from Mansfield to the townhouse all day Friday and then Michael and I moved all our furniture in after Michael got off work. We stayed here that night and got up early to start moving things from the storage unit. Michael's mom watched the kids (she has been so much help to us!) and his Dad helped us move our things from the storage unit to the truck and then to the townhouse. I do have to admit that I have had to push myself pretty hard these past few weeks. On several occasions I have felt like I didn't physically have the strength to move another box, but with Gods help I kept on trucking. My arms are still sore! Theres nothing like moving 3+ times in 7 months to keep you in shape!
The townhouse is cozy, when we bought the extra large bookcase from Ikea and the overstuffed couches back in Charlotte we didn't plan on living in a small space like this, but it is cozy. I spent a better part of Saturday evening (until 2am) cleaning the kitchen. No one ever told me how hard shelf paper is to put down! I wrestled and conquered that as well! While I was doing that, Michael was setting up our room...he even hung my NC photography for me:) Oh and of course the first thing that was set up was the kids room. I had made a bedroom-in-a-box for both kids so it made it easy. The special blankets, pillows, their rugs, and favorite toys were all set up for them in there room. They were so excited! They play well in their room together, I think they are just glad that they have their toys again AND also glad that we are staying here for a while (LORD WILLING...I've learned my lesson about being too certain of what lies ahead.).

We went to Megan's orientation for her preschool yesterday. She is going to love it! You should see her in her uniform, it is green plaid skorts or jumper with a light blue collered dress shirt. With her strawberry blond hair and fair complexion she couldn't be a cuter little school girl!

My big day (actually its pretty hard to rate what day so far has been the big day;) ) was today. I went to orientation for college!!! I am so excited. I registered for 6 hours/2 classes: Reasoning and Old Test. Survey. I will be taking OTS on Tue nights and Reasoning on Wed and Friday at 8am (yikes!). Again the Lord has blessed me with such a great friend in Donella tat she and I are going to swap childcare each week. She will take care of Megan and Jacob while I have class and then I will watch her 2 while she studies at the library. I am amazed at God's goodness to me through all this.

I have to tell you, Michael and I get comments on how faithful we are being and how sacrificial and "wow that must have been hard". But to tell you the truth Michael and I feel like this was in fact the path we were to have taken and the blessings we were to recieve 7 months ago, we just took a detour. We can convince ourselves pretty easily that we are in-fact following God's will and that this is the plan God has set for us if it is something we want bad enough. We can turn a deaf ear to the doubts and blame them on satan when it is the Spirit leading us elsewhere. I still don't have it figured out how we are to discriminate between doubts that satan plants about the plans God has for us and God leading us in a different direction than WE planned. I guess I will just have to start listening a lot better. I am just greatful that my God is a God of second chances. Michael and I feel so much more at peace than we have felt in a long time.

FYI

All is well in the world for the Griggs family. Just wanted to let you all know. Today we go to the house for one last clean up session then our tenents move in on Saturday. Michael is loving his job, it seems like it is a perfect fit. Again, God gave us something even better then we could even imagine. Who would have thought Michael would be working in marketing and production or at the seminary? He is very happy! I am getting back to "normal" with the kids even though we aren't in the townhome yet. Just sort of getting back to a semi-normal schedule is comforting. Oh, one more thing... I got accepted into the College at Southwestern!!! I an pretty excited about it.