Esther is smiling!!

It's adorable and someday I'll get a photo of it. She's also still going about 6 hours at night between feedings which is wonderful! She'll go 3-4 hours during the day for the most part. IF she goes 4 hours too often then she does wake up at night so we're trying to keep those times shorter... it's just not always worth waking a sleeping baby!

Tyler's therapy came to an end yesterday and he's very much improved. We'll continue the home therapy until his followup appt in February and hopefully after that we can just continue it and end all discussions of surgery. I was playing doctor with Grace the other day and realized she has all sorts of new teeth! Especially molars. I guess making her eat those carrot sticks has been helping push them through!

I can't believe Christmas is a week away!! We have given up the idea of cookies. I made some Christmas nachos with the kids the other day. I had some corn tortillas that we were just not going to use so I decided to let the kids use the cookie cutters to cut them and then i baked them. It was fun and I just made triangles with some since the cutting wasn't easy! We've also been making Christmas shape pancakes pretty often this month. We go to Alliance to see the lights at Silver Park as often as we can. We also go to a house in a neighborhood near us that does lights to music. They have a transmitter so you can tune in your radio to hear it and watch. It's great. They have 6 songs I think we counted. We have SO much shopping to do still and not much time to do it! We hope to travel to do Christmas with my family next week Tuesday thru Thursday. Then we have Christmas at home, then on the weekend with the Bush's and Kandrays! Grandparents are such a blessing! I do love that Christmas lasts for several days, but it sure can be stressful!

Our news this week is that we made an offer on a house last night! What are we thinking!?!? We've been "casually" looking for months, years really- since we've moved here. We upped the search recently considering buying while we owned the Mansfield house, or paying it off and then buying. I never took it too seriously because we were years from paying the Mansfield house off anyways. Then the Mansfield house sold and I think Gary shifted from "casual" to "search" mode and I was busy in "labor" mode and then "survival" mode and missed his shift! THEN Saturday came and we saw two houses in the same price range, one a foreclosure and one a century home. The foreclosure needed lots of cosmetic work and teh century home was in excellent condition completely updated, and we fell in love with it. After much discussion, many emotional and fearful tears on my part, and even more prayer we made an offer on it last night. We can't afford the listing price and made an offer a little below what we can afford. If they counter we only have our final price to respond at so we're praying that they are willing to take less than asking price. It's worth the asking price I'm sure due to the condition of it and the location, but we absolutely will not pay more than what we can. We know what we're willing to pay per month for mortgage/insurance/taxes/utilities and we won't go above that. We know if they don't take it, then God has something better for us!

I've learned in this process how absolutely wonderful Gary is. He's so patient and so willing to work with me and make our marriage and decisions a partnership. He was fully on board with moving forward before I was but he's accepted the process I need to go through (endless discussion) and accepted the emotional process I have to go through too. He was willing to wait until I was fully on board. He's willing to pray through it with me and answer the same questions a million times! For the man I think it comes down to does this house fit us, is it where we want to be, and can we afford it, and some of does is feel right. For the woman I think it's a lot more about can we afford it, and does it FEEL right. Just because you walk into a house and feel at home and love it doesn't mean it's best to actually BUY it!

I'm also grateful that Gary's willing to look at our finances and make decisions that are conservative and comfortable so that nothing has to change to make it possible. We could over extend ourselves and count on certain monies each year like tax returns, but he's careful to plan only on what we know. It's easy when emotions are involved to talk yourself into more than what you can do and I'm so thankful Gary's so disciplined in this area. We're not so disciplined in other areas but we're working on it!

The offer is being presented this morning so we should know soon!