Sorry, I know it has been over a month since I posted on the site. SO much has happened now…can’t quite figure out what to write about. I’ll highlight a few things. There are lots of good pictures but can’t post them all here anymore since it has been so long…but I’ll post a few.
2 days BEFORE we left for vacation, Dale found a massive hole in our roofline that some squirrels had burrowed into. We borrowed a trap and TRAPPED the two nuisance squirrels in 2 days and relocated them to the OTHER side of town. Well…what do you think 2 squirrels make?
BABY SQUIRRELS. Dale was 20 ft up on a ladder digging in the hole that the squirrels had left and low and behold he screamed like a girl when he reached in and pulled out a baby squirrel. I came running thinking he had fallen off the ladder. My heart hasn’t raced that fast in…welll…6 months. Needless to say, Dale is not allowed to scream on a ladder unless he is falling off.
So…what to do with 4 flea-infested baby squirrels? Dale wanted to kill them. I of course would not allow that. The day before the trip, we drove them 45 minutes away to an animal rescue league and paid $25 for them to take them off our hands. What can I say? I have a heart for animals?
“Cruise” to the Midwest
We traveled to Minnesota and Illinois a few weeks back a very enjoyable trip visiting family. It started as a joke but we kept saying “See, this is JUST as good as a cruise.” We drove through the night to Rich and Michelle’s house and enjoyed a few days with them. A few highlights were playing Sardines on their property in the dark, star gazing, playing paintball, Lindy playing with her cousins for hours on end, watching niece Hannah play volleyball, fixing a radiator on Rich’s truck, playing golf, seeing the Deckert cousins, settlers of catan, scum, attending the school open house, bonfire and hot chocolate, and letting Indiana roam the property for 3 days straight -he LOVED being a farm dog. We have some treasured memories from that trip. Couldn’t get anymore on a cruise right? From there we drove to see Bobby and Sara and meet their second child Claire. Scott Deckert and his girls drove down and we all went and played at a park with our ladies. It was a quick 12 hours with them but it included a fabulous steak dinner, skipping church to play settlers of catan, a brief visit with Mindy, and of course time with baby Claire. She is precious.
From Minnesota, we drove to Chicago to see Liz and Kavan and Kellyn. Our goal that week was to watch baby Kellyn while mommy and daddy went to work. We had such an adventure with TWO kids. Totally surreal to walk around the city with two kids strapped to your body. It’s hard to not wish for “that life.” Highlights of that trip include 2 visits to UIC to visit Liz. Once to eat lunch and the other to swim in the amazing student union pool. Date night at Wildfire for some great steaks and then to Second City to see a late show AND see some old cast members that we knew, Lincoln Park Zoo, playing settlers of catan, a special visit from Megan, Brian, Claire and Elliott, the dog beach, and of course spending time with our niece Kellyn.
Someday we WILL take that cruise, but visiting family is probably just as much fun.
The Ceiling Ghost
Earlier this week, Lindy woke up screaming and very panicked…saying she wanted to sleep with us because she “didn’t want to see that woman” in her room. She cowered in my lap as she begged me to take her out of her room. The next day as Lindy is getting something in her room upstairs, she starts crying and coming downstairs saying she couldn’t go get the toy because she was “scared of the woman in her room.” So…I asked her some more questions..trying not to lead her in anyway. The woman did not talk to her, didn’t have wings or a body…just a head and eyes that were always closed. So…we walked back up there and looked in her room and I asked her if she saw the woman and she said. “no, where did she go mom?” So…you can probably understand that we were a little disturbed. We are not oblivious to the fact that there is a spiritual war going on in places that we cannot see; we didn’t put it past her that she might be seeing a ghost. So, 2 nights in a row, we prayed against whatever was in that room. Lindy was physically showing signs of trauma every time she went into the room! Even at the mention of her having to take a nap in lets say 20 minutes…she’d start to tear up saying “she was too scared” So, last night, Dale laid in bed with her and we looked up at the ceiling. She said she could see “the woman.” I took a broom and touched the ceiling in random spots…she kept coming back to this one spot…
Well. we found the ghost. We have a textured ceiling and there were 2 spots on the ceiling that looked like closed eyes (see my beautiful picture above). From the angle of her bed…they looked like MEAN, closed eyes. ha. Dale sanded them down and she hasn’t mentioned “the woman” since.
It has been 6 months since the death of our son Everett. The past 2 weekends we have been shopping for gravestones. It is a hard process, only because we are innately cheap, so to spend thousands of dollars on one thing is a hard thing to mentally process. Of course our son is “worth it” but I think Dale and I are on the same page of smaller the better for our son.
The most RECENT news is that we lost both of our hard drives on our 2 computers in ONE day. bam. gone. blue screen. panic. BUT Dale stayed up until 5am and was able to recover 95% of the files on both hard drives including every picture I have of Everett. What a relief. We are up and running again now…surprisingly hard to be without a computer for one day.
Well, that is all for now. I must go to bed. more to post BEFORE October 20th. I promise.
