Very Long Overdue. . .

Well, it has certainly been a long time since my last post; I'm sure that many people have ceased checking this blog altogether. Many times I sit down to write, and the words just won't come - or most often, Little Miss Aayla's "mommy's on the computer" radar goes off and my attention is required elsewhere. For a few moments at least, her attention is diverted elsewhere, and I have time to write. So, here it is in a nutshell. . .

Shortly after my blogging hiatus began, we found that we are expecting baby #2 around June 30, 2008. While 2 weeks may not be much time between "we're expecting" and "announcing the birth of," it seemed better than nothing! This pregnancy has really been ideal - just the usual morning sickness and common aches and pains - I certainly have been blessed to have two such pregnancies in a row. I am slightly more uncomfortable than I was with Aayla - probably because time erases our memories somewhat, and because chasing an almost 2 year old around takes a toll as well.

I'm sure that something blog-worthy happened between Sept and Jan, but my brain is a little slow now, so we'll skip ahead.

In January 2008, Mike and I went to an open house (house for sale, not graduation), and even though we were not planning on moving for some time, we decided to put an offer on the house and list ours for sale. Our offer was accepted, but eventually fell through because it was contigent on our house selling. We prayed about it and decided that at least for the present, we would leave our house on the market. Nothing happened for several months - we had people look at the house about once a week, and we would occassionally look at houses ourselves - and we were considering the option that what we had was better than anything else that we saw. Then on May 2nd, our realtor called us to tell us that there was an offer on our house, and she would stop by to discuss it with us when Mike got off work. The offer was very good, but there wasn't much time to make our decision (they wanted to move in by the end of the month). We had no prospects and we were leaving the next morning to spend Mike's birthday in Chicago - but we decided to accept the offer, changing closing and possession to mid-June. The following Monday, we called our realtor, Maxine, right away to see a potential house. It turned out to be a "better to tear down than fix up." Maxine quickly lined up a few more homes for us to look at - the next one being in Hudson, IA. Mike and I agreed to look at it, but we both thought "if it's in Hudson and we can afford it, it has to be a pit!" Hudson is a fairly desirable area and the housing market seems pretty competitive. Well, we loved it. Enough said. It was the perfect house for us. Maxine wanted us to see a few more before we made an offer, so we did, but this was our house. To condense the rest of this long story, we made an acceptable offer, moved closing to the end of May, and have been "settled" in our new home for two weeks now.

All of that was crazy, made crazier by the events that unfolded during the week of our move, but we could see God working out all of the details in ways we would never have foreseen.(Mike-My favorite being our realtor getting a fax the morning of closing that our buyers still did not have all of their financing in order. God worked it all out and they had it about and hour or two before we were to close.) And the move could not have been at a more perfect time. Tornadoes and flooding have hit Iowa extremely hard this year - to the point of downtown areas being flooded and evacuated for the first time in who knows how long. Areas less than 1/2 mile from our old house were evacuated, and the roads surrounding our neighborhood were closed. You can read more about the flooding and see pics here. I'm just so thankful that we didn't have that to worry about.

That about takes us up to current status in the Ertl household. Aayla is playing with magnets beside me, but needs to have a snack and head off to bed. Mike is relaxing in the living room, enjoying the beginning of week 2 of his "vacation" from work (we are hoping that week 2 will bring less work, more relaxation!), and I am running out of thoughts.

Thanks to all the faithful who still check this blog, and many apologies for my long absence (now if we can only find the camera and cables, we may be able to post some pictures. . .).