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Fishing, Computer woes, and the Airport

5/21/2011

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Back in August, when we were in our mad dash to try to get out of the house and on the road, we made one last look through the house to make sure we got everything.  I guess we forgot to check the attic because after we were on the road we realized we had left all our fishing poles up there!  So our across-the-street neighbors took the poles under their wings (and into their shed) for us, and since we've been back we kept forgetting to retrieve the poles from them.  So I finally called Thursday and went over there and got them.  Well, yesterday, the boys spent hours out on the lake fishing their hearts out and having a great time!  Earlier that morning, we were talking about the prediction of the world coming to an end today, and since I had only heard about it but not read anything about it I thought I'd check out who in the world predicted this.  So I did a google search on 'who predicted world end may 21 2011' or something like that.  I clicked on one of the results and immediately all my Internet Explorer sessions went down and my anti-virus software sent me a red flag suggesting I move some files to the vault, which I did.  After that, I couldn't bring anything up - my email, my internet, even solitaire, nothing would come up.  So while the boys were fishing, I spent the day trying to fix my computer until I finally admitted defeat and took it to our other neighbors where we had stayed for a few months (the Reiblings), and Mr. Reibling had to create another user on my system and show me how to copy everything over.  So at least I didn't lose everything!  But it's going to take awhile for me to copy everything over and get things set up properly. 

Anyway, a couple of months ago Mrs. Reibling told me about a tour that the Tampa Airport does for free, and we scheduled a tour for both of our families for today.  We had the BEST time!  The first hour was a behind the scenes look at various parts of the airport, and then the next hour was a bus tour around the runways and hangars and a tour of the new fire station (Tim saw many of his old co-workers there).  And finally we did a scavenger hunt of boys against the girls back at the main terminal (or landside terminal as they call it and we jokingly referred to it as the landslide terminal).  We girls got back 10 minutes early from the hunt, and we slouched down in the chairs (see picture below) so the boys wouldn't see us until they got to the pre-arranged meeting spot where we planned on jumping up and saying, "Surprise!  We won!"  Well, about 9 minutes after our arrival I was triple checking our answers and noticed we had missed 2 of the questions completely!  So the other girls fanned out to obtain the answers to the 2 questions while I held down the fort so to speak.  They arrived back at the exact time as the boys.  So now it was a matter of who answered the most questions correctly.  It came down to the wire, but we girls won by 1.  Whew!  Here are some pictures of one of Nathan's catches and our time at the airport.  Hope everyone's having a great weekend!
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Fender bender yesterday & Answer to prayer

5/19/2011

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I was just thinking the other day how nice it is to have a car that doesn't have a lot of dings in it.  I think when we parked our old van in our garage there were more opportunities for things to ding it.  Well, we still don't have any dings in this one, just a couple of really long and deep scratches with blue paint running from the front driver's side of the car all the way to the back.  I think it involves like 5 panels on the car.  Argh!  This happened yesterday, and right after it happened, the blue car owner jumped out of his car yelling, "THIS IS SUCH A BAD DAY!!".  We felt badly for him.  And we felt badly for us, too!  Long story short, both the other driver and we were at fault.  So, we exchanged insurance information and we'll be off to get estimates.  Tim was driving, but he went  a way that I had suggested, so I think we both feel equally awful about the whole thing.  However, as far as accidents go, it was relatively painless, especially literally!  No injuries at all, thank You, Lord!  I've attached a couple pictures for your viewing pleasure. 
In other news, I hinted in one of my other updates that we may not be finishing our trip because doors are opening up for doing what we feel called to (ministering to church leadership) right here in our community.  Well, not only have the doors been opening, but the gates were thrown wide open yesterday.  I can't go into details, but suffice it to say, I'm no longer wondering why we're not finishing our trip at this time!  I love it when God moves His children in a direction, shows us what He wants us to do, and as we wait on Him He literally opens doors that we don't even try to open!   I'm reminded how God narrowed our focus in our desire to help marriages and families from helping all marriages and families to helping church leadership marriage and families when we spoke with Ben Freudenberg in Ann Arbor, Michigan (check out my 10/16/10 blog).  Hmmm - that was 7 months ago.  I just wanted to give Him the glory He is due.  For those who are reading this and waiting on Him, I hope this encourages you.  I leave with this verse:   Psalm 62:8 Trust in him at all times, you people;  pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.
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Nicholas' bday pics

5/17/2011

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What a great time we had at my friend's house on Sunday!  I thought they just had innertubes, which would have been great by itself.  But they have every thing imaginable to tow behind their boat - wake board, knee board, skis, tubes, I lost track, and Nicholas tried them all!  Holly even gave each of the kids a turn at driving the boat -  I have included a picture of Noah behind the wheel.  It was a wonderful day!  I made a couple of cakes and Tim made a fabulous dinner.  Nicholas' prayer on the way home was full of gratefulness - love that!  Yesterday, his actual birthday day, we gave the kids the day off from school - the kids know it just adds another day on to when they will finish school, but no one contested the idea (including Tim and me) when it was brought up.  :-)  So today we need to get cracking so I'd best be going!  Here are the promised pictures:
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Happy Birthday to Nicholas (almost)

5/15/2011

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Tomorrow is Nicholas' 12th birthday, and today we are going to go to my good friend, Holly's house who invited us to come and play on their boat in their lake while she drags the kids behind on innertubes.  Nicholas is very psyched!  We are back at the Perrellas due to breaker problems at the other friends' house.  Our trip out west is slipping through our fingers.  The cost of gas alone is almost double what it would have been a few months ago.  Tim is still hoping for a miracle to pave the way, but my hope quotient on it is pretty low.  I was really wanting to drive the camper out to Dallas for our conference and then fly the kids out at the end of the conference and go west from there.  But I finally resigned myself to that not happening and Tim agreed we should just go ahead and get round trip tickets for he and I, so I did that yesterday.  The good part about that is that my brother invited us to stay with he and my sister-in-law who live like 20 minutes from the conference, so I'm looking forward to getting time in with them!  I haven't given up on the trip out west forever, it just may not be the right time.  It seemed like a perfect time to me because we don't have the responsibilities of a house and other commitments to try to juggle.  I've lived long enough to know that things are not always what they seem - so while it seems like a perfect time, there are other reasons why it may not be, and I'm trying to keep my hands and mind open.  :-)  So the plan is to stay here, go to the conference, and come back and look for a place to live.  Well, I need to get ready for Little Church, so I'd best be going.  Hope everyone is having a nice weekend!
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Happy Mother's Day!

5/8/2011

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I've been so reminded of a time in my life when Mother's Day was very painful because we wanted children so much but couldn't have them.  The Lord had given me this verse as a promise, but I have to admit at times I didn't believe Him.  Ps 113:9 "He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children.  Praise the Lord"  For those who don't know our story, we tried invitro once, miscarried, then a 2nd time and had triplets and then 9 months after they were born I was pregnant with our youngest.  Yes, we feel very blessed!  I've had a great morning so far - Tim took care of breakfast for everyone, including giving me breakfast in bed!  And now he's supervising getting everything and everyone packed up to go to Port Charlotte for the day.  We moved from the Perrella's on Friday to another family who asked us to be here for the rest of May for various reasons.  I hadn't mentioned before but during the week of spring break we had some friends ask us to stay in their house for that week while they were gone to take care of their pets, and we had such a wonderful time there!  Tim was able to do a bunch of home projects while we were there (fixing screens, door locks, broken shelves, a piano bench, etc - nothing they expected us to do but very fun to bless them in that way!)  She cried when she saw all he had done.  And we also cleaned the whole house before we left.  It's such a different feeling to do things like that when you don't 'have to' - fixing things when they haven't been hanging over your head for months like we remember it was with our own home - cleaning places that normally get passed over due to time constraints.  Makes me wonder if there's a future in that - we'll come to your house while you're on vacation and do your repairs and clean your house for free!   Ahaha!  Just kidding.   I don't think we're called to that.  Anyway, I'm just feeling so grateful this morning I had to blog and share it.  I hope everyone is having a great Mother's Day!
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Update!

5/6/2011

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I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've updated.  I seriously felt like I didn't have anything to say, though.  We have been crippled by a lack of hearing God's voice, and therefore, haven't felt good about making decisions.  So last Friday Tim and I spent the day fasting and praying and the next day we sought some Godly counsel from a couple of different people currently in marriage ministry.  I'm happy to report that we do have some direction that resonnates with our spirits.  Lord willing, we are going to go to a marriage conference in June (the 20th - 25th) in Dallas, Texas, and then we would like to take 2 months and go out west with the kids to finish the 2nd leg of our trip as strictly a family trip.  Then we plan on coming back here and settling in for at least a year until we hear more direction.  As you may remember, we have been feeling more and more called to minister to pastors and leadership marriages and families, and we've had some things open up in this regard right here in our own community.  So, we are believing this is where God wants us for now.  It has made me wonder why the Lord wanted us to sell our house if we're going to be right back here, but then I'm reminded that He was very clear He wanted us to be unencumbered, and we have definitely been that since we don't have all the responsibilities and costs of home ownership right now.  Wow, now that I'm writing here, I have SO much more I want to say, but I always try to keep these fairly brief.  So maybe I'll share more another time.  Our 2nd leg of the trip is still a little up in the air due to a few reasons - gas prices being one of them!  But the 2 main pieces of direction we know are the conference and plugging back in here for the next year.  We've even been able to plug back into the 6 week marriage class at our church we used to teach that started back up this week.  Thank you so much for your prayers for us as we move forward!  
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    Tim & Jodie


    Tim and Jodie have been married since Nov. 5, 1988.  Tim is a retired Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and retired city of Tampa Firefighter.   Jodie is a happily laid off IBM/AT&T 21 yr veteran employee. So I guess you can say they're both retired, but still super busy!  They have four wonderful children:  triplets Nathan, Nicole, and   Noah born 11/16/97 and Nicholas born 5/16/99.  Nathan is at Trinity College, Noah is at Florida Polytechnic University, and Nicole is at USF.  Nicholas is an EDM (electronic dance music) creator and hoping to make a living from that!  We love and are so proud of our kids!

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