Puddle Jumping

This evening, after dinner, Victoria (who had already been excused from the table) came back upstairs wearing her new rain boots. These boots are black and yellow striped and look like bumblebees - complete with eyes and antennae. Since it had rained all day she was excited to try them out for the first time (she got them on Friday). I told her that we would go and look for puddles but that she needed her coat first.

Anyway, there weren't any puddles on the driveway as originally thought; so we decided to take a walk down the hill to look at the flowers and find some puddles to splash in. Almost at the end of the street, we found this really big puddle and she loved it! She had never actually gotten to jump in a rain puddle before, so this was new and exciting territory for her. Needless to say she got very wet and quite muddy by the time the splashing escapade was over.

Watching her I realized that splashing in puddles is one of the great joys and pleasures of childhood. I fully intend to jump in puddles more often with my children so that I, too, can enjoy childhood again.

Happy after all this time...

Finally! It only took me 12 weeks to get here, but I am finally happy about being pregnant. I owe some of this emotional change to my sister, Jenni, but I owe a lot more to God. After a very nice conversation with my sister the other day, I decided to take her advice and stop trying to do everything on my own. I gave a lot of my problems over to Him and things are starting to improve.

For starters, I spoke to the office manager of my obstetrician's office and they offered to give me an ultrasound FOR FREE (due to my lack of insurance currently). That's $450 I don't have to worry about. Then, I got a letter today from the Virginia Employment Commission granting my request for unemployment benefits. $58 a week for 16 weeks and I can file another claim if I am still unemployed at that time. The only thing I have left is to attempt to get on Medicaid for insurance (which occurs Monday morning). I'm going to keep praying and just let God handle it.

The only thing I wish would change is that my emotions would stop running away with me. I still can't seem to stop crying at the drop of a hat. Just show me something sad or let me hear something sad and I'm a weeping mess! Oh well, baby steps right?

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My brain doesn't feel like coming up with a title for this blog entry. I am so tired of being sick and tired! I don't remember feeling this crappy with any other pregnancy. I feel as though all I do lately is complain and pray for the nausea to go away. If anyone has any suggestions, PLEASE I'm all ears!

Oh yeah, and I have an interview this Thursday, the 18th. Keep your fingers crossed!

Here we go again...

I wasn't happy with the last blog I had so I decided to start all over. I want to attempt to be better at letting people know what's going on in our lives without having to rely on phone calls, text messages, and email. So here is a quick run-down on the latest goings-on of the Abel family:

Hannah, Jonathan, and Andrew were with us this past Christmas and we all had a great time. I was very sorry to see them go, but look forward to seeing them again this summer.

Victoria is enjoying preschool still and has recently been enrolled in a Musical ABC's class. She has taken the Phonics class three times now, and has improved greatly. We just figured that, since she loves music so much, it would help her with phonics if there was music involved. We'll see how it goes.

Charles was supposed to be placed for his student teaching, but the placement fell through at the last minute (literally). We are still hopeful that he will get a placement for this semester, but prayers in this department are welcome and much-needed. The good news is that we discovered he can start his student teaching as late as the first full week of February and still graduate, the bad news is that the time between now and then is getting smaller very quickly.

As for me, I've had a very difficult beginning to 2010. We found out that we are expecting baby #5 (due date is 09/05/10). On top of that we also discovered that I have an ovarian cyst that, until recently, had grown to 9 cm. While surgery to remove the cyst would not hurt the baby, the anesthesia for the procedure could. So we opted to avoid surgery and chose to have it drained instead. They were able to shrink the cyst this way down to approximately 2 - 3 cm, with the understanding that it can always fill back up. I'm hoping this won't happen as I've already had to lose 2 weeks' worth of work over this thing and I just started working again. Again, prayers are most welcome and much-needed!