An interesting week so far...

So far, I've been a busy little bee this week. It's amazing what one can accomplish on no sleep and whatever food you can dredge out of the farest reaches of a pantry. We started out with a 7 hour drive from NJ to home on Sun night, only to get home at 8 and find our fridge had broken over the weekend and we had meat juice running all over the floor. What a fun cleaning job that was! After disenfecting EVERYTHING, I got to bed at midnight and woke up Mon. morning a very grumpy girl. Mon. was uneventful (but grumpy), then Mon. night Ryan informs me I need to use up the fruit we had frozen in the freezer, so Tues. was spent making 6 jars of jam (and then nursing the various burns from boiling water canning... I'm all thumbs, ya know.), folding and putting away 5 loads of laundry and all our suitcase stuff, and making a big dinner in an attempt to stretch a few meals out of 2 pounds of stew beef (unsuccessful at the stretching... only lasted 1 1/2 meals). Then Sarah got a cold, or at least I think it's a cold... her cheeks are real red, though, so maybe 5ths disease, so now I have 2 toddlers (Hannah will not let her sissy "out-sick" her... my kids are such cold drug-seekers even though I rarely give them to them) running around crying for medicine and repeatedly reminding me, "I'm tick Mommy... *is the fridgerater bwoken till?" (*is the refridgerator broken still?). On the upside, we've now decided to renovate the whole kitchen, and now Ryan is out shopping every evening to find the perfect set (if you know him, you know it takes him MONTHS to pick out the simplest things, let alone a fridge, due to a compulsive need to comparison shop until every price in the city is obtained twice for a desired item).
The neatest part, though, is that a church friend generously gifted us a large sum of money two weeks ago, stating God had put it on his heart to give the gift. We thought at the time, "ok, well, I'm not sure we need it, but if God put it out there, then we can't really refuse"... fast forward now and we're really seeing God has given us a message with this gift. He's going to watch over and care for us, if we just trust him. Now to really put that trust into action...
On the kid report side, Sarah is much better today, and Hannah showed me last night that she's learning what lies are. I didn't think she understood the concept, but last night we were watching Veggie Tales ("Larry Boy and the Fib from Outer Space"), and every time the main character would tell a lie, Hannah made sure to report it to me as I was cooking in the other room, saying, "Mommy, he told a lie... lies are not good... he's a bad boy!" I was so impressed, as she figured out what was going on all by herself (the video doesn't explain the concept very well until the end). Also, the kids are really coming along learning their letters and numerals, thanks in part to a good healthy dose of Sesame Street! Caleb slept for 6 hours the other night, a new record, and Mommy woke up in the worst pain ever because of it. He might have slept longer, but poor Mommy needed him to nurse in the worst way! :) Alas, since then it's been 3 hours at a time again!