New Blog Alert!

Howdy people!

I just thought that I needed to make sure that you are all reading my parent's new blogs! So proud of them for blogging :)

My mom's is My Falafel Times www.myfalafeltimes.blogspot.com



My dad's blog is My Mid-Life Middle-East Crisis www.midlifemiddleeast.blogspot.com



So go and subscribe to their blogs!

Love to all!

HOME!

Ahhh, it feels so good to be home! I would have liked to stay longer in Belgium as we were having such a great and really productive time, BUT I missed Lyric too much! PLUS, it's always nice to get back to your own house. ahhh home!

We got in last night around 7:30 and Courtney came and picked us up. Then we drove by On the Border and got some fajitas and queso to go! Then we got home and showed Lyric her surprises. She then played with them for the next few hours. Like the entire time, she loved them all!

Here's a video thanking her Grammy and Papi:



I got to bed around 11p, but then woke up at 5am this morning because I had a bad dream. I then couldn't go back to sleep, and so I thought, what the heck! and I left nd got a taquito from Whataburger :)

I have to do laundry and then turn around and get us all packed AGAIN because we are going to the Great Wolf Lodge this weekend with the whole family. It's an indoor water park/hotel and we're staying the weekend there and it's going to be so much fun!

Well here are a few pictures. Sorry, I was really bad about picture taking this trip. But something is better than nothing right!

Shiloh playing with the toy uncle Tim got him:


Of course, you all knew this already:

Sunday family barbecue:




We went to a "western" themed Flemish youth camp. Here is my nephew Noah
And Jon. You can take the guy out of Texas, but you can't take the Texas out of the guy :)
The evening meeting
Jon getting all dolled up by Troy, Tim and Kevin
My and my in-laws
Shiloh pooped all over Tim's white couch. It was really funny, and don't worry, we got the orange poop stain out... mostly!
Allyster came in for the day since he was in France. Here me Al and Chris are showing how awesome we are
Shiloh after the flight. He once again slept almost the entire flight. However, when he was awake, he was kind of fussy. But that's fussy for Shiloh, not fussy for normal baby. Everyone around us were constantly commenting on how great he did.
This is my baby girl that I missed SO much! She kept hugging and kissing us over and over again and squeezed our necks for the longest time. She kept saying, "I missed you" over and over. But I think we missed her more :) She loved her surprises that she got!

Well anyways, I need to start my day, even though I've already been up for 3 hours.
I got a lot to get done today.

Love to all!

PS. I have a few more pictures on Facebook so click here to see them

My future home

It's so much stranger coming here with new eyes.
I'm sure my parents felt the same way when they went to Israel last April, knowing that there was a possibility this would be there new home. I'm the same way. I'm paying attention to what cities we are in and where they are in relation to the places I already know. Trying to figure out where we are when we're downtown shopping and how to get to the places I enjoy going to. It's strange though because there's only like one highway that I can decipher, called the Ring. But you don't get on it very often. Most of the time you just stay on larger roads (like for us it is in comparison to Beltline or Cooper) to get to the different cities. The GPS is definitely going to be my best friend when I move here.
I've also decided that I MUST cook mexican food while I'm here. If I am unable to cook a decent Mexican dinner with the products available at the grocery store, then I'm not moving. Okay, that's a bit exaggerating, but I brought the spices from America and am determined to make a meal. Of course my family is onboard with my cooking endeavor :) I need to figure out a good way to make queso though, that's my challenge. And I wonder if they have tortillas here? hmmm...

Anyways, we've had a great trip so far. We had a wonderful flight. Shiloh was a first class world traveler. He slept basically the entire long flight. We were a bit annoyed because when we first checked in at the airport, they had it listed that we had 4 infants traveling with us! Shiloh Vandeput born 1/21/09, Shiloh Vandeput born 5/7/09, Shiloh Benjamin born 1/21/09 and then Jonathan Vandeput born 1/21/09. I know, pretty ridiculous! So because of all of that, the computer wouldn't let them reserve the bassinet for us because there were too many infants. And they couldn't take the infants off for some reason. SO we get to DC to get on our connecting flight and of course the bulk head has already been reserved so that means no bassinet. We get on the flight and it is PACKED with only a few seats available in the back. So we are in the middle with the 5 seats. Jon and I are on the end and then there is 1 in the middle and then an older Flemish couple next to us. Well this 20-something French guy sits down in the middle of all of us. He looks around and after some small talk asks us if it would be more convenient for us if we had his seat for the baby. I said of course, but that he can feel free to stay put. Well he asks and the attendant said there were 2 seats available at the back that he could sit in. He agrees and gives us an extra seat! Yay! We now had a place to lay Shiloh down!
Here we are in the plane:



Shiloh slept almost the entire plane ride from DC to Brussels, which is about 7 hours. SO awesome! Here he is sleeping away:


I didn't sleep at all, and have been going to bed really late the last few nights before we left, so I was exhausted, but happily greeted my mother-in-law and brother-in-law Tim at the airport. We got back to Chris' "guest" house and met Elias (the SG Missions Pastor) who has been visiting missionaries around Europe and had just flown in from Serbia to spend time in Brussels with all of us and the leaders here.
Knowing we needed to stay awake, we piled in the car and went in search of food and some sightseeing as Elias has never been here before. We ate Lebanese food (mmm hummus) and then did a bit more sight seeing. I ate my first Belgian waffle of the trip (which is always a highlight) and then we headed back. I was EXHAUSTED and crashed in the car without even realizing. Last thing I remembered was talking and then next thing I remembered was waking up as we pulled up to the house :)
Everything basically was closed on Thursday due to the Ascension (they celebrate the "day" that Jesus ascended as a federal holiday).
I then took a four hour nap. I know. BIG no-no. Jon woke me up at 8pm and I felt like someone had beat me with a stick. I could barely keep my eyes open. Because everything was closed, Jon couldn't find any store that had bread, so we ended up ordering pizza. Soon Christophe was back (he had been in Turkey for a House of Prayer meeting) and we all visited before we excused ourselves to crash. We all slept great that night, the entire night. Shiloh slept from 11p-8a.
Yesterday we woke up to this beautiful view

and then went to a meeting with the leaders from A-Net which is a large apostolic church network here and talked about our vision for what we are wanting to see happen in Belgium and asking them to get behind us and support us. Everyone is excited about the potential of having a few families move to Belgium and really invest themselves in establishing a place where churches, people and ministries can all come together to impact Belgium and Europe. We are meeting together again Monday night to pray.
After the meeting I zoomed off to go spend the day with my sister-in-law Esther and my niece Jodie. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and hanging out in down town Brussels, and then ate Thai food for dinner. Then we went to a friend of the family's birthday party.
Here are Esther and I in DEEP discussion. Okay, not really :)

Here is Shiloh. He's started sucking his thumb, it's really cute :)
My beautiful niece Jodie
Shiloh and I

While me and Shi were hanging out with the girls, Jon was with the rest of the family were at Explosion which is the quarterly youth gathering (french speaking). Jon said it was awesome and that there were over 700 young people there. How amazing! David told us yesterday that since our group and Gateways Beyond came to the big youth conference in October, that there has been a greater hunger for worship in the young people. They had always made the services more like a "concert" because that's what the kids liked, but now they are wanting to worship! How awesome is that?! So they are moving the services to be more worship services and are seeing amazing results. 700 kids! That's huge! There is a hunger in these young people that needs to be satied and Jon and I are so excited about playing a role in that.
Tonight we are going to the Flemish version of Explosion, though I heard most of the service is actually in English, which will be nice for me. I'm excited about going! I actually need to start getting in gear to get ready. The service is about 1 1/2 hours away, so we have to leave earlier.

Anyways, just wanted to give you all an update on how our trip is going. It's going to pass all too quickly although I won't be TOO sad to leave firstly due to the fact we'll be back for a long time in the not too distant future, but mainly because the absolute most amazing 2 year old princess is waiting for me! She stayed with Christina Smith for a few days and is currently with Ry and Tiff. I talked to her last night and she was SO cute! Made me laugh and ALMOST cry, but I didn't. It was just great to see her smiling face. She kept kissing the screen where we were (we were Skyping with video) and told us that she missed us. She asked where baby Shi was and we told her he was asleep and she said, "Oh, I miss him". Awww! I can't wait to see her! I bought her a tutu and a leotard that she is going to LOVE to dance in! I can't wait to give it her.
Well that's all I have for now! I'll try to blog again before I leave.

Till then, au revoir!

Happy Mother's Day to ME!

I woke up to this morning to homemade crepes, a diet coke and this FANTASTIC video that Jon, Lyric and Shiloh put together for me! :)



I am a lucky woman to be the mother to these precious kids and so thankful for my husband who made this morning special for me!

LOVE YOU!

Busy Week

So I have about a million things on my to do list this week and none of them really have much to do with being a mom or keeping up with household stuff.
Today was one of those days where I needed my kids to take 7 hour naps. I finished a transcript, then worked on stuff for Aflac for my parents, then once Jon got home I dealt with all the stuff I had yet to do that I promised them I would do right after they left (oops!). But it's all done mom so you can rest assured! Aflac stuff sent, AT&T stuff faxed, International Driver's License stuff mailed.
Then Jon went up to the airport when he got off work to get Shiloh's plane ticket to Belgium (I couldn't book it online for some reason). His ticket should be about $350, which to me is ridiculous since he is in my lap. It's 10% of the ticket price, plus all the taxes and fees. So Jon went up there and argued with the lady at Lufthansa and told her they didn't charge infant taxes and fees in Europe, so why here and blah, blah. Well long story short, they gave us Shiloh's ticket for $80! Ya, Jon got them to wave almost all the surcharges, taxes and fees! Yippee! Gotta love saving over $200! However, he didn't double check the ticket and she put my last name on his ticket... yes I've been married almost 4 years, but I never changed my last name on my SSN or my passport, so when Jon and I travel I always have to travel under my maiden name. So Jon has to go BACK up there tomorrow to get the name changed. But at least he saved the money!
So he gets home and I go run all the errands I need to run. Post office. Church to make copies, etc. then to the store. Courtney is making dinner tonight and I'm making dinner Thursday (gotta love shared dinner nights). I get home and Jonathan had spray painted all the hinges and then moved the cabinet doors off the floor, picked up the kitchen, living and dining room and swept. It felt SOOOO good to come home to a little bit of order. Hopefully by tomorrow the cabinet doors will be up and we can mark that off our list of crap to do.

I still have so much to do, but at least right now I'm good. I can enjoy the evening with my family and maybe even get a load of laundry done. Ya right :)

I have another transcript to do on Thursday, so I need to try and get all my household stuff done tomorrow so I can focus on that since there is a 24 hour turn around time.

The only bad thing about my busy day is I didn't take time to eat. Therefore, I have a massive headache and Shiloh screamed through his last feeding because he wasn't getting enough milk. Oops. So I better go and take some medicine and down a diet coke before I go over to Courtney's house so she doesn't complain about me being in a bad mood! :)

Only 15 more days till I go to Belgium! Yay!

BELGIUM!!!

Hey guys!

I'm going to Belgium in 3 weeks!!! yay!

Jonathan was already going with Elias Reyes, our Missions Pastor to talk to Jon's dad and brother about starting something in Brussels. When he was about to book his ticket, I was like, why don't I go?

We found fantastic prices ($550- round trip), so we decided to go for it!

I am SOOOOO excited!

I will take Shiloh with me and Christina Smith, Tiffani and Courtney are going join together and keep Lyric for me. Although I'm already getting teary eyed at the thought of leaving her. I have never been gone from her for more than 24 hours!

I can't wait to see all of my Vandeput family.

I haven't been back to Belgium since September 2007. I was supposed to go this last October, but of course bedrest had me stay here. So there is a lot of family that I haven't seen in a year and a half!

I'm thrilled!!!

We leave May 20 and get back on the 27th!

Yay!!!!

Green Thumb

SO this weekend has been crazy.
I count my weekend as starting on Thursday. Thursday was date night and we went to the Over The Rhine concert and had a blast with Abby, Brad and Danny. It was a low key concert, but they are really great! Abby and I always have fun when we go anywhere together, so it's never a dull moment. Then, on our way back, I made an impuplsive decision to go see the midnight showing of Wolverine with Liv and Megan. I know. I've been complaining about how tired I am, but then I decide to stay out till 2am! I drank so much diet coke in the movie staying awake, that I was wired when I got home and didn't go to bed till 4am. I'm a mashochist!
Then Friday the kids and I went to breakfast with the Watkins and then hurried home so I could start on the challah, and that's an all day affair. We had a great Shabbat that night (but missed my parents).
Saturday morning Jon and I woke up and went to Home Depot and bought paint and flowers.
We got home and started the primer coat of paint on our kitchen cabinets. You may remember, about 2 years ago, we decided to stain the kitchen cabinets. Ya. That didn't work out very well. So then we decided it looked too bad and since we want to put our house on the market, we were going to just paint them all white... ya. See the problem is neither Jon or I are perfectionist and by today all we wanted to do was be done with the stupid cabinets! SO they all don't look great. I mean, I think overall they look good, but there are are definitely a few doors that are lacking. The cabinets are original from the 1950's anyways, and I'm sure the new owners are going to want to replace them anyways. But hopefully we improved! We've replaced all the appliances and so the cabinets needed a bit of an update as well.
We've been working on the cabinets for 2 days and we are finally done painting them! However, we still need to spray paint the hinges, so they aren't up yet. When they are I will post all the pictures from the kitchen.
Currently, my house has cabinet doors ALL over the place. Plus stuff from the cabinets and the counter tops ALL over the table and the fireplace. The house is a wreck and I can't wait to have it all done and back to normal.

Then we have the flowers! yay! My flowers that I planted last summer died during one of the freezes this winter and I have not cleaned the flower bed once since they have died. Ya, it was really bad! see:

I realized halfway through that I forgot to take "before" pictures. So just imagine all those nasty weeds throughout the entire bed. So I pulled weeds and leveled out the bed. I did it all by myself (well Jon helped me dig the hole for the bigger plant). I was so proud of myself!



I'm SO tired after today! Weeding, planting, painting, plus taking care of the kids... I also smell really bad right now :)

At this minute I am over at Courtney's house keeping Kadyn and Judah. My house is not in the place to have extra kids due to all the painting stuff, so I just decided to keep them here.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll have the cabinets up and then i can get the house cleaned.

Oh! I got hired on by a new transcription company, so I am going to be doing more transcripts! I am hopefully going to put all the money towards my Israel trip this summer. I have one due tomorrow afternoon, so i am going to work on it tonight.

Well I need to start paying attention to the 4 kids ages 3 and under that are running around this house.

Later!