What's been going on

I haven't posted the pictures I said I would or blogged in about a week.  Life has been fast and crazy with each day whirling through at top speed and leaving me in a heap of tired before falling asleep to the 10 o'clock news.  There is so much joy from these kids during this time of stressfulness.  Brendan never fails to crack us up at the most inopportune times of heated discussions and it's like God saw we were being to serious and wanted to lighten the mood with this sweet and adorable little boy. 

Trinity and I are back to our daily walks and now we are taking Chippy.  He's afraid of all the snow globes and Christmas inflatables in every yard and nearly drags us behind him on our walk.  But as we're panting and trying to keep up with him, Trinity and are bonding.  I'm able to talk to her without her little brother interrupting every two seconds and I see her becoming such a beautiful young woman.  Lately she hears us talking about the house.  She asked me last week if we lose our home where will we go, how will we get there, do we get to keep her bed and the stuff inside our home, and most important can she bring her swing set in the backyard.  I had been reassuring her that God has a plan and so far it looks like the mortgage company will help us with the loan until Craig gets a job.  But yesterday we got a call from the bank saying we had never been pre-qualified by the representative we spoke to.  Craig went through this pre-qualification process and we were denied any assistance for modifying the loan.  We didn't tell her anything but she heard me talking to my Mom and Craig talking to his Dad and then she knew the situation.  This morning during school she wasn't concentrating at all and I finally asked her what she was thinking about because it definitely wasn't her work.  She burst into tears about leaving her home, the swingset, all the plants that she and her Daddy and I planted to commemorate each of the children's births, Mother's Day presents, and my birthday gifts.  She cried and cried and cried.  Then I (thinking I had been holding it all together so well) started crying.  Through my tears I told her we had to have faith that God is with us and is working all this for our good, God has something better for our family no matter what happens, and we need to focus on what we do have -God, our family, food to eat, a place to live right now, and warm clothes to wear.  It's going to be hard until we know for sure what our options are and where we will go and what we should do.  But Craig and I have faith that God will provide and lead the way.
Last week our cat started having seizures again.  He had seizure after seizure after seizure.  It was horrible because we don't have the money to take him to the vet and I read online the vet usually can't figure it out anyway.  We tried giving him more protein via tuna fish and he still had a seizure that day.  Then I thought about things in his room he could be eating or drinking and I remembered the soaking bowl we have that has oxi-clean and water.  We took it out at night and he hasn't had a seizure since.  Hopefully he was just dumb enough to drink it and he isn't harmed permanently by this and that is what the deal was in the first place.  It was just one more thing to make us feel miserable about our circumstances and how we can't even provide for our pets in emergencies.
Annaliese is trying to crawl so much and she is the happiest baby.  She is also giving Brendan a run for his money.  If he gets in my lap she will lunge toward him screaming...she wants him out of my lap and her in it.  I can't believe that.  If he takes a toy away from her she just screams.  If he plays with her legs while I'm holding her she cries this mad cry until he gets off her leg.  Then she stops and smiles.  He really isn't loving her this last week and jealousy is rampant.  We are working through it and I know in the long run they will be great friends but they will also fight like cats and dogs.
And one thing that Trinity said this week that was hilarious.  We were at the dinner table and Craig said jokingly he would eat without his shirt on at the table (we were joking about how poor we were) and asked Trinity if she would like that.  She said quickly and loudly, "GROSS!!  I can't eat if you have your shirt off!! EWWW."  Craig and I laughed so hard we thought we would choke on our dinner.  Kids have such a way of humbling us, don't they? 
We have a birthday this weekend and Craig and I's 12th anniversary the week after...I'll be posting it all soon!