AMAZING events!

Some amazing things have happened in the last 24 hours! (amazing in michelle-world, anyway) Some are amazingly positive and some are amazingly negative. I'll start with the positives:

1. My kids cleaned up downstairs and then were nice to each other ALL THE REST OF THE DAY!

Here's Makenzie's new necklace that I made her. The center bead is what she picked out at a booth at the fair :-)


Luke wanted to show his photography skills :-)


and then he wanted a picture of him and Makenzie being nice together.


Can't leave Joel out, even if he is eating Cheez-its instead of joining in on all the hugginess :-)


2. We went shopping today at both Value Villages and A. the kids didn't fight at ALL; B. we found ALL KINDS of great stuff: movies (only $3 each), books (amazing deal: 69 cents each), a Scooby-Doo stuffed animal, Outburst Jr. game (which, in my opinion, is the best deal ever: $2). So now the kids are watching their new movies :-)

3. Three is a "blessed" number, right? Well this is the MOST amazingly positive event (possibly of the whole year!): Terra Bella bakery (on Dimond next to Bed, Bath, & Beyond) has gluten-free breads!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVERY SINGLE DAY, THEY MAKE SEVERAL KINDS OF GLUTEN-FREE BREAD!!!!!!! To people who love to bake, all the exclamation marks make NO sense to you. I, however, do NOT love to bake and will be treating myself OFTEN to coffee and BREAD that WON'T make me get blisters, nausea, or diarrhea!!!!!!! I pray God BLESSES whoever came up with the gluten-free sales plan at Terra Bella and whoever is actually baking the breads. Life is SO much nicer with BREAD! Today, I got a regular loaf of bread, a loaf of cinnamon bread, a piece of zucchini/pecan bread, and a banana cupcake. I ate the piece of zucchini bread and it was AMAZINGLY AMAZING!!!!!

4. This morning we went to Seth's 4-year-old checkup and found out that they blood-taking ladies did, in fact, get enough blood for Seth's tests. He seems to be completely healthy. The dermatologist yesterday, though, confirmed that Seth does have psoriasis and it's not the temporary kind. We're working hard to get rid of this round; and then we'll be working the rest of his life, apparently, trying to prevent any more outbreaks. My brother-in-law's mother gave me some encouragement from her experience that after we get rid of the sores he has now, it probably won't be too difficult to prevent any further flare-ups.

5. This is the amazingly negative event, and it makes me so sad that I'm getting a headache from trying not to cry. Our phone rang at 2:00 this morning. My next door neighbor was calling to tell me that the house right behind us was on fire. Then a cab driver rang our doorbell (several times very quickly so that we'd be sure to wake up, which would've been very appreciated if we hadn't already been awake) to tell us the same thing. We went to the back deck and saw that, yes indeed, flames were shooting out of every part of the four-plex behind us. The fire fighters did an AMAZINGLY amazing job of containing the fire, though. I do NOT know how they kept that fire from jumping to my other next door neighbor's giant cottonwood tree. It almost TOUCHES the house that was on fire! But they kept the fire contained to just the four-plex. All of the people got out safely, but they lost everything they owned. One of the tenants was a woman from our church. She grabbed her purse and her laptop, but lost everything else. Of course, the church and her employer are gathering donations to help her re-buy as much as possible, but the devastation of this kind of tragedy just takes my breath away! From what we've heard, a gas leak caused the fire.

In the bottom right corner of this picture is our shed in our back yard! And look at that stupid tree!!! I really don't know how they kept the fire from going to that thing!


Praise God that no one was hurt!