NatSprat

Oh my gosh, I'm soooo sorry! It's been a month since I last posted!!! I don't know where the time went. Things are going okay. The main goings on in life have been that our lease on the house we're renting expired and I was reeeeeally hoping to find another house to rent so we can get away from our noisy neighbors. I can't remember if I've told you about our noisy neighbors...well, more like neighborhood. I don't know how to tell you about it without sounding like a racist...but I'll try. Okay, there is our nice new neighborhood which was built in 2006. We live on the last street of our neighborhood. Behind our neighborhood is a neighborhood in an area where the Mexicans live. Most of the houses are trailer houses. There is a pack of dogs that runs around the neighborhood barking and chasing the poor girl dogs around. They drive big noisy trucks with annoying horns (seriously, their horns play entire SONGS!!!) There are roosters which crow all the time (I hope they're not used in cock fights...). We occasionally hear gunshots at night (scary) And they ride their 4 wheelers and dirt bikes right by our back fence and speed through our neighborhood all the time (totally illegal and they're going to run over a little kid one of these days). Those parts I can deal with (though shooting the pack of dogs with the bb gun at 3 a.m. when they've been barking for 2 hours straight right next to our fence doesn't sound so crazy sometimes). It's the parties and the music that are sooooo loud on the weekends that send me into the Incredible Hulk mode. I swear, I turn into some sort of monster with no sense of reason. Usually there is more than one party going, and the music is SO loud!!! I don't know how they stand it! It's that Mexican polka sounding stuff with the accordions and the heavy base and the yipping and yelping...oh I can't stand it! The drunker they get, the louder the music gets. And it seriously starts before sundown and doesn't end until 4 a.m. or later. No matter how hard I try to lay in bed and pretend I'm on a vacation in Acapulco, I still lose it. There's no way to drown out the music, I've tried. Sometimes it's so loud it buzzes our windows. I have been so tempted to get up on the roof and build a catapult and launch things at them....but that's not very Christlike, now is it. On Christmas Eve they had a HUGE neighborhood party with a DJ that went on until about 5 a.m. and Michael had to give me a blessing to calm me down because I was so distraught. So, I just wanted to get away from all that. Anyways, our lease finally ended and I was counting down the months until we could get out of here. We looked at some houses and there just wasn't anything that would work, and we just sort of felt like it was a bad choice so we decided to stay here. With the economy the way it is, and people starting to do layoffs (Mike's work just laid off 40 people from another department) AND we would have to pay about $3,000 for another deposit and first months rent (hello, can you say down payment on a house??? Why are we still RENTING!?! Okay, no more side notes in parentheses, I promise) It was a big bummer, but I know that if it was supposed to work out then it would have. But I hope Heavenly Father blesses me with the patience and tolerance that I'll need to get through the next year with a new baby, no sleep, and noisy neighbors up partying and drinking all night.

Then, a few weeks later Michael started having some health problems and the medical bills are adding up and it's SUCH a good thing we didn't spend all that money to move to a new place! It's interesting how things work out in life. When you think YOU know the best decision and are sure things will work out. Then, you don't get the answer you want during your prayers and you're like "WHAT!?! Why not!?! Seriously, how could this be a bad choice?". But, you do what Heavenly Father tells you to and then something happens in life and the light comes on and you realize, "Oh! I get it now. Thanks for watching out for us-that could have been bad!". It just makes me realize how much Heavenly Father really is in the details. He is the Master Architect in our lives and he really does know what's best for us and when we trust Him everything will work out for our good.