Update on Life!

It's been awhile since I've updated! I've had a little post partum since having this baby and have had to get that under way. Thankfully it is getting better each day and I'm now feeling more myself. Thanks to all my sweet friends here in Louisville for the support you've given the past couple of months since I've had her! It is so wonderful to have dear friends where there is no family. My bond has really grown strong to Maddie the past couple of weeks and it is especially fun now that she is smiling at me and brightening up at the sound of my voice, a little payoff treat for me! Her sleeping patterns are slowly but surely getting longer at night, although some days are still hard and test my fortitude and patience! But they are getting better which is encouraging.
Some updates on our lives include that our neighborhood management made us tear down our retaining wall after giving us permission to do it! Crazy! I was so proud of how Matt handled the whole thing after all the hard work he put into building it. Since there was nothing to be done, he just went ahead and hired someone to come and do the job. One positive is that we still have sod back there which makes it look better than before. We are debating a fence still. Matt is hesitant to put any more money into the house.
The photo of the stone bricks has an interesting story. They were piled against our house after the wall was taken down and while I was out Saturday morning, Matt took Jacob in the back and was doing some things around the yard. Suddenly, while they were by the bricks, Matt noticed that there were some spider legs in between two of the bricks where Jacob was playing, only a centimeter from his hand. When he moved Jacob and looked, lo and behold, there was a black widow spider! You may be able to see the red in the middle. Needless to say, we cleaned out the bricks that day and found two (including the one mentioned) black widows. Yuck! And for those of you who really know me, know I REALLY have a phobia of black widows, brown recluses etc. What a traumatic thing it would have been if Jacob had been bitten. Not good for him or my sanity!
But life is going wonderfully otherwise! The children are growing up more and more each day and Jacob is definitely my little buddy, helping me as much as his two-year old hands can! On a spiritual note, I have really come to have a testimony of the Lord's hand in our lives the past little while because of things people have done for me when I needed them and vice versa occasionally. It is so comforting to know that someone is watching out for us!
Madeleine is learning how to grab things as you can see from this last photo. She reached out and pulled this toy on her all by herself! She is so small, sometimes I forget that she really is growing! What a precious little daughter she is, such a joy to us.