Spring Cleaning...TAKE IT!!!

So, I've begun spring cleaning/nesting/GET THIS STUFF OUT OF MY HOUSE-ing!  Nathan had a dump trailer at the house a few weeks ago, and i just pointed and he took.  If it was his choice, he would have just burned all this stuff, but I know some people might want it, and it was given to me, so I want to make sure it gets up-cycled!

If you see it and want it, leave a comment, or tell me on FB!  I will either do my best to bring it to you, or set up a time where we can make the exchange.  Obviously the sooner the better! And I will travel :)  

**Please, PLEASE don't be offended if you gave me some of this stuff, and now I'm giving it away...It has served its purposes in the many houses I've been in, I'm just at a place in life & home where i need the space.**  

So here we go... 

*CALLED*

I painted this white (semi-gloss) and i have white/red/teal glass handles that i bought to put on the fronts...but never have.  

A black decor piece i had above my bed when i lived in Peoria.  It has a wall hanger thing on the back.

*CALLED*

A twin bed head and foot board.  can be painted.

*CALLED*

TV works great...we just don't need it.

*CALLED*

The reason why I am giving this away, is because it will probably take some money to get new pads and whatnot put on it.  I LOVED this thing.  It's great for middle schoolers wanting to try it for the first time.  

Shoe rack that goes over the door. 

We got two of these as a wedding present.  Never been out of the box.

*CALLED*

Works great, but we are getting out of the desktop stage.  No use for it now...

I'M NOT GIVING FORREST AWAY...although, Nathan might want me to... the lamp shades.  If you want measurements, let me know.  I used the small one on a small decorative lamp and the large one on a swivel lamp.  

There is a sewing machine inside of this.  Beautiful finish..nice antique piece.

*CALLED*

Big ole' heavy mirror.  I painted the frame black...it was also in my bedroom in Peoria. The back cardboard is coming off, but could be easily secured. 

We acquired these with the house, but we don't have a pool table.  I'm not even sure if they are good...no clue.

This is an old washboard I bought at a garage sale for $5.

*CALLED*

I will wipe this off for you...just a black shelf thing.

Yup...you guessed it...a vase. 

This i bought for the back of my honda...it's a bike rack...I took my bike to and from school.  It wont work on the back of my SUV now.  

I have two of these chairs.  Again...i will wipe them off for you. :)  Nice...just don't match anything i have. 

A Scent thing..Christmas/Winter.  I got it as a gift and used it once. 

CD rack...don't need it anymore.

My college ladies will remember this... :) The thirst extinguisher...I broke Cousin Amy's so I got her a new one...so this one doesnt have that center column, but we discovered that if you put ice in bags and duct tape it to the sides it works!  HAHAHA! :)

I bought this desk on Craigslist 2 years ago.  But this is going to be Ruthie's room and we dont really need a desktop anymore.  Please take it and use it to your hearts content...

Dont judge me by my messy house...we're cleaning/arranging (and these pics were taken RIGHT after i got my new carpet).  Again, I will clean what you want me to clean, and bring you what you want.  Just message/comment!!!

I am Becoming a Royal Red Eaglebird...

Holy cow, do I feel like the world is flying by!  I have a 2 mo old AND a husband again (aka football is over on Monday). The Princes weren't so charming this year so I think Nathan's secretly glad to be done. But I guess I just gave his secret away... Ruthie's better than ever.  We're getting a few smiles out of her here and there.  Now over 6 lb, she looks like a normal baby...not a 2 mo old, but people aren't commenting on her size as much.  And for the record, she is a farting machine!  We have her on gas medicine to make it easier on her, but it makes her even more musical. She will appreciate me blogging about that later on in life. I just know it. (Picture was taken yesterday night...that's a 6 mo. onsie, but had to put it on for support and a picture:)


The house is just about the same. I could use a day or 2 to decorate and rearrange. I still have to finish the nursery...argh.  There's no excuse now though because she would have totally been here more than a week. I also have kids from a choir staying at the house next weekend, so hopefully that will motivate me to finish the guest room. WEEKEND PROJECT!  

In other news I got a new job!  It's bittersweet really.  I had no real desire to leave my current job, but I just couldn't pass up the offer.  I will be that admin assistant to the athletic director at Dunlap high school.  I applied because it was a little better pay and I got full benefits for the family.  But, when D. Joseph heard, they matched it...yet another reason making it hard to leave.  It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, but the main reasons I switched with because of the benefits and vacation days and holidays.  It will help us save tons of money in the long run by not having to pay for childcare in the summers.  And come on!  Who doesn't want a summer break. I mean really!  This will also make it possible for Nathan and I to go on family mission trip every year. And that's something that we both decided is going to be priority in our family.  

So I'm pretty excited but I have a lot of work in store for me.  The director hasn't had an assistant yet since he took the position a year ago July and the previous person had the position for over 20 years with a pretty extensive paper system. We've got to make that athletic department computerized!  Not to mention the massive amounts of sports Dunlap has...football, volleyball, girl's track, boy's track, girl's tennis, boy's tennis, softball, baseball, girl's soccer, boy's soccer, swimming, diving, and I'm sure I missing something...ohh cross country. I think that's it.  So, I guess this makes me a Royal Red Eaglebird.  i.e. I hold true to my Metamora Redbird roots, I married a Prince, and my daughter will be a Princeville Lady Prince (why not a Princess, no one knows...), and now I am an Eagle.  I'm picturing an all red eagle with a crown on it's head...it's in the same animal kingdom as Napolian Dynamite's liger...pretty much my favorite animal, ever!  

I am pretty excited to be working at Dunlap though.  For those of you not from Ptown, Dunlap is the closest city to Peoria that isn't apart of the Peoria school district, which is currently less than desirable   And most of the families that go there just happened to be loaded!  I'm not knocking them at all! I've had many friends from Dunlap. But it's encouraging to know that the district is doing well and will continue to do well.  There are lots of teachers on my mom's side of the family, and I decided that if I were to ever be a teacher I'd always want to be a high school teacher.  I feel like you could have way more fun with the kids.  And the passion of a teenager is just immeasurable. Even if they say they don't care.  They just have to focus their passion off of parties and booze and each other... yet another reason why I'm pretty pumped about working at the high school.  This is the long term now. I thought last time was a long term but it wasn't. Now that I have a kid, this job is perfect. Well, I'll let all ya'll know a week from now how things are going with a new job and a new niece.  It's crazy how much life changes soooo quickly...Blows my mind sometimes.  

Brittany is days away from baby #2.  Layla Anne Marie almost came today, but the doctor wanted to give her a little bit more time. I think she'll definitely be here by Wednesday. She's going to be a pretty large and in charge baby.  This is going to be interesting. Bella's 13.5 months and a very jealous little girl.  She does love Ruthie though. She reaches out and pets her head as if she were petting Jack the cat...soft and sweet and she whispers so she "doesn't wake the baby" Brittany says. She whispers gibberish, but still very quietly.  Andy was holding Ruthie once and not paying attention to Bella, and that wasn't to pretty.  Only time will tell really.  

The Wineinger Calendar Countdown CORRECTED...

It is TRULY amazing how God's timing and our timing are SOOOOOOO off the chain different.  So please allow me to correct my previous post of dates...holy cow how things have changed!!!!

• 47 days until Ruthie's due date (10/3)   Today Ruthie is 8 days old!  Yeah...  
• Pre-eclamsia caused me to get admitted to the hospital last wednesday, and she arrived Thurs. evening via C-section.  I am so grateful that she is out and doing AWESOME! And grateful i didnt have to experience the last two gruesome months of pregnancy OR contractions... :)
• She also shared a special day with her great Grandma Sue Yates who dies just 4 hours before her arrival.  We just know that Gma Sue gave her a kiss in Heaven before Ruthie came to us.  LOVE YOU GMA SUE!  
• 22 days until my sweet cousin, Kelsey's wedding (9/8)  STILL GOOD! 
• This will probably we Ruthie's first outing!  She will be a month old then!  WHAT??!?
• 20 days until Bella's 1st B-day!  (9/6) 
• again still good.  Her new trick this week...elephant sounds.  She's kind of a genius.
• 14 days until we move into our new house! (9/1)
• We closed on the house THIS MORNING!!!  Awesome!  I'm going over this weekend to take pictures and start the cleaning process!  And, now that im not preggers, I can actually help in the moving/painting process!  AWESOME!!!  
• Ruthie's new room is gonna be so stinkin' cute...just sayin'
• T-Minus a few hours until Nathan is lost in the obis of Pville football.  
• they have the Maroon & White scrimmage game tonight.  Yeah he's all in now.  But don't you dare think he sacrifices Ruthie time for that!  Shoot!  He'll make your heart melt when you see them together.

It's sometimes all the time hard lesson for me to learn to trust in God and his timing.  I can EASILY say this is one of those humbling moments for us, Nate and I.  And now that things have fallen as they may, it makes so much more sense for things coming up why God wanted it this way.  

We got a letter in the mail from someone wishing us the best and welcoming the baby, but also saying this is a lot for our family right now with births and deaths and houses, but God gave you all of it at once first, b/c that was his will, but also b/c he wanted us to re-rely on Him for strength, faith, perseverance, **fill in the blank...**   So good to hear and be reassured of.  

PS.  Our first picture together... well, outside of the C-section room...  :)

And Gma D took this picture to show the world her red hair.  Hard to see in pic but DEFINITELY red!

Shag Carpet, Radon, & Answered prayers...

God gave me one of those, “I told you so…” moments today. 

So the house Nathan and I live in is pretty stinkin’ awesome.  It is a flip house that his parents bought, flipped the upstairs and are slowly flipping the down stairs as they have time.  We moved in to help them with payments and to get us out of Peoria.  We love it, but we obviously know it’s temporary.  In it’s final form, the house will be a 2-story, 5 bedroom, 2.5 bath masterpiece, sitting on just over an acre with two out buildings, a 2 car garage, amazing sunrise and sunset views out in the beautiful cornfields of IL…and out of our price range. 

So, we’ve been looking…nothing urgent.  Just keeping an eye on things to come and go on the market.  So there’s this house.  In the school district we want, in the general price we want.  We understand that the resale may not be great, but we could rent it when the time comes for a profit and really make this place work.  It’s also VERY outdated.  There are oh…5 different colors of carpet throughout the house; green & blue & black shag in the master, brown & white & pink-ish upstairs, brown throughout the living and dinning room, blue in the kitchen…yes there’s carpet in the kitchen.  It was a very stylish kitchen in the 70s!  But yeah… we would have to work on it. 

**Pictures thanks to PAAR 

There was that glimmer of hope in Nathan and I as we walked around this house…until the basement.  RADON…I hate you, radon.  The owner is one of Nathan’s friend’s grandmother who’s still well.  When she put the house on the market, she found out that the radon levels in her basement were at a 40.  In order to get a conventional loan or even a rural development loan the radon test has to come back at 3.9… and no, I didn’t misplace that decimal point.  We are looking for a difference here of about 36.1 points.  They put in a mitigation system (somewhat costly which includes drilling a hole in the basement), but still only cut the radon in little more than half to a 17. 

So remember, gimmer, stellar carpet…and radon.  So did Nathan and I want to pursue this?  Is this a battle to fight?  This was when a few weeks ago I posted on facebook, “How do you know when God's wanting you to fight for something vs. God saying, "Give it up already, Linz...I'm trying to close the door, so just let me!"’  So I prayed.  I didn’t pray a lot for a reason; because I didn’t want to convince myself that I should fight for it, which is my natural instinct, but I wanted to say, “If this is what you want for Nate, me, and the Ruth I trust you.  If not, I’ll forget about it.”  Granted I didn’t forget about it, but I talked to Nathan one more time, and said, should we just ask if they’d fix it?  The worst they would say is no, and then we’d move on.

So, about 20 emails and a week later, with LOTs of conditions, they agreed they would accept a certain offer if the stars aligned and they made the radon disappear.  So there was no fighting or  God back-talking me, but this morning on the way in to work, it was made very clear to me that God majorly answered.  Not, “can I have this house?” or “What does everything have to be so difficult?” but “I’ve had the baby and you in Nathan in my mind all along.  Don’t ever doubt that I’ve got things under control.”  And I smiled, and of course slightly teared up…b/c that’s what pregnant women do, and then made it to work peacefully. 

This still isn’t a done deal yet.  There’s still LOTS of stipulations and still a large change that this isn’t THE house.  But,  when God reveals things to you like that,  man, it’s just cool.  

The First 16 Weeks...

The Hard Stuff...

• I have not had coffee in over 90 days...no caffeine for that matter.  I still think about it every morning.
• The baby flu-  I lost a grand total of 13 lbs. Some may find this GREAT! but I just have started gaining weight with in the last 4 days.  I was generally fearful.  
• Being SOOO tired.  I was ready for bed last night and it was still light outside.
• Heart burn...I have been pretty fortunate to not have to deal with much sickness or digestive problems.  Tums and me...now we're like this!
• Brushing my teeth...nathan finds this slightly humorous...generally, gagging is NOT humorous.
• I can't leave the dishes more than a day or else the smell is just bad enough that i gag the whole time.  I confess, I have worn a nose plug doing dishes.  
• My brother-in-laws/future brother-in-laws/Boss/any other male in my life who teases me who says I'm "milking it."  I could slap you right now, and no one would bat an eye..."hormones," they'd say.  And I would play right along!  

The AWESOME Stuff...

• I can't/shouldn't change the litter box.  Nathan tried hard to get rid of the cat, but i told him he couldn't cause me stress b/c i was pregnant.
• I gag every time i take care of the dogs, so Nathan took over doing that as well...only when i'm really brave or i really want to impress him do I find my nose plug and forge through...
• That whole, CREATING A HUMAN THING!  That's pretty sweet!
• I've starting looking at my reflection in buildings and things out and public and giggling...it's just different than looking in the mirror at home.  Makes it more real.
• I get LOTS of Sleep.  (Well, lots of time to sleep...i toss and turn alot for comfort sake)
• Maternity Leave...need I say more. 
• This may be TMI but let's get real...my boobs fit my clothes!  Awesome!
• I can get away with not buttoning my pants...no one else knows, but i do.  :)
• I have lots of people around me that I can ask questions.  LOTS!  
• The gushy stuff...right before bed at night when Nathan puts his hand over on my tummy.  I cried the first time he did that...extra emotions, ya know.  Now i just smile.  
• The butterfly flutters.  He/She's not big enough yet to flat out kick me, but I def feel movement.
• My change in diet.  Besides my crazing for morning hash browns, im eating tons of fruit, almonds, cheese, lots of water, granola, good carbs, an occasional bowl of ice cream, but nothing too fatty or greasy!  
• My perspective in life is changing hard core.  I'll be the first to admit im pretty self centered.  How are things going to affect me?  I can definitely see a shift in perspective...what about Nathan, the Baby, the family...
• I CAN NOT WAIT for my baby to know Jesus! For the learning and the questions!  I dont know how prepared I'll be, but I'm def. excited!  

I know there's tons more...but these things stick out the most.  The Awesome stuff outweighs the bad right now a gazillion to 1.  I'll try to post belly pictures soon...but im still in the fat stage...not looking pregnant yet. 

I stayed up a little late last night thinking about the child birthing process...(I swear if you could read my  thoughts like I read Katniss Everdeens, you'd not stop laughing...her and Petaa are what i though about after this) freaking about the pain and the needles.  I've decided that I HAVE to tell the doc that I CAN NOT see the epidural needle.  And if I do see it, then i'm screwed b/c then I wont want it but then I'll be even more scared b/c of all the pain to come.  Then i doze off and dream I'm a bodyguard in the Hunger Games, and then i wake up thinking about that... humorous.  And last week, dreams about buffalo attacking people and me losing Daniel Monahan's non-existent dog and missing a class and calculators...oh the dreams.  

Man, I've got to stop.  I am all over the place!  Needless to say pregnancy is so entertaining in my head, yet slightly uneventful on the outside.  

A Little Change

This may be short and sweet. But i just realized something that might be monumental in my brain. If i think that there is no change in my life, or that my life may be really boring right now, wouldn't that be a change from the previous.... my life is always a change, even when i can't see change, its a change from the last time...

yeah... it's one of those days, when i have to reach into my inner most thoughts to think of something that can fuel me for tomorrow. God always give me fuel by His blessings, particularly a 240 lb. hunk of handsome teddy bear like blessing that will soon be a big change in my life, but if im constantly looking in the distance for change, i miss what's right in front of me that is constant.

the only thing that needs changing right now is my good old twisted heart. I'm praying for that right now...