Even though we moved into our home in March, it has taken until now for me to really start to feel “settled.”  You see, the man who owned the house before us left A LOT of random stuff (better known as junk to most people).  So, along with needing to unpack our things, we have also had to get rid of his things.  Last week I had a yard sale that helped to keep most of the random stuff that he left behind out of landfils, downsize the number of our own items that we did not really need, and raise some money.

This was the first yard sale that I have ever hosted, and I was a bit surprised at some of the items that did sell/did not sell.  For example:

1. My in-laws sold an old, somewhat broken-down couch that smelled of dog and was covered in dog hair for more than they bought it for at a garage sale three years ago.  Honestly, I was amazed that it sold – I would not have taken it had it been free.

2. The old man left two or three dozen partially-used bottles of random chemical-based cleaners, nearly all of which sold for $0.25 each.  We prefer to use natural cleaners, and thus had no use for them.

3. The single-nicest item that the old man left behind was a simple round table.  It did not have any chairs, but came with a leaf which allowed expansion.  If we did not already have a much nicer family heirloom table with matching chairs, we would have kept it.  Nobody bought the table despite the fact that it was a very reasonable price (I would have been willing to give it away, to avoid putting it back away).  We really needed to sell that table too, because of storage issues.

Today is the third anniversary of the day when J.R. and I were joined in the sacrament of holy matrimony.  Happy anniversary, love!

As I announced last month, I am in the process of growing our second child currently.

A few of the details:

- My due date is October 2.

- The ultrasound was this week, everything seems to be progressing very well.  We elected not to find out the baby’s gender, as with my first pregnancy.

- In the early part of the second trimester my morning sickness dialed way back, and is non-existent now.  It is wonderful to feel normal once again.

- Although anyone with more than one child already is aware of this, the second pregnancy is both more difficult and easier than the first.  Most of the difficulties come from having another little one to care for. Things are easier insofar as I know what to expect.

Although you may have just figured that between college courses, moving, setting up our new home, and taking care of Gabriel I was no longer finding time for blogging, that is not the case, actually.  In truth:  we are expecting our second child.  I have been experiencing as severe as I would ever like to face morning sickness, trying to finish up my classes to the best of my ability, and dealing with all of the regular events that make up my life.

I am going to try to post more frequently, but in the meantime, at least there is an explanation for my infrequent blogging now.

Everything went through with the move earlier this month as planned.  There were the usual hitches that come with any move, but we have adjusted to life in our new home and town rather well.

A few upsides of our new home:

- J.R.’s commute to work is less than five minutes (versus 25 minutes).

- We live closer to family and friends.

- Our housing costs have been cut drastically.

A few downsides of our new home:

- We are sorely lacking in space.  I would be happy if only we had more closet space, for the most part.

- Sometimes we miss the “buffer zone” that living further from family and friends provided us – insofar as we prefer planning social activities rather than finding ourselves in them.

- The location is not as convenient.  Any parish that meets our criteria is about a half-hour away, and the same holds true for most other things:  grocery shopping, etc.

- Our cell phone service stinks inside our house.  This is a problem because we do not have a landline.

We finally found a new place to call home.  As long as everything goes through as planned, we will be purchasing a home and moving into it in the next month.  The thought of moving again (this will be our third move in less than three years) makes me a bit nervous, but it should be our last move for two years or so.   The house meets all of our major prerequisites, but it is smaller than the apartment that we are living in currently in terms of square feet, so we will see how that works out for us.

So, there is much packing to be done in the next few weeks, and I will be very busy – but it is a good, constructive busy.

J.R. and I are both back to taking college courses this semester.  I am taking only a couple of online courses as a personal enrichment sort of thing (Developing Pages for the Web, for example – a topic that intrigues me and will have personal application for my life, but probably will not become a business venture).  J.R., on the other hand, will complete his photography degree next semester (Fall, 2009).  He plans on doing portrait, wedding, and event photography for the most part.  J.R. has been doing some senior pictures and is booked for a couple of weddings this summer.  Hopefully this will become a full-time career for him, as he enjoys photography very much.

Between work and taking night classes, J.R. is gone three nights a week right now.  Gabriel has taken up staying awake until after J.R. gets home in order to see/spend time with him.  I’ll try to put him to bed, but it’s no dice.  The biggest problem with this is that I am on Gabriel-duty all day long with the exception of his nap until late at night.  Any suggestions on how to fix this issue?  So far I have tried letting him get rather tired and putting him to bed, but Gabriel will hear J.R. get home and actually wake back up to see his father.  It’s sweet, but not cool to have a one and a half year old awake at 11:00 p.m. or later.

If you have missed the previous installments related to this post, you can read them here, here and here.

Now that Christmas has come and is nearly gone with the coming of Epiphany soon, I would like to comment on how my Advent observations/Christmas preparations went this year.  My “fasting” from certain foods during Advent turned out to be super easy for me to abide by.  Apparently it is easier for me to give up something that I do not need than to get into the habit of completing tasks that ought to be completed.  I say this because I never got into the habit of spiritual reading like I had originally intended to originally during Advent.  I did complete more spiritual reading than normal, however, and now receive a couple of spiritual thoughts newsletters, so I cannot say that my efforts during Advent to incorporate more spiritual reading into my life were fruitless.

While doing some post-Christmas shopping I found a wooden Advent calendar that I intend to hang on my wall next year (actually, for as many Advents as it holds up, which will be many, I hope) and fill with scripture passages correlated to the appropriate passage of the liturgical cycle.  I did not come up with this idea on my own, however, as it was born from the Advent calendar that Arwen mentioned recently.  The use of an Advent calendar will help incorporate spiritual reading into the Christmas preparations of my entire family next year.  Honestly, it is not likely that I would have planned this had I not been focusing on incorporating more spiritual reading into my life during Advent.

All in all, I would rate my Advent preparations as successful, though not as sucessful as I had hoped originally.  Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to everyone!

Although I could tell you about my week and outline at least a couple of seemingly-good excuses regarding why I did not manage to complete my daily spiritual reading as I set out to do, I am certain that God would not buy them.  If I was to discuss my lack of spiritual reading, despite my talk about how I was going to do better this week, with God, it would sound something like this:

Me:  You see, I did not feel well for a couple of days, and I was really busy with…

God:  You could not manage to read a page or two of a daily spiritual meditation, yet you found time to check email and blogs?

Me:  Ummm…..

So this week I am going to try completing my spiritual reading and meditation from a different angle.   I plan on using the Catholic Update along with The Journey as my guide, hopefully this will enable me to complete my daily spiritual reading and meditation as I had planned for this Advent.  I’ll check in again next week to let you know how my spiritual preparation for Christmas is going.

In order to better monitor my progress this Advent, I will be checking in with a weekly self-review of how well I am (or am not) doing in regards to my Advent goals this year.

Project Advent 2008 is going so-so.  I have been contemplating the coming of Christ and its impact on my life, I have stuck to my modified “fast” (no junk food), but my daily reading has not happened every day.  I am sure to read the missed passage, but part of the purpose of the reading exercise was to 1. discipline myself to do some spiritual reading every day, and 2. to contemplate the passage during my daily activities. If I miss my passage one day, I am not quite accomplishing what I wanted to.  I am doing more spiritual reading than before, however, so I have taken a step in the right direction.

As you can probably guess, my particular goal for this week is to remember to take the time for my spiritual reading every day.