The event that changed our normal life.

Lately our family has been turned on it's head from an event that has crippled our city. On Tuesday, May 31st, 2011, as I was beginning another what seemed to be normal day the news came that a big rainfall had happened north of our city and that the levels of the water were expected to crest over the current level of the levees.

We were given 36 hours to get everything out of house that we could. We were beyond blessed when friends from everywhere started pouring into our small home grabbing things and loading them into a moving van as quickly as possible. There was no time to grab boxes nor could you find them within two hours after hearing the warning. So earthly things that we held dear to us were thrown into anything that would hold. Many of them ended up in garbage bags to be stored in families garages.

We worked late into the night and managed to pull most of our possessions out. The next thing we went after were the extras that we had poured into our house two years before when we gutted it after purchasing it and redid it all. The water was only suppose to get as high as the counters. Luckily officials raised the dikes in time and we did not get flooded.

We moved out on Tuesday and Wednesday and my parents moved into a new home they had purchased a couple months earlier on Thursday and Friday that week. Saturday morning I left with the baby to Florida for an already scheduled vacation with the sister. I am so glad I was able to enjoy that time down there especially knowing now everything that was still to come.

I was gone for 10 days in Florida and returned Monday evening. The next week we spent at my parent's house debating if we should slowly start returning home. Luckily we never moved pass talking. We enjoyed a great Father's Day on Sunday, June 19th and on Monday, June 20th we got word that once again we were at risk of Flooding and this time it didn't look like anything could be done to stop it.

An enormous amount of rain and melt off in Canada had left the 3 dams in Canada at full capacity and they were forced to send down record amount of water otherwise the dams would overflow and they wouldn't be able to control the amount of water that came. Throughout the days every press conference got worse and worse with the amount of water that was being released from the Canadian Dams. With the Corp of Engineers here to help it finally became resigned that our town was going to flood and flood some 10 feet over what it did in 1969. After the 1969 they rerouted the river and it was guaranteed that we would never flood again. Everyone's was under that assumption as there was 1 in 10 houses that had Flood insurance. Us not being one of them.

On Wednesday, June 22 at 12:57 pm the sirens sounded in Minot signifying that our greatest fears were becoming a reality. We were flooding. Thursday, June 23rd early in the morning we received pictures from friends in our neighborhood that our house was already flooded even though the crest was still 3 days away. For the next several days we were literally GLUED to the TV with constant flood coverage watching neighborhoods, parks, pools, school and many homes loose the fight against the river. Hoping that the flyovers would show us some picture of our house, we were lucky to see our house twice. Once on June 23rd in a Denver Post picture and then again on Monday when all we could see was the roof.

Now we wait as the river returns to normal levels and water is pumped out of our streets in order to go back and assess the damage to our home.

Ouch, That hurt

This past weekend, Tim and I were dealt a hard blow. We were forced to look at the happenings in our lives in a different light versus the version that we had been seeing for the past several years and it caught us completely offguard.

We have greatly enjoyed the choices that we made to start a family, but didn't realize that in the process we would be loosing such valuable friends. It's been a slow fade as the realities of parenthood and both of us having to work and be daycare at the same time have left little to no room for much extra curricular activities. For us we've just been doing life and fitting friends in whenever we could--trying to be as intentional as we could be. Yet in the midst of it you forget that other peoples lives still revolve without you in it. It's just that you don't really realize or understand it until it's brought to light and then you find out that you are in this romanticized relationship that is one sided. Things haven't changed for you, yet for them much has happened while we have been running around after two toddler. And why wouldn't it?

I can't blame people for continuing on in life. It's just that I didn't realize how much we had missed the boat. It made us very sad to realize that we were not as good of friends as we had thought we were and a little lonely. We know that God is our faithful friend. The one that never changes even when everything around us does. Thank you for sustaining us and being our constant.

Just a typical Thursday night

Here's some video that we just took. This is what happens when we are all home together :)

(No child was hurt during the filming of this video...amazingly)

Being Missional While Being a Mom

I (Stephanie) have recently been reading a book that is completely turning my Christian bubble literally upside down. It is called The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay. I'm only half way through the book but so far am understanding the main focus to be about being missional (sent out) and incarnational (embody in the flesh). It talks a lot about not waiting for people to come to church but being church (or better said Christ) to them. This is not done through preaching at them but through modeling Christ to them. It's not a thing that can be done overnight, but something that you do by growing in a relationship with them through time all the while showing them Christ. It is based on your actions not your words.

I have to admit this book resounds with my soul on many levels. Tim and I are in a very unique and unfamiliar time in our lives. We both have been surrounded by the church and have been in some form of Christian ministry most if not all our lives. We have been content to live in our Christian bubble and to seclude ourselves from "the world." We have often seen the focus of our ministry be to the people inside the church. We have supported missionaries and been on missions trips ourselves. My way of evangelism has been to invite someone to church in hopes that the pastor would maybe lead them in a prayer or that the music or church program would engage them. I've taken all the responsibility off of myself. Yet within this last year we have both been employed in jobs outside of the church and christian school and are meeting tons of people who have yet to join us on our journey of faith. We completely enjoy the people that we have been working with and our hearts are growing with love towards them. We know that God is calling us to engage them and to be Christ to them.

As I've been looking at actually doing and reorientating myself to think and live this way, I have one obstacle I am going to have to get over. Well more than that, but one that sticks out to me right now as I type is my 18 month old crying, grabbing my leg, and throwing a tantrum on the floor. The last few days I've been thinking a lot of how I can be more like Christ to people and have wonderful ideas, but then I am reminded that I have two toddlers to "help" me. It's hard to carry on a conversation with someone and try to get to know them with spit up, monkeying, screaming, crying, tattling, fighting and mischief happening around your ankles.

This isn't me throwing in the towel to the idea of being missional... it's just going to take a lot more creativity on my part. If anyone has some ideas of how I can hang out with people and my kids at the same time I'm all ears.

Ice Skating at the Maysa

Our first time ice skating. We went with Stacey, Tanner and Ashlyn Vix at the Maysa. I had both girls and probably wouldn't do it without Tim again. Kaiya kept trying to walk on the ice and fell a couple of times. She didn't like that and that made her more leery of trying it on her own.

Kaiya is 2 3/4 yrs old.

Here's my little rag doll Allie...

Allie is 1 1/2 years old

Snowboarding 2010

Here's some pictures of me enjoying my pre-Christmas/ Christmas present. It was a blast to get out on the slopes. I think we figured it had almost been 4 years since Tim and I last went. The first run for both of us was pretty rusty. By the end of the day we looked like pros :) It was so nice to be able to get away with my honey and enjoy an afternoon just the two of us doing something we enjoy. Thank you mom and dad for watching the girls!

Allie's 1 1/2 years old

Allie's 18 month accomplishments:

• speaking in short sentences like i aunt uuuup (i want up), i aunt ilk (i want milk), wear daddy O (where'd daddy go). We are excited for the day when we understand all of her i aunts....
• trying to catch sister in her words
• moving to a toddler bed on Christmas Eve night between services because she figured out how to crawl out and kept doing it. So she wouldn't get hurt we moved her.
• loving on ALL babies real or fake...especially cousins
• continuing to discover her independence which includes mastering stairs and putting on her snow boots.
• she is our extrovert....constantly saying "hi" and "bye" to all strangers
• running and tackling her sister
• almost hitting the 30 lb mark... (29 lb 6 oz)
• being the most mischievious toddler... (drinking bubble bath, eating deoderant,coloring on walls, getting into child restrained drawers and cupboards) all with the adorable smile from above.
• giving the best hugs
• sitting through 15 minutes of a movie (so not like her sister)
• bringing a smile to everyone's face!