whew!

we're winding down from all the excitement of the past few weeks. this has been an incredible ride. we are sooooo thankful that God has given us this time to trust Him and grow as a family. rather than try to reword all my thoughts so late at night, i'll just copy a part of my family newsletter article which summarizes things a bit more sensibly than i can at this moment. hee hee.

we've surprized even ourselves with this month's news. what was supposed to be an uneventful, quiet month of caring for children with the chicken pox, turned into a very full turn of events . . . kim happened across an interesting property in edgerton. it caught our eye because the yard backs up into a large wooded area just on the edge of town. the house is in need of a bunch of work, but after looking at it with our parents, and considering the asking price, we thought we could make it work. so . .. we make an offer 2 days later. crazy, huh?!?! our offer is contingent upon the sale of our house, so . . . we began the mad rush to complete unfininshed projects, unclutter, and get the house ready to sell. we went back and forth, but finally decided not to do the for-sale-by-owner route. after 2 weeks of intensive work, we listed the house using the buyer's agent as our realtor memorial weekend.
needless to say, we did remain at home through the entire month of may. not only because of homework, but also because we went through 2 rounds of the chicken pox. the children were amazing! we had fun doing special things like watching movies (mark introduced the children to STAR WARS!!! - this also included pulling out our light saber collection - 5 or so of them and one fully functioning homemade by mark back when episode 1 first came out!) we had special snacks - lots and lots of yummy real fruit popsicles, (oh, and uncle joe popcorn to go along with the movies), oatmeal baths complete with a snack of raisins, calamine lotion polka dots and coconut oil massages, and some funny photos and videos of kiddos. they were all wonderful and that aspect of the month seemed somewhat a breeze.the children have also been wonderful workers and helpers with all the other adventurous happenings. we have been amazed at how all of this has brought us together and refocused our daily relating. we all feel so free from uncluttering and organizing our home, ordering priorities, deliberately working at clear communication, and just simply waiting to see what God has for our family. (which is really not so simple as it seems here on page because we have been stretched and challenged incredibly in all this. yet it has been SO GOOD!) so we've all determined to be thankful for what God has given us, and what He will do in and with us, and trust Him to let us be content in whatever happens here or there. it's all good!
i guess i just wanted to update ya'll on the more personal side of things with this praise the Lord post. maybe all of this latest adventure is just to grow us up in Him a bit more. we honestly haven't been content with what He has given us. i think we are learning some important lessons on holding our hands open before the Lord. i read a cool article this past week that seemed to describe my heart in the matter. it said something about not holding an idea too tightly in your hand. instead, give it to the Lord. we should hold things loose enough so that if they fall through our fingers (or don't go the way we hope or plan) that we can trust God's sovreignty. or something like that. anyway . . . i related it to feeling anxious about selling our house. for me, early this week i'd been holding on to our cozy home and not wanting to let it go. but before all this i had been holding on to a dream of land and other stuff and simply not being thankful for the blessings of our current home. hmmm . . . well, my praise is that God is letting me rest in Him without any anxiousness! and i am so enjoying the work that He is accomplishing. that He is setting our family free to know Him more! WOW!

okay. i'll be off now . . .

House for sale

Anyone want a big house?
Here's a link to our house listing: http://www.wisconsinhomes.com/search/search.php?step=quickaddr&search=1&where=streetaddr&street=albion+st

We're on the list at 206 Albion St.

Here's a link to the house we have made an offer on: http://www.wisconsinhomes.com/search/search.php?step=quickaddr&search=1&where=streetaddr&street=707+s+main

It is 707 S Main St.

chicken pox: ROUND 2 & other news

able broke out with the chicken pox on sunday - i think. maybe it was saturday though?
i noticed nikao has one "chicken spot" just this morning. leannora and owen are healing up very well. we more than survived the first round. the children were excellent troupers! i'm really glad that they didn't all get hit at the same time. somehow i think that just being used having a busy life with a large family has made the chicken pox not as difficult for us as i had imagined it would be. (does that run on sentance make any sense?)

other news . . .
we have made an offer on a house here in edgerton. we signed the counter offer on sunday morning. now we are madly getting the house ready to sell. my parents helped us like crazy last week with painting projects. we've had lots of unfinished jobs to complete. and now we're in the uncluttering process too. boy have we accumulated lots of stuff! so we're setting out to do the seemingly impossible and have our house all ready by thursday of this week. crazy! we'll be trying the for-sale-by-owner thing first, so maybe we can get a post up of all this house stuff soon!

gotta get to work!
please pray for us!!!!! we're asking God to shut doors if this is not His will for our family.

chicken pox day 4 among other things

each morning i've been doing a chick check. well, owen is our new winner. he's been tolerating a whole bunch of spots under his clothes without any complaints. just after my post yesterday, he voiced his first uncomfort. i looked him over and was amazed. i thought leannora was covered, but owen surely had her beat. so now on day 4, we've used up 1/2 of our container of calamine lotion. the children have not wanted the pink stuff on their faces, so we've used coconut oil on the visible areas. i have no idea what that'll do, but they smell really good! able and nikao are still clear of any signs. and shiloh has been wonderful. the poor dear has been couped up in our room with visits from mommy and daddy fairly regular, but she is tired of being on the bed by her lonesome.

last night mark let me go out with some ladies to a pampered chef party. i'm not really a fan of parties selling products at all, but the girls that were going and the host are dear friends and i didn't want to miss out on an opportunity of sweet fellowship. shiloh loved the momma and lady attention. but we did not love that i accidently ate an extremely HOT pepper. it was little and purple and dried i think. i actually thought it was a funny bean in the chinese stir fry that we made. while i was changing shiloh's diaper i missed the warning not to eat those seasoning accents to the meal. whoa! was that a surprize! my ears turned red and i cried and everything. thankfully, a friend rescued me with some milk. mostly i felt so stupid and concerned for how my nursing baby would handle the thing. (she was fine. she slept well, but was letting wind all night in her sleep!)

when i returned home, i found mark and hogan and owen watching star wars together. this was the first time the boys had watched the movie. it was a really special time. they watched the first half last night and finished it during quiet time today. and leannora got to join in the fun this afternoon! we've had some fun conversations! i'll be interested to see how their immaginative play changes. hmmm . . . cowboy spys in space!?!

we had some more visitors this evening. though no one trying to catch the chicken pox. our friends the robertstad family joined us for prayer and dessert. we've been regularly meeting with them for about the last year to seek the Lord together about all sorts of things. one of them being the possibility of home church. actually, we've begun somewhat officially meeting on sat. evenings after Easter. so we've been opening our homes to sing, share, pray, and practice one anothering each other with a variety of families. it has been such an awesome experience waiting on the Holy Spirit's leading in such a new way. God has been putting unity and pressing community on our hearts. and there is so much more i'd love to say, but this post was supposed to be about chicken pox. :)

chicken pox update

owen broke out with the chicken pox yesterday. he still only has a few spots and is not too uncomfortable. although, it's going to be really hard for him to control his hands and not scratch his itchy spots.

leannora is on day 3. day 1 she wasn't too bothered by them. we put coconut oil on her and she was still happy to be the winner. we got a phone call from a little friend named ava. she asked if leannora could come out and play. it was so cute and so hard to tell her mommy that leannora has the chicken pox and couldn't play. so we we're a little disappointed about that, but then grandpa and grandma strub came over for supper. after the children went to bed we played a game of settlers of catan with the fog scenario of the seafarers expansion. we're hooked! grandma won.

day 2 of leannora's chicken pox was not as happy for her. her spots had at least doubled and she was ITCHY. she has been doing an awesome job of not complaining or being too whiney. i'm amazed at her attitude! she enjoyed her bath of oatmeal. but i forgot to let her have raisins in the bathtub. (we eat raisins with our oatmeal for breakfast. she thought it would be pretty funny to eat raisins with her oatmeal bath!) i also forgot to break open the popsicles yesterday. although the children did get to watch a couple of videos before bedtime. oh yeah, we had visitors yesterday. some new friends of ours brought their 4 children over to get exposed. they played for a couple of hours and stayed for lunch. that was fun. it was a great time for the children and helped to keep things happy and adventurous. mark was in milwaukee tuning all day and played a bit of frisbee golf with my dad before heading to band practice in the evening. he missed all of our "fun".

so today is day 3. i think leannora's spots doubled again overnight because she is covered! she wanted to wear a dress today so she could look pretty. we remembered to let her eat raisins while taking her oatmeal bath! we also remembered the fruit popsicles!! she's taking a long nap on the couch just now while the little ones are sleeping upstairs for quiet time. i'll try to put up a not so embarassing picture sometime on a future update.

we've got the chicks!

breaking (out) news!

just this morning we spotted the pox.

while Leannora and i were doing our reading learning time together, i noticed a funny looking pimple on her face. the funny thing is, i wasn't even thinking about the chicken pox. it wasn't until we were done reading that i realized she has the chicken pox. so, Leannora is the winner! she's got a few spots on her face, neck, and tummy, and lots on her back.

i excitedly checked the other children hunting for more spots, but haven't seen any that are for sure the chicken pox . . .yet. my hope is to keep the children happy about it, so as to lessen the misery of the oncoming itch. so far, Leannora is pretty thrilled to be the winner. she's also looking forward to a bath of oatmeal. Hogan did not believe that i said she could have an oatmeal bath. he thought that was pretty weird! i've also told the children we'll have lots of fun doing special things like eating popsicles and watching movies. last week i went out and stocked up on calamine lotion and goodies to eat. Shiloh has been quarentined to our bedroom for a few days already. she'll probably stay there for a bit till the contagious time wears away, just to be a bit on the safer side for her little baby body.

so, if any buddy is interested . . . you are welcome to join our craziness. we are NOT having a chicken pox party because that just sounds super weird (and i already feel weird enough about the whole thing). i also don't want everybody else's other yucky sick germs. so our home is NOT open to all sorts of who knows who children walking through to catch our bug. (but if any good friends would like their children to get the chicken pox, we'll be happy to share.)

i've done a little bit of research about this. Leannora will be contagious for a few more days i suppose. if i understand correctly, we'll be contagious until her spots scab over, but i think the peak time is a couple of days before and after breaking out. incubation time is 11 days and up to about 3 weeks. you are not contagious if you have been exposed. sometimes children show symptoms of a sore throat, headache, or fever before the spots appear. a nursing mother passes on her immunity to her babies if she has already had the chicken pox. so an infant should not become infected if they nurse regularly. the concern of shingles is not to be feared if you have had a strong case of the chicken pox as a child and if your immune system is not compromised.

hmmm. . . so we'll be updating with future reports.

camping

though we did not do such an exciting thing as to camp out on the beach, like our friends the hasting family, we milligans did have our own little camping experience recently. mark took hogan and owen camping at our church property so we could have a big fire and shoot our guns.


we did some yard clean up and decided to tackle our wood pile of too hard to split stuff and big stumps and sticks and other stuff laying around. we filled our 15 passenger van with the yard mess and left room for only one bench and a small amount of camping gear. the momma had an early morning Bible study at the church. so mark brought the kiddos up and we met there - in the rain. uhh, what a bum way to start off a fun plan. it was supposed to be a warm, sunny day. thankfully, the rain ran away, and mark was able to get the fire started. kim joined the adventurers after the wet, cold morning went away. mark wanted kim to shoot our new 12 gauge shotgun.yes, she did it, and it didn't knock her down or even bruise her!
the children took turns with our bb gun.

trying out the rifle was pretty fun too.
(i'm not sure why the only photos are of us girls with the guns?!?)
we had a picnic lunch, hiked around a bit on the 17 acre property, grandpa strub brought us burgers for supper, and we had some marshmallows and smores. kim was not up to the adventure of camping with the little ones, so as planned, she took them home. mark and the boys had a good time being manly milligans. and, yahoo, our wood is no more!