family

beth and i are sitting on our beds right now, watching about 8 kids play in our room. the kids are all under 4 years old and they are playing with toys, reading books, and watching "school house rock". it's bible study night, and everyone's at our house this week. don't tell anyone i'm blogging during bible study.

i typed out a ridiculously long post last night and when i clicked "post" my computer decided to freeze up. i lost the post...of course. i won't write the whole thing again, so let me 'splain. no, too long. let me sum up.

i spent the weekend with mom and the a-team and a bunch of women from our church and homeschool group at a mother's conference up in dallas. kristen and annie were able to come down and spend the weekend with us, so that of course made it so much more fun. after the conference ended, we drove over to ft worth where dad and the rest of the kids were waiting for us. all 9 kids in our family got to be together at the same time with our parents and grandparents. dad took us all out to eat mexican food where we were mainly concerned about eating as many sopapillas as possible. when we got back to the grandparents' house, we went out back for a "purely warren" photoshoot.
it was definitely a fun time and we are grateful that God allowed us to all be in the same place at the same time. we are blessed.

it's my birthday and i'll cry if i want to...

...you would cry too if it happened to you

i've been singing this all day with my best voice, but the kids don't appreciate it very much.
so i'm pretty happy today because now when aubrey refers to "teenagers" in her exasperated tone of voice, i no longer have to feel included.
so today we all woke up with the flu, which was disappointing because mom had scheduled our house appraisal for this afternoon. we all walked around like old people in our pajamas trying to clean up our mess for the inspector man. in honor of dad who could not be with us for this day, i tried to make a mandatory "one sock up, one sock down" dress code for the day, but the kids weren't amused. so instead we moaned and coughed all day, and pretending to be cleaning whenever mom was around. we actually finished more than i had anticipated, but our feeling of accomplishment was crushed when the inspector man was only inside of our house for approximately 7 minutes. i bet he didn't even notice the clean closets or the cracks in the walls that beth so diligently caulked up. oh well...it's always nice to have a clean house.

ever since abby was born, we have shared a birthday party every february. she, of course, always gets to pick what kind of party we are going to have and interestingly enough, she always settles on a "dora the explorer" party. she will usually call me to tell me that she has decided on dora, and i "oooh" and "aah" appropriately and tell her that dora is my favorite. well this year, she actually had a change of heart and ran over to me one day, threw her arms around my neck and squealed, "oh dok! mom says we're having a party again! it's our birthday again! what kind of party are we gonna have? it's a dok and abby party!! what do you like? dora, princess, strawberry shortcake, or little ponies? what kind do you want?" i thought carefully and said, "um, i think we should have a strawberry shortcake party this time! i love strawberry shortcake!" she stepped back and her face turned serious. "no dok, not strawberry shortcake. we love DORA remember??? we're having a dora party! yay!! we love dora!" she then bounced away and reported to mom and aubrey that we had decided on dora. so...on sunday night we'll be having a dora birthday over here. i'm sure we'll have plenty of pictures to post when it's over!

don't you LOVE dora?

metal

well well well...it's too bad for aubrey that i don't have a picture of my new braces yet, but most of you have already seen them anyway. my parents have this idea that once the other two get their braces on, there will be some sort of mandatory photoshoot of our four metal mouths. so i'm holding off on any pictures until then. ;)

beth is almost flipping out right now because she claims that mom told her that, hypothetically, it would be fine for us (i mean beth) to get a small house dog. if you san antonians remember back a few years ago, "a small house dog" is how luther and ellie started out and now we're a week away from shipping ellie off to friends in west texas. and we're already talking about another *inside* dog? i have yet to thoroughly investigate this alleged conversation between beth and mom, but on the offchance that i don't know my mother nearly as well as i thought, would any of you mind if i came and camped out at your house?
i guess i'm really not a dog type of person. i'm an ant farm person. wait...nevermind.

since dad left today for a tdy to maryland, i figured it was my turn to make sure something horrible happened while he was away. nathan got his chance last week, mom and sam got theirs the week before, and so i was next on the list. after only 3 hours at work this morning, i had to all but crawl to the back office to call mom because i was having another of those blackout/seizure episodes that was bad enough to cut off my vision, hearing, speech, limited my overall balance, movement, and coherence, and of course made all of the regular symptoms and pain worse. mom was great and came to drive me home and we've been trying to decide what to do ever since. the weird thing is, i don't have a doctor right now due to pcsing, iraq, and general tricare dumbness. they let me slip through all their cracks again so dad, even though he's in maryland, has been on the phone with the hospital all day trying to get me back into a doc rotation. i would rather get right back into the clinics without going through the er again. if you think about it, please pray that some of the neurologists will take a chance and agree to see me soon (like, this week) and that God will give them wisdom for how to proceed and how to make this stop. needless to say, we're so tired of the same old "take a bunch of drugs and nap alot" routine and would really like some real answers.

ice

i thought that we lived in south texas for a reason... because we (or i) wanted to escape from cold? we are in a once-every-billion-years ice storm in san antonio and although i like the excuse not to have to have braces put on today, i'm not really happy about the frigid temperatures. today the wind chill won't climb above 18 degrees, and the ice covering the city is not supposed to melt till thursday. i think this is as closed to being snowed in as we'll ever feel down here.
beth and i thought we'd use this day of rest to clean our room and do all the upstairs laundry that never seems to go away. but after getting out of bed and drinking a few mugs of tea and hot chocolate, we decided we'd better stay in bed and watch reruns of "the office" and "ugly betty". (seeing mom in her bed surrounded by feathers and hot coffee didn't really help motivate us either... )
i'm supposed to be housesitting for the lasalles who unfortantely had to leave the area surrounding our neighborhoods because of the helotes fire. i'm also supposed to be keeping their pets alive, but for today i'll just pray that God keeps their food bowls full until the ice melts.

so we'll have to plan another day for braces and another day for cleaning and laundry. too bad.

room

beth and i are happy because mom and dad bought us the beds we wanted from ikea, AND they got us red velvet curtains that we've been craving for a long time. we were really craving the black-out effect. here are pictures from the day... what you don't see in these pictures is all the work that dad did. he basically did the whole room... he spent several hours hanging the curtains and trying to make them look straight in the crooked room, and then spent a good three or four hours putting my bed together with beth's help. by then the end of the day we were feeling guilty about all the work he did so we decided to beth's bed on our own. i really hope my doctors don't read my blog, because this is totally not allowed.


i assumed that beth was the boss because she was reading the directions and telling me what to do.




but she soon fell asleep because it was taking me so long to figure things out. josh tried to help out.
a couple of pictures from the finished product. we aren't sure why caleb decided to cozy up in our room... he should go get his own room.

faithfulness

i'm sitting in my room right now listening to patty griffin and thinking about what to write. i had to turn the lights off in here so i wouldn't have to look at the mess. beth is my motivator to do anything, and she's gone so i figure that i'll worry about cleaning when she gets home. tim just walked in to give me some tea that dad sent up for me, and on his way out the door he paused to look at beth's new dart board and said, "oh my gosh. beth is so dead. i am so going to beat her at darts." so...maybe we won't be cleaning tonight after all. :)

it's hard to believe the year is almost over. exactly a year ago today the slaughters drove away to virginia. i can't believe they haven't been here for a whole year. maybe that's because i've been up there several times this year, but still... a whole year?
2005 was a year of a lot of heartache and pain for our family, so i was happy to put that year to rest 12 months ago. but 2006 has been a year of healing and starting over and i'm sitting here so thankful for the way the Lord has mended what was broken. as i think back to this day last year and how a certain level of despair hung over me, my family, our church, and our friends, and now to look at where we all are today is incredible. we've seen the Lord work in such amazing ways and bless us in ways that we thought were impossible last year. God has graciously taken away much of the physical pain this year for me, mom, samuel, and others in the family. He has united our church and restored many broken and wounded relationships there. He has given us new friendships and allowed to us meet and get to know some of the extended family. He has strengthened bonds and relationships within my own family, and created new dynamics to those relationships that we had never known. He has seen all of us through many days of change, has been patient with our own stubbornness to accept those changes, and as we watch His hand at work He continually reminds us that His ways are perfect.
one of my struggles throughout the last 2 years has been keeping perspective. it's a hard thing to grasp in the middle of any kind of suffering and it's been difficult for me to raise my head up out of our circumstances and look at the larger picture. i'll never master it, but it helps to think back to last year and know that if we hadn't gone through those long months of uncertainty and brokenness, we wouldn't have been able to really experience the Lord's healing and grace this year. we still have a long road ahead of us and i'm sure we'll be met with difficult situations again, but i hope that when that happens, i'll always remember this year and be reminded of God's great faithfulness.


all the way my Savior leads me, what have i to ask beside?
can i doubt His tender mercies, who through life has been my guide?
heavenly peace, divinest comfort, here by faith in Him to dwell
for i know whate're befall me, Jesus doeth all things well!

all the way my Savior leads me, cheers each winding path i tread.
gives me strength for every trial, feeds me with the Living Bread.
though my weary steps may faulter, and my soul athirst may be,
gushing from a Rock before me, lo, a Spring of joy i see.

all the way my Savior leads me, oh the fullness of His love!
perfect rest to me is promised in my Father's house above.
when my spirit, clothed immortal, wings its flight to realms of day
this my song through endless ages, Jesus lead me all the way.

eve

it's christmas eve and it actually feels like christmas here in south texas. this means that aubrey and i don't want to get out of bed unless we can take our down comforters with us.
we've enjoyed having our cali family out here for the week. lyric and some of her brood came out to spend christmas with us and it's been fun having a crowd in our "empty" house.

this year was the first year that i caught the "last-minute" disease that seems to plague native san antonians every december. i actually did all my christmas shopping on the 22nd and 23rd...and i don't recommend it.
we have stayed busy this month with christmas parties and gatherings and family traditions and driving around looking at christmas lights. mom and us girls went to a christmas tea last week which was wonderful. i think abby had the most fun because it was her first tea party. she got dressed up and aub put some faint makeup on her face and she was in heaven. we probably have pictures somewhere...maybe i'll put them up one of these days. we also had a church advent dinner on friday with traditional tamales and mexican food. we've had some new families join our cozy little church recently and we all had a good time. i don't think i was the only person there who was thanking God that night for our church and how He has blessed us and grown us and carried us through more than a few very rough days. i think this is our third christmas together and i am amazed at how far God has brought us from that first sunday. our little congregation truly is proof of God's great grace and faithfulness.

i have been feeling stable for a few weeks now and am so thankful for the extra energy this month. i've learned how to work every day without having to show up late or leave early, but at the same time i'm so grateful for a boss who understands when i can't work and won't hate me for it the next day. :) the couple i'm working for are getting ready to open a third store on the other side of town (well, my side of town) and want me to manage it. my boss and i went over there to look at it a few days ago and i loved it. the previous owner basically abandoned it and left everything she had. well, everything except the cash. we looked. :) it will probably take me and whoever i can bribe to help me between 8-12 weeks before i can open it. i'm really excited about it and can't wait to get in there and get it running. i will need about 5x the engergy and strength than i have right now, but i know that God will give it to me when i need it.

alot of friends have come back into town for christmas so beth and shelley and i have been spending alot of time with our friends who ditched us for college. (wait, did i say that?) we miss the virginia people so much and i especially missed them tonight while we were doing the big family christmas. it just wasn't the same. and i can't write anymore about it because i can barely see the screen right now!

well, i should close this and get to bed. i hope all of you have a fabulous christmas tomorrow and pray that we all give thanks to the Father who has blessed us far beyond what we deserve.