Pictures of the Girl's Room!

I wanted bunk beds. But Brian had this crazy idea of building loft beds for the two older girls. The week that we had no electricity and the kids and I went to my Mom and Dad's house, Brian spent hours laboring in the heat making these beds as a surprise for the girls. Needless to say, I was quite impressed and the girls very pleased.

It is difficult to take pictures of small, square rooms. But hopefully you can get an idea of the awesomeness. This is the corner of the room, both beds go off to the right and left. The "brick wall" was hand painted and is not a support, just decoration and to add a place to play.

This is Sophie's bed to the right of the brick wall. You can see Savannah's bed at the top left hand corner. And of course, the dollhouse bookcase my dad built for the girls.

Savannah's bed is at the top. Along the left edge of the picture you can see the edge of the brick wall. Sophie's bed is partially underneath Savannah's bed.

Emily's bed is at the top right of the picture. Toys and books reside underneath her bed and the dresser is to the left. The top drawer is Emily's, Savannah's is in the middle and Sophie's is the bottom drawer.

Upstairs- Emily's bed!

Savannah's Bed!

Brian added the pulley and the basket. The girls play with this for hours. It was a stroke of genius on his part.

Emily was enjoying all the pictures I was taking of her and her room!

Brian also bought these really awesome beanbag chairs while we were away and added them to the girls room. They are really comfortable - I even like to sit in them and read stories to Sophie before nap time.

I'm grateful for the creativity and hard work that Brian put in to this room. The girls love it!

Fifty Shades Worse

I had never heard of the Fifty Shades Trilogy until posts began popping up in the Christian blogosphere. 

Fifty Shades of Grey is a book. Fiction. A make-believe. A story of an adult man and an adult woman having consensual sex. He likes her. She loves him. He does nothing to her to which she says, "No."

In the grand scheme of the Kingdom, Fifty Shades of Grey does not matter. Read this book, don't read this book, I don't care. But please, care about something that does matter.

Little Girls matter. In our city, the place I call home, innocent, precious little girls are being bought and sold, smuggled over borders and being exploited by men who do not give the promise of a "safe word." Human Trafficking matters. Eighty percent of human trafficking are women and girls. Fifty percent of all people brought across the borders are minors. Non-consensual. Most are forced into prostitution using threats, rape, drugs, safety of family members. Little girls are exploited and suffer life-long physical and psychological damage due to the perverse actions of other human beings. 

Christian women are upset about this book. Should they be? Perhaps. But at the end of the day, people who follow Jesus are called to defend the weak, speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, love those who are not loved.  A book is easier to stand against. A book is safer to stand against. No one gets hurt fighting a book. Words just transition from my computer to your computer. These little girls and women who are sexually abused over and over get hurt. They don't have safe words. They can't say "no" and walk away. They don't know love. They are not safe. 

What if all the women who are safely ensconced in their righteous indignation against a book, would begin using their platforms and readership to fight for the rights of the innocents?

I don't like writing these kinds of posts. I'm just a girl behind a computer. A mom with kids. But this has been simmering within me for the past two weeks. I don't have a readership. I don't have an audience. But this topic won't leave me. It follows me and haunts me.

If you feel led, please check out Not For Sale, an organization dedicated to fighting for little girls all over the world.

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Statistics taken from Texas Sex Trafficking Obliteration Project

Funnies from the Girls

Me: "Emily, I have extra chores today if you want to make some money."
Emily: "What is it?"
Me: "Vacuum and mop the kitchen for $2."
Emily: "No, you should keep your money, you need it."
Me: "So you want to do the chores for free?"
Emily: "No." (laughing at me)
Me: "You want to pay me to do the chores?"
Emily: "uhhh... No!"
Me: "Well, I have lots of chores today and I need help!"
Emily, looking around the room: "Its okay, Mommy, the house looks fine."

Me: "Savannah! Stop waving those chopsticks around! You are gonna poke me in the eye!"
Savannah giggles.
Me: "It won't be funny."
Savannah: "Maybe a little funny."

Emily: "Sometimes when I need to think, I shake my head around. I imagine that my brain has lots of pockets. Each thing goes in a pocket. Math goes in a pocket. Animals go in a pocket, like that. Everything has a pocket. So when I shake my head around, everything flies out of the pockets and is easier to think of. Then I don't have to go sorting through all the pockets looking for what I'm trying to think about."

I've been working hard at potty training Sophie this week. It is going so well that Emily is begging me to use pull-ups instead of panties. As I was wiping up a puddle today, I muttered: "This is a lot of pee for such a little person." Emily joined in, "I can pee almost as much as Daddy!" Ah, the joys potty training induced conversations.

At lunch today, in Arabic, I asked Emily if she wanted to drink some tea. She replied: "I don't know what you are saying to me. But if you want to speak Arabic to us, you should say it in Arabic and then say it in English, so we know what you are saying." The little one speaks truth.

From There to Here

When we returned from Egypt, we had some sweet friends who let us stay in their home temporarily. But the time was coming that they needed the house back and we needed to find a place to call home. Our last job had some wonderful perks, but pay wasn’t one of them, so we came home with nothing in the bank and a pay history that was too small for a lender to consider lending us money for a home. 

We could rent an apartment or house, but then we would be dumping tons of money into someone else’s pocket, leaving us unable to save towards a down payment. At the seemingly last moment, a local oilfield company donated a trailer to us and a spot to put it opened up in the right area of town. We are incredibly grateful for a place to call home and the low rent so we can save towards our Someday House. Our goal was to be near the school where Savannah is enrolled and to have a home that we can have friends and family comfortably come visit. One out of two isn’t bad?

If I were a great blogger, I would have taken pictures of the move. The moving truck. Emily walking Benjamin around in the wagon while he slept in the heat. The stacks of boxes. Savannah carrying boxes like a trooper. But I was too busy. And blogging was not at the top of my to-do list.

There was a week of lag time between the placing of the trailer and when the electricity was turned on. So the kids and I went to visit my parents and sister for a week. I cannot say enough about the hard work Brian put in that week and the several days after we got home. It is about 880 square feet that all 6 of us are living in and he has done his best to make the most of it. I’ve been impressed over and over by his creative ideas and the things he has bought and built. Ikea has become our go-to store for space saving items and inspiration. Inch by inch, this trailer is becoming our home.

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A couple of weeks has past since I wrote the first few paragraphs. In the meantime, we've eaten some good food, visited a couple of Museums, I've baked a lot of bread in my bread maker, met some new friends and spent a lot of time with other friends.

But, I miss blogging, so I’ll post this for tonight and plan on taking some pictures soon to wow you with my husband’s handy building skills. It’s impressive, let me tell you!