After months of saying I was going to read The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate I’m very pleased to say I finally found it and read it. My best friend recently completed a Bible study focused on the book and found it life changing, I must say I completely agree with her recommendation.

Although the book is focused on healing and strengthening marriages I’ve really found it beneficial in self therapy (looking back at my own childhood) as well as a new approach to my own children. I’m definitely one who focuses on words of affirmation as a primary love language. Between this and being a highly sensitive person I definitely see how deeply affected I am by positive and negative words. Now I know that as a child it wasn’t just the physical discipline from my parents that hurt me so badly, it was the harsh words and yelling that went along with it that really shook my being to the core.

One thing that I treasure about my husband is that every time we talk on the phone, no matter how brief or short he tells me he loves me before we hang up. I grew up in a home where love wasn’t blatantly expressed. Sure my parnts did tons to take care of my brother and I and overall although there are things they did I don’t agree with they were good parents, but I craved that affirmation of love so deeply I wound up looking for it in a lot of places I shouldn’t have been. I’ve quickly seen just how significant speaking all of the love languages to the children in your life can make a difference.

What’s your love language? Here’s a quiz to help you figure it out.

What’s been going on lately:

• Decided to use a bullet format ala Tifi since I haven’t had the time to write lately
• Yesterday I cleared the first step of getting over our final huge financial hurdle selling the house. Its looking like this is a done deal
• The house here is scheduled for closing August 25
• The new house will be completed August 25
• I’ve got to figure out what to do with our mail while we are living in a hotel prior to moving into the new house
• Never turn your back on an active 18 month old while he’s near bathroom cabinets- you might find an entire bottle of your favorite fragrance oil dumped on the carpet
• I hope the new owner likes the scent of mango fragrance oil, the bathroom will smell like a mango grove for months to come
• Another thing I won’t miss is the carpet in the bathroom- who likes bathroom carpeting? Its just not a concept that works well in my opinion
• Design Star is my new favorite show.
• I love sending children on random pointless tasks, they are currently gathering leaves and sticks in a tree trunk to help the squirrels to build a new home
• I’m going to head off to drool over some more of the new fabric in the latest Ikea catalog- I must learn to sew soon there’s too much cool fabric out there!

My 5 year old goddaughter was discussing her thoughts about memories while we were driving home from an outing:

“Memories are very important to have. Like me, I have lots of memories. I remember being in my Mommy’s stomach. And while I was in there I was learning how to play the flugelhorn. I’d play it so good and have so much fun!”

We still can’t figure out how she knows what a fluegelhorn is, I told her Mom she must have had one HUGE pregnant belly.

As of yesterday afternoon our house is sold! We received our first offer from a buyer who had been to our home 3 times to view it. We’re already priced perfectly according to every realtor that has visited (a few thought we were underpriced) so we were pretty surprised when the first offer came in signifigantly below asking price. Turns out the woman viewing the house had 2 properties she was interested in. One was a brand new home with granite coutnertops, hardwood floors and lots of bells and whistles maybe 30 minutes from my neighborhood. The other was mine because her sister happens to live down the street. We were pretty sure she was going to go for the new home so the low offer was a bit silly to say the least, but the next day they called back and upped it to just under our minimum and had no closing costs or contingencies so we went with it.

I’m ecstatic and just in awe at how quickly everything is moving. Sadly, my blog time has been nonexisitant with the moving preparations (plus my Goddaughters are hanging out with us during the week so they keep me busy) so I haven’t been able to visit all of my lovely blog friends.

Our new house will be finished at the end of August, and this house is slated to close August 25. While I most certainly have enjoyed my house the one thing I look forward to is not having my annual panic attacks in the spring. Our lovely home is situated across from a lake (one of the largest manmade lakes in Georgia apparently) and this lake is responsible for all sorts of vermin and pests. Water moccasins, woodland creatures, I can handle just about anything as long as its outside but every spring we have to battle enormous waterbugs(I would post a link to a picture but I can’t even stomach searching for that yick!) that try to find their way in. If I never ever see another one of those horrid things it won’t be too soon! I love water but living next to a lake isn’t happening for me again unless its in a nice bugfree place (that was the nicest thing about living in Seattle, I swear there were no bugs there, so awesome).

Thanks to everyone who has dropped by to check in on me, hopefully I’ll figure out some slivers of time to at least blog some of the things I’ve had on my mind lately (quite a bit to say the least) but if not I’ll see everyone in Texas!

We’ve returned from another trip to Texas. We had a lovely but very busy time- more details to follow.