Learning not to say NEVER...again??

In the course of 10 1/2 years of being a mom we have had a good number of pets marching through our home and they have varied from a beta fish, a rat, a toad, a snake and of course a dog. And from all those mentioned above there is one that I hated. I remember myself telling Josh "I'll never have another beta fish"
Well, the Lord has a way to teach me things in such a way, that finally it's getting through my hard skull that I should not say Never.
Let me explain.
Our little Matthew started to have some anxiety issues last year while we were in Alabama, and while we were a little worried about it we thought that it was just a phase because of "Kindergarten", and that it would go away at some point. Sometimes doubting that it even was anxiety I thought that he either just wanted attention or he was just being a little...well bratty.(nice mom ha?) Well, here we are almost 9 months later dealing with something that is very hard for me to understand. First because I'm a very practical person and second because I have never dealt with anxiety myself. Josh on the other hand having dealt with some serious anxiety/panic disorder issues almost 6 years ago knows first hand the feelings that my child describes that are so foreign to anybody that has not felt them before, has been the biggest help on how to help our sweet boy when he has an episode, which usually happens when he eats.
So in the process of learning how to distract him in a not so obvious way, we decided to listen to his plea to get him a fish. It occurred to us that if we placed it close to the table it may help to focus his attention somewhere else.
Here I am with an other beta fish and glad that it's serving (a little bit) its purpose...and having to clean the slime,poop,food full fish bowl it's not so bad after all.

The hot desert!

Almost two weeks ago we moved in. We arrived to Yuma Arizona where we had left all our belongings in storage almost two months ago. When we got to the office where we were going to sign the lease and get the house keys it was 9:00 am and already 102 degrees. At 1:30 Josh and the two guys he'd hired to help us move got to the house and started unloading our stuff but had to stop for several hours since one of the gentlemen got sick because of the heat, that at that point was 110 degrees in the shade... (Now these men work for a local agency and are used to the heat but they usually work very early in the morning). But the break was needed for my hubby since the only food he'd had was coffee and a muffin at 6:00 that morning when we left SD. Needless to say that they did't have time for the second trip and we didn't finish moving that day. But the next morning God gave us a cloudy and cooler morning, so that the kids and I could help Josh load the rest of our stuff.

At last we are settling down, with boxes still here and there but happy to be close to Josh's work. The kids are happy to have their toys, some of which they've not seen for over a year.

We also met our next door neighbors who seem to be very nice, happen to have 2 boys the same ages as ours, and were awaiting the arrival of our family since our landlord told them about us and our boys before we even got here. They also have a beautiful pool, which my kids already enjoyed a few evenings ago.

Now to find a new church family. I don't know how hard it'll be since there are no PCA churches in this city, and it wont be either New Life or Westminster...