"Jesus Make Better"

Paige has been suffering from a pretty severe diaper rash the past few days. It would begin to clear, but then suddenly flare up again. I think we finally have it under control, but for the past few days we've had some battles while changing her diaper. The poor girl was in so much pain.

Last night, I was praying with her before she went to bed. Part of my prayer to Jesus was to "make Paige's bottom feel better and take her rash away." After the prayer, Paige pointed over to her changing table and said, "Momma, medicine make bottom better," referring to her diaper rash creme. I told her that Jesus will heal her bottom even better and faster than the medicine can, and that's why we ask Him to make it better.

Tonight, Paige said something that sounded like it came from the mouth of a religious fanatic. Jason was changing Paige's diaper. As he brought out the diaper rash creme and showed it to Paige, she said "No medicine. Jesus make better."

Belly Brace

For all those past preggos:

I'm looking for a belly brace for support. When I was pregnant with Paige I pulled a groin muscle and it irritated me through out the entire pregnancy. Just like the doctor had told me, it didn't heal until after she was born.
Now that I finally have a belly hanging, the same muscles are starting to bother me again. My doctor recommended that I get one of those maternity support braces.
So, my first thought was to see if anyone had one that I could borrow for the next 5 months. Do you have one? If not, I will break down and get one myself, I guess! :)

HUGE Praise!

For the past 4 years, our only vehicle has been our Toyota Tundra truck. It has worked very well for our one kid family. Since we are adding another kid, we really needed to look for a car. 2 car seats don't work too well in a truck.
Problem: It's not really a truck buying market out there. We were really worried that we weren't going to be able to sell the truck for a decent price. Since we still owe on the truck, this was going to create a big problem on the purchase of a new car. We couldn't even look for new cars until the truck was gone.
We decided to list the truck now, in case it sat for some time. We checked the Blue Book and then also several different sites around to see what people are asking for their 2002 Tundras. BB says we should get about 8,000. We couldn't find anything on the internet for LESS than 10,000. We listed the truck Saturday morning on Craig's List for just under 10,000. Monday morning we get a call and essentially a cash offer over the phone, sight unseen. The guy is here by 11, the truck gone at noon! Praise God! We even got our asking price (ABOVE BB!!)
Uh oh....now we don't have a car! ;) No worries, we went up to Fresno and found a great deal for ourselves. We are now the happy owners of a 2006 Honda Accord. What other color for the Wedehase's, but dark silver (the color of the past 3 cars we've owned!)
Our family is just praising God because we got a great price for our truck, it sold SO quickly, and we were able to replace it with a great, reliable, affordable, family car! HOORAY!!

Passed out

Another first for Paige:

Tuesday late morning Paige was playing in her room by herself. Since she was content, I went into the office to complete some Arbonne work. After 15 or so minutes, I noticed it was very quiet in Paige's room. No noises from toys, she wasn't talking, nothing! Generally this means she is getting into something she shouldn't, so I went in to check on her. I was very surprised at what I saw:









She went to the extent of pulling all 3 blanket animals from her bed and passed out on her chair in her room. Man, she must have been really tired, because she'd normally come tell me to put her in bed! Too cute. It was hard to wake her up to move her into her crib, but I knew she wouldn't nap well if I didn't. My sweet little baby!

Morro Bay!

The Wedehase family got the chance to get away this weekend. Jason has been working a ton of overtime trying to finish a job site. It has been really hard on our family, so we decided to take advantage of Labor Day weekend, regardless of the potential crowds and traffic. Our deal to each other was that we didn't have any time lines, we can stop and look at anything we wanted, and we couldn't fight. Not bad, huh? :)

We drove to Morro Bay Sunday after church. It was a great drive. Paige slept in the car for about an hour, which is very rare for her. On the way there, we took a side street and stopped at a family farm store. Paige got to see and feed goats, look at pumpkins on a vine, and best of all, play in the dirt! It was a lot of fun.

Our hotel was only 2 blocks from the Embarcadero, so we just walked down the hill to see the sights and eat great food! Paige loved looking at the "ochen" (ocean) and wanted to go "wimming water" (swimming in the water). She heard sea gulls for the first time and immediately started making their noises. It was really funny. Then we also found some sea lions on a dock and she loved to watch them. She would throw her head back and make their noises too. It was so cute!

While Mommy was doing some shopping, Daddy took Paige out onto a pier to get some pictures. She had a blast chasing around a sea gull. She also enjoyed looking at the water through the boards on the pier. Here is a great picture Daddy got, when he asked Paige to smile.

Eventually we made it to the beach, where we could take Paige to feel the sand and water. I was really unsure what Paige would do. I was kind of expecting her to be afraid of the water, being that it's loud, moving and cold. She really surprised me when she walked straight to the water and let it come up onto her feet. We played in the wet sand, and combed the beach for shells. Then we headed back to our towel for some fun in the sand. I knew she would like that part, because Nanna and Nanno have a sand box that she loves to play in. Her and Daddy dug around for a bit. Daddy buried her feet and she laughed! She loves to play in the dirt! She's a farm girl at heart.

We had a great time getting away. We really look forward to taking a much needed longer vacation to Pismo soon.

Ukraine: Saturday, July 12th

After such a long day (almost 2 days) of travel, I awoke at 5:30 am and couldn't fall back asleep. I finally got myself out of bed at 6:30, took a shower and got ready for the day.

Cheryl, Debbie and I ate breakfast with our host family. The husband's name is Vasya and the wife's name is Mariya. They have 2 boys: Misha, 23, and Vitalik, 13. Neither spoke English well, but we had some conversation with them. We were all able to tell them about our families and our work. For breakfast we were served granola cereal, yogurt (the best yogurt ever!), bananas, meat, cheese, bread and crackers. All of it was very good.

The first taxi ride was good. Mariya called for our taxi and instructed him where to go. He took us straight to Cornerstone. No major events to tell about. Once at Cornerstone, we went through our orientation. We learned about Ukrainian customs, language, and our schedule for the week. We also had time for some praise and worship and devotions.

After orientation, we went out for pizza. Now their pizza is totally different than ours. There really isn't any sauce on the pizza. Just cheese and toppings. No pepperoni or sausage. But they did have olives, tomatoes, ham, pineapple, and other things too. I opted for just olives. When they served the pizza, they offer a dipping sauce, which was essentially ketsup. Ukrainians dip a lot of things in ketsup, I guess. The pizza was good, just not like home.

When lunch was done, we walked over to the church to see what Children's Church was like. Our "home" church for the week is one room. The sanctuary and that's it. Sunday school really isn't an option for the kids, because they don't have anywhere to meet. The first thing we saw at Children's Church was their praise and worship team. They have 4 girls singing and 3 kids doing the motions to the songs. It was loud, lively music. All the kids were having a blast! It was awesome to see them in true, genuine worship. After worship, they played games and had a bible based lesson. It was really cool to see that not just one person ran the show. It was a combination of 5 or 6 ladies who divided up the duties to make it work. A true network of help.

After Children's Church, we walked through town and eventually ended up at Patrice and Alex's house. In town, we got to see the shops and markets. Nothing chain, all family owned businesses. A lot of street vendors selling produce and goods. We even walked through an open air market where you could buy almost any grocery. Extremly fresh!

At Alex and Patrice's they prepared hamburgers for us for dinner. While they were preparing dinner, most of us Americans took a nap in their living room. We were all exhausted, still trying to adjust to the 10 hour difference! We had yummy hamburgers for dinner. After dinner, the women from the church came over for a Women's Fellowship.

Some ladies from our group shared their testimonies. Some Ukrainian ladies shared theirs. Mariya (our host Mommy) shared her testimony. She is an incredible woman of God. She will get her own post later... One Ukrainian woman asked how many of us do NOT come from Christian homes, or don't have Christian husbands. Some of us raised our hands, and she asked how we did it. How did we come to know Christ? How do we live out a Christian life without a Christian husband? God truly used this time for Jan to speak out of her experience and testimony. She was able to really relate and touch this woman's life. I believe she got the encouragement she was seeking by hearing Jan's story. It was truly moving.

We ended the night in prayer. First the American ladies surrounded the Ukrainians in a circle. We prayed aloud for them. Then we switched. When the Ukrainian women prayed, It was amazing. They are very dramatic and dynamic in their prayers. Very emotional and heartfelt. I just wish I knew what they were saying! :)

Overall we had a very good day. We got to see and learn the basics of Ukrainian life.

Ukraine: Thursday July 10th and Friday July 11th

So this is long overdue, but I will try to stay on top of blogging at least one day each day.

On July 10th, 10 ladies and I boarded a plane in Fresno to make our trek to Ukraine. What a LONG day it would be too! We boarded around 11 in the AM Thursday. Our first stop was Denver, then Munich Germany, then Budapest. The longest duration on the plane was about 10 hours from Denver to Munich. It really wasn't too bad. There were several movies and videos to choose from while on the flight. I got some sleep, and felt well once we landed in Budapest.

Once we landed in Budapest, we loaded all our luggage into 2 vans and drove 6 hours to Uzhgorod, Ukraine. It happened to be really HOT on Friday and the vans did not have any air conditioning. YIKES! Jan, Andrea and I were in the van with most of the luggage. Our drivers were missionaries from Germany, and didn't speak any English. We had to drive through the entire town of Budapest on surface streets to get to the freeway. We were burning up because there was no airflow in the van. It didn't help that we were trying to drive through Budapest at 4:30 on Friday afternoon either. Yes, they have just as bad of a traffic problem as we do! Once we hit the freeway, all was well.

The freeways were beautiful, actually. Very green landscape. Well kept roads. Public restrooms very frequently (much like our Rest Stops, but SOOOO much cleaner). The thing that was really beautiful were all the fields of sunflowers in full bloom!

We had to cross a border check in both Hungary and Ukraine, about 2 miles apart. Neither border gave us any troubles. Once we arrived in Uzhgorod, we met Alex and Patrice at Cornerstone English School. This would be our meeting point and headquarters for the week. The 10 ladies divided into 3 groups and we finally dispersed to our homes for the week.

I roomed with Debbie Linman and Cheryl Kent. We ended up with a fantastic family, who you will learn a lot more about later. We didn't arrive to the house until 12:30 AM, and we were all EXHAUSTED! We pretty much went straight to bed.