The Earley Days

Following God - even when it's not convenient.

2011-01-27T20:33:00.000-05:00

Lately, I have been pondering a thought that permeates all elements of my life, I just cannot figure out how to word in a witty and concise way. Maybe some of you can help.

I coach gymnastics in the evenings and we tell our girls that they will never get stronger without conditioning. We relate it to school and any thing else that we can think of to make them understand a little better. Since I coach a younger team, they always look to the big girls and want to do what they are doing. We tell them that if their arms are not strong enough to do a pull up and a push up, then they will not be strong enough to support them in a back handspring.

I have caught myself using this thought process in other parts of my life as well. If you want to improve at anything, you must, at some point, become uncomfortable. If you want to become a black belt at martial arts, you are going to have to work through the other belts first. You will have to get some bruises in order to learn how to block. In order to learn how to dive, you will have to learn how to drive your heels up and hold your body tight. You will go through several belly flops before you become strong enough to dive correctly.

In other words, you are perfectly prepared to do exactly what you are doing right now, but nothing else.

I had the chance this last week to reaaaaaalllllllly step out of my comfort zone. I had a casual friend that was in kidney failure. I went through the testing and ended up being a good enough match to be able to donate. On Friday, my friend went from kidney failure to having normal kidney function numbers. I am so so happy for him. Everyone is making a big deal about me donating the kidney, but to me, that was not the hard part. The hard part to me is the down time, not the surgery itself. I do not like being "weak." I do not like having to depend on others. Giving up a physical part is not hard, the vulnerability that comes with that is the difficult part.

However, if there was no "uncomfortableness," then how would that be serving others? It is easy to be generous if you don't have to go out of your way to do it.

This has been quite the spiritual journey for me. I have always thought of myself as somewhat caring, but have never really had to test it before. I really have had to trust that this is what God wanted me to do, even though it was definitely NOT convenient.

I have seen amazing spiritual growth in my husband as well. I have seen him step really out of his comfort zone and take the other family under his wing as well. He has risen above and beyond anything I have ever witnessed in him before.

My hope through this journey is that I will help myself to remember that God doesn't call the equipped, but equips the called and that he will prepare you for the journey He has for you - although there are no guarantees that the journey will be an easy one. I hope that my kids will learn this lesson in their life as well.

No one wants to push beyond the comfort zone, but that is where the greatest rewards are.

I just hope that I remember this as May rolls around and it is time for the Iron Girl Triathalon that I have signed up for. Anyone want to teach me how to swim?

Our "Green" Christmas letter

2010-12-24T22:08:00.000-05:00

Personalize a newsletter design

Never Let Go

2010-08-22T21:39:00.000-04:00

Well, I don't know if anyone really visits here anymore, so we will see I guess.

I had visions of grandeur of writing several posts a week over the summer, but obviously that did not happen.

So, I will do a short recap of what has gone on with us since my last update.

My oldest daughter J started having some lightheadedness issues and unexplained weight loss. We are still trying to figure out the cause, but we have eliminated heart issues. In the interim, she found a lump in her chest that we ended up having to get removed. Tests showed that it was benign, thank goodness. She has started her junior year in high school, so it is going to be a tough year. To help balance her life a little better and to help heal from 2 years of injuries back to back, she is most likely not going to compete at any gymnastics meets this year and will be cutting back on her practice hours. Then, she will be in the best possible shape both physically and academically for her senior year.

My youngest daughter, M, has started 7th grade and is still really enjoying JH. She is about halfway through her braces journey and will be glad to get it over with. She is considering looking at other sports, so we will start thinking about that, although no decisions have been made either way.

My DH received a promotion at work. Woo hoo! He has started working on getting healthier as well. I am so very proud of him.

I am still coaching gymnastics and working at the kids school, so nothing ever changes with me.

My main purpose in writing tonight is for therapy for myself. While I cannot go into much detail, I do need to work some things out in my heart and soul, and writing has always helped me do that. So, if you are reading just to catch up on the family, you can stop reading now. :-)

My spiritual family is in a lot of pain right now. There has been a betrayal that has affected many, many people. The fallout from this is life-changing in a vast myriad of ways. Anyone that has ever been through a huge life changing event - death, divorce, infidelity, violence, etc. can probably relate to what emotions are surfacing. Anger, denial, acceptance, disappointment, confusion, hopeful, hopeless - all rotating through repeatedly. I have no idea what I will be feeling in 10 minutes, much less in 10 days. I do know, however, that all of us MUST remember that God is God and we are not. Neither is anyone else. We MUST all remember that we are the body of Christ and that while it is painful to lose a part of the body, that the body can still work and do it's job. We all MUST remember that we have all failed and fallen short of the glory of God.

We sang this song today and I could feel God's arms holding me while saying these words by Matt Redman:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
Your perfect love is casting out fear
And even when I'm caught in the middle of the storms of this life
I won't turn back
I know you are near

And I will fear no evil
For my God is with me
And if my God is with me
Whom then shall I fear?
Whom then shall I fear?

(Chorus:)
Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me

And I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on
A glorious light beyond all compare
And there will be an end to these troubles
But until that day comes
We'll live to know You here on the earth

(Chorus)

Yes, I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on
And there will be an end to these troubles
But until that day comes
Still I will praise You, still I will praise You

(Chorus 2x's)

If you have never heard this song, you can listen to it here:

I will be singing this song a lot in the coming days, I'm sure.

My mom also lost her last living brother today. So all in all, today was kind of sucky. But, the good thing is, this heart will hold on for that light that is coming.

Thanks to any of you that still visit.

I will hope to post a happier post soon with pictures and funny stuff.

I refuse!!

2010-04-25T14:43:00.000-04:00

For those of you that know me personally, you know that I am still child-like in some ways. (Probably child-like in some ways as well. :-D) I still like to play and hang out with kids. I usually feel more comfortable with kids than adults. I like to be silly and play jokes.

However, this is getting harder and harder to pull off. Mainly due to the fact that by body is not cooperating with me very well. It is starting to be very obvious that I am not the 20 or 30 something year old that I envision myself to be.

I have blogged on this before, but only about my face and the fact that it looks like it is melting when I lean over to the side.

Now, other body parts are joining in the parade.

My latest fixation is on my knees. I know have the dreaded elephant knee syndrome. Have you ever seen elephant knees? How they are pudgy and wrinkly just above the knee? How in the world do you make that go away? I coach gymnastics part time and wear shorts in the summer. I cannot figure out how I am going to deal with these knees out in public. I already have to make sure my triceps are flexed the entire time that I coach so that I don't injure anyone with the flapping that occurs there when I move my arms.

Also, my eyes are becoming squishy. You know when you rub under your eye? Well, know when I do that, the skin squishes up and stays distorted for a bit.

As a matter of fact, a lot of my skin looks different now. It is almost like I lost a ton of weight and was left with a lot of loose skin. Or it is a size too big for my body.

Never mind the spider veins and the grey hair.

It looks like I am gonna have to give in and accept the fact that I am getting older. I am going to have to change my thought process on the whole thing. I always thought that I would age gracefully. I thought that I would be a mature adult with it all together. Boy, was I mistaken. I do NOT have it together, I am NOT mature, and I am definitely NOT graceful.

I am trying really really hard to remember that we are all made in the image of God and that he loves who we are on the inside and not what we look at on the inside. I hope that I do a much better job of instilling that ideal in my daughter's than I did in myself.

Do any of you struggle with self-acceptance?

***Prayer requests:

Travis Shumard just started his first round of chemotherapy for Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He is 15 years old.

Becky Smith just had a double mastectomy and is starting her treatment for breast cancer.

Please visit and leave them a note of encouragement.

As always, let me know you were here.

Blessings of multi-generationalism

2010-04-11T17:01:00.000-04:00

I have been very remiss in posting anything lately. Mainly because I got so many awesome comments on my last entry that I knew that I could never come up with another topic that would generate such great feedback.

We just finished up a much enjoyed spring break. It was awesome to not have to work either job for several days in a row. As much as I enjoy both of my jobs, I enjoy my husband and kids more. We went up to the mountains and spent a few days at the cabin. It was warm enough to hike and play in the creek, but cool enough that there were no mosquitos or chiggers or poison ivy yet - perfect weather.

We also had Grandparents Day at school. It is always the last day of school before spring break. There is a special program just for the kids and grandparents, and then the kids get to leave at noon. My hubby and I are blessed that we both adore our inlaws. Our kids are blessed to have 3 full sets of grandparents that all get along with each other.

I have tried to make a point of making sure that my kids appreciate their grandparents. Neither my husband nor myself have any living grandparents - and haven't for a while. It is kind of an empty feeling.

My oldest, J., and I were talking about this while hiking at the cabin. She had a neat way of putting it. She said that you have your friends to be your friends, your parents to be your parents, and your grandparents are like your friendly parents. Friends, parents, and grandparents all fill a different role and meet a different need, and none can fill the space of another. I thought that was a neat way of looking at it.

My grandparents were awesome people and I was so blessed to know them. In a way, they remind me of my children. My oldest daughter, while funny and fun-loving, is a nurturer. She is always careful of others feelings. My maternal grandparents were the same way. My youngest daughter, while a nurturer as well, is very up-front and no-nonsense, the same as my paternal grandparents. While she, and they, would do anything for you, they will also let you know where you stand and did not waste time on stressing about pleasing everyone. I think this is the best mix in the world as they balance perfectly. You need both personalities in your life in order to make your life complete.

I think this is why my husband and I work so well together - we balance each other. If you have two personalities that are completely alike or so completely opposite, you have nothing to use to complete each other.

Well, this was another one of my posts about nothing, so if you are still reading - congrats and thank you.

Please sign the guestbook and let me know you were here.

Would you like me to bubble wrap you?

2010-02-01T21:30:00.002-05:00

This is a pretty pointless entry, but I am posting it out of curiosity.

What do you think/feel when someone tells you that they will pray for you? Do you feel thankful, blessed, or comforted? Or do you feel empty, puzzled, or awkward?

Do you really feel like it makes any difference? I mean, everything is in God's hands, right? So, will praying actually do anything? Will it change God's mind? Will it make him mad when you ask for things?

I will tell you my take on it, because, after all, that is why I blog. :-)

I feel like prayer is almost like bubble wrap. Whether prayer changes your circumstances or not, I feel it will at least make things easier to deal with. If you had to fall down a flight of stairs, wouldn't you prefer it to happen while wrapped up in bubble wrap? Will it still hurt? Probably, but maybe not as much.

Let me know your thoughts, please.

Thanks for stopping by.

Never, EVER, assume! AKA - Object lesson

2009-12-28T11:26:00.002-05:00

Everyone has heard that you should never assume anything.

I just want to give you quick proof that this is very good advice - in a purely hypothetical setting, of course.

If you assume, that once you and your children get home from dropping one of the vehicles off at a service center, that you can outrun the children to the closest bathroom, you would be wrong.

If you assume that maybe if you bring everything in from the car, that the child that made it to the closest bathroom would be done by the time you got inside, you would be wrong again.

If, when you screech out the words, 'You are still in there?' to the child in the preferred bathroom, you assume that they won't giggle at your predicament, then, you would be wrong.

If, in your panic as you realize that said child is still in the bathroom and that you will not trip running up the stairs to the next closest bathroom, you would, again, be wrong.

If, in the midst of finally getting to go to the restroom and your phone rings and the caller i.d. shows it is the daughter from the preferred bathroom, and you assume it is her calling you to gloat over getting the closest bathroom, you would, believe it or not, be mistaken.

If you ever find yourself in this predicament - please, please do NOT make that final assumption above. Because, chances are, if you answer that phone call and make a comment about 'talking while peeing' because you assumed it was your child on the other end, it could possibly be someone saying that they just found a cell phone and called the contact listed as "mom" in it to hopefully find out who it belonged to. This person could also be calling from the car service center that you just dropped the car off at. The same place you have to go BACK to in a short while.

So, you see, assumption is bad!! Purely hypothetical situation, of course.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T14:14:00.001-05:00

Please take a moment to view our animated Christmas letter below.

Make a Smilebox greeting

What would your sign say?

2009-11-19T21:07:00.002-05:00

Do you ever wish people could wear some kind of sign that gives everyone kind of a heads up on things you need to know about them? Or vice versa?

For example, I often wonder if I walked around with a sign that said, "ADD. OCD. Depression. Low self esteem. Slightly neurotic," if it would make people be more conscientious with their words and actions, or if it would scare them off or make them decide I was not worth getting to know?

What if the signs said only positive things? "Devoted wife and mother. Desire to be Christ-like. Persistent." Would that then make people want to get to know me? Would they be disappointed if they chose to get to know me based on my sign, and then saw all of the "bad" traits later?

What if it were that everyone wore a sign? Would you greet the person with the sign that said "Addict" or "Murderer" the same way as you would the people whose signs said "Clean and Sober" or "Protective of loved ones?"

What if the signs had positives on one side and negatives on the other? Would you want to only show one side, or would you show both sides?

Some days, I wish I had a sign so that people would know that I have ADD and would therefore not sit and click their pen next to me. They would know that I struggle with self esteem issues and depression and they would not say things in a joking manner that keeps me up crying at night. They would know that I am a little OCD and would not do things willy nilly without a list to check off. Other days, I wish I had my other sign so that people would know that I take my family and my faith seriously.

Then there are days that I wish that other people wore signs so that I could figure out what in the world is going on in people's heads sometimes.

However, one of my favorite things to do is to try to figure out what makes people "click." I love to people watch and find out about them. So, I think the signs would take away from that.

Also, I know that to God, I might as well be wearing a sign since he knows my true heart and spirit. He is the one whose opinion matters most, and that is what I need to remember.

So, my question to you is:

If you could know, beforehand, what would be on the front and back of peoples signs, would you choose to do so?

Would you want to wear a sign?

What would each side of your sign say?

If God made your sign, would it say the same thing as if you made it yourself?

See, I can post a happy post. . . .

2009-11-14T18:54:00.012-05:00

No deep and pondering thoughts this post, just some pics to let you guys get to know us a little better.

We are all a little silly and we love to have fun.

Here is M. on the podium at her state gymnastics meet last year. Don't you love the beautiful smile?

Here she is while up at the cabin

And here she is at her 5th grade graduation:

Here is a very excited M. She found a chocolate chip cookie the same size as her head:

She is not the only silly one. Here is her sister, J.

The girls together:

Unfortunately, this strangeness does not limit itself to the children:

The lazy man's way to mow grass on a very steep hill:

At the aquarium:

On your mark:

Get set:

GO!!

We also like to take silly pictures of things other than each other.

A tiny froggy that M. found:

M.'s hair curling in the humidity:

Apparently silliness is contagious. Here is our BB curling up with the bear skin rug at the cabin:

And poor BB trying to figure out how she is going to sleep with those two hooligans sleeping under her:

So, I know this was not a very exciting post, but my last several posts have been so serious and verbose, so just wanted to lighten things up some.

Hope you enjoyed the pics.

As always, let me know you were here.

Is it a tradition for you to trim your butt?

2009-09-28T20:34:00.007-04:00

There is a story that I read somewhere that goes something like this:

A woman is teaching her daughter how to make a roast. She gets out the roast and proceeds to slice the end off of it and throw it out. The daughter asks her mother why she threw part of the meat away. Her mom told her that was what you were supposed to do. The daughter asked why again. The mom said that she did not know, that she did it because HER mom did that. They then called the grandmother and asked her the reason. She said that she did it because HER mom always did that when she was making a roast. They then called the great-grandmother and asked her why she always cut the end off of her roasts before cooking them. The grandmother's response? 'Because my pan was too small.'

At church recently, we were discussing about what do we do because of tradition and what do we do because it is what God wants us to do. I believe so many of us have developed not only our sense of right and wrong, but our entire belief system on what we learned from our parents.

While this is okay for small children, as one matures, we need to learn to think for ourselves. With this growth, we also need to learn WHY we think what we think and to be able to defend and support it. I believe that any religion out there has the goal of reaching out to others to try to teach them about God/Jesus/Allah/Buddha, etc. I cannot think of any religion off hand that encourages people to completely avoid others and to not ever try to spread the word. In order to successfully do this, you must have some ammunition. You must have some ready answers and to be able to support your words.

If someone asks you what religion you are, you can give a simple answer. What, if after that, they ask what your religion believes in? That answer, while a little more in depth, would not be too difficult. Then, what if they ask you WHY you believe that? Could you answer that? How would you answer that?

We talked about visiting other churches with your friends. I think it helps you to start asking questions when you are exposed to other beliefs. It makes you see that there are different sets of beliefs out there, and while we may never know this side of heaven which religion is the closest to being right, it will help you make an informed decision if you actively search for info.

Hopefully no one picks a religion because it seems easier than others. It is not supposed to be easy. I mean, Adam and Eve were the only people in the world at one point and they only had 1 rule. They had an intimate relationship with God and they blew it, so we cannot expect to not fail.

I hope that the girls that I teach on Sunday's will at some point question their beliefs. I hope that when it happens, their parents realize what a sign of maturity it is and will allow them to make this journey. I also hope that they understand that all differences may not be salvation issues. Some differences are due to different core beliefs and other are just matters of preference or tradition. That is something I hope these young ladies, and everyone else as well, realize as they spiritually mature. I also hope that they realize that people can agree to disagree and still respect each other's beliefs.

If you are still reading, I really appreciate you listening to your ramblings. I would love any feedback any of you may have, positive or negative. My only request is that no one bashes any one else's comments.

So, do you "trim your butt" because your pan is too small, or because that is how you're parents did it? (In other words, do you believe what you believe because you looked for the answers, or because you followed what your parent's did?)

Thank you for reading!

Come back and visit again.

I do hope to get a more "fun" entry up soon.

Why do my eyes keep leaking?

2009-08-23T19:04:00.003-04:00

I have decided that I need a tear duct transplant, mine are obviously defective. They leak all of the time, when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m angry, when I’m frustrated, etc. It seems to be my default response, and frankly, I’m tired of it.
Lest you think I am exaggerating, let me tell you about the strange things that I have cried about in the last week:

1) I was talking with a friend who was concerned about some struggles their child was having. She started crying. So, I cried because she was crying.

2) I was talking with a teacher friend at school about a mutual child we were concerned about. I cried because he showed empathy and concern.

3) My mom’s closest sister is not doing well. I cried because she was sick, I cried because my mom was sad, AND I cried because my mom pulled on some crazy inner strength and was dealing with it very well.

4) The strangest – I cried because I saw a young lady, around 18 – 22 years old, walking with an elderly lady holding on to her arm, going into QuikTrip gas station. We walked in behind these women and stood close to them at the Slushie area. The young lady proceeded to read each and every flavor to the older lady, telling her the ingredients in each, as well as explaining what each different machine did; made drinks, icees, shakes, smoothies, coffee, etc. She let her pick out what she wanted and made it for her. As we stood next to each other getting lids, I told the young lady that seeing them together was one of the most heartwarming things I had seen. She thanked me and told me it was her great aunt. I then proceeded to tell her that she looked just like my aunt (see above) that was not doing so good. This girl then proceeded to tell me that she was so sorry and then gave me a hug. As soon as that happened, I started crying all over her. Of course, my children pick this exact time to come around the corner and see their overly emotional mom wrapped in the arms of a complete stranger and crying on her. The girls, knowing me the way that they do, just waited until we were done and we left. You know that you cry too much when something like this doesn’t even faze your children. J

So, while some of these were normal things to cry about, the QuikTrip thing is just ridiculous.

While I know some of you will say that this just means that I care about people, I seriously still think that I have got to get it under control. It is hard to ever deal with anything when all you can do is stand there and blubber. Imagine you wanting to confront someone who has been disrespectful to your children. How effective can you be while crying? Have you ever tried to be professional while crying? It doesn’t work.

Any suggestions on how to “toughen up?” Or at least enough to contain my crying until I am in a more appropriate place?

On another note, a couple of weeks ago, we sung this song at church:

I have heard this song before, but it never grabbed me until we sung it at church. We sing acapella (without instruments) at our church, and to me, that makes the songs much more powerful. It is just a room full of people singing with nothing else to focus on except the words. I personally like to close my eyes when we sing because then it feels like it is just me and God.

I encourage you to listen to this song and really pay attention to the words.

Oh, guess what I did when we sung it at church?

I cried. Big shocker there, huh?

Sign the guestbook and let me know you were here. If I don’t get a lot of signatures, I may just cry. Of course, if I get a lot of signatures, I will definitely cry. So, I will probably end up crying no matter what you do, but you can at least make it a happy cry. J

Hey - remember me??

2009-08-09T21:04:00.001-04:00

Wow, it has been a long time. Not sure if anyone still visits or not, but if so, I’m glad you’re here.

I kind of took a blogging break over the summer. I enjoyed my wonderful kiddos and my sweet hubby. Each summer I realize how little time I have left with my kids at home. J. is going into 10th grade this year and M. is starting 6th grade – Junior High!! I cannot believe they are that old. Nor can I believe that I am old enough to have children that old. I still believe that I am a decade younger than I am. It is always a big shock when I realize that I will be turning 40 in January instead of 30.

While we did not do anything extravagant this summer, we did get to spend some quality time together. We had day hours at the gym, which let us have the evenings all together, which will not happen during the school year.

Since I tend to be verbose, here is the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of our summer:

- J. got to go to church camp in Arkansas
- The girls got to gymnastics camp and train with the GA Gym Dawgs. They loved it!
- We got to spend some time at our family’s cabin in the mountains – our favorite place
- Vacation Bible School
- Anniversary trip with hubby to Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Cherokee
- Starting on the orthodontic road with M.
- My baby girl turning 12
- Drivers Ed. For J.
- J. getting a boot on her foot for tearing up a ligament/tendon and bone bruising
- Went to funerals for 3 different people
- NOT GIVING IN TO THE DEPRESSION MONSTER!!

The depression monster really tried to get me this summer as I had a lot of things hitting me all at once from many different locations. I really worked hard into not giving in, but it took everything in my power. While normally I have a very low sense of self worth, I was actually quite proud of myself for being able to hold it together this time. I have never had some of the things happen to me before that I had to deal with over the summer; nor have I ever been treated the way I was by some this summer. I got hurt very deeply while dealing with some stresses at my jobs as well as a lot of changes going on at church and at home. There were many nights that I cried myself to sleep, and many days that I hid in the bathroom and cried. There were many times that I could not stop thinking on all of the things that were going on. However, I NEVER gave up hope! This was due to many factors – good friends, good family, and a great God. I remembered all of the wonderful things my “online” friends and my “church” friends, and my “work” friends and my family have said to me along the way. I also remembered the promises that my Father in Heaven made me about never forsaking me and that if He led me to it, He would lead me through it.

I appreciate all of you sticking with me and for being such an important part of my life.
Also, you friends listed over there on the right of my page? I truly love you all and send my apologies for not visiting your sites lately. I kind of removed myself from the blog world for a little while. I did miss you all dearly and hope that I will be accepted back.
Now I am going to spend my last evening with my family before school starts.

Hug your family – you never know when it will be the last chance you get.

Those left behind have it the hardest

2009-07-10T20:55:00.002-04:00

If you have not read my last post, scroll down and read that one first.

Little Ryan was welcomed into heaven tonight by his mom Missy.

While Missy and Ryan are no longer in pain and are able to now be together without their longtime cancer companion, the rest of the family is left without their wife/mom and son/brother. They are now planning a double funeral.

Please stop and think about this for a minute. Can you even wrap your mind around that?

I beg you to stop by Ryan's site and leave this family words of encouragement.

I also ask that you get angry. Get angry at cancer. Why, with all of the advances we have made in cancer treatments, do we still have families that have to go through this? Why do our best treatments leave people with burns on their skin and poison flowing through their veins? Missy had a cancer that gets tons of research and funding. Ryan had a cancer that does not get tons of research and funding. Yet, they both had the same outcome. Cancer stinks. I loathe it and what it does to people.

The Morgan family did not deserve this. No family deserves this. Please remember them in the days to come.

Thanks for stopping by.

Ryan's site: www.superryan.blogspot.com

Why?

2009-07-09T18:30:00.003-04:00

For my first blog in a while, I had planned on coming on here to tell you the struggles we have had over the last month and how we were dealing with them.

Instead, I come to you begging you with all of my heart to pray for the Morgan family. Ryan is 10 years old and has been battling neuroblastoma since 2004. He has repeatedly fought long and hard with this monster that will not leave him alone. Last week, he was sent home on pain management as there is nothing left for them to do. To make things worse, Ryan's mom, Missy, was diagnosed with breast cancer in August of 2007. Last night, Missy lost her battle. Ryan is not doing well at all. Please, please, please, pray for Les as he lost the love of his life and is now on the verge of losing his little boy. Pray for Heidi and Will as they lost their mother and are watching their little brother get weaker.

Any "struggles" that I was having over the last month pale in comparison to what this family is dealing with.

To visit this family, click on the following link:

www.superryan.blogspot.com

Thanks to you all!

Mamasita

Irony, Gratefulness, and Prayer Request

2009-05-03T23:06:00.003-04:00

First off, the irony. I wrote a lot of random things in my last post. One of those items was my wonder if my children would grow up to be strong Christian women. I also wondered how I would feel if they did NOT, would I still love them? I think I have my answer. It is a resounding YES.

The very night that I posted this, there was a crisis beginning in another family. Friday morning, things looked really bad for this family. Friday night, however, brought unimaginable heartache to two different families. I will not go into much detail here out of respect for both families. These 2 families lives will never ever be the same.

The gratefulness is for my church family. One of the families involved is an integral part of our church. There are many generations of this family that attend as well as extended family members. This morning, our entire church service was devoted to prayers for this family as well as covering scripture that reflected on grace and mercy and forgiveness. The songs chosen focused on the same themes. This family was all sitting in church. Things could have been so different. The church could have turned their back on them for having a family member that made such a grave error in judgement. The family could have hidden out at home rather than face the questioning looks and possible inappropriate words of others. Instead, they knew that they were loved and would be held up by those that love them. The church surrounded them with love and prayers. They stood firm on the scripture that states that ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God as well as the fact that God's grace is sufficient for ALL and that Jesus died for ALL of our sins.

Is our church perfect? No. But if myself or any of my loved ones stumble and fall far away from God, I have decided that this church is the one I want to "have my back."

My prayer request is for both of the families involved in this tragedy. Both families have many unanswered questions; questions we may never know the answer to. While most prayers are usually always with the victims in any situation, I beg of you to pray for the parties on both sides, they are all hurting and need as many prayers as you can spare.

I may never post more details about this situation, I don't know. I also know that this is quite the cryptic post. I just ask for you to love those around you. You never know when it may be the last time you see them. I ask you to always remember that everyone you see is someone's son or daughter and that they are loved. I beg you to show others the grace you would want shown to you.

Thank you for your time.

Seinfeld-esque

2009-05-01T09:21:00.002-04:00

Did you ever watch the TV show Seinfeld? If not, it was the show about nothing. That is kind of how this post is going to be – a lot of nothings with no point whatsoever.

My blog buddy Natalie did something similar to this and I really enjoyed reading it. I am going to piggyback on her idea, with a few changes. Most of these are hypothetical questions that I don’t expect an answer to in this lifetime. Others are just things that stress me out and keep me up at night.

I am doing this for 2 reasons: I haven’t had a minute to put together a coherent entry. Out of the 4 computers in our house, only one is both working and accessible right now. Of course, it is the one computer that I don’t have any of my pictures on. With all of us fighting over the computer, my turn doesn’t last long.

Anyway, here goes.

Why do people on a multi lane highway drive the same speed as the car next to them? That creates a wall in which no one can get around. Why can’t they either speed up or slow down and/or change lanes? It’s not that hard.

Why do people think it is okay for them to turn left into the school entrance that says “No left turn?”

Why are people disrespectful to my kid(s) in front of other people and then deny it? Especially when a whole room full of people can hear it?

Why do networks find it necessary to put so much language and sexual stuff in shows that otherwise would be great shows that we could watch as a family?

Why am I so talented at having things get mangled somewhere between my brain and my mouth? Things sound so different in my head.

It bothers me that I may have to take anti-depressants my entire life.

I wonder if I will ever “get it together.”

Will I ever get enough sleep so that I am not always so tired?

When we get to heaven, will we be forever the age we were when we died?

Will we recognize each other in heaven?

Why can people make decisions that affect other people without conferring with those affected?

Will I ever be happy with myself?

Why do I have so many strange quirks? Can I make them go away? I don’t want to have issues with certain sounds and textures.

Will my kids grow up to be wonderful Christian women?

If they don’t, will I still be able to show unconditional love and acceptance?

Will I ever be able to find the movie Pure Luck on DVD?

Why have they not found more cures and treatments for cancer, especially childhood cancers?

Will I ever be caught up on laundry and house cleaning?

Why do my grey hairs all grow in the same spot?

How did I get so blessed to have such great blog friends, a handful of awesome friends that I see on a regular basis, a husband who loves me as well as likes me, and two amazing kids???

How was that for a post about nothing?
Leave me some comments and let me know some of the things you ponder.

As always, thanks for stopping by. Hopefully soon I will post a blog about an actual topic. Or with some pictures. Or at least a coherent thought. If it is a good day, maybe all three will appear in the same entry. Who knows???

My "other" girls

2009-04-19T21:06:00.003-04:00

As some of you may know, I coach a level 3 gymnastics team. We had our state meet this weekend. They finished 8^th in the state, out of more than 30 gyms. YAY!!

While I am excited about how well that they placed, that is not the point of my entry today. As their season comes to a close, I look back at some of my favorite memories, both of the season and of the state meet.

As I look back on all this time together, I have decided that I am too much of a softie to ever lead a cut-throat, unbeatable team. What has touched me the most has not been high scores and 1^st places. It has been watching them grow and mature and become a “team.”

They came in as a bunch of scared and nervous girls. Now they are friends and supporters. I have seen my girls hug each other when they learn a new skill. I have heard them cheer each other on when they see one of their own struggling. I have had them jump up and do the “stay on the beam” dance when one struggles to stay on the beam. I have had them crawl in my lap and snuggle. I have had them wrap around my legs when I am walking. I have seen them holding hands with each other while they are getting instructions.

I am more proud of my girls for their actions at the meet than if they would have come out in 1^st place, but without their wonderful personalities.

Let me tell you a couple of excerpts from the meet so that you can see what amazing young girls that I have.

When we were at the bars and some of the girls would get to a skill that they had been struggling with, I would hear them quietly cheer, “YES” when their teammate made their skill. They came and sat next to me during beam because they knew that I needed to hold on to someone when the girls are doing their handstands on beam. They let me hold their arm or leg. (There was once that I accidentally grabbed the leg of the girl that was the timer for beam, but that is another story for another day.) They did a modified “stay on the beam” dance with me while their teammates were doing their handstands and leaps. They cheered their teammates loudly, they told them good job and high fived them no matter if they stuck their routines or not. They were able to shake off a bad event and not take it with them to the next event. They made me and their other coach so very proud and we love them dearly.

The rest of the season will be spent training them for the next level, learning new “fun” skills and getting them ready for their new level and new coaches.

I am going to be sad to see them go, but proud to see them progress. It is almost like having kids. You have to give them roots before they can grow wings. Whether these girls stay in gymnastics or not, I hope that they remember the lessons they have learned and the coaches that loved them.

So, obviously I do not have what it takes to make these girls be state champions that will always outscore everyone else. That would take someone much tougher than I am. Someone who does not get teary eyed when they are crying during conditioning. Someone who does not think one of the best parts of practice is getting the hugs at the end of practice. Someone who does not feel so honored when they want to come sit in my lap or lay their head on my shoulder. Maybe one day, I will be “tougher.” For now though, I am going to enjoy the ride and the joy that comes with it.

As always, leave me a comment (click the word "comment" below) and let me know you were here.

Pictures, gymnastics, and more

2009-04-16T07:57:00.007-04:00

Sorry for the delay in posting. March and April are insane months for us. For March, we had gym meets the first and second weekends, then a retreat from church the 3rd weekend. In April, J. had her state gymnastics meet the first weekend. She did awesome! She came in 5th All Around with a score of 36.075. (A perfect score would be a 40 - which would be a 10 on each event.)

She has had an ongoing series of knee and ankle injuries lately. The last one being that she landing a tumbling pass on the side of her foot, with her ankle rolled under. It had a huge knot on it and turned many beautiful Easter colors; purple, blue, yellow, and green. The colors were nice and vivid around her ankle and faded as it extended to her toes. She went and saw our athletic trainer here at school every day for a week and a half and he would do some kind of e-stim boot therapy on it. We were really hoping she would heal in time to compete at state. She was hurting afterwards, but was able to do all 4 events.

She got 5th on vault with a 9.4. Third place on bars with a 9.175. 9th on beam with an 8.5, and 11th on floor with a 9.00. I am so proud of her!

I am more proud of the fact that she did so much to help herself heal quickly and kept working through the pain. This is what makes a gymnast - not the scores, not the placings at awards. These girls work out 18 hours a week, go to school for 35 hours a week, keep up their grades, and do their chores. For some, they are quite active in church. They are usually leaders among their friends. When they are hurt, they push through it. I can personally say that there have been times where my daughter has saran wrapped ice bags to herself so that she can still work out. She has gone in the bathroom and thrown up for one reason or another (sinus drainage, stress, etc - nothing contagious) and then has gone back out to the floor and finished whatever skills she was working on. She competed twice last year with a fractured shin. She has come home from practice and has had to have had help getting up the stairs because she is hurting. She is not a rarity in the gymnastics world by any means. They are all this way. We had one girl still coming to practice with a stress fracture in her spine - she thought she just had a backache. I have seen several girls doing conditioning with ice bags saran wrapped to their knees. I have seen girls coming in and doing just conditioning when they have a cast on. When they fall off of the beam or bars, they get back up immediately and do the same skill again and again so that they don't develop a fear. I have seen them get hurt in the middle of a routine, finish the routine, and then not be able to get back up afterwards. They have a work ethic like I have never seen before in kids. They do their homework and dinner in the car on gym days. Yet, when they take a couple of days off, they miss being there. Since it is not a seasonal sport, they have these hours all year long, so the literally only get days off a year, not weeks.

Anyway, enough talking. Here are some pics from the last couple of meets. Keep in mind that you can not use a flash, the action is quite rapid, and the lighting is flourescent. None of which allows for optimum pictures.

Here is J. and her friend A. getting ready to compete at state. These are two of the most amazing young ladies:

J. doing her favorite event.

J. doing her least favorite event:

J. and A. holding the team banner. The team came in 7th! Yay!

M. had a meet the same weekend. She got her first 9 on beam. Look at those pointed toes!

M. on bars. She is such a flexible person that she has to really focus on staying tight. She looks so much better on bars since she has learned how to focus on that:

This pictures look a little better as the lighting was a little better. Here is J. hitting her handstand on the bar:

Look - her heels are together! YAY! (Since she is pigeon toed, this is a big struggle for her.)

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the pics. The photographer at state got some really good pics, I will post them when I get them.

My team has state meet this coming weekend. I am so excited and nervous for them!

The next weekend, M. has her state meet.

Then, we are done competing for a few months and will work on training for the next level.

We went to the mountains over spring break and I am working on an update that will have "prettier" pictures for those of you that are not into the gymnastics stuff. I forget that other people have a life that does not revolve around gymnastics schedules.

**For those of you that get email updates - I'm sure that you noticed that you only got the title of the blog and a link to get here instead of the full entry. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. There were several reasons for this. I realized that for people that do NOT visit the actual site, you and I both were missing out on some things. You would not get to see any pictures that I place on the blog template. You also would not get to see my blogroll on the side. Those sites are absolutely wonderful and I encourage you to visit them. Also, for you guys that don't blog, something you may not know: Bloggers LOVE for their hit counter to go up. We also love to get comments. We like to know you were here. There is nothing more rewarding for a blogger than to see and read that people were here - another reason to visit my cyber-friends on the side over there.**

As usual, thank you for stopping by!

Very disturbing entry - also quite useless

2009-03-31T08:28:00.004-04:00

This is probably the strangest and most useless blog entry that has ever been posted. As a matter of fact you may want to stop reading now, because what follows is quite disturbing.

Let me set the stage. For those of you that know me, you know that I have a LOT of hair. I also have a lot of weird issues. One of my weird issues is my wet hair touching me. So, the other day after my shower, I was blow-drying the ends of my hair so that it would not drip on me (I am cringing just typing it – ewwww.) Anyway, I was leaning far to one side so that all of my hair was hanging down in the air and not on my back. I then leaned a little forward. While blow-drying my hair, I happened to look in the mirror and noticed something quite strange and frankly downright frightening. I noticed that gravity was not my friend.

My face looked quite strange. It actually looked like it was melting. I was leaning to the left while using the dryer. The left side of my face looked like it was stretched realllllly far and the right side of my face was all bunched up at my eye. After I got over the sheer terror of realizing that was MY face, I became interested to see what would happen as I moved around. Unfortunately, I discovered that it was not just that one position. As I leaned further over and forward and backward, my face continued to morph into unrecognizability.

I knew that as you aged, your skin lost elasticity and have even noticed it around my eyes. However, NOTHING could have prepared me for what just happened. I am still in my 30’s! Not by much, but I am holding on to the 30’s with dear life. I forget quite often how old I am. I don’t think I will forget any more, though, as that image is indelibly etched in my brain.

I am still going back and forth between being mortified and morbidly fascinated. I keep finding myself in front of the mirror leaning over in different ways.

Now, I am going to be curious as to which of you go and try this when no one is looking. Let me know if you discover strange contortions of your face. If you try it and nothing changes in your face – well then PHHHHTTT. Just kidding, it will happen soon enough.

You may wonder why in the world I posted something like this. My reasons are two fold – one, it gives everyone fodder for teasing me with, as if you needed more ammunition. Two, it gave me a chance to use my new Mac book and see how well it works with blogger.

Thanks for reading this absolutely pointless entry.

Teenage epiphany

2009-03-20T08:10:00.003-04:00

To clarify at the beginning, this is an epiphany that my teenage daughter had. NOT an epiphany that I had about teenagers. I'm still waiting on that to happen.

As you saw in my last post, J. was baptized earlier this month. Before that, she obviously had been doing a lot of thinking. One night, she came to me and said this:

'You know that phrase that you hear people say - "God is Love?' (I John 4:8) Well, you hear it a lot but don't ever think about it. If you do, it is kind of hard to make that phrase make sense. So I started thinking about it. Then I thought of that passage in the bible that says "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." (I Corinthians 13) If God is love, then you could say that God equals love. So, you could go through this passage and replace the word "love" with "God." That would make the "God is love" phrase make a lot more sense. '

I was blown away! I had never thought of this in this fashion before. It got me to thinking more about it.

Here is how that passage would read with the replacements made:

GOD is patient

GOD is kind

[GOD] does not envy

[GOD] does not boast

[GOD] is not proud

[GOD] is not rude

[GOD] is not self-seeking

[GOD] is not easily angered

[GOD] keeps no record of wrongs

GOD does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth

[GOD] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
GOD never fails

That is powerful stuff in my opinion.

If you look at this passage in The Message translation, the sentence that precedes the passages states, "So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love." Again, if you replace love with "God," it is right on target again.

This has been floating around in my head for the last couple of weeks since she said it. It has really got me thinking. I wonder if this thought went through the authors head when he wrote these words?

Irregardless, it got my teenagers thought processes going in an awesome direction - there are a LOT worse things that she could be thinking about!

Thank you for stopping by and reading.

I do want to ask 2 favors from you:

1) Please visit my friends on the right sidebar over there. Many of them are going through a lot right now and some kind words would go a long way. Just don't leave me for them. They are much more talented writers than I am and lead much more exciting lives than I do. You will enjoy their sites more than mine, I promise. But remember how insecure I am and still come back and visit me, please??????

2) Leave me a comment and let me know you were here. You don't have to say anything other than "I was here." I just like to know I am not alone. Plus, it helps my insecurity issues when I look at my blog and see that I have comments posted. :-)

Marching forth on March Fourth!

2009-03-05T08:19:00.015-05:00

What a happy, happy time! My oldest daughter, J., got baptized Wednesday night!

(As stated when M. got baptized in July, I am not wanting to start a theological debate or anything. I just want you readers to understand what baptism means to us:

The word baptize comes from the Greek word "baptizo" and literally means, "to dip, to immerse, to plunge." In addition to the literal meaning of the word, immersion is practiced because it was the practice of the church in apostolic times. Still further, only immersion conforms to the description of baptisms as given by the apostle Paul in Romans 6:3-5 where he speaks of it as a burial and resurrection.

We believe that baptism by immersion is a necessary response of faith to God’s free grace. It is not a work we do to earn God’s favor, but rather, a work God does for us."We see this as one of the steps necessary to becoming a Christian - giving your life to God.)

Okay, now back to the pictures. For those of you that are not from the same religion as us, I will have a running commentary on what is going on with each of the pictures. For those of you that were there, or know what is going on, feel free to just look at the pictures if you want.

Here is the excited Dad, waiting on J. to get ready:

Here is our good friend V.T. getting the baptistry ready. By getting it ready, I mean removing the foam rocket that had mistakenly and mysteriously landed in the baptistry earlier.

My sweet M. and our "adopted" sister B.B. She bridges J. and M. together nicely, don't you think? With her blue eyes like M. and dark hair like J., she blends right in.

Friends waiting on J. (There was a lot of waiting on J.)

Behind the scenes: J., MM., KJ., and CT:

I absolutely LOVE this picture. The kids are being led in prayer by one of our youth ministers.

Here we go!

J. realizing that the water is really cold:

Before I go any farther, I have a couple of disclaimers to throw in. When I was young, it seemed to always be the minister who did the baptizing. I have observed that more and more people are choosing to be baptized by someone who has been a big influence on them spiritually. J. and CT, the young man in the picture, have been talking a lot lately about Christianity, life as a teenager, being spiritual leaders, etc. They are not "dating" or "going out" or whatever the term is these days. J. calls him her big brother and he calls her his little sister. I didn't want any inaccurate beliefs about them to be floating around making either of them uncomfortable.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program. Again.

Here, CT is asking J if she believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that he died for her sins.

Based on her agreement and confession of her belief, she is baptized:

Lest you think I wasn't there, here is proof. My left hand is holding on to J.'s hand.

Notice KJ's expression? J had just slipped coming up the steps. She is a true gymnast.

I LOVE this picture. I love these girls. I love this picture of these girls.

The "hugging" aftermath:

We are all so very thankful to you that were there in person, those that have prayed for any of us in the past, and those of you that will pray for us in the future.

Please continue to pray that we will be able to be good parents to our daughters and that we will raise them to be strong Christian women.

As always, leave us a note in the guestbook to let us know you were here!

(Instructions for newbies: click on "comments" below. Type your comment in the space provided, then provide your identity by clicking on "Anonymous" unless you you are a fellow blogger/have a google account, or fit one of the other ID types listed. If you click as anonymous, be sure to sign your name to your post.)

Dinner with royalty and more roller coasters

2009-03-02T16:39:00.016-05:00

Last weekend was quite amazing - I got to do something really cool! I got to have dinner with royalty! The Sarah Smith crew were in town picking their son up from the airport, and several of us fellow Sarah followers met them for dinner. It was so much fun! Besides myself and the Smith's, Pam D and Vicki were there. I took my 2 girls and they chatted with Sarah the whole time. Sarah is right in the middle age wise of my girls. Pam and I discovered that not only are we from the same home town, we are from the same denomination of church. She actually goes to church with M.'s teacher! Vicki brought her 2 adorable little boys. They were so well behaved, and so so so cute! It was kind of weird in that we all knew so much about Sarah and her family, yet we had never met each other face to face. The restaurant was very nice to us and was quite interested in the whole situation. If you click on Sarah and Pam's names above where they are highlighted, you can read their version of the night. Since they are much better writers than I am, you will be much more entertained there than you are here, I promise.

Here are some pictures from that night:

Sarah and the adorable guard dog, Snowy:

The 3 blogging ladies, Pam D, Becky Smith, and myself:

J., Sarah, and M.

The whole gang, starting at the left and going around: Steve Smith, Pam D., myself, M., J, Sarah Smith, Becky Smith, Vicki, her beautiful boys and her husband, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Becky's son Nathan called to let her know his ETA back in the states. Notice the smile and the eyes glowing:

How cute is this little guy?

Sarah trying her first fried pickles. She is being quite brave here because she does not like pickles.

The men pretty much had their own conversation going:

Bravely trying an olive for the first time:

Knowing we were meeting in downtown, we were a little nervous as to what kind of restaurant we would end up with, but it proved to be quite nice:

Even if the decorations hanging from the ceiling were a little, um, strange. These were hanging right above the girls' heads. They kept looking up uncertainly, hoping they would stay suspended and not come crashing down on their heads.

Sunday brought a whole new set of emotions as the kids at church were told that their youth ministers are leaving. There were so many tears and so much anger. I worry over how the kids will get past this. So many of them have deep relationships with one of the youth ministers or with the other, or both. It is hard to understand emotionally. However, the leaders felt this was best for the kids as a whole. While I trust our elders, as I stated earlier, I wish all would have been handled a little differently. Hindsight is truly 20/20. We must remember to keep our focus on God and on continuing the legacy started by our youth ministers. Now is the time to start healing and start looking forward.

Also, during this past week, another friend of ours, Kristie, got some horrible news about her husband and his ongoing battle with cancer. This family has been dealt a "crap sandwich," as they put it, over and over again. Please go visit them and leave them some words of encouragement.

This weekend found quite a bit of snow in our area. We actually had a snow day today! The funny thing is that the temperature for this coming Saturday is supposed to be 70 degrees. Go figure.

Here a few snow pics:

So, this post was quite a potpourri of topics. Hope you stuck with it and weren't too bored.

Thank you for stopping by.

Let me know you were here.

Dire prayers needed for a dear friend

2009-02-26T23:39:00.002-05:00

This family has been served yet another helping of a "crap sandwich," as they call it.

Please visit this family and leave them some words of encouragement.

Please storm heaven with prayers for this family.

(If you are easily offended by foul language, be forwarned that you will run into some while reading her post. However, they are at a point where harsh language is all that is left to describe what they are going through.)

Thank you in advance for visiting and praying for this family.

I thought that I liked roller coasters . . . .

2009-02-20T10:14:00.003-05:00

As I have stated before, comparing life to a roller coaster ride is quite an accurate analogy. The nervousness and tenseness over what is coming, the fear as it gets closer, the desire to turn around and get off as you crest, the terror and thrill as you plummet, the amazement that you survived after the descent, the wonderment if you can handle it again as a new climb begins, and finally, exultation at the end that you survived it and could survive it again.

This past week has been one of those roller coaster rides. There were so many emotions that were experienced this week that it has left us a little dazed.

We had 3 gymnastics meets this weekend. (Don't worry, the whole post isn't about gymnastics.) The team that I coach had their very first meet ever. This was also my first meet as a team coach. I was nervous for myself and each of my 15 girls. However, they all did such an amazing job and came in 2nd place as a team! Woo-hoo! My own daughters each competed this weekend as well. M. scored a 9.5 on vault! It was a beautiful vault. She also brought her all around score up by around 2 points from her first meet. (When scores are measured by tenths of points, a 2 point change is quite an improvement.) Her team came in second place as well. Their team score came up by about 5 points from their last meet, which is incredible. J. scored her highest all-around score ever! Her team came in first place, by about 5 points. So, all in all, an incredible weekend gymnastics wise.

However, in the midst of all of this, we got hit with several not so wonderful things. I really cannot go into much detail of the exact circumstance. Even if I did so, it would not do an accurate job conveying the emotions involved. I can say that it struck our foundation really hard. I will try to use a hypothetical situation to help everyone understand. Think of something that is a vital part of your life or someone in your immediate family's life. It could be a job, school, church, a group of friends, a support group, or something like that. Now, imagine that you all of a sudden found out that it was no longer going to be the same. Imagine that it was going to change so drastically that it scared you. If it is your job that you are thinking of, imagine if someone in headquarters was going to revamp your whole department, and your favorite boss or mentor was no longer going to be there. Granted, there are reasons for this decision, whether you agree with them or not. However, you struggle because the people making the decision are basing their decision on what they feel is best for a department that they are not a part of. If you work in the department, you will see this decision completely differently than those that are not as emotionally involved. You also know how the news will be received by those affected. You know that it should have been handled differently. They know it too, but they realized it too late.

You know that there had to be a legitimate reason for the decision. You have to trust that those in charge know what they are doing. You have to have faith that they are looking out for those they are leading. You have to accept what has happened, maybe not quietly, but you have to accept it. You have to. Or else you will self destruct. You have to believe that the entity that is such a strong part of your life will still be there for you. You have to realize that those involved are humans, and that you must have grace.

The hard part is watching your child cry herself to sleep at night. It is hard watching her friends cry. It is hard to see them go through so much inner turmoil - more than they normally go through. It is hard seeing the fear in your child's eyes because they don't know what is going to happen next. It is hard to explain to them that there may be something good that comes from this. It is hard to know that they feel unimportant. It is just hard.

I am at the point on the roller coaster ride where I want to get off. This isn't fun anymore. I want to go back to 2 weeks ago when my kids were happy. When they felt important and loved. When they felt like their opinions mattered to others. However, I know that this isn't possible.

I know that all decisions cannot be based on what we want. I know that these things happen and I cannot change them. I also know at the end, when this ride is over, I will feel exultant to have survived, as will my children. I will feel a little better prepared for the next ride. I am starting to see some of the "good" already. I see my oldest daughter deciding to step up and be a leader to help some of the other kids who are upset and scared. She and several of her other friends talked and decided to step up together to help with this. I see other teenagers so affected by emotion that I know they will never be the same. They will be more approachable and more appreciative. I believe this will force some of the kids affected to take more control of themselves. I wonder if some of them may have gotten too dependant or too comfortable in their comfort zone. This may open some of their eyes to the fact that they alone control their lives. I see people showing passion that before were kind of lackadaisical. Passion, whether positive or negative, is much more effective than nonchalance. Passion shows care. Used properly, it can be a very powerful tool. I see more parents becoming involved. I see leaders realizing that decisions on paper and decisions in real life are two different things.

So, am I happy about these events? No, absolutely not.

Do I think that it is what is best? For my family, no, definitely not. As a whole? I'm not sure yet.

Do I think good can come out of this? Yes

Am I scared of the changes? No. I am terrified.

Do I trust those that made the decision? Yes

Am I a barrel of contradictions? Yes and no. :-)

Do I believe that God will help guide us through? Oh yes!

So, if you have read to the end, kudos to you. It probably makes no sense whatsoever. I just needed to get it all out.

Thank you for listening. I would love to hear how any of you have dealt with unforeseen life-altering events. I want it all - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Where in the world are you?

2009-02-10T10:53:00.006-05:00

As usual, our minister Jody, got my wheels turning this weekend.

Have you ever thought about the demographics of our planet? It has crossed my mind, but I have not really dwelt on it much.

Have you ever really thought about the difference between how those of us that live in America versus those that do NOT live in America? Again, I have thought about it. I’m sure you fellow Americans have thought about it as well.

Have you ever gotten frustrated that you could not get in touch with someone because they did not read their email often enough? (Yes for me.) What about ones that did not even have email? (Oh my goodness yes.) And the ones that don’t answer their cell phones? (Um, certainly.) How about those that don’t even have cell phones? (Yes, yes, yes!) Do you ever find it hard to believe that there are people in the world that don’t have email or cell phones? (Resounding YES from me, again.)

Well, our minister mentioned a website called 100 people. They took the worlds demographics and converted them into numbers we can wrap our minds around. Look at this:

If the World were 100 PEOPLE:

50 would be female

50 would be male

5 would be from North America

9 would be from Latin America & the Caribbean

12 would be from Europe

61 would be from Asia

13 would be from Africa

31 would be Christian

21 would be Muslim

14 would be Hindu

6 would be Buddhist

12 would believe in other religions

16 would not be religious or identify themselves as being aligned with a particular faith

17 would speak Chinese

8 would speak Hindustani

8 would speak English

7 would speak Spanish

4 would speak Arabic

4 would speak Russian

3 would speak Bengali

2 would speak Malay-Indonesian

2 would speak French

45 would speak other languages

82 would be able to read and write

18 would not

76 males would have a primary school education

72 females would have a primary school education

66 males would have a secondary school education

63 females would have a secondary school education

1 would have a college education

83 would have access to safe drinking water

17 would use unimproved water

17 would be undernourished

53 would live on less than 2USD per day

50 would live in poverty

76 would have electricity

24 would not

34 would be cell phone subscribers

17 would be active internet users

1 would own a computer

A similar website had the following statistics:
18 would be white
82 would be non-white
89 would be hetero sexual
11 would be homosexual
5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth, and all of them would be US citizens
80 would live in substandard housing
24 would not have any electricity

So, apparently, I am quite the minority. I am a white Christian female with a college education, I speak English, I have a cell phone and access to the internet, and I do not live in poverty.

I live in one of the most affluent counties in my state. We live paycheck to paycheck and often feel inadequate around our more affluential friends and neighbors. This list helped me to realize that, truly, I am “rich” by the majority of the world’s standards.

While my head has known this fact for a while, the numbers broken down this way really helped me to get my mind around it.

The challenge I am issuing to myself, and to you, is this: What are we going to do with this knowledge? Do we try to introduce Jesus to those that don’t know him? Do we try to get drinking water to those that thirst? Do we try to get food to those that hunger? Do we try to teach those that cannot read? These seem like overwhelming tasks for you or me.

There are people who have devoted their lives to helping these people. If you are a member of a church, you probably support missionaries. Increasing your giving to church will help support those that are already out there working on these issues.

If you are not sure what to do about this, prayers for guidance and clarity are always beneficial for the person praying and for the issues and people being prayed for.

**I am not asking you to become a missionary or to sell all that you have to try to change the world. I just want to strike a chord within your heart. If we all changed our way of thinking just the tiniest bit, we could change the world. Compassion and generosity are contagious. If you display these traits, those around you will start trying to be the same. If you impart these traits on to your children, it will spread even faster. I wonder how long it would take to change the world?

Again, thank you for reading my ramblings!

Let me know you were here! I love to know that I am not talking to myself. Also, look through some of my previous comments and pay some of my visitors a visit as well.

Gymnastics pictures

2009-02-01T17:16:00.014-05:00

Well, competition season has started. J. has had 2 meets and M. has had one. Below are a few pictures from their meets.

Before I get any harrassing comments on my pictures, let me provide the following caveats:

* All of the pictures are taken inside a gym

* Lighting inside gyms is not conducive to picture taking - think flourescent bulbs

* You cannot use a flash while taking pictures at a gymnastics meet.

Therefore, the pictures are not great. Some of them are not even very good. Some of them are outright bad. These are the best of the lot, though.

If any of you have any suggestions on how to improve these pictures, please let me know!

Thanks.

Here is J's dismount off of the beam:

Split leap on the beam:

The bars are her best event. Below is her handstand on the high bar:

Part of her floor routine:

Back tuck in floor routine:

M. in the middle of her tumbling pass at her first meet:

Split leap:

Not really an exciting picture as far as action goes, but it turned out well. This is during the dance part of her floor routine:

Dismount on beam:

Scale:

In dance portion of beam routine:

Preparing for 1/2 turn:

Rebound:

Stretching out:

So, if you are not a close family friend or a gymnast, these are probably not that exciting to you. However, it is the icing part of a gymnasts life.

If you have never been involved in gymnastics, it is hard to understand. I am working on a post to tell you what the life of a gymnast and their family is like. Here is a quick snapshot:

J - 18 hours of practice a week

M - 9 hours of practice a week

This is every week. There is no off season. The girls get 1 week off a year. There is anywhere from 30 - 60 minutes of conditioning in each practice. This is hard work - and the meets are where they get ONE CHANCE to show off what they can do, so it is a pretty big deal to them.

Here are their stats from their first meet:

J: - 1st on all 4 events and 1st All-Around with team placing 1st

M: - 1st on vault, tie for 1st on floor, 3rd on bars, 2nd on beam, and 2nd all-around with team placing 2nd.

At J's second meet, she placed 1st on vault, 2nd on bars, 3rd on floor, and 4th all around with the team placing 1st.

This past weekend was homecoming at our school, so I will be posting some pictures from there soon.

Don't forget to leave me a note and let me know you were here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Democrat or Repulican?

2009-01-26T10:28:00.005-05:00

I am not a very politically minded person. I have never gotten too involved with it beyond the surface. Therefore, I feel a little inept during political conversations. I find it fascinating that people that ARE politically minded know so much about the process as well as the people involved.

So, for my personal education ONLY - not to start any political debate, I ask the following questions:

1) Are you a repulican, democrat, liberal, or some other party? Have you always affiliated with this party?

2) Do you tend to stay in your decided party when you are voting? Or does it depend on the candidate?

3) What are the traits that you look at to decide what party you want to affliate with?

4) Tell me 3 positive things about your party.

RULES:

1) You do not have to answer all of the questions
2) Post your answers in the guestbook
3) This is a FRIENDLY survey - for my education only, and possibly to educate others
4) Please only tell me positives about your party - do NOT say negatives or bash any other party or any person that does not agree with you and yours

If there is one thing that I have learned over the years is that there is always more to learn. I don't believe in being so closed minded that nothing else can come into my brain, nor do I believe in being so open minded that my brains fall out. No matter what my stand is on something, I do like to hear opinions that vary from mine. More times than not, I find myself seeing that there are things that I did not know or did not understand that make me more understanding of how others think and why they think the way that they do.

I hope that this does not turn into an ugly discussion, please keep it friendly.

I will start and answer the questions myself.

I am a Republican because they tend to be a little more conservative in the areas that I am a little more conservative. I tend to stay within my party when I vote, but am willing to look at the individual candidate - there are things I agree with on each party. As I stated, I don't normally get too involved with politics, so I tend to look at just a few things when deciding on a candidate. The stand on abortion is a big one for me because I see that as an indicator on how their view is on human life. Is that a foolproof way to decide? No, it is not. Could someone believe in abortion and still value the unborn child? I suppose that they could. My point is that MY PERSONAL BELIEFS on abortion tend to mesh better with the Republican party. However, my stand on Stem Cell studies tends to mesh better with the Democrat party. This may seem like an oxymoron to many. I feel that embryos that ARE ALREADY ON THE WAY TO BEING DESTROYED THROUGH THE DECISION OF THE PARENTS can be used to hopefully find ways to cure other children of terminal genetic diseases. From what I have learned from my research, embryonic stem cells come only from parents wishing to destroy remaining embryos that they may have - NOT from wanted embryos.

So, I can see positives for each party. I would like to learn more though. I tend to learn more by hearing from other people - not the politicians themselves.

(BTW - just because I am a Repulican does not mean that I support 100 percent everything Bush did and everything the McCain planned. NOR does it mean that I am totally against Obama. I believe both candidates had a lot to bring to the table, but I was not completely comfortable with either one of them. Does that make any sense?)

Anyway, I look forward to hearing from everyone - hopefully from all party affiliations.

If you have never posted in the guestbook before, it is easy. Just click on "Comments" at the bottom of this post. Then, on the screen that pops up, type your comments in the box. Underneath, pick your ID - if you are not a blogger, do not have open ID or a URL of your own, click "Anonymous." If you do click anonymous, be sure to sign your post so that I know who you are. :-)

Challenges - For Me AND For You

2009-01-12T11:17:00.003-05:00

** As always, my posts are wordy. Sorry. If you just want to see the challenge I am issuing to YOU - scroll down and look for the next set of asterisks. **

Here it is the week of my last birthday in my 30’s. As is every birthday, it causes me to reflect on where I am, where I've been, and where I want to be.
I have decided that I am going to show the depression monster that would normally show up at a time like this that I, indeed, am stronger than it is through Christ which strengthens me.

I could focus on the fact that we always seem to be short on money, but instead, I choose to focus on the fact that we always seem to have enough to cover our needs. We may not get paid a lot at any of our jobs, but we have 3 jobs between the two of us when there are those out there that do not know if they will have a job tomorrow. Our girls have learned to differentiate between needs and wants through us having to really think through our purchases.

I could focus on the fact that our girls’ school and gymnastics tuition is a stretch to cover. I choose to focus on the fact that we are blessed enough that I am able to work at both the school and the gym to help offset those bills. This also allows me an insight to my daughters’ lives that most parents don’t have the privilege of seeing. I get to see my daughters at any time of the day if I need to. I see their friends and know their teachers and coaches.

I could lament the fact that we do not have much family time together due to our gym schedule. However, I choose to see that my family is strong enough to survive the hectic schedule that we have. I rejoice in the fact that both of my daughters love the same sport and that we don’t have different sports for different seasons. Our schedule stays the same for the entire school year. I love the fact that because my kids put a lot of time into their sport, that they appreciate hard work and discipline. They have learned to be good sports and have developed an intense work ethic. Not many kids can put in the hours that they do and still have the grades that they do. They are more discerning about what they do with their free time since they have so little of it. They still enjoy spending time with the rest of the family because it is such a novelty.

It does make me sad that I don’t get to see the rest of my family more than I do. But, I have 2 parents that have been married for almost 50 years. I have a sister that has devoted her life to being a good mom, sister, aunt, and grand-ma. She works gazillions of hours without ever taking a day off so that she can take care of whatever is needed. She has 3 kids who are all very different, but all very wonderful. I know that they all love me and my kids and hope that they know that we love all of them very much. I have great in-laws that I get along with. I have a husband who loves his in-laws and who is loved by them. We are blessed to have that.

I could be sad about getting older, but I am rejoicing that I am still alive and healthy.

I could be sad that I/we still don’t “have it together” like I envisioned 10 years ago, but I am rejoicing that we have provided a loving, stable family for our girls and that our marriage is still going strong.

** So, my challenge for you is this: I want you to sign the guestbook and tell me either some bits of wisdom you have learned over the years, your favorite birthday present or your favorite birthday memory, or something that you are thankful for that may not at first have seemed like a blessing. My birthday present for myself will be to see how many comments that I can get from you guys answering these questions. I don’t want birthday wishes for myself, but insight into you guys out there and hopefully to gain some wisdom for myself. **

Thank you for stopping by and reading my always wordy posts.

I can't believe it happened . . . .

2009-01-06T14:12:00.005-05:00

Alas! Woe is me! You will never guess what has happened in the very short time frame of 2 ½ weeks. I became spoiled. Life will never be the same again. I will long for the the “spoiling era” for weeks to come. For months. For years.

Let me explain. For those of you that know me personally, this will not be news to you, but look below at my normal weekly schedule when it is NOT Christmas break:)

Monday

6:00 a.m. – wake up
7:00 a.m. – leave for work/school
7:30 a.m. – arrive at work/school – work straight through until 3:05
3:10 p.m. – leave to come home
3:30 p.m. – arrive home
3:30 – 4:10 p.m. – eat dinner, change clothes, check homework that was done in the car, and leave for gymnastics (coaching for me, practice for the girls)
4:20 p.m. – clock in at the gym
4:30 p.m. – 8:00 – coach
8:00 – 9:00p.m. – wait on daughter to get done with practice
9:30 p.m. – whenever - arrive home, grade more homework, clean up dinner dishes from earlier, do a load of laundry, say hi to hubby. Go to bed

Tuesday – Friday

Lather, rinse, repeat with only slight changes of a half hour or so here or there

Saturday

7:45 – take J. to gym
10:00 – clock in at gym
12:45 – clock out at gym
1:30 – leave gym with J.
2:00 – get home and eat lunch, enjoying the fact that Hubby and M. did all the grocery shopping
Then, there are several hours of housework, homework, etc.
That evening, I work on the Sunday school lesson that I will be teaching the next morning.

Sunday

8:00 – leave for church
9:45 – teach Sunday school class
Lunch, errands, etc.
5:30 – leave for small groups
6:00 – 7:00 – small groups
7:30 – home, dinner, bags ready for school, etc.
8:30 – panick because I got nothing done this week

Well, since school has been out, here has been my schedule for the last 2 weeks:

Monday – Saturday
Sleep in
Eat late breakfast
Eat lunch
Take a nap
Eat dinner that was cooked by husband (he took 2 weeks off as well.)
Watch a movie or play a game
Go to bed
I coached occasionally during the break, but not near as many hours as normal. Sunday school classes were on break during the holidays as well, so I did not need to prepare a lesson for a few weeks.

Needless to say, I probably gained 850 pounds due to cruddy eating habits and zero activity. And I loved every minute of it. Now I’m back to both jobs. And I miss my cozy couch, squishy pillow, and snuggly blanket. Sniff sniff.

Leave me a comment and let me know how your break was, or if you had one. If you did not get a break, what would you do if you did have 2 weeks off?

Reminder:
(I am not sure if my notifications have worked for my last couple of updates because I would start my updates one day and finish them the next. I think the date would throw the notifier thingy off. So be sure to scroll down and read the last couple of posts. Then, at the end of the post, click on "comments" and let me know you were here. If you do not have a google account, click "anonymous" in the comments section, but be sure to sign your name after your comment. )

Our Christmas Letter

2008-12-25T20:26:00.005-05:00

Here is a de-personalized version of our Christmas letter. Hope you all enjoy.

(BY THE WAY - I am not sure if my notifications have worked for my last couple of updates because I would start my updates one day and finish them the next. I think the date would throw the notifier thingy off. So be sure to scroll down and read the last couple of posts. Then, at the end of the post, click on "comments" and let me know you were here. If you do not have a google account, click "anonymous" in the comments section, but be sure to sign your name after your comment. )

2008 Christmas Letter

We hope this letter finds you all in good health and good spirits.

This year was a great year for our family. As the country headed towards a depression and the economy suffered greatly, we made a point of looking for blessings wherever we could.

C. is still employed at the same company. He received a nice promotion this year and is the head I.T. guy for his own company as well as 2 sister companies. While this entails more work, it also ensures more stability for the company. He also is the leader of our Sunday school class at church.

P. is still working at the girls' school in the technology department. She is also still coaching gymnastics at the girls' gym. Besides coaching preschool and rec classes, she now helps coach the level 3 team. She is loving getting to be with some team girls. She also teaches a group of 7th and 8th grade girls on Sunday mornings.

J. is still competing in gymnastics. She is an optional gymnast and has “La Bamba” as her floor music. She had an injury earlier this year (stress fracture in her shin) that slowed up some of her tumbling work, but she has worked hard to keep up and stay in shape. Her first meet is in January. She is a freshman this year and is doing well in school. She received her learners permit and is helping do some of the driving now.

M. is on level 4 in gymnastics. That makes 2 competitive gymnasts in the family! We cannot wait for her first meet in January. She is in 5th grade at school and is doing wonderfully. She also decided to get baptized for her 11th birthday. That was such a wonderful day!

Between the 3 females in the house having team hours, there is at least one of us at the gym 6 days a week. That makes it difficult sometimes to have family time, but we squeeze in what we can whenever we can. We always make a point of trying to have a lot of fun together whenever we can. We got to spend some time at the cabin this year and go camping as well.

We love you all and hope that you all have a wonderful year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Getting to know my youngest - or Living with ADHD

2008-12-23T09:29:00.010-05:00

ADHD. You hear so much about it. You see kids diagnosed with it and think that they need just a good swift spanking. You see kids NOT diagnosed with it and wonder why they aren’t.

We used to think that all it meant was that a kid was hyper and did not focus. We were wrong.

We have a child with ADHD. M. was diagnosed in 2nd grade after an intense and expensive psychological education evaluation. Apparently, it manifests itself very differently in little girls than it does little boys. Boys tend to be on the hyper/aggressive end and girls tend to be on the lack of focus/depression end. (Not always the case, though.)

Since then, it has been quite a ride. The analogy of a “roller coaster ride,” while cliché, is actually quite accurate.

We have learned so much about not only this diagnosis, but also about our wonderful daughter and ourselves as well. (Her dad and I think we both may have ADHD as well.)
In looking back, there were many things that we thought were just her unique little quirks. While it is sometimes hard to differentiate between what is a quirk and what is being ADHD, it is easy to see that her brain just works “differently” than our other daughter’s brain.
As a toddler, she would find loopholes in any rule that you came up with. She would follow our instructions to the letter, but would still find an alternative way to accomplish what she wanted. For example, we kept finding her sitting on the kitchen table. We did not do much at first, we figured she would lose interest after the first couple of times after we would remover her. Not so. Finally, we sat her down and told her that “we do NOT sit on tables, we sit in chairs.” We thought that we had that taken care of. We came in later and found her on the table. However, she had dragged her little chair up onto the table and was sitting in the chair that was placed right in the middle of the tabletop. When asked what she was doing, she clarified for us that she ‘was NOT sittin’ on da table. I sittin’ in my chaiw.’ (sic.) We had a similar situation with writing on the wall. We thought we had learned to be more specific in our instructions when we stated that we do not write on the wall with pencils, pens, markers, or crayons. We forgot to mention stamps. We learned that using stamps on the wall is not covered by the “No Writing” rule. “Keep your hands off of that” does not cover the use of your feet, elbows, or tongue to touch things.
In Kindergarten, she had to write down someone that she admired. She wrote down “Andrew” from her class. When I asked her what she admired about Andrew, she said that he could sit still in class and not talk. For a long time. And she thought that was amazing.
Not all of it has been fun. At least not at the time. Some of it now is quite comical. Right around the time she was diagnosed, I had the following situation happen at my house. It was morning and we were trying to get ready for school. A friend’s son, E, rode with us in the morning. E was later diagnosed with ADHD as well. So I had 2 ADHD kids to try to get out the door. Here is a copy of an email that I typed to a friend and ADHD advocate regarding that morning:

Okay – here are some phrases that were uttered by me this morning in my attempt to get everyone here this morning. My goal was to get everyone here in one piece, go over “borrowing and carrying” with M. for a minute, and stagger her medicine. Small and seemingly easily attainable goals.
“M., I printed out a few math problems for you to make sure you remember how to borrow, do them real quick and let’s make sure.”
“E., could you please quit singing to the turtles?”
“M., show me how you did this problem because it is not right.”
“E., could you sing to the turtles in your head?”
“M., this is still not right. Let’s go over how to do these again.”
“E., singing in your head means to do it so no one else can hear it.”
“M., you cannot just try to do these problems in your head; you have to write them out.”
“M., you must write out EACH problem, not just the one I said to write out earlier.”
“M., you cannot decide to randomly reverse the numbers because you don’t feel like borrowing.”
“M., you need to WRITE OUT the problems.
“E., could you stop kicking the chair?”
“M., when you borrow, you do it the same way every time.”
“M., when you borrow, you borrow from the next number to the left, not the number 2 spaces away, you know, just like we did on the previous 9 problems?????”
“No, M., I don’t know where your bag is.”
“M., those shoes are wet because I washed them; you must wear your other shoes.”
“M., THOSE SHOES ARE WET – YOU MUST WEAR YOUR OTHER ONES.”
“I don’t care if you don’t like those shoes – YOUR OTHER ONES ARE WET!!
“Why are you smelling those shoes? THEY ARE WET –WEAR YOUR OTHER ONES!!”
“M., why are you drawing smiley faces on your paper? Is that helping get your math done?”
“E., the cat is not going to answer your questions, even if you follow him through the house asking him over and over and over.”
“M., Mrs. Jones is going to break you all up into smaller groups during the timed part of the test so that it will be less distracting, probably into a different room.” “No, everyone is not testing at different times; during the timed part of the test, you all will be spread out a little more.” “No, the whole class will not be moving to a different room – how would that help?” “Ok – let’s try this again, during – testing, - - SOME of you will go to a different room.” “NO – NOT LESS TEST WITH MORE TIME – JUST SPREADING OUT SO THAT IT WILL BE LESS DISTRACTING.!!”
“M., bring me your medicine. ONLY bring it to me – don’t open it.”
“M., what are you doing? Why are you opening your medicine? I said specifically to NOT open it.”
“E., what are you doing? Please don’t play with those scissor things in M.’s open medicine bottle.”
“M., STOP trying to do those math problems in your head – WRITE THEM OUT!!!”
“How can 706 minus 700 be 124?” “No it can’t” “What do you mean that is the answer to the next problem? What about this problem?” “It does not matter that you could do this one in your head, you STILL need to work it out and tell me the answer, I do not have X-ray vision and know that you are jumping around from math problem to math problem.”

This was one of those days where I felt like I was that man in that episode of the twilight zone where he wakes up one morning and everyone is speaking a different language than him and they are all looking at him with pity because obviously something is wrong with him and he does not know how to communicate with anyone and he spends the rest of the show trying to rapidly learn the language they are speaking so that he is not locked away. AAHHHH.

Then, there were days where my heart would break for her. Here is another email to the same advocate and friend from above:

I just needed to vent to someone who would understand.
I love my adhd child,
I love my adhd child,
I love my adhd child.

I needed to remind myself a few times in order to not have any laying on of hands (around the neck.)

When she tells me that she knows that I hate her, I love her.
When she cries and yells at me because she forgot her homework, I love her.
When she tells me that she is a failure, I love her.
When she writes mean things in her handwriting book because she is angry at having to do handwriting, I love her.
When she says that she is the least important person in the family, I love her.
When she is screaming and crying about things that happened a year ago, I love her.
When I sit here with tears running down my face at what she must be feeling, I love her more.

She has really struggled with feeling like she is a worthy person because she cannot get her mind to do what she wants it to do.

We have gotten now to where we can have fun with it and enjoy to fun and exciting part of ADHD. The spontaneity had driven her to occasionally go throw in a load of laundry just because it was needed. The hyperfocus has made her into a wonderful reader – she had read all of the Harry Potter books by 4th grade. She can figure out strange and difficult math problems in her head. The verbal acuity she has helps her to come up with great stories as well as the ability to create wonderful analogies to explain how she is feeling. Her “thinking outside the box” process has made her incredibly adept at technological things. She figured out how to send and receive emails via the wii. She found out how to set up filters and signatures on her email by herself. She does power-points for fun. The feelings of failure she has had in the past make her a very caring person. She loves people no matter what they look like or act like. She is a true friend to those in need. The larger-than-life emotions that used to focus on what she perceived as her shortcomings now focus (most of the time) into showing love for her family and friends. This extends to her sister’s friends as well. They love M. like she was their own and she loves them right back.

She now knows her struggles and tries to find ways to work with them. Recently, Becky, who lives in our basement, went out of town for a few days. M. was in charge of feeding Becky’s cats. Knowing that she is forgetful, she took the initiative to leave just a few reminders for herself around the house. (As per normal for ADD kids - the goal was the note itself, not the spelling or grammer.)

Hanging on the wall going upstairs to her bedroom:

On a table at the bottom of the stairs:

On a napkin at her place at the table:

On the milk:

On the peanut butter jar:

On the chin up bar that she must hang on every time she passes it:

This doesn't include the notes that she left that I could not get good pictures of - the bathroom mirror, on the door, on the loaf of bread, etc.

All things considered, I would not wish for M. to not have ADHD. I think it makes her who she is, it gives her that little something extra. It helps her to stand out from the crowd. I would not wish her the pain and grief that she has experienced to go away either. I believe those hardships have helped mold her into the caring and loving girl that she is now. We are all products of our circumstances, our choices, our experiences. The tough times that she has survived have made her into a stronger person than she would have ever been without them. I think she is a really neat person and I love her dearly.

Thanksgiving

2008-12-12T10:24:00.004-05:00

We went to my parent's house for Thanksgiving. We took with us our Becky from the basement and her mom. Hubby's dad and step-mom met us there. They brought with them a friend from Saudi Arabia - Jamie. My niece and her daughter were there as well. The only way it could have been better would have been if my sister had been feeling well and had been able to come, and if my two nephews would have been there.

Here are some pictures:

Me and my parents:

Becky and her mom:

Becky and the moms:

The moms:

Remember a few posts back when I posted pics of my fam with Hubby's side of the family and the attempts at getting a good picture? Apparently, the goofiness does not reside only on Hubby's side of the family:

My parents look fine in this one, but M. looks like she is asleep and J. is making some strange face and sticking her tongue out:

Now, all looks good, except M. looks like she is choking:

Again, everyone else looks good, and M. is making another face. She looks like she just won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. Or told that she can eat again.

This is M's "I'm really not making this difficult, honest" face:

My dad threatening M. My mom praying. J. getting a kick out of the whole thing:

This one is actually a good one of M, but now J's eyes are closed and my mom is checking on M. to make sure she is behaving. What would make her think otherwise??

My dad deciding he would take matters into his own hands. Literally. My mom praying that this will all be over soon.

M. sheepishly posing somewhat correctly.

Apparently, this picture taking challenge occurs even when my children are not in the picture:

'No, I am tired of taking pictures!'

We did finally get a great shot: Grandmother, Grand-daughter, and Great-granddaughter:

Hubby and his dad:

After eating, we went out and played some on the golf cart and 4-wheelers:

Becky and M:

J. honing her driving skills:

Hubby telling me to put the camera away:

The 3 littles all snuggled up on the couch.

It did not take long for the silliness to start:

After eating and playing, we all got lazy on the couch:

Soon, the fake sleeping gave way to real sleeping:

Feeling refreshed!

I think I have decided that the goofiness originated in the male DNA:

That brown thing the dads are playing with was something my dad bought. It looks like a vase, but then it will stretch out and make a hat. I tried to do a movie from the pics of M. putting it on her head, not sure if it will work or not. If it doesn't play - you may need to manually drag the play bar across the bottom slowly.

When we got home, we decided to do Christmas decorations:

Ginger the cat was a big help:

I am working on a "wordy" blog entry next. It will have some pictures, but not as many as this. I always get more comments on those, so I am looking forward to that.

While you are here, check out this other blog entry (Dec. 11th) that Kristie alerted me to. (Pardon any offensive language, I did not write it.) Then, after you read it, come back here and leave me a comment.

Love you all and thanks for stopping by.

Camping trip

2008-12-07T13:16:00.013-05:00

I realized that I never posted any pictures from our camping trip last month. So, without further ado, here they are.

Most of the clan that went:

For those of you that know my youngest, you know that she loves animals. All animals. Except for cockroaches, those freak her out a little. Here are her and her sister with a rabbit that was kept in the main office of the camp grounds.

Now, here she is snuggling up with the rabbit. She wanted to try to take it home. Naturally.

Here she is with a chicken. That she caught. By her self. She wanted to take it home.

Here is a huge grasshopper cricket thing that she caught. She wanted to take it home.

Here she is with a squirrel. A pet squirrel that one of the women there raised. She wanted to take it home. Notice a theme here???

(By the way, this picture was taken in the restaurant part of the office at the campground. Notice the dog sitting next to M. and the squirrel? It sat in the restaurant the entire time we were eating breakfast in the hopes that it would get some scraps. The bunny was right outside the restaurant part - in the store. There were a dog and a squirrel running around where we were eating. I'm not thinking the health department visits there much.)

There is actually a strange story about the squirrel. The lady in the picture came in while we were eating and told everyone to be on the lookout for an overly friendly squirrel. (Overly friendly? Is it going to come up and say "hi?" Is it going to jump out of a tree and land on our shoulders, causing much screaming and running to ensue? Does it have rabies and is going to come find us all and kill us? What are the characterists of an "overly friendly squirrel?") She apparently raised 2 squirrels from the time they were babies and one had gotten out that morning. She then proceeded to take off her jacket and this squirrel was on her back. (I envisioned the whole squirrel scene from National Lampoon's vacation at that point, but that is irrelevant. :-)) The squirrel that got away was named Nutmeg. Later in the day, this lady was wandering around the campground calling, "Nutmeg, Nuuuutmeeeeg." Needless to say, we would all get the giggles when we heard it. It was quite the strange situation.

The campground had a petting farm. The kids got to milk the cows. (We actually had the milk at breakfast the next morning - fresh from the cows, no pasteurization. Again, where IS the health department???)

(I felt sorry for this cow. There were so many pictures taken of it's nether regions and no one was looking at it's face. I felt sorry for it and took a picture of it's face. And then I petted it and told it how sorry I was that we were all up in it's personal space. She forgave me.)

Here is a picture of the scenery that you could see from our campground. Isn't it beautiful?? I just love, love, love autumn!

This picture is not from our campground, but from pretty close to it.

There were also built in trampolines there:

J. trying to help put up the tent. (Nice biceps, girl!)

M. walked out onto this tree that had fallen into the creek. She then decided to practice her beam routine one the tree. While surrounded by water.

By the way, notice the short sleeves? They were all well and good as long as the sun was up. As soon as it went down, it was beyond cold. One poor person on the trip woke up one morning with icecicles in her hair. M. and I ended up going and sleeping in the truck at one point. It was in the 30's at night. I don't "do" cold. Brr.

Scary self portrait of me sitting next to my baby girl.

Thanksgiving post and pictures are in the works. Hope to have that up before Christmas.

Thanks for stopping by!

Let me know you were here!

New feature!!!!

2008-11-29T21:41:00.003-05:00

Due to mass demand (okay, only a few people asked,) I did some research.

If you look to the right hand side of this page, just under the light green box, you will see a new tool. You can now get an email update letting you know when the blog is updated.

For those of you that do not have feed burner, hopefully this will help you keep up.

Let me know how it works, I appreciate any feedback.

Hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving!

Update coming soon, with pictures!

Foiled again!!

2008-11-25T09:35:00.005-05:00

This is one of those posts where I explore my shortcomings and point fingers at myself. Please enjoy. :-)

For any of you that attend church, have you ever had one of those times where you felt like the sermon was directed at you? Or was written because of you? Don't you love those? (My oldest daughter had this same situation a few weeks ago, it was much more enjoyable when the spiritual finger was pointing at her. For me, anyway.)

Anyway, our minister,Jody, has a wonderful way of bringing up issues that we all struggle with. He is able to hook us in with real life situations. Then, after we are all drawn in, he then is able to turn it around as if it were a mirror and force us all to look honestly at ourselves.

This week, his sermon was "Everyone has a gift." Well, those of you that know me and my husband know that we have always said that we didn't have any gifts. Our families are all very gifted in one way or the other. We laughed and said that the gifts must skip generations because in our opinion, our girls are very gifted. We decided that our gift is that we made good kids. Our church even had an online "test"once that was designed to help you discover your spiritual gifts. My hubby and I both took the test. Both of our results told us that we were "side-kicks" instead of "super-heroes." We were to find others with strong gifts and help them. We, of course, laughed hysterically and used it to prove our point.

Well, this week, our minister kind of shot our theory in the foot. (Thanks, Jody!) He made 3 points:

1) Everybody has a gift given to them specifically by God.

2) All gifts come from God.

3) Our gifts are supposed to be used for the good of others.

He used 6 scriptures to illustrate his point: 1 Corinthians 7:7 (But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that;) 1 Peter 4:10 (Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others;) Romans 12:6 (We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us;) 1 Corinthians 12:7 (Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good;) 1 Corinthians 12:11 (All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines;) and Ephesians 4:7 (But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.)

It was then pointed out that there is a distinct difference between being good at something and being gifted. This is the part that makes it impossible for my hubby and I to continue to use our argument that we have no gifts. We now have to amend it. I guess we now have to say that we have yet to discover our true gifts. I guess we better get to work.

The most difficult part was another thing that Jody pointed out. That by denying or questioning that we have been given gifts is basically questioning God's generosity. Oops. Never realized that. However, when we take credit ourselves for our gifts, we are robbing God of the glory. What a balancing act!

It all almost seems like an oxymoron - you must accept greatness, but accept it humbly. Wow. That really makes my head spin. On one hand, it seems impossible. On the other hand, it seems so simple. I guess that is how the Christian life is. "On paper," it sounds like it is easy, but once you start actually trying to "do" it, that's when it gets difficult. That is where grace comes in. A friend of mine once said it this way after her daughter pointed out something she was doing wrong. She said, "Well, you know, I'm not perfect. I strive to be like Jesus, but I can't. Grace fills in my shortcomings. Thank goodness." I like that. I envision it like we are a colander. Formed perfectly, but full of holes. Usually the holes let the bad stuff drain out and the stuff you want to keep stays in. However, there are a lot of times that some of the good stuff slips out and gets lost. God's grace helps "fill in the holes" so that the good stuff stays in better. Clear as mud??

Now, my husband and I must realize that God distributed gifts to each and every one of us lovingly and intentionally and specifically. Then, we need to do some serious self-examination and see what we can find.

Thank you for reading.

Leave me a note and let me know you were here. Also, let me know how you have discovered your God-given gifts.

A few pictures

2008-11-14T20:08:00.008-05:00

A few weeks ago, our church had Trunk 'n Treat. Here is a picture of us. C. and I are pumpkin pi(e) and apple pi(e,) and M. and BB (my "little sister" that lives in our basement) are Olympic gymnasts.

Did you notice who is missing from this pic? J. :-(. Sniff Sniff. She was on a school field trip. To Orlando. Florida. She had a great time, but I don't like her being that far away from me. I missed her terribly.

Also this month, our school had a fall festival. The girls have almost out grown it, but they still managed to have some fun.

Here is J. with her "peeps."

Here is M. and friends riding a really cool ride. I like these pictures because M.'s hair looks cool in them. :-)

As I mentioned earlier, we had some family come up in October. Hubby's dad (B.) and his wife (D.) came and brought B.'s brother and his wife. For those of you that know my husband and his unique sense of humor, let me just tell you that all of this family seems to carry the same "humor gene." It was entertaining just to say the least. Here are a few pics from that visit.

There were obviously two camera in operation at the time because no one knew which camera to look at.

It took a while, but we finally got everyone looking at the same camera and smiling like normal people.

Uncle C. and the girls being silly:

G-pa B. and Gramma D. with the girls. G-pa looks like he cannot believe what he has gotten himself into by sitting with these ladies.

Okay, that's it for now. I have another post or two with pictures in the works. I'll then try to post one with more "meat" in it, I seem to get more comments on the posts that talk about the sad state of my mental health and/or capacity. :-)

While you're here, sign the guestbook. Then look on the right hand side and become a follower of my blog. Also, look at the top and sign up to be notified when I update. Anything to let me know I'm not alone. ;-)

Another example of life not being fair . . .

2008-11-11T09:39:00.003-05:00

As some of you know, I am an avid follower of several Caringbridge sites. Caringbridge is a free blog service provided to families in crisis.

One of the families that I have been following is the Morgans. They started their site for their son, Ryan. Here is a synopsis of Ryan's journey, taken from their website:

Ryan is ten years old. Diagnosed in '04 with Stage IV Neuroblastoma, one month before his 6th birthday. Ryan had been placed on a treatment protocol (COG ANBL00P1). Ryan has completed: a 6" tummy incision to biopsy the tumor and lymph nodes , 5 rounds of high dose chemo, a 14" incision to surgically remove the tumor, 2 rounds of mega chemo to destroy all blood cells with 2 stem cell transplants, 4 weeks of radiation and six months of Isotretinoin (accutane) oral therapy, more than 100 nights spent at the hospital and many more days. Ryan officially ended that treatment in September 2005. In April 2007, Ryan relapsed. He has since completed 11 rounds of Cytoxan/Topetecan then 3 rounds of VP-16. In April 08 a brain tumor was discovered and Ryan under went a successful Gamma Knife surgery. We then started a combination of temozolomide and irinotecan. In July, Ryan under went surgery to remove what was left of the tumor in preparation for brain and spine radiation. Ryan is presently taking part in a Phase II, 3F8 antibody treatment, interthecally at Sloan in NY.

Shortly after Ryan's relapse, his mom, Missy, was diagnosed with breast cancer. All was going well until recently. Missy's cancer has spread and she is now home on hospice. Here is an entry on Ryan's site regarding Missy's current situation:

There are a lot of things that are wrong in this world. Tonight, Missy and I had to tell our three beautiful children that their mommy is dying. The only thing possibly worse than that, is losing a child. We have appreciated the support from all of our family and friends so much over the years since we started SuperRyan. I never, in a million years thought that I would have to type this on his page. Missy has been every bit as amazing as Ryan while fighting this hideous disease. She was full bore right up until last week, never a complaint about her condition, just constant worry about Ryan and the rest of us. It is still her main concern. I am not sure how and when Missy will be able to handle visitors, it may be just hit or miss depending on how she is feeling. She is on a number of medications for pain, cough and sleep. Our hospital appointments have been changed to Hospice care, our nurse will be here on Saturday. I will plan on having a book by the back door that you can sign if you stop by and she is not able to visit. I am asking for no food...it is a stressor just getting it together, getting everyone sat down and cleaning it all up, also, finicky kids don't help. Thank you for being there for us, praying for us and letting Missy know how much she is loved.Sincerely, Les

I would like to ask that you stop by either Ryan's site or Missy's newly created site to let them know that you are praying for them.

http://www.superryan.blogspot.com/
www.caringbridge.org/visit/missymorgan

Thanks in advance,
Mamasita

Contest!!

2008-11-06T10:33:00.005-05:00

***** YAY Debbie!! You were my 1000th visitor! Congrats. I will email you separately to get your mailing info *********

I am almost to my 1000 visitor!!

If you are my 1000th visitor, please sign the guestbook and let me know. (There just might be something in it for ya! Possibly a gift card???)

You can tell what visitor you are by looking at the hit counter along the right hand side.

While waiting to find out the winner, I will leave you with a few unusual pictures that I found while cleaning out my memory card from my camera. These will are from several different settings. There will be a more complete update from each setting coming soon.

Here is a close up a cow's nose. We met this cow while on a camping trip last weekend. I also got a picture of him snarfing the camera, but I won't share that one.

Here is a view from our campsite. Isn't it beautiful???

Chocolate Skittles!!!!!

While camping, we went hiking. At one point, the wind blew and the leaves started raining down on us:

Hubby and I at trunk-n-treat. Can you tell what we are??

M. showing her muscles after uprooting a tree at my mom's. (Actually, the wind blew it down, but it makes a cool picture.)

Can anyone tell me how I got old enough to be taking pictures of my kid while she is driving???

At the gym, there is a tradition of dunking the kids head in the chalk bucket and throwing them in the foam pit for their birthday. This is M's scalp after her dunking.

Here is my teenage daughter's hands after gymnastics practice. Don't you wish your hands were this silky smooth?

Okay, that's all for now.

Don't forget to sign the guestbook!

OH - one more thing. I added a new thing to my blog called "Follow this blog." Please sign up as a follower so that I will feel like I have some friends. :-)

New diet!!

2008-10-29T08:14:00.004-04:00

For those of you that know me, I am always trying to lose 5 pounds. Guess what? I lost 2 1/2 pounds! Yesterday! In a 24 hour period!

Would you like to know how? Food poisoning. While not enjoyable at all, it is very effective at dropping weight quickly.

The headache that is left after all of the sickness is not very fun, though.

M. and I both came home from school yesterday at mid-day. We stayed in bed (or in the bathroom) until this morning. Tummies are still making strange noises, but hopefully no more forceful ejecting of contents.

I know this was a wholly enjoyable post. Aren't you glad you stopped by??

Random Ramblings

2008-10-22T09:37:00.005-04:00

For the few of you that visit my site, have you heard the crickets chirping? It has been a little quiet around these parts, huh.

Most people would assume that would mean that not much has been going on. Those people would be wrong!

To catch you up on our lives since September, here it is in a nutshell:

* Elementary back to school night for M.
* High school back to school night for J.
* J. turns 15
* J. gets learners permit
* I start teaching a small group of JH girls at church on Sunday mornings
* Our small groups start up for Sunday night
* Our gym hosted a meet, which meant 17/18 hour days for a weekend
* J. has to get contacts
* J. has some extra gym practices - on Sunday afternoons
* M. is working on items for her web design team
* M. is practicing her percussion instruments
* DH (darling hubby) throws his back out
* J gets sinus infection
* My nephew comes in for a visit from China. However, he is extremely ill the entire visit and spends most of it in bed. :-(
* My father in law (B.) and his wife (D.) come to visit from one state away, bringing with them B's brother and his wife, from several states away. Quick visit, but enjoyable.
* A nasty virus or something similar decides to take up residence in our home computer.

And last, but not least, I have discovered the evil that is Facebook. It is an addiction. However, I have enjoyed being able to keep up with so many friends and their families.

Anyway, I promise to do an interesting update (with pictures) soon now that our computer has been healed thanks to my DH!

Oh, my on-line friend, Becky, posted a hilarious story about a run in with a horrifying gigantic slug that was trying to harm her and her entire family! In honor of her story, I am going to relive my horrible encounter with a terrifying creature. Most of you know this story, but for those of you that don't, here it is:

First, I need to set the stage. The back of our house has a lot of woods which end at a large pond. My DH was working on my car out in the driveway one evening. When he got done, he came in, but left the windows open.

The next morning, I pulled out of the driveway on the way to school. J and M were in the back, as was E. a boy who was carpooling with us. It was in October, so it was still dark in the mornings when we left. As I got about 3 houses away from home, I see something in my peripheral vision. I think at first that E. is somehow putting his shoe between me and my window, so I glance around. It was not a shoe. Oh, how I wish it had been a shoe! It. was. a. RAT. NOT a mouse, a L A R G E river rat. It's body was about the size of a house cat. It had fangs. And a tail. I still shudder when I think of the tail. EW! And it was INSIDE my car! It walked across my door and made a right onto the dashboard. I opened the door, slammed on the breaks, threw the car in park, and jumped out, all in about .68ths of a second, all the while yelling, "It's a mouse, there's a mouse!!"

What about the kids, you may ask? I am ashamed to say that I left them to fend for themselves. I did not jump in the back to try to protect them. I did not try to help them get out of the car. I jumped out and told them to stay put because after the creature walked down the passenger door, I did not know where it went. (It was dark, remember??)

I called DH to come to my rescue. He comes down the road carrying, are you ready for this, a flashlight and a golf club! A golf club? Seriously?

Anyway, we never found the creature. I am assuming it got out of the car during my door flinging hysterics. I will never know for sure. All I do know is that every time I stopped at a traffic light or stop sign, I got all paranoid that it was sitting somewhere watching me.

Needless to say, we traded in that van. I couldn't function normally in it any more.

**Please let me know you were here! Sign the guestbook!**

. . . . And sometimes, life is great!

2008-08-25T18:42:00.013-04:00

As some of you may know, or may have guessed, I struggle with depression at times. Then, when I am out of it, I realize how blessed I am.

I have a wonderful family:

(me, J., my sister, M., my nephew, my niece, her husband and daughter, and my mom and dad)

I have great in-laws:

(Father in law, M., J., Step-mother in law, and my hubby - C.)

I have a husband (who just got a great promotion at work - way to go honey!!) who loves me and will dress up to go to my high school reunion with me even though he most likely won't know anyone there:

I have a daughter who finally got past a mental block on her giants on bars:

I have a teenager who is silly:

I have an 11 year old who is not afraid to drive the 4-wheeler anymore:

I have kids who are silly when they see the camera:

I have the privilege of getting to go to my parents cabin with my family quite often. We get to do things like sit on the porch and enjoy the peace and quiet:

While at the cabin, we sometimes get to have unusual encounters with wildlife:

We have fun friends. We were able to take some to the cabin with us this summer. While at the cabin with them, we got to enjoy the "twinnage" look of the two teenage girls:

How cool are they?

Their son seemed to read my mind and decided to relax:

However, don't let his sweet innocent face fool you. He's a stinker. He got my younger daughter to hide behind a tree when I was driving toward them on the 4-wheeler. When I got close, they jumped out and scared me. I almost crashed. I almost wet my pants. I almost wet my pants while crashing. They found it hilarious. I did too. Later. After my heart started beating again. I still think he's a great kid - I just want to keep him in my sights. :-)

We got to enjoy watching the kids play in the creek:

While there, we kept seeing strange creatures that resembled our children, except kinda mushed together:

This strange creature metamorphed into a mixture of different kids:

Then, the metamorphosis continued, with the new creature appearing to sometimes be missing a head or torso:

The creature then began to slowly separate until it became two separate kids again:

When I see my youngest walking with her hands like this, it usually means she has caught some critter and wants to show it to me:

Getting closer:

Ah - a crawdad. I think.

Then, of course, there was the wonderful event on M's birthday, witnessed by many many friends and loved ones. Some of who are pictured here:

(My Mom, MD & his dad RD, C., myself, KG holding little KG, and JC with M. and one of her bestest friends - SE.)

I hope you all enjoyed the pictures and a post that was not so whiny. Please leave a comment! If you do, please remember to leave your name if you sign in as "anonymous." Also, I know it is probably annoying that I use all initials instead of names. I do this for security reasons. When you sign the guestbook, please use initials as well.

Thanks!!!

Sometimes, life just stinks . . . . .

2008-08-18T09:16:00.004-04:00

Do you ever sometimes feel like you will never be able to get it together? To get ahead?

This weekend was one of those weekends.

A little history for those of you that don’t know us, C. and I had 2 cats ever since we started our lives together, their names were Oreo and Mocha. Mocha lived for 15 years, Oreo for 17. After Mocha died, Oreo kept sitting on the steps crying. So, C. and I found a pair of Ragdoll cats that were available. We had always wanted one of those cats, so C. went and picked them up. So, then, we had Oreo, Molasses, and Ginger. This last year, Oreo died and we had just Ginger and Molasses. Well, this weekend, we had to have Molasses put to sleep. What stunk so much about this one was that we had to make the decision. We did not have to do that with our others, they died at home.

Last week, Molasses peed on J.’s bed and then on ours. We assumed that he was just wanting more attention because we had started back to school. We started giving him more attention and he did not do it anymore. What we did not know was that he had a urinary tract infection. On Thursday night, he started crying like he was hurt and hissing when he went into the litter box. We took him to the vet on Friday, thinking he was constipated. They said a UTI and that he was having a hard time going. The pulled some urine and relieved his pain. He got a shot to help as well as some antibiotics. Saturday night, we had to take him to the emergency room because he was crying again and not moving around much. He was blocked again. They cathed him and we took him home. We were back at the vet Sunday afternoon for yet another blockage. He was a completely different looking animal by this point. He was raggedy looking and sad looking. The vet said that they could do surgery but that there was no guarantee that he would survive the surgery, that the surgery would work long term, or that he would not suffer long term permanent damage. This non-guarantee would cost us well over $1000. If we did nothing, his bladder would rupture and he would die in excruciating pain. We decided to euthanize him. However, having to look at my girls hearts break as they told him good bye was devastating.

I will forever wonder if we made the right decision. Will my kids be upset at a later date and think that we thought their pet was not worth spending the money on? Will they be angry that we did not try the surgery?

For someone that struggles with depression at times, this is threatening to pull me in. It seems like every time we start to get it together, something else is thrown into the mix. I know that God is good and that there is a reason for everything. I also know that I am so very strong in some ways and so very weak in others. Things seem to keep finding my weak spot.

In the past 5 years, we have:

- moved into a new house
- had the sale of our old house fall through several times, which put us paying 2 house payments for several months
- C. got laid off
- C. was out of a job for 10 months
- Old house finally sold
- Mortgage co. got mad that our payments would be late periodically during layoff period – depending on if we had money or not – so they decided to make us pay 1 ½ payments a month by money order for a year.
- C . finds another job – a definite pay cut – but a job, nonetheless
- I have a hysterectomy
- C. gets a corporate AMEX to pay for travel expenses and supplies, however, expense checks do not come in as quickly as the bills do. We have to pay for expenses with our own money and then use a credit card to pay our bills, which puts us in debt.
- The siding on our house starts to rot and we have to get replaced
- M. gets diagnosed with ADHD
- We have a different type of health insurance for a year. Of course, during that year, mine and M’s meds are not covered, neither are J’s x-rays, physical therapies, MRI’s, orthopedic appointments, etc.
- Lost 3 cats
- We have (obviously) had to ask for financial help quite a few times, which embarrasses me to no end

Okay, now let me finish by saying that I KNOW that there are others that have had it much, much worse. I also know that in this post that I sound whiny and ungrateful, so there is no need to tell me those things. Please leave comments, but only ones that are positive and encouraging. Or ones that can tell me how to hurry and find money to cover the checks that I wrote for all of the vet visits this weekend.

I really just needed to vent.

Also know that I am working on a post to follow up on this to focus on the other side, that life can be amazing at times too.

Thanks for reading!

Special time for my sweet M.

2008-07-31T16:49:00.007-04:00

My sweet little girl turned 11 on Sunday. I will have some pictures up of her birthday later.

First, however, I have some pictures of another exciting event that happened to her on Sunday. She was baptized!! I know that each religion has it's own views and ways of doing things, so I will very briefly tell you what this step means to us:

"We believe that baptism by immersion is a necessary response of faith to God’s free grace. It is not a work we do to earn God’s favor, but rather, a work God does for us."

We see this as one of the steps necessary to becoming a Christian - giving your life to God.

I am not posting this to start a theological argument or anything like that. I am only posting this because it is such a meaningful experience for us.

Anyway, here are some pictures taken on that day.

Stepping down into the water:

Daddy asking her if she is ready to be baptized:

The dunking:

Coming out of the water:

Look at the smile on Dad and M.'s face, priceless:

Cancer stinks . . . .

2008-07-20T23:19:00.003-04:00

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate cancer? Tyler is young man who has fought cancer for years. His battle will soon be over.

There is an article in his home town newspaper, along with a picture gallery.

If you visit most of my favorite links, you will notice most of them are kids who have fought or are fighting cancer.

Please keep Tyler's family, and all families that are going through similar situations, in your prayers.

After you pray for them, say another prayer thanking God for each day that you have.

Vacation notes

2008-07-14T22:18:00.012-04:00

**Notice - all pics were taken with my cell phone. I haven't yet figured out how to make the pics load any bigger without becoming too pixelated. If you know how to fix that, please let me know.**

On the 4th, my beautiful niece got married. She, naturally, was a beautiful bride!! Her new hubby seems like such a sweetie, and he seems to love my niece and her daughter great deal.

We then spent the night at my parents. The girls got to ride the 4-wheelers and play with my niece's daughter, which is always fun.

On Monday, we went to a theme park not too far from home. M. is a roller coaster/thrill ride fanatic. On one roller coaster, J. rode with one of her arms across M.'s chest because M. rode with her arms up in the air. J. was determined to keep her from falling out.

On Tuesday, we went to my father-in-law's house. He and his wife were great hosts. We went to see Wall-e while we were there. We also got to see some great mountain views:

On Wednesday, we headed up to the mountains to my parents cabin. M. found a baby bird that had fell out of it's nest:
It actually let her pick it up and hold it. We made it a little nest in a bowl to keep it warm and safe while we figured out what to do with it. We called a good friends of ours, SLK, who not only was a forester, but also makes a habit out of rescuing animals. We found out that the mommy bird would come back for it. We followed her instructions and the mommy did come and find it. She seemed so excited, as did the little baby.

We rode 4-wheelers a lot and walked down to the waterfall. We also went fun-yakking. We managed to get sunburned. Woo-hoo!

We had a lot of fun, but we are now back to reality. At the beginning of summer, we always think that we have all kinds of time to get things done, then, before you know it, summer is almost over and we are just getting started.

I know this was not an exciting post for everyone, but it will document our trip so that we can come back and remember it later.

I hope to post more pictures soon.

By the way, see that word below? The one that says "comments?" Please click on it an let me know you were here. I see the hit counter go up, but not many comments. Sniff, sniff.

Irony? Or Intervention?

2008-06-22T23:17:00.002-04:00

Until last week, I had never heard of “dry drowning.” I happened to read an article about a little boy who died from dry drowning. I told my kids about it and we talked about how unbelievable and tragic it was. In no way minimizing what had happened, our lives continued on as normal.

Little did we know how this information would come back into the forefront of our minds.

On Saturday, we were at an indoor pool for an “end of the year” banquet for the team girls from the gym. While playing in the pool, M. and another girl were pulling each other around on a pool noodle. All of a sudden, M. started coughing extremely hard. She got out of the pool and came to me, but she didn’t look quite right. One of the lifeguards came over and asked her if she was okay. M. was very slow in responding. She could not catch her breath and was still coughing to the point of gagging. She was a little pale in the face, except for around the eyes, which had a purplish red tinge to them. She kept trying to sit down, but the life guard would not let her. She bent M. forward while forcefully pounding on her back. M. kept coughing quite hard and had some water coming out of her mouth and nose. By this point, we had 3 lifeguards involved. In a very calm fashion, they got my attention (I had been trying to calm M. down and keep her focused while trying to find out what happened) and asked me if I had heard of dry drowning. I asked if that was what happened to that little boy at the water park and they nodded. They looked at me and waited to see if I understood what they were saying. I asked them if they thought that I should take her to get looked at. All three said yes. (BTW – they were trying to communicate with as little words as possible so as not to panic M.)

We then left for an urgent care center nearby. They took X-rays of her lungs. While they did not see anything immediately, they mentioned the fact that it can take several hours for the lungs to have a reaction and start filling. They then transported us by ambulance to the main Children’s close to down town. They had to observe her for several hours and take more X-rays after 4 hours. She apparently, with the help of the wonderful lifeguards of course, had been able to either get all or enough of the water out of her lungs that they did not have a reaction. Praise the Lord!

We were told to watch her for the next 24 hours. That has now passed and I think we can start to relax again. She is still quite sore in her sternum and her lungs.

Any of you parents that visit a pool regularly, please be aware of this situation. The paramedics were very reassuring that all seemed okay, but they also told me that it was a very good thing that I brought her in. They have seen similar situations with not as good of an outcome as ours. Please click on the link in the first paragraph to read more info on warning signs. Also Google “dry drowning” and “delayed drowning.”

All I keep thinking of is what if there had not been anything in the news about this lately? Would the lifeguards have been as conscientious? Would they have been less aggressive? If so, would all of the water gotten out of her lungs? If not, would she have been a news story?

Again, I ask, Irony? Or intervention?

Click on "comments" below to let me know your thoughts. (Comments that are left go straight to my email, so it will save you the step of having to create an email from scratch.)

M. gymnastics

2008-05-27T23:15:00.003-04:00

Graduation

2008-05-19T08:31:00.009-04:00

Graduation was wonderful!! We had 2 sets of grandparents come in.

Here is a picture of J. getting her diploma:

Here is J. with my parents, Nanny and Paw:

Here is J. with me, Nanny, Paw, Granma D., Granpa B., and Dad:

Here is a picture of J. with the grandparents:

And a pic. of just J. all by herself:

That night, we went to a nice fondue restaurant for dinner. Boy were we stuffed!

We so enjoyed having everyone together! We hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.

Before we go, I have one last picture to show. As you know, J. is a competitive gymnast and works out 17 hours a week. Needless to say, she is pretty muscular. I tried to get a picture of her flexing in her dress because I loved the irony of the feminine dress and the masculine musculature. Here is that picture. Of course, she is giggling and not really flexing that well, but you can get the idea:

Here is a better picture showing her muscles:

HA HA. (Sorry, I thought that was really funny.)

Hope to post some more photos soon of M. from her gymnastics "fun meet."

Take care!

By the way, see the word "comments" below? Click on it. Then leave us a note letting us know you were here.

Love to all!

Pictures!!

2008-05-11T11:33:00.013-04:00

Finally, a post with some pictures!

Here is C. and I dressed for a banquet. We clean up pretty well.

Here is M. jumping 6 feet and 3 inches in the standing broad jump on Field Day. 1st place!!

Relay race on field day.

Sack race. Love the pigtails!

Egg toss!!

J. and M. - my beautiful girls.

Can you guess which one is which?

Now, before anyone says that it sure seems like I like M. better since I posted more pictures of her than of J, be reminded that J. graduates next week. I have a hunch that we may take just a few (ahem) pictures of her dressed up as a girl - seeing as how it doesn't happen often.

***OH - guess what?? M. tried out for the competitive team at gymnastics and made it! She will be competing level 4. I am going to be coaching a team this year as well, but I am coaching level 3. So that is 3 competition seasons for us this year. Luckily though, all 3 of our teams will compete in the spring season (which starts in January.)

Don't forget to sign the guestbook and let me know you were here!

Preliminary update

2008-05-05T07:39:00.003-04:00

This is an update to let you know that I'm working on an update. A really nice one. With pictures and lots of info. However, I don't have it ready yet. So, hopefully soon. :-)

Things have been pretty calm the last week or so. That is in prep for this week as well as the next two weeks. This week has M. participating in field day at school and having team tryouts for gymnastics this Saturday. She is a little concerned because she pulled a muscle in her groin area and is a little sore. She was very unhappy that this happened the week before field day and tryouts. She did not really complain this morning though, so hopefully she is almost better.

J. has a "welcome to High School" thingy tonight. We are all still a little bewildered as to how she is old enough for High School. She is happy. Dad and I? Not so much.

Next week is JH graduation for J. AHHHH!

So, this weekend is tryouts, next weekend is an all-weekend event at our gym. And by all weekend, I mean ALL weekend - Friday night, all day Saturday, and 3/4 of the day on Sunday. Because I coach, I will be working all shifts inside the gym. Then, because I am on the executive board of the booster club, I need to have someone working a lot of the shifts in the lobby working concessions. Guess who gets to fill that spot????

Then, the NEXT week is exams for J. I am stressed about those because she has a couple of classes that she really needs a good exam grade in. She has developed some kind of testing brain freeze this year. Test preps, class work, and homework produce wonderful grades. However, if it says TEST at the top of it, she cannot seem to make the same type of grades. She is taking 3 credit classes this year, so we are hoping that she at least does well on those.

Well, that is it for over here. I sure wish my life were more exciting - then I would have more to write about.

Thanks for visiting!!

Post Spring Break ramblings

2008-04-18T11:19:00.005-04:00

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted! I really enjoyed the comments people left here after my last post as well as all of the emails that came from it! I like hearing others points of view and learning about how others tick.

Anyway, over spring break we went to my parents house. They live way out in the middle of nowhere. We let the girls each bring a friend with them. We took our 4-wheelers out there with us as well. Between our two 4-wheelers, my dad's 4-wheeler, my dad's little circus bicycle, my mom's 3-wheel bicycle, and my mom's all terrain golf-cart - the girls were riding something continuously. I will post some pictures later. Some of them are quite hilarious.

J, my oldest daughter, finally got her MRI. Guess what? She has a stress fracture in her right tibia. What fun. The doc said to try to rest it and quit trying to "work through the pain" so much. What is funny is that she is leaving on Monday for a school trip near a beach where they will be participating in many tours as well as a scavenger hunt through the town. She gets back from there on Wednesday evening. School on Thursday. Then, on Friday, a school trip to a theme park (physics lessons in a fun setting.) So, I'm not seeing much rest coming to that tired little tibia.

She is rethinking her goals for gymnastics. She doesn't think she can get to the level needed for a college scholarship in time. This has always been her goal, so it is a little hard to see her struggling right now. She has had a tough year with competing a dual season and having some injuries. She is feeling kinda down right now. I'm hoping that since competition season is almost over - one more meet - she will get time to regroup and refocus. She loves gymnastics so much and she does not want to lose it. I told her that she does not have to get a college scholarship to be a considered a successful gymnast. Very few girls get to that level. However, many compete in the "amateur" side and do very well. She is debating on if she wants to just stay in the USAG side and just get as far as she can, or if she wants to stay in the AAU rec side of it. The skills are pretty much the same, but the judging is a little more lenient in the AAU side. Also, if she stayed in USA, there are 4 levels left to compete. In AAU, she is in the highest level there is (I believe.) She could add harder skills in AAU as she learned them, but would never move up a level. It is so much to think about.

M, my youngest daughter, will be trying out for team in a couple of weeks. She is very nervous about tryouts and the thought of competing. However, she has seen the myriad of benefits that have come to her sister from it; strong body, determination, endurance, prioritization, and most of all, an extremely strong bond with other girls that become like family.

Speaking of my girls, they both participated in something besides gymnastics this year!! :-) J. is in a Christian drama group in her school. This morning, they performed for the kindergartners.

M. participated on a web-design team and they just submitted their site to be judged. This morning, the web-design team was spotlighted at the elementary morning assembly. The web-design teacher called me this morning to tell us about it. She was going on a field trip with the kids in a different grade and could not be at the assembly. She asked if M. would mind getting up at the assembly and telling the elementary what their site was about, etc. She said that M. was such a leader on the team that she wanted her to get up and be the spokesperson! I was so proud! Interestingly enough, both girls were on two different stages on campus at the exact same time.

Even though things have been really stressful for all of us this first week back to school, I have enjoyed watching my girls rise to whatever occasion occurred. They are maturing so quickly that I often get tears in my eyes. Sometimes the tears are from watching them have to struggle with hard decisions, quick changes in plans, and being disappointed. Other times, though, the tears are from joy in the way they are handling these situations as well as seeing what kind of person they are developing into.

I am such a hands-on type mom that it is a little hard sometimes to see that they (especially my teenager) are getting to where they don't NEED me quite as much. I enjoy the difference in the relationships that comes from a desire to be with me rather than the utter dependence. It has left me feeling a little bereft at times though. I know that they will always need me - but it is just in a different way now. It is more of a guidance role now rather than a director. I like being the director. I like the control. :-) I know, though, that if a relationship stays with that dynamic, there is really no growth and no reward for either party. I'm doing my best to accept it and go on.

So, those of you with kids that are older, let me know how this process evolved with you. Those of you with kids that are younger, you are free to tell me that I am a psycho and that I need therapy. ;-)

Pics will be posted soon.

Revelation

2008-04-01T09:45:00.004-04:00

Not sure how many of you go to church. If you do not, then this post may not be as meaningful to you as it is to me.

First off, I love our church and our minister. He seems to have a knack for saying what I need to hear. Let me set the stage.

For those of you that do not know me, I struggle periodically with depression. Some times it is so far in the background of my psyche that I almost forget about it. Other times, I feel as if it is an entity similar to a second personality that is trying to take over my entire being. It clouds my insight as well as my outlook. It can be a vicious cycle that makes you feel like a failure for not being able to get "it" together as well as everyone else seems to be able to do. Which causes you to set even higher expectations of yourself. Ones that cannot be met. When you fail to meet your new set of standards, you sink even lower.

I have always had a hard time wondering why I cannot be strong enough, Christian enough, etc. to not fall to this and to fail over and over again.

Well, this past Sunday, my minister pointed out that Paul had similar feelings. I have read this passage many times, but hearing it in a different version (The Message) made it "click" better for some reason. In Romans 7, Paul states:

"I know that all God's commands are spiritual, but I'm not. Isn't this also your experience?" Yes. I'm full of myself—after all, I've spent a long time in sin's prison. What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God's command is necessary.
17-20But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
21-23It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
24I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
25The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

Okay, if Paul, who was one of the most amazing and influential people in the New Testament felt at the end of his rope at times, then maybe I'm not as much of a failure as I thought.

When I am mean to my kids, my spouse, and my friends; when I lose my temper; when I lie; when I speak bad of others; when I am un-supportive; when I SIN, I must remember that Jesus is the way to set things right. I cannot do it alone. When I feel as if I am the worst person on the planet, I must remember that Paul wondered at times if there was something wrong deep within himself.

I am thinking of making this my new mantra. Romans 7:15-25. Romans 7:15-25. I need to say it over and over in my head.

Hopefully by doing this, I can reach the next step. By agreeing that I have a problem and that I am a sinner, hopefully I can now begin to embrace the life that only HE can give.

I'm sorry for the theological post today. I hope that I do not offend anyone. My goal here is self-therapy at times. Today was definitely one of those times.

Thanks for reading!

I would love to hear any spiritual epiphanies that any of you have had.

YUCK

2008-03-27T14:13:00.002-04:00

You know what stinks? When your daughter needs an MRI for a gymnastics injury.

You know what stinks even more? When your insurance won't cover it, but they will graciously apply it towards your insanely high deductible.

You know what stinks even more than that? Not having a money tree to pick money from to pay for the MRI.

The stinkiest of all? Having to cancel MRI and hope the injury is not too serious and will heal itself.

PFFFFT.

I wish . . . .

2008-03-25T08:18:00.002-04:00

Okay, does anyone else ever do the "I wishes???" I do them constantly in my head. Here are some of them:

I wish I knew what kind of boys my girls will marry.

I wish I knew when we would be financially ahead of the game.

I wish I could get my house together enough that it would stay organized.

I wish I could find a way to make clean laundry last longer.

I wish I could have a flat stomach.

Then, there are ridiculous ones:

I wish I could shave my cats so that I would quit having to deal with cat hair all the time.

I wish there was no pampas grass in my yard.

I wish my hair were not so curly.

I wish my eyes were green.

I wish my eyelashes weren't red.

I wish I had more kitchen cabinets

Why do we (I) spend so much mental energy on such things? I wish that I could NOT focus on these things.

So, am I the only one whose brain does these things?

My first blog post!

2008-03-19T14:03:00.000-04:00

I thought that I would start a blog. Mainly to see if anyone will read it. Hopefully, this will be the start of a very prosperous adventure in which we will make millions of dollars.

Or not.