I Stand All Amazed

I just need to say that I am utterly amazed the strength and faith of the people who surround me. We are all stronger than we think we are and when tested can muster more faith than we give ourselves credit, but truly I have seen the best examples of love, service and faith in a little family from church over the past few weeks. They have changed lives as their lives have been changed in heartbreaking ways.

We serve a mighty and compassionate God whose love for His children is boundless and unfathomable. Only, we get to have a glimpse of it through loving and serving His children, our neighbors and His children, those he has entrusted to our care in this life. I am blessed to know that families ARE forever and that death will not separate us from our loved ones for long. I am fortunate to understand the Master's Plan for salvation, indeed exaltation. I am not saying that I am there, but I definitely have a strong desire to redouble my efforts to bring myself and my family to celestial glory.

Heaven is a little brighter with the return of precious Brandon to his Heavenly Father's Kingdom. My world is a little brighter with his parents' example shining before me.

Mother's Weekend

First of all, DON'T HAVE A STROKE!!!

I realize that it will come as quite a shock to both of you readers that I am posting after 6 long months. It may have been that long since I last had this much time to myself with no other pressing obligations. I can't promise that it won't be 6 more months before this happens again. I cannot possibly recount the happenings of the last six months, and if I were to, I would soon have no readers. Suffice it to say that there have been birthdays, ER visits, sickness, health, reaching of milestones and much love and laughter. That said....

I have a wonderful husband and children!! Since our Sundays are generally hectic (ok, that is an understatement) James made this Mother's Weekend. He got up with the children on Saturday morning (and I only gently reminded him 3 times Friday night what my expectations were). They brought me breakfast in bed at 8:00 (which IS sleeping in at our house)~ chocolate chip pancakes, fruit and milk. YUMMY!! After a leisurely breakfast, I got up to go to the restroom and immediately 3 of the 4 children were banging on the door to give me a card. Some things never change!

It was a beautiful day outside!! A little blustery, but sunny and pleasant. Once we were all dressed and ready to go we took off to Lowe's where we built planters for Mother's Day....I built Eli's. He would not even plant the flower. You know, I'm a DIY hands-on kind of mom. So we got home and fed the troops then suddenly, I had a brilliant idea! Just this week I have re-committed myself to taking time to search, ponder and pray each day. I told James that I wanted to take my books and go have a snack in the sunshine and read. It will become important to the story later that I have had severe allergy symptoms for several days leading up to this. So off I went. I had a yummy lunch on the patio of a restaurant while I read scripture. I prayed and shivered as the wind blew across me on the completely shaded patio. After lunch I wanted something a little sweet, but not heavy. So I drove across town to the snow cone stand. Said wind was still blowing and now I had ice in my hands so I sat in the car with the windows partially down so that I could be right in the sun but not get sweaty because the buffered breeze kept it pleasant. I read an entire chapter uninterrupted of a book I have been trying to get through for like a year. I did not want to be gone too long, so I headed home to find James in the hammock waiting for me. It was a beautiful day for lying in the hammock. Unfortunately, he then had to leave to procure the gifts for the mothers at church, but then I got to lie in the hammock for about a 1/2 hour before needing to wake the boys. More outside time!!!! Then we took my mother out for dinner.

Fast forward to now, Sunday morning. I am in the bed with worse allergy symptoms than all last week combined surrounded by a mountain of laundry since I took the day off yesterday. My children are at church singing to an absent Mommy right about now. It was worth it though! To be out in God's beautiful world soaking up the beauty and glory of it all....Happy Mother's Day to me and to all the other wonderful mothers I know!

Big Pile O' Leaves

Another yearly tradition! The first big pile of leaves must be jumped in!

Halloween 2009

When all talk of Halloween began in September my first thought was "cha-ching!" All three big kids wanted to be the same as last year. There is nothing better than getting 2 years out of one costume for the same kid, not to mention 3! (Some of you may remember that I may be the only person in history to wear the same bridesmaid dress in 2 weddings!) I was patting myself on the back for buying those black cat leotards a little big last year. Then last week as the girls were chatting up trick-or-treating, Eli said, "Me be pider-man?" I quickly reminded him that he wanted to be Bob the Builder again. But alas, the boy who has never seen a SpiderMan movie and has no SpiderMan toys had to be "pider-man". OK, 2 repeats are better than none. Then, the day before Halloween I went to get the girls' leotards, tights and kitty ears and tails and horror of horrors, the leotards were missing! Probably sold them at Kid's Market for $1. So then I had to talk up going to pick out a new costumes at he store (no time to make anything with less than 24 hours to go) and was not well received on the first pitch. Finally talked them into new costumes and headed to Wally World. Emily picked a pixie costume without much fanfare, but Rachel could not pick any costume that was actually available in her size. There was not even a long sleeved black leotard to replace the missing one in her size. Grudgingly, I agreed to go to the other Wal-Mart to find a leotard since she was not giving up on the black cat. No luck at the other store either!! She was not having anything that was available. Then, finally, she said, "I'll be a cheerleader." Woo-hoo! We have that at home!! She wanted pom-poms and I said SOLD! Two Auburn shakers later and we were on our way! So here they are, our cheerleader, pixie fairy, bumble bee and SpiderMan.

We Trunk-or-Treated at church in the late afternoon and then headed over to Grandma's neighborhood to do a little Trick-or-Treating. We met up with Keely and Erica and go to get a numch more candy since they had just started! We're now off to gather some our loot to send to a soldier in Afganistan to give to the children there!

PS~guess what I found on the way out the door to trunk-or-treat......

Fall Campfire

Last week we had beautiful fall weather. It has been too wet to actually camp in the back yard though we hope that is coming soon. We were able to have a fire in the fire pit and roast some marshmallows for Family Home Evening though.

The Hiatus is Over!

Well, time totally got away from us this summer! We stayed so busy that I totally forgot all about the blog! Now that I am thinking over it, I am not sure what all the busy-ness was, but believe me, we were running all the time!

Sam turned 1 on July 10th! He loved his cake and could have cared less about anything else. Since he's the 4th kid and I knew that he wouldn't, we just had a little family celebration which turned out to be just right! Can't find those pictures though. Will post if I find them.

A few days after my last post we got a difficult phone call. James's grandmother had passed away suddenly. For the last couple of years she had been battling lung cancer that was spreading. We were beginning to make preparations to visit in her in a couple of weeks anyway, which made it hard to tell the kids as they were already very excited to go see Mauzy. It was not until we were there, I think, that they realized they would not be able to talk and play with her this time even though we were staying in her house.

Emily took it the hardest of the children. They were very close and Emily has many fond memories of Mauzy. She will still say sometimes that she misses Mauzy very much and that it is hard not to be able to talk to her. Rachel is very matter-of-fact about these things. At the viewing she came to me asked why we could not touch Mauzy. I told her that we could if she wanted to, so she and I went and held Mauzy's hand for a minute. It did bother her that the lower portion of the casket was closed and she could not see Mauzy's legs. A friend asked if I had the funeral director open it up. I'm happy to report that it was not necessary, she accepted my explanation that her legs were still there. As I reflected on this little bit of Rachel-ness, I realized that I should not have been surprised. She wanted nothing to do with Sam in the hospital until she could see his body~his head with the hospital cap poking out of the burrito blanket just did not cut it for her! Eli remembers Mauzy and knows that she died. We saw her house listing on the internet the other day and he knew it was her house. I hope he will always be able to remember her at least a little. Sam only saw her once, last fall when we made a last minute trip when we found out that the cancer was back. I am so glad we went then!

We stayed in Maryland a little over a week. It was a tiring trip for this poor(as in bad)traveler, but good to see family even under the circumstances. We had a "picnic". That's what Mauzy called a big get-together with 40-50 folks eating crabs, pizza and hot dogs under the carport and playing in the yard. It was strange without her there giving us all little jobs to get ready, but an appropriate way to celebrate her life. She loved nothing more than family and friends and a friendly card game!

When we got home, there was a lot of planning, organizing and preparations to be made for heading back to school. We got it all done and went back to school without the first picture being made! Another accomplishment to add to my Mother of the Year nomination form.

Sam also began walking during those early August days. Now he can keep up with those big kids...as long as a gate doesn't get in his way! Just a couple of weeks ago he went down the stairs by himself. One of those gates didn't get closed. He's always wondered what the sibs were doing downstairs in the playroom...now he knows! We're pretty sure an unseen hand was helping him out!

So now we're in the school and preschool routine. Emily is in 1st grade and loving it. Rachel and Eli are in preschool 3 days a week and Sam and I go to preschool 2 days a week. We've had pink eye. We've had swine flu. Poor Rachel missed her trip to Old Baker Farm that everyone else is posting pictures about, but maybe she'll be done with illness for the year. We'd like to get on with the fun stuff of fall now. Football, Pumpkins, Crisp Air, Apples, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Autumn is upon us. We're going to enjoy it!

Vacation 2009

Two days after the unfortunate finger-door thing, we left to go on our first extended family vacation in Gatlinburg. This one included Grandma and my sister's family. We rented a house (they like to call them chalets, but you know it's Tennessee and I just can't go there) from my friend Donna. Fortunately it was a big house with plenty of room and even a basement rec room, but by Tuesday I was missing my girls. They were always in the basement playing with their cousins and when we went somewhere they rode with them too (necessary car seat move that just didn't get fixed until the night before we left). I would get them dressed in the morning and read to them at night, but really missed our quality time during the day. Poor Eli was suffering from an pretty severe UTI (103 fever and sometimes severe abdominal pain) but kept giving us intermittent details of the symptoms and, just so you know, medical care is spotty at best in the Garlingurg/Pigeon Forge area. I was missing the Birmingham medical community by Sunday morning! By the time we saw the doctor the unrinalysis showed what the doctor thought was the beginning of the UTI, it was actually the end. If you know Eli, you know that he is pretty darn smart and he has a drinking problem. "Mommy, I sirsty" is the first thing I hear every morning and he'd like to have a cup in hand all day. He quite quickly put together that the more he drank, the more he needed to go and that hurt. So he carried his cup around (we really wanted him to drink now) but it was always full and he started going 12 hours between bathroom visits. We had to bribe him with "Special Special Juice" that only he got. We all survived and even had some fun. We hiked, rafted, visited the national park and Cades Cove, miniature golfed and more. I was a little nervous to have the whole family vacation experience, but I'd do it again.