Connecting with my inner pioneer...

Alrighty then...
Got to have a good freak-out post every once in a while, huh? What makes me smile is that each of you picked up on the fact that this chick desperately needed to get the heck out of Dodge for bit.
In a pre-planned (read: Providential) Cub Scout camping trip, we loaded up early Friday morning and headed to Far-Far Away. It was breathtakingly beautiful there. I couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous retreat, but the most awesome thing of all is that cell-phones were so far out of range that there was NO CHANCE of getting a phone call at 4:30 in the morning packed full of DRAH-MA.
I TRIPLE DOG HATE DRAH-MA. And that's all I will say about *that* because we had nary a bit of it this weekend.
Well, except for when my big warrior man got in touch with his wild side and killed a copperhead snake with a rock. ~sigh~ That just does something in a woman when her man saves the children in such a primitive way. After we were sure that he was good and dead, we fished him out of the river and put him on display for all the impressionable little Cubbies to see. Because that's what warrior princesses do when they are proud of their man (this ain't Girl Scouts, y'all). My good buddy Caroline has some awesome pictures that will be posted at some point either here or on her blog for your viewing pleasure.
I want you to know that we thought of you, bloggy friends, as she was holding my arm which was keeping me from plunging to my certain death (of a heart attack) into the river on top of the snake. We knew good blog fodder when it was given to us, and we were willing to sacrifice life and limb to provide. You're welcome.
Until then, here are some other pictures from our excursion in the great outdoors:
This is where I had my quiet time yesterday














**By the way, I can't see the toolbar at the top of my page to add links and pictures, ect., and I have no clue why...Anyway, here is Caroline's address, but you will have to copy and paste the old fashioned way: http://myincompletethought.blogspot.com/

Finding My Happy Place

Have you ever wanted to choke about 10 people simultaneously with your bare hands? No? Ok, well me neither.....
Because I live a perfect life, completely FREE of stupid people who force me to practice the virtue of patience at it's zenith.
Oh. And I never lie.

A Baby Story

Let me just start by saying that God has been blessing me immeasurably lately when it comes to celebrating new life. My last post was about my boys' baptism and now, tired and incoherant as I am, I am excited to tell you that I had the amazing privilege to be a part of a birth last night.
My sweet friend, Heather, was due to have her first baby last week. She was a little apprehensive about the whole labor and delivery thing, so she wanted someone who had been down that road a few times (wink) to be in there with her. Her hubby was a little.....ok, ALOT.....skiddish about the whole process, bless his heart, so they both agreed that ol' Gayle ought to take his place next to her Mama in there.
YAY!!
We arrived at the hospital on Saturday night around 9 p.m. where she labored on her own until around 7:30 a.m. with little progress. It was then, that the Dr. came in and decided it would be a good time to get things moving a bit faster (thank you Lord), so he put her on a pitocin drip and broke her water.
Ok, NOW we are in business. She labored until about 9 a.m. with those horrid pitocin contractions until, most blessed and honored event that it is, she was able to get her epidural.
The angels sang audibly at that moment, folks. Life was good and all was well.
Heather was even able to catch a nap while her Mama and I drank our 256th cup of coffee and prayed that our deodorant wouldn't wear out. At about 5 p.m., she was ready to start pushing.
Here is where I give a big shout out to all the nurses and labor coaches in the world. I am sure that many of us can relate to only having been on the pushing side of the whole delivery event, so we don't realize that it takes a village of folks doing a full body workout to assist in getting these little pumpkin's out. Before you say that it is nothing compared to what the mother is going through, I will tell you that I unequivocally agree. Remember, I have done this 4 times myself. I just have to say that I was SURPRISED at how physical it is for the helpers.
Our (Heather's Mama and I) main duty was to hold Heather's legs and push backward on her feet during a contraction. It's all about giving them resistance, I guess, and let me tell you, her legs are STRONG. We pushed, pulled and contorted, dispensed numerous spoonfulls of ice, and dried exhausted tears from our champ for about an hour and a half. My shoulders and legs are sore today, but I wouldn't change it for anything, because, at 6:21 p.m., I saw the most amazing and beautiful thing happen. I saw this perfect little face and then this perfectly formed little body slip out of her mother, and I absolutely marvelled at our God. I just wept (and still do every single time I think about it, including now) at how miraculous birth truly is. God is so very good to us. I just want to give Him the praise right now, for this awesome experience.
Well, I need to wrap up this long post and make my children something to eat. I will end this by telling you that Mom and Baby are fine, and are resting comfortably as they get to know each other while figuring out this whole nursing business. I have a trillion pictures of Heather's sweet baby girl, but I don't think it would be a good idea to post them on the world wide web without permission. Just trust me that she is extremely cute with her wide eyes and a head full of fuzzy dark hair. Alright, I'm really going now..
OH! HOW could I forget? Happy St. Patricks Day, from this Irish lass! Are you wearing green?

Let the little children come

First, an update on the post below, and one other thing: The kids were put on Prednisone that evening and they are feeling much better. I am planning to speak with my pediatrician face to face the next time we have an appointment, and then we will just see how it goes from there.

Also, I am going to be scarce for a little while around the world wide web. We are hitting a pretty busy season (Oh, blessed Spring!!), so I must be a good steward of my time. If you need to, you can reach me via email because I will be checking that regularly.

In the mean time, we have had an extremely eventful week. They were all good events, though! The most blessed one of all was the baptism of Ty and Jacob last Thursday. Did you catch that? It was on a Thursday. And to be even more unconventional (because that's kinda the way we do things), it was done right after our P.E. class.

Over the last several years our family has been so very blessed to be friends with a homeschool Dad, who is also a Children's Minister, who also does said P.E. class in all of his spare time. He loves the children God has given him to minister to, but more importantly, he loves his Father and it his passion to connect the two. He has done a great job. My boys have learned so much from Mr. Jason, so we knew that even though he isn't on staff at our own beloved church, we wanted to give him the honor of baptizing our boys.

We also felt it very important for our boys to have their friends be a part of this meaningful milestone in their lives. However, being that many of their friends are scattered throughout different locations of The Church, we knew that Sunday would be almost impossible.... so after P.E. it was..... and let me tell you, God shows up and blesses unconventional, too!

From the moment Ty (who went first) entered the water, all 30 kids were not content to stay in their seats. Not in any way irreverent, they all rose to their feet and went right up to the pool, surrounding it, to show support to their friend. It was a sight to behold and not one adult in the room could keep from tearing up. After all, isn't that the way Christ calls us to be? They applauded and congratulated Ty and Jacob when they came out of the water, and they weren't even afraid to get wet when they hugged them....which they did, because they were genuinely happy for them. I felt like I learned a thing or two from these kids on Thursday. A lesson that I probably only could learn by watching.

Along with the immeasureable rejoicing of my heart over my boys' public proclamation of faith, I became freshly aware that God isn't glorified in our inhibitions when it comes to worship and love. I was blessed enough to see a sweet glimpse of what He meant when He said that we are to be childlike in our faith and that the kingdom of Heaven is made up of "ones such as these". What a treasure to hold within my heart forever.

Jason and Jacob

Jason and Ty

Growl..Snarl...Rant, Rant!

This past weekend, my kids were all vigorously playing outside while their Daddy fought the evil tree that eats chainsaws. Apparently, they spent a significant amount of time in the woods because this is what they looked like yesterday when they woke up:

This is not my child. I tried to get pictures of their rashes that nicely cover each of their faces, but the rash wasn't really showing up enough to adequately demonstrate how nasty it is, so I gave up.

Naturally, I called my pediatrician right away (read: first thing in the morning) because I knew that Prednisone was in order (we have "been there, done that" a few times already). I left a message on the nurses' voicemail, otherwise known as the black hole, and I waited....and waited......and waited, until 4 stinkin hours had passed and I never heard anything back. So I very nicely called the front desk to check the status of my call (as my kids are itching and whining) whereby they put me on hold. For 10 minutes. At that point, they come back to let me know that "call volumes are high and they will get to me when they can", so she took down my info again and we cordially hung-up.

So I waited....and waited.....and waited some more, until around 8:00 p.m. when I decided "ya know what?, I don't think they are going to be calling". That was the point when I got frustrated.

I love my pediatrician. In fact, I have used him ever since Ty was 3 (meaning he has had all of my others since infancy). He knows my kids and he takes great care of them, but I can never seem to get in when my kids are sick, I never get a return phone call in any *reasonable* amount of time, and they have to schedule well-appointments almost 6 months out. Is this normal? I don't know if I will feel better or worse if you say yes, truthfully.

Anyway, I called them again first thing this morning and I explained that they never called me back yesterday, so I got put on hold again. When she finally came back, she told me that she was handing the paperwork to the nurse as soon as we hung up and that she would call me right away. 2 hours later, she called. I am still waiting to see if the prescription will be called in or not. GRRRRRR!!!

By the way, we are treating the kids with some over-the-counter stuff that will temporarily relieve the itching that's so miserable. So, what would you do?

Crazy, Scary Thing #2

I ask you, is there ever a dull moment around here? Let me help you out by saying, NO. No there is not.
So bright and early Monday morning, I was a determined woman. Mark had to head out of town for business overnight, and I was going to make sure that our day/night ran smoothly. We got school done in a swift and accurate way, the house was picked up and all was well. I even took the boys to gymnastics that evening and used the opportunity to reward myself and the littles with a Chick-fil-A chocolate milkshake (Can I just pause here to say OH.MY.WORD....If you have never experienced this new obsession of mine, get thyself to a Chick-fil-A, pronto! Trust me.)
Anyway, I got home, made a decent supper and got all the little dumplings in bed, feeling thrilled that it went so well. I was more than giddy that I would be able to obnoxiously sprawl all over that bed, so I made myself a nest of pillows and crawled in. Right in the middle...and before I knew it I was sleeping like a baby.
Do you get the feeling that something is about to happen? Well, of course it is.
All of a sudden, I am jarred awake by the sound of a massive crash and the house literally shaking. All at once I realize that a pretty serious storm is going on outside, and the power is out.
I checked the time...4:21 a.m., and I go to get the kids out of their beds to sleep in my room while I called the power company to tell them of our outage. I just thought that maybe the big box thingie had been struck by lightning or something.
Well, I was wrong.
When the light of day came, I realized that we had a MASSIVE tree come down in the backyard that took our power line and my peach tree with it. We had a live wire in the back yard....AND it came only a few feet from hitting my boys room. A few feet.
Don't forget the fact that my hubs is 4 hours away when all this comes to my FRANTIC attention.
So anyway, I called the neighbors, the power company and Mark, and before too long, I was out the door to my Mom's, where it was warm. They couldn't get it fixed until late last night, but bless their little overtired hearts, they did it, using the headlights of their trucks just to make sure we had power. My backyard looks like a bomb went off and as soon as I can find the camera's battery charger, I will post pictures.
I am, yet again, humbled and awed at the Lord's protection over this family. There are families all across Alabama today that are dealing with waaaaaay more damage than we are, to their hearts or homes, or both. Thank you Father for your protection, again.

**Edited to add pictures and to say that...YES, Emily! You hit the nail right on the head....I have no doubt in my mind that that's exactly what He is trying to show me. For so many reasons... and I adore Him for it.

This is the view from the boy's window:

This is from my kitchen window:

This is Ty:

My "Rebuttal"

It has come to my attention that the previous post may have made a certain man look like a "big fat jerk". I was also made aware that I wasn't as hurried to let y'all know that I was presented with some amazing take-out from one of my favorite restaurants for dinner that night, or that it was accompanied with a DQ ice cream cake (my favorite...it's the crunchy chocolate stuff in the middle that does it for me) complete with my name on it.
I guess now would be a good time to mention that said man footed the bill for my freshly cut new do and highlights, and that he has a pretty big deal date set up for us in the next few weeks. I am not privy to date and time, you see. He takes care of everything.
Whew~now you can rest easy knowing that I am married to a pretty swell guy. Seriously, I adore this fellow and he is waaaaay more nice to me than I have ever deserved. Love you, my Mark.
Oh, and I am the ripe old age of 33.....Thirrrrrty-three.....Treinta y tres. Nope, no matter how many times I say it, it doesn't go away. Oh well. Now you know.