an award....

Kelly at My Utopia has given me a blogger award, the BrillANTE Weblog Premio-2008. Here is what she had to say about me....

Breezy: Besides having a cool blog title, this mother of three's blog is a breath of fresh air. I love reading about her everyday adventures. Quote "My two youngest offspring have decided to trade bedrooms and why they didn't do this in the first place when we first moved in a little over a year ago is beyond me".

Thank you Kelly for your kind words. I too love reading your blog and seeing you experience motherhood for the first time.

Here are the rules:
Put the logo on your blog. Put a link to who awarded it to you on your blog also. You need to nominate 7 other bloggers for the award and put links to them also on your blog. Finally, leave a comment for those you've nominated- so they know they've received a special award.

Normally I wouldn't list anyone but this is different than a meme and it is also a great way to let someone know that they are not only a blessing but an inspiration to you.
Here are my 7:

Lime: A beautiful mother of three who can make me laugh until my sides hurt and/or leave me speechless with just a few words. She is intelligent, creative, kind, caring and thoughtful. Lime will tell it like it is, she just says it in the most unique way. I have never read a dull or boring post on her blog and every Friday you can read a post called "DaCount" to find out what she is thankful for each week. It is a true pleasure to read her blog and I thank her for sharing pieces of herself with us all in Blog Land.

Logo: A beautiful, sassy, red-head who is very adventurous and likes to post about her adventures with pictures as a bonus. Logo is very creative, intelligent, kind, caring, thoughtful and hilarious. She has two sons who are just adventurous and creative as she is. I really enjoy reading about her life's travels, new things she has found on the big web and her day to day life as a wife and mother. Thanks Logo for sharing yourself with us.

Susie: Another beautiful mother who is also creative. Susie is a hoot and you never know what will be posted when you are headed for her blog. My favorite posts of hers are about India. Each December Susie takes a trip to India and she posts pictures and tells how different it is from our America. Thank you Susie for sharing India with us.

Jillie: A beautiful nurse who has a very kind heart. Jillie is full of energy and passion and it all shows in her posts. I enjoy reading Jillie's posts concerning her travels, times out with friends and just life in general. She has a very kind heart and will be the first one to send a birthday card out to all of her friends. Thank you Jillie for all you do and for being a breath of fresh when sometimes no fresh air can be found.

Shari: This beautiful mother of two has opened my eyes to a genetic disorder that I didn't even know existed. Shari has Usher Syndrome Type II. Her posts are centered around how she deals with life while dealing with hearing loss and loss of sight. I admire Shari for speaking out and teaching others about her disorder, also for sharing her day to day life. Thank you Shari, you have taught me so much about appreciating the "little things" in life.

Mona: A beautiful mother who lives in India. Mona is very intelligent and she too is adventurous. Mona has her own way with words that makes it very fun to read. Her posts will cause you to stop and really think about the difference in how things are done here in America than how they are done India. She is most always very upbeat and happy and always has something positive to leave in your comment box. Thank you Mona for sharing your life with us.

Ameratis: Last but not least, A beautiful new wife who has big heart and a way with words. Most of her posts nowadays are concerning her married life. I enjoy reading her Flash 55 posts because she has a very creative mind and like the others she is wonderful with words. Thanks Ameratis for letting us see bits of your life.

It was hard for me to think of things for each person I awarded because I could go on and on about each one of them, they are very special to me.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but things here are busy with trying to get the kids ready to go back to school tomorrow on top of everything else we have to deal with.

I hope you all have a great day, week, weekend!

the beach

We are back from vacation and this is the first time I have had time to post pictures.

Upon our arrival at the beach the first thing we always do is unpack and get settled then we normally hit the pool but this year we didn't hit the pool until the next day, here is the first pic that I took. It is my almost 11 yr old son Ty, you can tell by the smile on his face that he is very happy to be in the pool and that he really didn't want to step out for this pic.

There was a chance of thunderstorms every day but as you know the storms do not always happen and when they do they are quick about their business. This pic is of a storm moving in on Monday that gave the ground a tiny drink, this pic doesn't show what I was trying to capture but here it is anyway.
When I took this pic I was looking at how choppy the ocean was becoming. On the day before, Wednesday, the water was choppy but it was really weird because the wind didn't blow at all that day. This pic was taken on Thursday and as you can see the wind was picking up and the water was getting rough. As the day went on Thursday the wind kept getting harder and that evening we were put under a Tropical Storm Warning because an area of low pressure that had developed off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida had been upgraded to a Tropical Depression and was predicted to move up the coast.



This was taken on Saturday. What you are looking at is part of Tropical Storm Cristobal. Cristobal came through on Friday and finally cleared out early on Sunday.

Sunday afternoon the sun came back out so we hit the pool. Ty was so excited that his sunburned dad had finally joined him in the pool that he wouldn't let go of him, this pic is the proof of that.
This pic is of another late afternoon thunderstorm trying to pop up. I also wanted to get a pic of the lovely pink house you see on the left. As you all know, pink is my favorite color.

Mr. B wanted to get a pic of the kids and me playing in the pool so he started snapping away, in this one he wanted us to get out and stand with the pool in the background but the pool felt so good that this was as close to out as we were willing to go.
Ty wanted his dad to snap this pic so that he would have proof that he and I could sit and balance on the boogie board that kept flipping everyone. The boogie board mentioned is pictured in the above shot. Chesney is hiding behind the black boogie board and Bethany is preparing her hair in a funny style so that Mr. B can snap her pic with weird hair next.
This pic was snapped Monday evening before we left. My mom and me were finishing up our laundry and the girls came out on the balcony to mess with us. What the girls didn't know was that I had my camera with me, this pic is after I talked them into letting me snap them. The funny thing was that the girls were acting all silly and they didn't know that on the balcony to the left of us two teenage boys were standing there listening to everything the girls were doing.
Ty never strays far from me so when mom and me went to do laundry Ty tagged along. I had made him stand near the pool in several different spots for pics and then he wanted me to get a pic of him acting like he was going to jump in the water. Ty was in his pj's in this pic because it was taken about two hours before we left to come home Monday night.

This is the last picture I took of the beach before leaving.


We had a great time and we didn't really do anything. We shopped a bit, ate out a few times and swam, other than that we didn't do a thing. Mr. B and I had problems sleeping while we were on vacation but only because I am use to a nice soft pillow top mattress whereas the ones in our condo were like sleeping on boards to me, it is also hard for me to adjust to different places when I am away from home. We will be returning to the beach when the kids are on their fall break in October. Mr. B will be hiring a private charter boat so that he and a couple others can go deep sea fishing.

I will post more about vacation Monday and maybe post some more pics. I also need to do a post about an award another blogger gave me this week. Until then y'all take care and have a beautiful weekend!

God Bless!

farewell for now.....

It is that time again for my family and I..ya know...V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N!!!! I think we all are more than ready this year, I will be gone until the 23rd. Every year when I do my "I'm leaving for the beach" post I always post pics with it. This year I decided to post some that I took myself in 2006.
I found this pic of the round house while searching google the other day checking out beach pics. When I saw it I got so excited because this is right across the street from the condo building we stay in. Below is a pic that I took from our balcony 2 years ago. You may have to click on my pic to enlarge it to see the round house but it is there. We will be returning from the beach either on the 23rd so between now and then y'all take care and have fun. I will see you all when I get back! HUGS! :)

4 more days....

As usual, it has been a while since I have posted on here so I figure it is about time. I have been more busy than usual the past few days so I haven't had time to get online hardly any at all. Actually I have been on the computer for the past two or three days almost constantly creating spreadsheets, printing labels for files, and getting paperwork from our flooring business more organized so that we have not only a paper copy in a file but also a copy on the computer. I have also been re-organizing and/or re-creating print outs of my monthly reports on the accounts that I hold at church. When we get home from the beach I will be looking for something to keep me busy but I do not know that I will be successful in finding something to do other than the usual house work/cleaning because I have done just about everything I can think of to get this complete house organized better and I have done it one room at a time.

I have just returned from dropping my van off at our mechanics. We are getting a tune up, new brakes, and he is going to check a couple of things out for me that we have been having problems with. Yesterday Mr. B was changing the oil for me and he noticed something that could be part of the answer to my brake problem. First of all the van needs new front brakes but I have been noticing that they aren't working well at all lately. I pulled out of Wal*Mart the other day and a car stopped in front of me at the stop sign, when I put my foot on the brake it felt all squishy and different and I didn't think it was going to stop but it did about a foot from the car in front of me, wanna talk about a scare. When this incident happened I was going maybe 8 mph because I had just pulled out of a parking lot. While changing the oil Mr. B saw a brake line (?), I think that is what he said, and it had a leak so the mechanic is going to check that for me. I haven't been driving the van that much since the brake problem first started a couple of weeks ago. We were supposed to take the van to our mechanics last Monday but we were too busy to break loose and take it which was kind of good considering our mechanic had another car come in that really needed some major attention.

I have to go this week to buy new shorts and a new belt because all of the shorts/belts that I have are now too big for me. When I put on a pair of jean or khaki shorts even with a belt I can pull them off of me without undoing the belt, button, or zipper, this is a really great feeling. I was telling Mr. B when I lose a little more weight I am going to have to go get one of the soft rubber things that go on a ring that is too big for your fingers because my wedding ring is very lose right now and if I were to sling my hand sideways I could sling my ring completely off my finger, I do not wear my rings to bed anymore because I am afraid they will slide off in the night and if that happened I would panic the next morning when I noticed they were gone.

We are keeping an eye on the weather today because we have severe storms that should be passing through sometime from now through this evening. We need the rain badly but I wish we could get it without all the high winds, hail, thunder and lightning.

For those of you that use Mozilla Firefox, have you installed version 3 yet? If so please let me know what you think of it. I have been reading up on it and it has some very nice, helpful add-ons.

I guess I better sign off now and finish up this account I am working on. Y'all have a great day and I will be back sometime this week to post again before I leave for the beach. :)

late on a promise.....

I have a cousin that just started a new discussion blog. I promised him on Thursday or Friday that I would do a post about the new blog Monday to help get some traffic going through there but I have been very busy the last two days and I haven't had time to post. The post that is up is almost a week old but you are free to comment on it. I do not know when a new post will be up because when he is not working he is at the hospital visiting his father-in-law, my uncle, who (I just found this out yesterday) has Ecoli and from my understanding some other problems going on. I haven't been able to get to the hospital yet because Mr. B has been working late and so has Chesney and that leaves me nowhere for Bethany and Ty to stay. I am not sure on the entire illness with my uncle since I haven't been able to get up there and talk to anyone. Anyway...here is his blog, stop by sometime and check it out.

In previous posts I have mentioned organizing the office and what a job it was. I worked for three days sorting through files, getting rid of what we didn't need, condensing what we do need, printing new labels for the file folders, and creating new file folders for some things. My main goal in all of this was to get our old file cabinet out of here and get the files into my desk and my newer file cabinet. I had files stacked around me for three days because I went through every single one of them sorting, throwing out, and placing things in other files where they will be better found. I have handled every single file here too many times over the past three days but I am very familiar with all of them and what section they are in now. Before I had them in alphabetical order in the file cabinet, Mr. B's idea of alphabetical order and mine differs, actually it isn't the alphabetical order as much as it is what he refers to things as and what I refer to them as. Now we don't have to worry about that because I have alphabetical sections now. If it is a copy of an invoice from his business then he just goes to the business section which is labeled nice and clear for him. If it is a spreadsheet concerning the remodel on our fellowship hall at church then he will go to the church section, etc... . I am hoping that this proves easier for him in the times when he is filing something when I am busy or not home because I get tired of digging in other files to find something that should have been in another file, most of the time if I am looking for something I have to stop and think like he does. I have made him a list and told him if he isn't sure then ask me where it goes and if I am not home then leave the paperwork on my desk with a post-it note explaining that he isn't sure where to file it and I will show him when I return. Don't get me wrong, Mr. B is not goofy or any less smart than anyone but some of the paper work that you have to deal with when owning your own business can be a pain sometimes, there are so many tax papers that don't need to just go into a file that says "Taxes". It is easier to separate them now so that when it is tax time next year we can just pull the files out and go. Some of them can be confusing as well if you aren't use to dealing with, some can be confusing whether you are use to dealing with them or not to be honest about it. Mr. B is also the type of person to put all of the paperwork into one stack and separate it at the end of the year because he doesn't have time to sit down and create files for the paperwork, receipts and so on.

We leave for the beach in ten days and I am so excited! On July 11, the day before we leave, we are moving everything off of our hardwood flooring, going to rent a hotel room, then coming home to buff and coat our hardwood. Sometimes when you install raw wood and sand it the wood seems to soak up the finish more so than other floors, this is something that happens from time to time and as it turns out our floor has done this. We wanted a semi-gloss finish on the floors but what we ended up with was more of a satin look and we haven't had time to re-do them in the past year. You can't really tell a difference in pictures because the floor is shown at more of an angle plus the glare from lights and windows are shining on the floor so in pictures it looks real glossy but in reality if you are standing on them you can see the difference.

Tomorrow the kids, my sister, and I are going to a local public pool to meet up with a couple of our cousins and their kids that we never get to see. We are going to spend the day soaking up some rays and swimming with the kids and I am very excited about this because I haven't got to swim much so far and I LOVE swimming, I just love being in/around/near water.

I guess I need to sign off for now, what little bit of laundry I have is calling my name and the carpet is in need of a vacuum. Y'all have a wonderful day!

ready for the weekend

This has been a crazy busy week. Not only has Mr. B been helping preach a revival every night but he has been working like a mad man. Every night this week he has had to come straight home from work, jump in the shower,jump out of the shower, get his suit on, grab his Bible, grab his keys and we head out the door. I am not complaining because I am thankful that God is blessing him with plenty of work right now. For the past few months the business was at a comfortable lull giving them plenty of time to get everything done and not having to worry about shifting from job to job each day but since about the second week in May it has been hectic. My husband has been dealing with 4-6 different jobs a week in order to get every job done before we leave for the beach on July 12.

The thing about hardwood flooring is that some of the steps take time to finish.
Let's say you are having raw wood installed, first the wood has to be cut and nailed down, then the wood has to be sanded, buffed,vacuumed,then a coat of polyurethane which needs at least 24 hours to dry. Now if the humidity is high outside, the first coat of finish (poly) may take longer to dry even though you have your air conditioning unit on. Rain factors in on the drying time as well because of the dampness it leaves in the air or if it increases the humidity as some summer rainstorms do. Sometimes when the humidity has remained the same and it hasn't rained the first coat will be tacky when you check it the next day, if it is a bit tacky (tacky is when it is almost completely dry but the top surface has a slight stickiness to it) you can't buff it again because it will not only mess up the first coat but it will also jam up on the buffer screen and let me tell you those screens are not cheap. When the first coat is dry you have to buff, vacuum and then apply a second coat of polyurethane. Once the second is dry you buff, vacuum and apply a third and final coat. That is how Mr. B has 4-6 jobs going at once, when you have those drying times you can be on another job site completing it.

Okay, I don't know why I just gave you all a lesson in hardwood flooring...lol...on with the post.

Last night was the final night of the revival so we do not have to go to church tonight but we are in desperate need of going to the grocery store and also we have to buy a new washer sometime this weekend (I was hoping to go purchase a new one tonight but since it is 6:30 and Mr. B is about an hour away from completing his work day, I am assuming it will be tomorrow morning) because mine has washed it's last load. I have been fluttering around the house cleaning all day and getting things done so that other than going to purchase a new washer we won't have anything that we have to do tomorrow.

For the past three months I am finding that I can't sit still much. I can try to sit on the couch and prop my feet up for a rest and some tv but something comes over me and I am up and moving/cleaning again. I have lost a bit of weight because of the moving around all the time and my legs and feet are paying for it because I am on my feet most of the day unless I sit to check my email or I have to drive, I have caught myself standing to eat meals as well. I don't know what my problem is but I do know one thing, I have one clean house! Being that physically tired does cause problems when I try to go to sleep at night, it is as the saying goes "I'm so tired I can't sleep" and I have trouble sleeping anyway. One would think that after staying so busy each day that I would be ready to fall into bed and sleep at night.

I am so ready for July 12 to arrive so that we can go to the beach and relax for almost two weeks, I don't know why I am rushing it on because once it gets here the time will fly by as always. Each year we are on vacation we sit and talk about how nice and slow the days are going and then before we know it we are saying "our time is up already? but it was going so slowly".

I went to get gas for our four wheeler earlier because my son was wanting to ride and the gas container was empty. When I returned with the gas and filled the four wheelers tank, my son tried to start it and it would do nothing. We checked everything on it and of course my son started flaring his temper a bit so I started walking closer to talk to him about his temper when I noticed something, he had the key turned to the off position, I immediately started laughing which didn't help my son until I told him what the problem was. His temper vanished as quickly as it had arrived and he too laughed then turned the key to on and started the four wheeler. It is very quiet in the house now that he is outside riding.

Well folks, I have gabbed long enough. Y'all have a wonderful weekend!

is it that time yet?

I am so ready to go to the beach and it is almost time (18 & 1/2 days to be exact but who's counting down?) but it seems like the closer our departure time gets the busier we get and that is kind of a good thing because it does make time go by faster but I would like to be able to relax somewhat before we go on vacation.

This week Mr. B is helping preach at a revival for a neighboring church. This is the first revival he has got to be a part of as far as the preaching goes so he was really nervous yesterday morning since he was the one scheduled to get it started, he did a very good job and brought a message titled "Rise Up and Walk" out of John 5:1-9. Basically to break it down quickly and in short he was saying that we (Christians) need to lay our burdens on God and keep pressing onward because we can't stop at every bump in the road to complain or we will get nothing accomplished in our lives. There is so much more meaning to it but that is, like I said, quick and short to give you an idea.

I think I have made it around to all of your blogs today and commented. I have been trying to keep up with my blog reading/commenting however here lately it can be a feat just to get online with everything on our schedules.

I apologize for the shortness of this post but I have to go now and finish up with all of my "to do's" around here. I hope all of you are having a wonderful day!

trading spaces...literally

My two youngest offspring have decided to trade bedrooms and why they didn't do this in the first place when we first moved in a little over a year ago is beyond me. Bethany wanted the bedroom that we had intended to give Ty and it didn't take Ty long to jump on board with the idea to take the room at the end of the hall so now here we are over a year later and Bethany came to me one evening and asked if I thought Ty would want to switch bedrooms. I told her that I would talk to him but the next day I got busy in the house and forgot to ask Ty about it, however, later that night Ty asked me if I thought Bethany would trade rooms with him, my question to Ty was "are you sure you want to do that"? he replied that he was sure so I told him that Bethany had already came to me the evening before and ask the same question. Since then we have been preparing to make the switch but other things have taken up my time. Yesterday Bethany and I got online to shop for new bedding and once she had that picked out I took her to the paint store to try and find the color she wants. Ty wants his new walls the same periwinkle blue but he wants a blue tie-dyed comforter, when he showed me this I immediately thought of Lime since she likes tie-dyed things. Needless to say today is the day that some of the painting will begin and they both will be sleeping in new rooms tonight but they will have to wait on all the new bedding and we have to wait on Bethany to be sure that the bedding and paint she picked out is what she wants and what she will be happy with because once it is done there's no changing it.

The high today is supposed to be 82 and the humidity lower than it has been in weeks, all I can say is that it will be a pleasure not to have that thick sticky humidity. There have beens storms all around us but we haven't had rain since last week some time. Almost every evening the sky starts getting huge dark storm clouds rolling through ,thunder and sometimes the lightning will start but we do not get the rain from these storms and we desperately need it. When it does rain here it is torrential downpours that last about 20 minutes then go away then by the next morning you can't see sign that it even rained. We haven't really been labeled drought yet but I know it is coming because we haven't had a chance to catch up from the drought last year. Living here in the valley is sometimes rough because the mountains surrounding us keep the storms out, that is also why we rarely get snow storms during the winter.

That is about all I have at the moment, my mind is turning now to periwinkle blue paint, taking beds apart, moving dressers and then turning around and setting it all back up again. I will make my way around blogland today to read and comment but it will take some time because I will have to do it during breaks from painting and moving. Y'all have a blessed day!

a new blogger

I don't have a lot of time today but I wanted to introduce you all to someone that is very dear to my heart. She has decided that she would like to join our blogging community. I would like to introduce you to Bethany, my daughter. You can also find the link to her in my blog roll listed as "Outside the Box".

If you have time and of course if you want to go on over and check out her space.
Have a great day!

VBS, organizing, and it's almost beach time

Good morning, I finally have a little bit of free time this morning so I am going to use that time wisely and blog! The laundry can wait along with sweeping and mopping the hardwood. I thought once VBS was over we would slow down somewhat but so far that hasn't been the case. Today I don't have that much to do other than cleaning the floors and doing laundry and I am not sure that I will know what to do after that because my schedule has been fully loaded here lately, I am fairly sure that it won't take me long to figure out how to sit and relax.

Speaking of VBS, we had a wonderful week with all of the children. All week long they were so well behaved and attentive. I honestly have to say that this was one of the best VBS's that our church has had since I have been attending there. We had two girls that got saved, my 7 year old neighbor Shyla got saved on Wednesday night and then on Friday night a 13 year old girl named Destin was saved. It was a great week all the way around.

It seems I have been in an organizing mood lately. My office will probably be my next room of choice to hit. I am almost always organized even if just a little but here lately I seem to have taken it farther. My hands are itching to get in the pantry in the kitchen but I keep putting that off because I straightened it up just last week. As far as the office goes, I am actually wanting to downsize my desk. I have nice office furniture but the desk is too big for the room so I want to get a smaller one and use my space in here to it's full advantage. Right now things are here or there and I want everything to be in it's proper place, I also would like to get the rest of my Lighthouse collection in here, currently I only have a few pieces of my collection in here so I would like to complete that task. I think what I dread the most is going through the filing cabinet because even though it is all in order I have some old files in there that I can get rid of.

Our beach vacation is so close, I can't wait until we are there. This year we are staying longer than a week, I am not sure if we are staying another week but I know we are not just staying for a week. We could stay a month and I wouldn't complain!

I am going to try to make it around to all of your blogs throughout the day so until then have a wonderful day!

times are a flyin'

It has been a while since I have had time to post on here because things are very busy in my life. Last week I was busy re-painting the kitchen for two days, the first day I only had x amount of time to paint so I finished up the next day and I have been shopping for wall hangings and such to go in there. We have also just came out of a very busy weekend with church and we started VBS tonight which went really well. Other than that I have just been busy with this and that. Hopefully by the end of the week I can get on and swing by your blogs. Until then y'all take care!

schools out !!!!!!

I am so happy that summer break has arrived. This year has been a tough, hectic year for my three kids so the break is well deserved. I have been busy the past few weeks helping a friend do some home improvements. The friend I have been helping is the one who lost her husband back in March. She lives two counties North of me so when I go up there I stay all day so that hasn't left much time for me to blog. Today I had to go pick up this years final report cards then I came home and I have been keeping myself busy with little overlooked household tasks.

I am happy to report that all three of my children advanced to the next grade so that means in the fall I will have a fifth, eighth, and eleventh grader. The bad thing is that we now have a new school that houses grades five through eight and it is about three miles southwest from the elementary, middle and high school that the kids attended this year. The soon to be 5th graders at the elementary school were split in half so that some stay and some go to the new school. My son will be staying right where he is until his 6th grade year. My daughter that will be an eighth grader doesn't have a choice but to go to the new school because it is the new middle school as well and the old middle school will be the 9th grade academy and all of this is being arranged to help with the over crowding situation that the high school has been dealing with for the past few years.

I know this post is very short but I have to run, I have promised to take the kids out to lunch to celebrate their advancements in school. Y'all have a lovely day!

long time, no post...

It has been a while since I posted here so I thought that I would do so now that I have a minute or two to spare.

Last time I posted was on May 1 my 15th anniversary. Shawn and I were getting ready to leave for a couple of days at the beach alone. A lot has happened between that time and now so I will just catch you all up.

First of all Shawn and I had the scare of our lives in the evening of our anniversary. Chesney, our daughter who got her drivers license on March 18 of this year, had her first wreck and yes, it was her fault. Her Choral Department was performing "The Sound of Music" and this was the opening night. Chesney was the spotlight person and she had to wear all black while up in the booth so that the performers couldn't see her and get distracted. That morning she had forgotten her black slacks at home so after school she ran home to get them and on her way back to school she stopped at a gas station to grab a drink. Upon pulling out she was going to make a left turn so she looked left, looked right then pulled out. It just so happens she pulled out and hit a 1995 GMC Sierra truck in the back quarter panel and when we arrived and asked what happened she said that she didn't see him but the truth later came out and she had forgot to look left again before pulling out. The gentleman driving the GMC would get out and talk to her because she was so upset and scared so he waited until Shawn and I arrived. He was the nicest fellow about it all, he even told me to take it easy on her because it happens to all of us. His truck might have $100 worth of damage to it but Chesney's 1995 Toyota Camry wasn't so lucky. The Camry needs a new hood, new grill, new headlights, blinker lights and a new bumper clip. The most damage was done on the passenger side of the car and it isn't going to be as expensive to repair because we have several mechanics in the family that are willing to do the work if we provide the needed parts. Thank God she was alright, just a little shaken up.

Shawn and I had a very nice trip to the beach. I wish we could have stayed longer but our schedules wouldn't allow more time. We walked the beach, enjoyed the sun, shopped til we dropped for items to bring back home to the kids, and we spent some time napping. We decided over that weekend to start looking for a more fuel efficient car because we don't really need the mini-van anymore. Even before Chesney got her license we haven't been using all the seating space in the mini-van. I now have a Chevy Venture WB edition and it has three seats in the first row and two in the last row. The two in the back never get used unless we are doing something with the youth group at church. The Venture isn't that bad on gas if we are taking a trip but around home with all of the errands I have to run weekly and with gas prices being as high as they are, and going higher, I use a lot of gas and it is getting expensive so we spent part of Saturday checking out some new cars.

I went back to the eye doctor on Friday and found out that my vision has actually improved a bit since last year and my astigmatism is almost gone. I also found out that I have severe dry eye so we are going to try out a more breathable contact lens. I am hoping these will do the job for me because if not there are only a couple more brands/types of contact lens I can try since I have an astigmatism. There are several new types of contact lens coming out for people with dry eye and astigmatism.

I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day and I will try to get around to all of your blogs sometime this evening. Y'all have a great day!

15 and counting.....

glitter-graphics.com

Today Shawn and I are celebrating 15 years of marriage. I can't believe that it has been 15 years already, I guess the old saying is true "time flies when you're having fun."

I met Shawn 17 and 1/2 years ago and my life has never been the same since that day. He is my world, I love him so much that there are no words to explain what I feel for him. Even though we have been together for seventeen and a half years I still get butterflies in my stomach when he walks in the room, he doesn't even have to be around me because just thinking about him makes my stomach flip flop. It is not often but we, like everyone else, have our arguments intense moments of fellowship at times and when those times happen we say what we want to say then walk away to cool off and before you know it we are laughing about it. God really blessed me when he put Shawn in my life and I am so thankful for that. I look forward to many more years with him.

As I have said in my previous posts, Shawn and I are leaving first thing in the morning headed to the beach for a few days alone and away from everything. In that time y'all have a great weekend and take care!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY SHAWN!!!
I LOVE YOU!

celebrating another year of life.....

Good morning Blogland! I can't remember a day that has started out so great in a long time. Most mornings I am grumbling as I pull myself out of bed but this morning Mr. B woke me when he slipped his arm around me, kissed my neck and whispered "Happy Birthday Beautiful". Wanna talk about making a girl feel special!

My opinion on birthdays differ from a lot of people's opinion. A lot of people look at it as doom and gloom because they are getting older but I just can't do that. I feel it is a time to be thankful for living another year. I am not saying everybody should gather around you shower you with gifts, cake and all of that and make a big deal out of it. Instead I think we should all celebrate the past year of life and start praying for the best in the coming year. If you have had a hard year then celebrate the fact that you made it through, learned from it and start looking for a better year this time around. I am simply saying it sure beats the alternative if you know what I mean.

With that being said, today I am thanking God for the last year. The year may have had some small bumps in the road as each year usually does for every breathing human being but I feel that those valleys we go through help form who we are. Wouldn't the perfect, burden free life be boring? Think of it this way, if we all lived perfect lives we wouldn't have mistakes to learn from which make us stronger nor would we have the friendships that we form while going through life's troubles. God never promised that the hill would be easy climb, He did however promise that He would only put on us what we can handle and that He would be there always and that includes getting older. Age has really never bothered me because I feel that we are only as old as we want to be and I do know and understand that the body doesn't always agree with the mind but if you keep your mind in a positive field then those times when the body isn't what it once was things go a lot better.

I am not only thanking God for another year of life but also thanking Him for all the wonderful people, you included, He has put in my path, I am truly blessed to have the family and friends that I have.

With that...y'all have a beautiful day and at some point today I ask that you stop, take a look around you, count your blessings and thank God for them. Sometimes doing this will put a different perspective on things and we see that it isn't so bad even if we are getting older every year.

Before I go, I want to thank Mona for the beautiful birthday post she published in honor of my birthday. Thank you!

a busy week....

Good morning. It is rainy and messy here right now which is probably a good thing since I am trapped at my desk for a while finishing out accounts for the month. I have a several errands to run today but they will have to wait until the rain stops, people around here drive crazy enough when it is dry outside so I am not taking chances while the visibility is bad due to downpours.

I am going later to look at some paint colors. I am going to repaint the kitchen a darker green I think. I love the color that is in there but it is too light and shows everything that gets on your walls like dirty hand prints from an active ten year old boy that can't help but touch the walls everywhere he goes, I am just tired of wiping and swiping on the walls all the time. When we built the house I chose to go with an eggshell finish but I am finding that it just isn't working in the kitchen so we are going to make some changes. I had thought about painting the kitchen yellow and accenting with blue and red but yellow wouldn't really help me out with the finger prints. I may change my mind a couple of more times while looking at paint colors so who knows what it will be when I am done.

Speaking of my son Ty, he has the sweetest little heart when he wants to. We were driving down the road the other day and out of the backseat he says "Mom, don't you like whipped icing on your cake better than regular icing?" I told him yes I like the whipped better then he says "what kind of cake is your favorite yellow, white, or chocolate?" I tell him that the either of the three will work for me then I ask him why he is asking me questions about cake and he responds "your birthday is Tuesday and I am going to buy you a birthday cake because you always buy me one and I am getting it with pink icing since pink is your favorite color". So I am assuming that I will be eating a birthday cake with whipped pink icing tomorrow and even though I am watching what I am eating right now I am going to eat it because he thought of me. He also told me he was going to buy me something pink for my birthday..now how sweet is that?

As the title of my post says...this is going to be one busy week for us. We have a revival going on at church through Wednesday and the man preaching is from North Carolina, he is one of our favorite preachers so we will definitely be attending each night. Chesney ,our oldest, probably won't be able to attend the revival because the Choral Department in her school is performing The Sound of Music on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night so they are practicing for several hours after school each day. She is part of the tech crew so she has to be there for every practice, she is doing the spotlight. Friday she went to school that morning and didn't get home until 10:30 that night because of practice, thus far weekends have not been excluded for practicing and she is ready to get the show on so to speak. We are going to see the performance on Thursday night because Mr. B and I are going to the beach Friday morning for our anniversary. Mr. B is packing about six days worth of work into four days so that we will be available to take our little trip with no worries as far as his clients go, needless to say he will be putting in some extra hours this week.

I have had a long enough break from the numbers so I better get back to it. Y'all have a good day, be safe and God Bless!

good so far....

Hello blogland! All of you that have been saying prayers for my son or kept in him your thoughts let me say thank you. Ty went back to school on Wednesday and has been good since. There has been no more vomiting, his appetite is slowly returning, and his color is getting better everyday. He is tiring easily but that is to be expected after what he has went through for almost two weeks. He has been going to bed so good at night because by bedtime he is too tired to argue about it, actually he has been going to bed an hour to a half hour earlier than his normal bedtime.

I went for a check up yesterday and found out that I am not as tall as I thought I was. I thought I was about 5 feet and 2 inches, it turns out that I am only 5 feet and 1/2 an inch. I am seriously going to be the runt of my little family. My 16 yr old passed me up about three years ago but she is only a couple inches taller, my 12 yr old is about an inch taller than my 16 yr old and she is still growing she is also loving the fact that she is taller than her mom and she rubs it in at every opportunity. My son, which is 10, is slowly sneaking up on me. The top of his head is level with my lips now and he hasn't even hit that huge growth spurt that boys hit around age 11-13.

The upcoming week is a big week for Mr. B and I. Tuesday we will celebrate my 33rd birthday then on Thursday we will celebrate our 15th anniversary. I have been talking for two or three years about wanting to go to the beach for a few days on our anniversary but it seems we never have the time or one of the kids are sick, you know how it goes something always comes up. Well my sweet husband surprised me yesterday by telling me that we are leaving bright and early next Friday morning, just the two of us, and heading to the beach. He already has reservations made and everything, I can't wait!

Well, I am going to lunch with my mom and sister and I think I hear them pulling up so I better sign off so I can go. Y'all have a beautiful day, take care, and God Bless!

an update....

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers regarding my son. Yesterday Ty felt like giving school a shot. He was still weak and draggy but otherwise okay. I took him and talked with is teacher for a bit about his do's and don'ts right now. About 8:30AM Ty's teacher called me and she was worried. Ty had been sitting at his desk doing his work one second and the next second was violently throwing up in the trash can behind him. I picked him up and as his doctors office instructed me to do, we headed for Children's Hospital. After more blood tests and going over and over with me about the vomiting they came to the conclusion that my son has acid reflux which is inflamed because of the pneumonia. They told me to take him off of the Levsin and they wrote me a prescription for Zantac. He was to take 1 tsp thirty minutes before breakfast and another tsp before dinner. This morning was his first dose and it didn't do well at all. Within half an hour after breakfast Ty started having some abdominal pain that got worse in the span of about twenty minutes, once the pain hit it's peak he ran to the bathroom and vomited more violently than he has throughout this entire illness. About twenty to thirty minutes after vomiting his stomach finally quit hurting and his color has come back. I have decided not to get my panties in a wad yet and give it another go at dinner, if we have a repeat of this morning then he will go back to the E.R. at Children's Hospital.

Good reports from yesterday are that his electrolytes are good which means, praise God, he isn't dehydrated at this point and how he isn't I don't know.

Please continue to pray for him.

prayers needed.....

Friday morning I posted about my son Ty being sick all week. After my post Friday morning things started going south pretty quick with him. When I woke him that morning it seemed that the cough he had been having had turned very bad. I called the doctors office and they couldn't see him until Saturday morning (I am very thankful that our pediatricians office has a Saturday clinic). We went in first thing Saturday morning and after telling the doctor all about what had been going on with my son and what the results were from the appointment with the other doctor earlier in the week, Dr. H got real mad because further tests were not done on my son especially after hearing him cough which I explained had got worse in the past couple of days. We were sent to Radiology with an order for a chest x-ray and to the Core Lab for blood tests. The doctor told me that since Ty had been vomiting for seven days that depending on the results from the blood work he might have to be admitted to the hospital.

The lab tech that took the x-rays let me go back since Ty was young. I stood in the little room with the tech while she took the x-rays. When I worked at the hospital (not the hospital we were at) I worked in Radiology. I had to handle the film from x-rays a lot so I knew what I was looking at, basically I knew when something was there that shouldn't be there but I am not educated enough to know what it is. With that being said....as the picture of my sons chest came into view on the computer screen I immediately saw a spot/mass in the bottom right lung that shouldn't be there. Wanna talk about scared! I almost asked the tech what it was but caught myself because I knew that she couldn't tell me due to laws and such. I tried to act all cool, calm and collected on the walk back to the doctors office which is housed in a wing off of the hospital. After waiting on the results from the blood tests for about an hour and a half the doctor came in and informed me that my son has pneumonia. It is in the lower part of his right lung. They prescribed a very strong antibiotic and a good cough syrup then the doctor wanted to talk about the vomiting and the five lbs. my son has lost since Monday, those five lbs. are weight he really couldn't afford to lose in the first place. He told me that if there wasn't much improvement as far as Ty eating and vomiting by Monday then he would have to be admitted. After throwing up for a few days my son was more than reluctant to eat at times and I can't say that I blame him and this is what concerned the doctor. He told Ty that throwing it up was bad enough to deal with but even if it did come up he had to eat or they were definitely going to admit him. The doctor told me to give him whatever he wanted to eat but make sure he eats something. He also prescribed a medicine for the vomiting and it has worked so far.

Today Ty hasn't had much to eat but what he ate has stayed down. Last night was the first night in nine days that he has slept all the way through the night and not had to get up to vomit. Even though I am really worn out and tired I couldn't sleep last night because I was worried about him so therefore I made several trips to his room to check his breathing. The only downfall about today is that he has had a fever. He hasn't had a fever since late Wednesday night until now. I have to call the doctors office first thing in the morning so I am praying for more improvement by then because I don't want him to have to be admitted to the hospital.

I'm sorry to blog about my sick son all through this post but nothing else has been really happening in my life the past couple of days to blog about unless y'all want to hear about the cleaning I have done to keep my mind occupied?LOL! On a more serious note, I would like to ask all of you ,for the second time, to please pray for my son. Before I go I would also like to thank you all for being my sounding board in times like these, I really appreciate it!

Y'all be safe, take care and God Bless!

Friday, Friday, Friday...ahhhhhhhh

I tried to get around to most of you yesterday since I haven't been on that much this week. I have had my hands full with my son being sick and also with a project I am working on for my daughters high school choral department.

In my last post Sunday, I briefly mentioned that my son Ty was sick and that it was sinus and allergy problems, well two doctor visits and they still don't know what is wrong with him. Saturday he got out of bed and was fine from what we could see, he did seem somewhat more mellow than usual but we thought maybe he just slept hard. By Saturday night we knew something wasn't right because as the day had progressed he had started acting more and more mellow. By 9 that night he had a fever then he woke up around 2:30 AM vomiting. He hasn't quit vomiting yet! Every time food hits his stomach it is right back up again within an a couple of hours. He has been eating exactly what the doctor said to give him..chicken soup, popcicles, saltine crackers and nothing is staying down. Wednesday he showed a lot of improvement so it was okay to send him to school today. At 11:15AM the school nurse called to tell me that Ty had eaten lunch then got sick two times so I needed to come and get him. The fever is gone, he feels fine but his stomach rejects any type of food and sometimes drink that hits it so I am thinking that maybe it is time for some blood tests and I do believe we will be persuading the doctor in that direction. I would ask that you say a prayer for him to get better.

As for the project I am working on for the Choral Department at the high school...they are getting ready to do a production of "The Sound of Music" and I am creating the programs that are handed out to everyone so that they can read about the scenes, the cast, cast bio's and so on. I don't have all of the info that I need but I have got a good start on everything I have. Out of 25 main cast members, I have only received bio's on three of those, however, last Friday I went down and finished shooting their pics that will go beside their bio's so that is done. I have also been playing around with different templates and modifying them to my satisfaction. Once I get all the info and can put at least two complete programs with different styles together I am going to take it to the Choir Director so that she can choose the one she wants to go with. I didn't realize everything that goes into this program deal but I sure have worked hard on it.

Well, I am off to get my day started. Y'all have a great day, be safe and God Bless!