A Rollercoaster Ride

The last 4 weeks of my life have been the most emotional since 2/14/08. I have had tremendous highs and heart breaking lows. Today in the space of 6 minutes I've had both. The phone rang...not completely unusual. I looked at the caller ID....huh...a Utah number. I knew Kev was flying out to Texas today.....did I dare to hope?? I picked it up. An almost familiar...yet just a bit different...voice exclaimed "MOM!!" I almost fell of my chair. I was so excited to hear that again. My emotions took me through the roof. Turtle Balm to this Mom's soul. "Hey, Bud!!" Was all I could squeak out. Then I pulled it together knowing that he didn't have much time. He asked me about the new 4-wheeler and he told me how much he missed the dogs. He has lost 15 pounds and has already worn through one pair of suit pants. We laughed at some things he's seen and he told me he misses me just a little. Then the pay phone chimed in and he needed to go. I told him that I love him and I would talk......."I love you, Mom." Click. My heart went from the highest heights to a crash landing on my unswept kitchen floor. I guess habit takes over. I'll talk to you later just seems like the right thing....but later means December. On the bright side, I got to talk to my son for the first time in 20 days today. He is doing better than I could have imagined.....better than I could have hoped for. So why am I weeping in a puddle of broken heart? Maybe I'm just not ready to let go of him. When he left 20 days ago I knew he would never really be mine again. His heart now belongs to the Lord and serving Him. And when he comes back....he will find some pretty young thing who will claim his heart forever. While I welcome this for him...I guess I still need time to get used to the idea. Oh, how I love this child of mine. And miss him.....

Happy Birthday To You!!

Yesterday, August 1st was a very important day in my life.....back when it was 1979. You see I had a younger brother and a younger sister and my Mom was about to give birth to another sibling. Now this was before gender identifying ultra-sounds....so we were about to be surprised. Well....most of them were going to be surprised. I wanted another baby sister. You see, the one I already had didn't like to play barbies or house with me (she was 3 for crying out loud!!). She wanted to hang with Travis and play "boy stuff".
I needed and prayed for a little sister who would be like me and want to do girly stuff. Boy...if I had only know the power of prayer back then. My poor Mom....I did get a little sister who was very much like me....and still is. She is very different than I am too. She is strong and courageous. She is hip and cool (just ask Jo). She is one-of-a-kind. I just love this girl.
We have such a good time together. It wasn't until a few years ago when I noticed that not everyone was BFF's with their Mom and sisters. I'd just assumed that everyone had that remarkable bond. huh...I was wrong. We are so lucky to have each other. It is very hard for me to live so far away from them.
Miss Kim is a great listener and is always there for my kids as well as me. She never seems to tire of our incessant whining. She offers good advice and a shoulder when we just need to cry it out. I do wish that I could have been there for her birthday...but instead I just have to wish her all the happiness and the richest blessings from here.
So, my darling sister, I love you more than I can say and I miss you terribly. Someday I will live close to you again and we can hang out and resume our wild and crazy ways (like going to Wal-Mart together!!) Oh, how I love that girl!!!

One Down....

Here is one of the Pay It Forward projects I delivered to it's new owner. It is now safely at Heather's house. I am pretty sure she likes it. I used Halloween colors for Halloween Heather. But not so much that she can't display it whenever the mood strikes. And if she wants to make it a bit more Halloweeny ((hehehe...weeny...tehehehe)) she can change the paper to Halloween paper. So, I have one project finished and delivered and 2 others finished but not delivered and one more started. But...my house is a mess and my dogs need bathed and the child needs picked up and a letter to write and nothing is getting done.....except spray painting....

Winners!!

Everybody loves a winner. I love my winners. I have 5 winners....I've never been much for rules. Ladies....Heather, Renae, Salena, Susan and Jackie....be watching for a package from me. Oh, Susan...I think I need your mailing address....and whether you want an S or...oh...an S (never mind). I'm so excited!!

Pay It Forward

One of my favorite songs in church is "Because I Have Been Given Much". It is that attitude I strive for everyday. Because I have been given much, I too must give. I have been blessed with a wonderful family, sisters for BFFs, fabulous friends, a country I love and you....my Blogmates. So today I am doing a Pay It Forward blog. My sister has done this a couple of times and I loved the idea of giving things to my friends and them making things for their friends and so on.



HOW IT WORKS:

1 - Be one of the first 3 people to comment on this post, which then entitles you to a hand made gift from me.

2 - Winners must post this challenge on their own Blog, meaning that you will Pay It Forward, creating a hand made gift, anything for the first 3 Bloggers to comment on your post about this giveaway.

3 - The gift that you send your friends can be of any price range and you have 365 days to make/ship your item. This means you should be willing to maintain your Blog until you have received your gift, and you have shipped your gifts. ((And remember, it's the spirit and the thought that count.))

4 - When you receive your gift, please feel free to Blog about it, sharing the appropriate linky.love! If you are not one of the top 3 to comment on this post, you can still play along. Go ahead and start your own Pay It Forward chain, and encourage your Blogging friends to do the same.

Before.....

What do I do when the house is a mess and the laudry is piling up and the dogs need fed and the child needs runned (I do know that is not a word...but it is slang at our house for "needs to be taken places" and I'm sticking with it) around and the yard needs mowing....I spray paint. Yep. I used to toll paint....everything. Now I spray paint. It's so much faster and I am really all about immediate gratification. So I dropped Jo off at "Behind the Wheel Training" and headed to Good Will. It is an interseting place and it doesn't smell half as bad as the Salvation Army. I found a
few things that could use my attention.
I have been very drawn to owls lately. For some odd reason....they remind me of my Mom.


I got some really ugly, and I do mean UGLY picture frames. I wish I was better at taking before pics....but I'm not. This one was the worst.It was a faded fleshy salmon color with faded green and blue at the top.This was the pic behind the glass. ick!!

It really needed some help. So I took it home and took it apart. I'd like to tell you that I cleaned it with a toothbrush....but aside from cleaning the glass....I just started spraying. I LOVE the way the black looks. I put some scrapbook paper on top of the sad old flowers and put the (clean) glass on top. I screwed it all back together and put an initial middle of the circle. It is for my friend (TBA). I do hope she likes it. The best part is she can change the paper to whatever she likes. I am making this little beautyinto something similar....but since I am still searching for the perfect size letter, I can't tell you who it is for. I found a few more frames and an unpainted tray. Here are their before and almost finished states. I am very excited to get these finished. As for the house that is falling down around me.....house???? What house....all I see are projects!!!


And I really show you what they all look like when they are finished!!!

He Killed It

A while back I started noticing some dry looking patches in our yard. It was odd because we'd just had A LOT of rain. I noticed them getting drier and bigger for a few days. huh....I asked Jim what he thought the issue was. Jim has always been very particular about our yard...wherever we've lived. In fact he'd has sort of a reputation for being "THE" yard guy. In Rigby he would spend hours working in the yard. While the rest of us didn't share his passion for yard work we were able to...support him...in his obsession to have the greenest, most fabulous lawn in the hood.

In Rigby, many a neighbor watched as Jim hand watered the dry patches and cared for the 80 some odd trees on our almost acre sized lot. They watched as we placed huge slabs of stone in our landscape. They even laughed as we raked, swept and vacuumed the tiny rocks from the grass that the careless drivers had flipped onto our green oasis. So as our "dry" patches here began to grow....I was worried. I was afraid of what new yard project we were going to have to participate in to fix this mess. As Jim and my Dad (so not a yard guy) were discussing the possible causes of such a large scale patch problem, it dawned on my Dear Hubby. He had used what he thought was WD40 (or actually some other real weed killer that I can not name at this moment) just the week before. He ran to the garage to inspect the offending chemical only to find a jug of Round-Up in it's place. Horrified, he gasped....wondering if he had caused this lawn graffiti. Apparently when he thought he'd be just killing weeds....he was killing EVERYTHING!!! So sad for lawn guy!! Now that we had the culprit we needed a solution. We were going to have an open house for Kevin in a week and the lawn looked like a mine field. Oh, what would Rob say?? What would Bob say?? (Well, like any true friends....they would laugh....duh!!) We tried to paint the spots. We'd seen that done on DIY....why not. Not so much. Next course of action.....sod.

Oh, how Jo and I despise sod. In Rigby we dug a lot of sod out of our yard in various landscape projects. But now we get to dig out dead grass and put in a patch of....not dead....grass. Fun??? Not in the slightest. Hard, back breaking work.....yes.

So much for the newly painted nails. Oh well....My DH's sanity is worth more than pretty nails...right??

We raked and shoveled for 2 hours and managed to get 6 of the 10 rolls placed. It was the least amount of fun I'd had all day....which really isn't a fair statement because up until that point I'd had one of the MOST fun days I've had in months. So I guess this kind of balanced it out.

We still have a lot of work to do...but I think it will look better...at least. It certainly can't look much worse. Poor Jim. He really didn't mean to kill it.