Sometimes there is no remedy for a heartache. You just have to pray your way through it. I have been REALLY missing Trina and my dad the last few days. Today at church one of the messages was about how we will all face death at some point. We will not escape our crossing. It got me to thinking about what it might be like in my last few moments. I pictured seeing my dad and Trina coming towards me and even holding my hand to help me make that final crossing. How beautiful. It was such a comfort to me. I do not know what my end will be, but I do know that God will be with me and He will hold my hand and be my comfort and stay in that time.

This evening as I got on Facebook, one of the first posts was one Trina made a few years ago. At first, I was caught off guard, but then comforted to feel a connection with my dear friend. I know my heartache is somewhat selfish because they have gained their crowns and no longer have the pain that we begged God to take from them. I am very thankful for that, but from time to time I must give a sigh, and even shed a tear for my loss. Then pick back up and carry on to make my own heavenly goal.

Take a peek at what we've been up to...

There are several things I have thought about posting lately, so I decided to cram them all into one BIG post! Dont't say I didn't warn you...

1. Pinterest. Love it! I have heard complaints lately even on the radio about how pinterest is just a bunch of people collecting pictures of things they will never make or try. I totally disagree! I haven't tried everything I've found, but I have found some good stuff like:

new hair doos for my girls

O.K., I know these didn't turn out perfectly, but with practice I think they will be adorable.

Bird feeder


Maybe this is a no brainer, but my little girlies had a blast decorating (markers washed off in the rain oops) and making this bird feeder. They check it several times a day and we have enjoyed watching birds and chipmunks eat the food.

Hair bows and accessories

The colors didn't turn out so well in this photo. The ribbon isn't near as shiny as it looks but I will probably go for no shine next time. I also made some hair pins for myself a while back that were inspired by a picture on pinterest but hot glue doesn't hold well when gluing to a bobby pin.

Fun birthday cake ideas


Obviously I am a novice cake maker, but my girls loved searching on pinterest for days for their perfect birthday cake. It was very exciting!

I could go on and on about the many recipes I've tried, and yes there are still lots of pins I have left to try but I am very excited about those and have found pinterest to be a HUGE motivator for me.

2. We have all been working very hard on our yard and garden.

Most of our neighbors have IMMACULATE yards so I'm sure they will be pleased with our efforts, even if it is only for a week or so out of the last 4 1/2 years. LOL


We totally revamped our garden this year. Whew was that a lot of work! I'm sure it will be worth it and maybe it will even be cost effective (in 10 years or so :))


We got our seeds planted Saturday and last night we had radishes coming up. I took this picture this morning and they are really going for it! Radishes are a must to boost moral in any garden. 3 1/2 days and they were sprouting!!


I found my lettuce sprouting this morning too! I am a happy girl :)

We have several tomato and pepper plants. We also have okra, beans, peas, cucs, zucs, spinach, carrots, and...


Rhubarb, basil and lastly asparagus, which is in its first year so it won't produce till next year.

3. Samantha is in Kindergarten this year and so we have spent a lot of time with her doing lessons. Ella on the other hand just misses the deadline by having her birthday 9 days too late,so she won't start kindergarten until fall 2014. She loves to do "school" probably because she has had no pressure to perform. I got a new phonics program for her and Samantha do do in the fall at different levels, of coarse. The program is still in the box, though we have looked at it a bit. Yesterday, I got it out to look over and see if there was something that Ella would have fun with now. She totally loved HER new little reading book and proceeded to read 57 pages with very little help. Yes, I said FIFTY-SEVEN!!!!!!!! She is slow but again, she has mostly learned through watching her sister so I was stunned when she picked up the book and started reading. Today she didn't do quite as well but close. This video is about 10 minutes so don't feel pressured to finish, but in these 10 minutes, she read only 13 pages. That tells you how dedicated she was to read 57 pages at one time! Then she picked up the book again last night to read to her daddy. Yesterday she told me,"I am going to read to daddy and he will be so proud of me!"(Sorry, having trouble loading the video)

4. My hubby had a great idea several months back and I am loving it. We searched and searched for something big enough to cover an ugly eye sore on the wall on our landing. It is about 3 1/2 feet tall by 2 1/2 feet wide. We have our breaker box and internet router and modem mess here, but now it is cleverly hidden. He's so smart, I think I'll keep him!



5. We have started another remodel. We started off stacking the washer and dryer and we are getting a smaller freezer to fit in the cubby under the stairs (by where the white step ladder is), all to make the best use of the space. These pictures are not pretty but it will be when we get the laundry room framed in, flooring , down, sheetrock, ect..


Well that about covers it for my recent thoughts. Hopefully I didn't lose you anywhere up there.

I had a mini photo shoot with Samantha the other day. Just as we were heading out the door, I accidentally bonked her in the head with the camera, but I turned it into a photo opportunity and told her not to wipe her tears. We got a few good pics here :)

AWESOME!!

I was working on my to-do list today, but I was dreading the window behind my stove and the top of my refrigerator. The greasy, dusty film that collects there is not easy to remove, by any means. As I was cleaning, I caught a glance of a cleaner I bought at the dollar store a few months ago. It didn't work for the purpose I bought it for so I simply put it under the kitchen sink and forgot about it. Now, I am not one of those people who buys a lot of different cleaning products, I like a small handful that have multiple uses; Oxi clean, comet, soft scrub with bleach, and glass cleaner pretty much covers it, I don't jump on every band wagon around with new stuff. But, back to the current cleaning dilemma. The dollar store cleaner is called AWESOME!! but like I said, I initially thought it fell far short of its name. I sprayed it on my window and began to get ready to scrub.....Ummm the film simply wiped off. Now for the top of the fridge. Wow. Ceiling fans were not on the list today, but this was just going so well. They were a little tougher than the rest. I did have to scrub a little, but I know what I normally have to go through to get those things clean! I'm not sure if I will find another use for Awesome!! but for now as a grease cutter, it is AWESOME!!

The Terrible 4's?

In the past, it seemed like seem like when my kids turned 4 it was somewhat magical. I remember even being some-what of a know it all with less experienced parents about their young toddlers saying, "Just wait till they turn 4, they will get along better with other kids, they will be more independent, and their attitudes will change from night to day.

I am now dealing with my 3rd and last (Lord willing!) 4 year old, Ms Ella. Her mission in life is to prove me wrong and she is doing a great job of that on the 4 year old view I previously held. She even brings God into it by telling me that it doesn't make God happy at me when I take away her mermaid. She thinks it's completely ridiculous that we are upset about her graffiti on her NEW wooden headboard and frame or the hair style she gave herself with the scissors. I mean she just wants to express herself for goodness sakes!

I have had to totally change my tactics with this child. If I start off with my natural instinct of, "Gabriella Anne..." She bristles instantly and becomes defensive. The battle has begun. The scary part is that she doesn't throw fits, instead after she has thought over the words I say when she gets in trouble, she calmly tells me what she wants to say in a very calculated manner. Yesterday she had to clean her room by herself because she had been playing instead of helping Samantha clean. While she was alone in the room "cleaning" she found a crayon and went to work on the bed. I told her that daddy worked hard for the money to buy her bed and since she was trying to destroy it, then one of her things would be destroyed/taken. For 20 minutes or so she kept coming to the door with new insights and ideas. One of the things she came to the door and calmly said later was that since I took her mermaid that she was going to destroy my stuff. She sat in there thinking this through. This wasn't said in a rage of ranting and crying just simply and matter of factly stated. I told her that if she destroyed something else that she would lose something else of hers, but I have to admit, I'm a little nervous!

She is definitely giving me a run for my money, but at other times she is such an angel and I feel so blessed to have her. I just pray that God can help me reach her and understand her.

Plumb Tuckered Out

We had out of town company in last night. It was a blast! Billy and Barbara were heading through on their way back from Kansas. Our girls got very close to their family last year because they spent a lot of time with them, while I was at Trina's, during her illness.

I didn't tell the girls they were coming, I just said that we were having surprise company. They made several guesses like Andy, their friend Abby who they see at least twice a week, and Sister Sharon who we saw at costco yesterday.

They had no idea and were completely surprised and excited to see Billy and Barbara's family when they arrived. The kids all had a ball and the house was abuzz until well after 11pm last night, over 3 hours past the girls' bedtime. Then, at 7:30 we were all up and at it again this morning. After a nice leisurely breakfast, company hit the long road to get further on their journey.

Today has been a trying day of meltdowns and grumpiness because of lack of sleep for my kiddos. To say I was longingly awaiting their bedtime would be a considerable understatement.

I decided early in the evening that they were definitely going to bed early, so at 7:30 tonight I headed downstairs with them to tuck them in. When I went to check on them shortly after and make sure they were not playing, I wasn't completely surprised to find them both sawing logs even though it was still daylight out. It's exhausting to play with your long lost bff's!

FINAL!!

After a year of remodeling, we finally got our final inspection for our new bathroom!!!! So I decided to share some before and after photos with you. A lot of photos.

This is what our old bathroom looked like.



And the new! We moved where the door was so now the bathroom is our master bath instead of the main bathroom. In the first picture you can see the door color in the mirror. I love it! It makes me happy :). The second picture shows a cool mirror like the ones they have in hotels. Since it swings out, it makes doing the back of my hair in the vanity mirror much easier. The magnifying mirror on the backside of the swing mirror is perfect for plucking eyebrows or putting on mascara. And the last photo shows the whole bathroom. We didn't get to replace the tub and shower yet. That will come at a much later date unfortunately. We did tear out the old dark gray grout and put in the lighter color that is in the rest of the room. We also put in new shower doors which helps to give it a more updated look.




This is our diningroom. This first old photo shows our game cabinet, wasted space around it, and the landing down to the basement. In the second you can see the old view from the kitchen into the diningroom. Also the arch into the living room which we moved and widened in the remodel.



Here is the landing and the new diningroom wall where you can see we made better use of the space with a full bathroom and we still have some closet space. The shower is where part of the old game cabinet was. We chose to use the same colors in both bathrooms because they are so small that we could share tile, paint, ect which saved some on the costs.


Here are some old pictures of the living room.



We put a coat closet in next to the front door. I still need to stain the trim but it is so nice to have a coat closet and it's so full of stuff that I'm not sure how we lived without it! You can see in the last photo here compared to the last old living room photo (2 photos up) the change we made to the arch. The arch had to be moved to give enough depth to the new bathroom, but it was a lot of work!

We still need carpet in our bedroom which we hope to have done in the next month or so. I am so happy that this remodel is almost there. It will be just in time to start on the basement this summer...

God has worked out so many beautiful things for us here of late. I am in Oklahoma seeing my Grandma now. Looks like she is at the crossing. Andy, the girls and I all came out. We had some good conversations. We will keep the prayers going so that we may see what God has in store for us.

Praise

I will praise you in this storm. I will lift my hands. You are who You are, no matter where I am. Every tear I cry, You hold in Your hands. You never left my side... Though my heart is torn, I will praise You in this storm....

I lift my eyes unto the hills where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord. The Maker of heaven and earth...

The Power of Prayer

The power of prayer never ceases to amaze me. Lately, we've had a trial to bear that at times seems unbearable. The past week it seemed to be getting worse daily. Then, Monday night things were looking really bad. On Tuesday morning Dale and I got down and prayed together before he left for work and the difference was like night and day. The trial isn't gone, but I know that God is there and working. I have all confidence in Him and in His plan for me. I have so much to be thankful for. I am SO thankful that I have the privilege to call on His name in my time of need. He is my Father and he cares for me.