You Know It’s A Bad Day When….

I have had a pretty rough week!  And to be honest, I truthfully think I am battling some depression.  I have just been extremely overwhelmed with the expectations other people have of me.  I have always been a people pleaser, and that hasn’t changed.  I have really been struggling with the challenge of always keeping it together, just because I have done so up until now.  But me and the Lord are working this out as we speak, and I fully trust He is going to help me over this hump.

But in the mean time, I have to admit that He does have a sense of humor.  Yesterday was a trying day.  We were crazy busy at work, and that had me all worked up.  On top of that, we celebrated SaraGrace’s birthday with the family last night, so I had to make her cake. 

About 20 minutes before I planned to leave for the day, this happened to me.

Just in case you can’t tell, I split my drawers wide open.  Let’s not mention that my weight has been a key element in the defeat I have felt, so this really made my day.  As if this wasn’t humiliating enough (remember, I work with mostly men), I got in my car to go home and change and realized I had NO GAS!  Yes sir, I had to get out in public and pump gas like this. 

I did have a good laugh about it!  Maybe the Good Lord knew I needed it:)

But the day didn’t end there.  I went to Winn Dixie to get the stuff for SG’s cake.  I even remembered the candle, which is huge because I ALWAYS forget the candles.  I got the cake made and SG loved it.  Do you notice anything wrong with this picture?

Other than the fact that it looks slightly tacky, the candle is clearly the number 3.  The problem is, it’s her 4th birthday.  The sad part is that I intentionally bought the 3 thinking it was her third birthday.  Luckily, she doesn’t know her numbers yet, and Gamma had one single candle so we used it.  Hey, 3 + 1 = 4!

The day did have a great ending seeing my girl open her presents.  Here are some pictures from the evening.

 

Pardon the scratch on her forehead.  I am pretty certain that Kitty retaliated when he was reminded of his recently acquired tattoos.

Welcome to McDonalds.  Can I take your order?

She always wants to be the helper and make Cade be the customer.

   

Her actual birthday is Saturday.  She asked to go back to see Cinderella and the bad Mommy and bad Sisters, so we will celebrate next weekend at the Bibbidi Bobbidy Boutique again. 

I hope your weekend is better than yesterday!

Flea Market Fun

This weekend, the beloved work truck lost the AC.  While we (the girls)  were bummed we would have to take it to town to get fixed (remember we were in the woods), we took FULL advantage of the trip. 

Once we dropped the truck off, everyone jumped in our truck and we went to the antique mall and flea markets.  Y’all, I am WAY TOO NOSTALGIC to shop these kinds of stores.

The first find of the day was this beauty:

It is a Big Wheel.  (Sorry for the unidentified driver.  I was threatened with huge consequences if I posted this picture.) All of us girls had one of these growing up.  SG fell in love with it.  Now it was ratty….I mean ratty.  The stickers were faded, a family of spiders had taken up residence under the handle bars, and none of the buttons worked.  But for $3, everyone enjoyed this.  The kids, both big and small, took turns riding it through the house. 

My boy is very picky, so last year, we got him a Star Wars thermos to pack hot foods in his lunch.  This was the new version of a thermos that cost a whopping $17.99 and may hold one can of Chef Boyardee.  Of course, SG wanted one too, but I wasn’t about to fork over that kind of money for another pint-sized thermos.  Imagine her joy when I found these beauties:

 

We had lunch boxes like this!  And that is what I call the real deal thermos.  At $2.50 for the whole setup, I’d say it was a steal!  She has been big stuff these last two days with her new lunch box and thermos.

Talk about nostalgic-growing up, we had every Cabbage Patch known to men.  We had the dolls, the horses, the furskins, even a bumble bunny.  My Nanny has our collection at her house.  It even includes the doll bed and the sleeping bag.  SG loves these dolls.  I squealed with excitement when I came across this…

 

It is a Cabbage Patch play pen.  It matches our other furniture EXACTLY!  Now, they were asking $10 for this “crib” as SG calls it.  I kindly asked the lady running the flea market to call the vendor and let’s make a deal.  Only in GA are people so nice to oblige.  I walked away with a “Pack and Play” for Baby Gracie for $7.50.  I was so proud.

Now, this trip did make me realize how easily I can revert to my hoarding ways.  Rob kindly asked me what I was going to do with all of this “crap.”  I eloquently replied, “Don’t worry, I have a use for each of these things.”

It’s a good thing I passed up the record player with the talking books.  You know, the Strawberry Shortcake books that come with a record inside that reads the story for you?  Yep, I had one just like it.  If I knew I wouldn’t have caused World War 3 with the $30 purchase of another memory,  I would have brought it home too.  We are going back this weekend, so if it’s still there, we may have to do some dealing.

The reason we went shopping for these goods, is my parents are using vintage decor in the lodge.  They want it to look like it did when they went to their Grandma’s house.  They are currently looking for glass Tom’s and Lance jars that look like this:

If you know where any may be, please let us know!  Happy shopping!

The Hun-Tin House

As I’ve written many times before, this family loves to go huntin’.  We are currently shacking up in a 3 bedroom mobile lodge, in which half of us sleep on air mattresses.  Dad has recently began construction on a hunting lodge big enough to house this brood.  It is affectionately called “The Hun-Tin House.”  This is what SG calls it and it has stuck.  She loves that place more than Dizzy World. 

You know by now that our family does everything together.  Even the construction of a new house is a group project!  We have been spending some of our weekends working on this house.  This weekend was especially hard work!

Here is a view from the front.

And the side.

This is one of my favorite things about this place!

It’s the pump house.

Each of us have different talents to bring to the table.

Here we have our electrical crew…

Now, these two work pretty hard, but we did catch them taking a few too many breaks:)

But once they got refreshed, they went back to work.

Then we have the drywall crew.  They stayed pretty busy the entire weekend.

And let’s not forget the supervisory crew.  Here’s the Big Boss!

He did do a little more than just supervise.  We witnessed him cutting up some drywall.

  

But the hardest working crew of the day was the cleanup crew.

    

How about our OSHA approved work boots? 

I even put my tractor-driving skills to the test.  I think everyone was a little nervous.  But if you knew how I drove, you would totally understand:)

Little Brinley got her hands dirty in all of  the action!

   

During a break, which was few and far between, Gamma and the kids found some wild huckleberries growing near the house.  They did a little pickin’.

 

   

Hopefully they managed to get enough to feed the crew next weekend.  I imagine we could cook up a mean cobbler with those berries!

It Could Always Be Worse

Tuesday marked 2 months since Faith came into this world. It has undoubtedly been a hard week. Satan has had a hay day filling my mind with all kinds of doubt and worries, and unfortunately, I have let him win some of these battles.

Wednesday was especially hard. For some reason, I just felt like the world was against me. I was having a good ole’ fashioned pity party. I went to church to work with some of the kids on VBS music. I fought back tears all the way there. I just flat out asked God why this had to be so hard. Why did He feel so distant?

Before it was time to meet with the kids, I spent some time talking to one of the ladies at our church. We have known her for some time, but I never knew the loss she had experienced. She asked me how I was doing, and I honestly told her how I was feeling. She shared with me that she had lost not one, but two children. Then to make it even harder, they passed away on the same day, just several years apart.

My heart sunk! I felt so terrible for having a pity party. She told me that it was okay to remember the anniversaries and dates. That Faith was my child whether she was here or in Heaven. She also told me that we can make a choice to look to our Lord and follow His way, or we can choose to turn away and do things our way.

Let’s face it! Even when you are following God’s will, it isn’t always easy. Imagine how hard it would be trying to go against it! This time I spent with her was God’s gentle reminder that though we suffer the loss of our children, He suffered the same. He watched his own son die a terrible death, all because He loved us so much. So He hasn’t asked us to do something He hasn’t already done. It confirmed for me that God isn’t distant. It is me who makes the choice to be distant from Him. It also confirmed for me that it could be much worse!

What are you choosing? Are you choosing to look to God and follow His ways? Or are you choosing to walk this life your own way. Life is hard no matter which way you choose, but just imagine how much it means to have Him walking it by your side, to pick you up and carry you through the rough terrain.

This weekend, I encourage you to choose Christ and follow Him. I also encourage you to know that if you are down about something and feeling like you are all alone, God has walked this path before us. Lean on Him and let Him carry you!

The Birthday Party

Cade celebrated his birthday for the third time this weekend.  With his birthday being so close to the 4th of July, we postponed his party.  But he was so full of himself seeing that he had celebrated for almost an entire month!

Cade wanted to have a swimming/fishing/campout party.  We accomplished the swimming and the fishing, but the weather wasn’t going to cooperate for tent-sleeping.

I think these pictures say it all!  All of these little boys, and one brave little girl found their spot along the pond, and had a blast.

 

I wanted so badly to get a picture of all of the kids together with fishing poles, but this is as close as I got.  And just where did they think they were going?

All the way around the other side of the pond! 

 

But Rob and Justin were serious about fishing.  They just had to decide which variety of worm was the best.  Cade talked me into buying every species of worm that Alachua Farm and Lumber had to offer.

Even Mrs. Sarah got in on the action.  But Mr. Justin is pulling in the big one.

Oh wait….maybe not!

 

It looks like Kate wasn’t afraid of the mud.  She hung in there with the best of the boys!

And Emory didn’t let a little mud stop him from fishing.  (Y’all, isn’t he just the cutest?  He is SG’s little boyfriend, so she says.  It does seem to change on a daily basis, though.  These two little redheads can do some damage together.)

Ben made sure he got a little dirty, too.

 

Benjamin and Zachariah were like little fish in the pool.  I’m pretty sure these boys slept really good that night.

It was finally time for cake!  Cade had specific instructions for how his cake should look.  He even had to oversee the placement of the military machines. 

And a word to the wise…if you are ever tempted to use black icing on a cake, BEWARE!  You may end up looking like this…

SG Ink!

I think Miss Kat Von D better look out for Little Miss Sara G!  She has been practicing her tattoo skills lately.  I blame all of this on her daddy.  The kids think his tattoos are so cool.  (It took me a while to warm up to them, but now I kinda like ‘em.  I even have one on my toe:))

So just who is the newest little tattoo artist in the family?  It’s none other than this little girl.

I took this picture because this is how she got ready for bed.  Apparently I am not fully recovered from my hoarding tendencies, seeing that Baby Girl was able to dress herself in some pajamas that bore a tag reading “18 mos.”  However, in my defense, they do still “kinda” fit.  They are just a little short!  Never mind the single flip flop who has lost his mate.

Back on track now….

SaraGrace has been practicing her art skills on anything and everything she can get her hands on. 

See Exhibit A:

I went to get her out of the car on Monday morning at my mom’s house, and this is what greeted me on my car window.  Of course, I didn’t think it was very funny.  When I asked her why she did it, she replied, “I just needed to see exactly what color it was.”  Needless to say, she did  get into a little trouble because she knows not to color on anything other than paper.

Now let’s look at Exhibit B:

These would be her white leather shoes that provided the perfect canvas to practice her art skills.  This would also happen to be Tuesday morning, just one day after she got in trouble for the car window.  Her excuse this time, “I just like coloring so much!”

As if the non-living were not good enough, SG found her first live being to render a tattoo on. 

Exhibit C: For your viewing pleasure-

 

 

Look closely at the paws.  They are nicely tinted with streaks of red and blue.  And just who was dumb enough to sit and let SG come at them with a colored object?  It was none other than…

 

Mr. Kitty, who was sporting 4 brand new spanking sets of artwork on his feet.  When the defendant was asked the reasoning behind her handy work, she replied, “I was just giving Mr. Kitty some tattoos.”

I tell you what.  I’m going to start to worry if she asks for freckles in the shape of stars around her eyes.  I just don’t think Miss Sara G’s daddy would approve.