Careful what you pray for

I asked the girl in my group last week to pray for a desire for me to quit smoking.  I did well for about 3-4 months than fell off the wagon.  I told them I have no desire to quit but really want to for good.  No more back and forth.

Yesterday I had this nagging thought.  Why not make today the day.  In one year you can celebrate being 35 and one year smoke free.  I kept pushing the thought away and continued on with my day.

I smoked a cigarette while chatting with James before picking Victoria up from the bus stop.  I butted my cigarette out in the planter hanging on the porch, grabbed A&A and drove up to Grant Line to wait on the bus.  I was there about 10 minutes before the bus cam with Victoria came bouncing out and told me that she was didn't get her name moved again today.  (This is a 4 day run for Victoria not getting in trouble at school and getting her name moved to a different color.)  We chatted a bit about it and then headed back home.  I pulled into my driveway to a cloud of smoke and horrible smell.  My cigarette I "put out" wasn't out and the side of my porch was in flames.  I panicked and grabbed my coke out of the cup holder and poured it over the flames.  It didn't do much so I ran in the house and flung open the cupboards to find my popcorn buckets staring at me.  I filled two and ran back outside before I had my "Duh" moment and ran down the side of the house to get the garden hose.  It took a second to get it completely out.  In the meantime my heart is racing, Anthony has rolled down the window and thrown Addison's blanket out of the car causing her to scream bloodymurder, and is now yelling "Mommy the porch is broke!"  I cooled the planter off enough to remove it from the railing to find that about a 1 and a half 2 foot hole burned completely through the lattice work.  It took about 15 minutes for my adrenaline to level off and I broke down and cried on the swing.  Thank God we are all ok! Thank God I didn't have anywhere to go after I picked up Victoria!  Thank God the bus was on time!  Thank God I still have a home to shelter me!  Thank God for answering a prayer while protecting me and my family!  When you get a prompting from the Holy Spirit you better listen up!  God can and will use mighty ways to get your attention if he needs to.

34!

What beautiful weather to celebrate another year!  Crissy, Mom and I headed up to Hubers with the kids and took in the sights.  I told my mom to call my sister to ask her if she would like to join us.  She told me she would but she was driving the bus for a field trip.  Guess where the field trip was to.....Hubers!  How is that for fate.  So good to see her.  She brought a bag of pretzel M&Ms and a card that made me get teary eyed.  Love ya sis!  Addison my fearless child walked around the store just taking it all in.  Anthony my strong as an ox and scared as the cowardly lion spent the first hour clinging to anyone that would hold him because of Halloween decorations.  It started off with the 20 foot tall jack-o-lantern and escalated to the robotic mummy in the gift shop. Crissy had shift one till her back started hurting and then I took a shift trying to get him in a cart to sit.  When he saw Punkin he wanted her to take a shift too.  We will all have sore backs in the morning.  When we got home tonight he had to tell me that the Big pumpkin scared him because his eyes were following him.  The eyes didn't move.  It was a big balloon but to him that thing was sitting on the top of the hill so that he could watch his every move.  I will try to get a video of him talking about the eye movement of the pumpkin and post it on here.  For some reason our photo loading program is messed up and I haven't been able to load any.

We left to pick up Victoria off of the bus (side note Victoria has made it 3 days without getting in trouble at school.  Hooray!) and then headed to Applebees for dinner.  Great food!  Addison made me chuckle in the bathroom.  I was standing there in the stall waiting for her to "finish" and she looked up at me and said....
"Mommy, Is your burday today. It not my burday.  My burday is gone......I lost it."  in her matter of fact tone with her little nose wrinkled and lip turned up.  I guess tomorrow I will lose mine.  :)

Where the past month and a half of my life has gone.

Victoria turned 7 on Saturday.  I have worked my tail off on redoing her bedroom. I found the comforter and with the help of my awesome brother in law Victoria had a new twin bed on the way.  I worked away from the start of school to the bus dropping her off on the details.  I have to admit I have had a ball but dragging all of the stuff out and then packing it away again along with the hiding of things until the big reveal was a pain.  Here are a few pics to show you the transformation. 

Before...........

During.... Couldn't have made this happen without Crissy.  She is such a trooper!  She was at my house at 8am right after the bus left and didn't leave till 8:30 that night.  She didn't even complain when we ran out of paint for the accent wall and my trip to walmart resulted in the wrong color.  Now that is a friend.  :)  We ended up painting one wall 3 times due to this mistake.

After.....(as Addison says "PA-DA!")

Love this bedding.  It was ordered from Target.com.  Sheets were Walmart clearance for $5 and the floor lamp in the background was $6!

Hand painted this sign for bed.  Another dollar tree steal!  Beading by my buddy Crissy as I was sewing away on other projects.

Handmade pillow I assembled from scrap material from Large Group projects at Church.  Got to love donated things that match a project your working on. 

 

This dresser has been in our family forEVER!  Mom found this at a yard sale I believe and we have had it in every room of mom and dad's house and mine.  I painted the drawer fronts to match the bedding.  It added a nice touch.  Notice the matching rug at the foot of the bed?  This is actually a bath rug from Walmart's back to school collection.  I got a two rug set for $5!! Can't beat that!

Canvas that I painted to also match bedding.  This hangs above the dresser and Crissy added a really cute touch of wire threaded buttons to hang them with.  Very cute detail! Canvas was 3 for 6 at Walmart.  Woo Hoo!

This gives you a better view of the bedding and the throw blanket I added a flower to.  Again Walmart Back to School clearance throw for $5 and material for flower left over from church.

This was the only furniture that was in Victoria's room prior to the remodel.  This plastic shelf.  I purchased the canvas totes at Walmart Clearance for $3 each.  They matched the colors perfectly!!!

Victoria's new closet.  I knew she wouldn't have much room to move around with the new bed in the small room so I removed her closet door and added this curtain purchased by Mamaw and Papaw at Walmart.  It came with two panels and I cut the tabs off of the top and added a spring rod.  The length was perfect and this project took about 5 minutes to finish.  Had to add a little feather boa touch for the top.

I am going to have to take another pic of this but the pink curtains were made by my mom a few years ago.  I kept them and cut apart the remaining panel from the closet and made a valance from it along with tie backs.  Crissy was excited because she got to sew a bit on the tie backs.  She wanted to learn..

Some of the hand painted frames that I put together for her. These were purchased at Dollar Tree and a few coats of paint and they were ready to go!

The room turned out better than I thought that I expected.  I was thrilled and so was Victoria.  Glad that the project is almost over.  Still waiting on James to put up the white shelves over her bed.  I have a few plans for them as well.  Someone please remove the glue gun from my hand!  I'm out of control!!

Labor breathing Labor Day.

I am reminded again how incredibly blessed I am to have a man like James in my life.  He has been suffering with the respiratory crap that we have all been passing around.  He was coughing so hard this week that he had pulled something in his side and his stomach was bulging out on the side and hard as a rock.  He was coughing from his pinkie toes.  This morning we were laying in bed and he was flat on his back when a coughing fit hit him.  The first cough did him in and he let out a screaming and fell apart in the bed for about 5-10 minutes before he was able to speak.  He told me that he felt and heard something crack.  He said he believes he broke a rib.  He was unable to sit up and just laid in bed sobbing and screaming.  I was terrified and didn't know what to do.  After some gentle yet aggressive suggestions to go to the doc he decided to go.  I dropped off the kids and took him to Immediate Care.  They took an x-ray of his lungs and looked for pneumonia.  Doc was more concerned for the long lasting cough and lack of oxygen than the possible broken rib.  They decided to give him a steroid shot to give him a boost and had us stay for 15 minutes.  Boy am I glad that they did.  He started to have a reaction to it and within 5 minutes was howling and wouldn't respond to me.  The color drained out of his face and his eyes were floating. I grabbed the nurses and they brought him a cold wash cloth and took his vitals.  Shortly after his blood pressure came back up and his face began to regain color.  They said that wasn't uncommon with that steroid.  They said that they have a joke they say of the bigger they are the harder they fall.  Big guys with tattoos (i.e. James) turn to mush with that drug.  The nurses came back to check his oxygen.  It was below 90 and they wanted it up before they cut him loose.  James was able to take a deeper breath with the thought of a hospital and endure the pain a bit.  We picked up his medications one steroid, one Z pac, one pain killer, and one cough suppressant and we were off to pick up the kids.  James went through all of that and still has to go to work tonight.  He was under a load heading to North Carolina and then another to Wichita that he couldn't back out of.  So we sent him off to work tonight with worry and prayers.  Such a hard working man that man of mine.  I don't know if I could be that strong to hop in a truck and drive all night in pain.  Safe travels to you honey.  We love you and miss you already.

It's not a big girl bed....

Today while suffering temporary insanity, OK permanent, I decided to move the twins bedrooms around and convert their cribs to toddler beds.  To be honest I would rather keep them in the cribs till they are around age 7 but know that I need to make this step and so do they. 

My house looked as if it had exploded as I took everything out of there that would fall, take up too much room to move furniture around or stuff to take to Goodwill.  The kids played in the living room with their new stuff and Grandma came by to say hello on her way to therapy.  Side note: Mom went to the doctor today and she has full freedom with her left arm.  She is now allowed to lift weight and she couldn't be more excited to get the OK from the doc about that.  It is funny how much you take things for granted like carrying your purse or groceries in the house until you can't use an arm. Way to go Grandma!  Doc said she is doing amazing as far as mobility but will never regain full mobility from that arm due to how sever the break was.  We are glad to have her back though even if she can't "raise the roof"

The beds were a cinch to convert. A few screws and walla toddlers bed stared at me begging me to cry over the inevitable growing up of my little muchkins.  I moved the dresser, changing table and then headed out to Walmart with the kids to grab a few storage bins for under the beds and one for a new mega toy box in the closet.  I have SO MUCh storage now.  I just love it!

School time was coming to a close and I woke up the kids asleep on their new bean bags.  We headed out to the car, snacks in hand, and I turned to them and said "Are you guys excited about your new big boy and big girl beds?"  Addison rolled her eyes at me and said "Mom, it is not a big girl bed it is a couch."  Well excuse me Miss Thang!

They are finally asleep now after sitting with them to get them used to laying in their new couches.  Anthony was a nervous wreck and kept getting me to come back into the room by having to "Tell you something Mommy...".  A good ol Baby Einstein movie with soft music and they were out like lights.  I will post pics tomorrow. Afraid that I will wake them if I try to take a picture and don't want to have to get them back asleep.  Sweet dreams my little ones.