Daffodils & Dragonflies

Well, we found out on Wednesday that Big C’s team was going to Octoberfest today. He managed to make it to practice Thursday but not Friday because of Baby’s birthday party. But we showed up for the tournament anyway. We had to be at the field at 7am! It wasn’t even light yet! But it was starting to drizzle. As the day wore on, it started to rain harder and harder until it was coming down in sheets. It was made all the worse by the cold wind. We were miserable! We did go and get a canopy and a couple propane heaters. (One for us under the canopy and one for the boys on the sideline.) We got some cheap painters plastic and laid it out on the grass under the canopy and let the kids wrap up in the blankets on the ground. It was finally tolerable, but we were all tired, already wet and cold.

They made it until noon and finally we were done. We packed everything up and headed for home, stopping at D Dad’s where we put up the canopy over the hot tub and spent some time soaking in the warm water.

When we finally got home, we laid down to nap. I have been up for just over an hour and I am still wet! I am so sick of this rain I could scream! But you know what they say “When the Mormon’s meet, The Heavens weep.” I think it’s just God’s way of trying to keep us all inside to watch conference!

My life has been just insane in the last 3 weeks or so. Just as a quick update, Hurricane Ike made a direct hit on Houston Texas, taking out my major hub and operations center. Our office was put into an all night, overtime situation and I took on alot of extra hours. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, the trip I won to NYC was canceled. Jayce FINALLY started soccer and has been having trouble at school. (more indepth post about that to come.) Clayton finished out his Football season, not making it to the playoffs. I was diagnosed with scoliosis and a $1400 yearly bill to correct and maintain it and Lee lost his job. Yeah, I’ve been a little stressed!

Well, sort of. At least I have my computer back. I took it into Circuit City and they wanted to charge me over $200! Then the young kid at the counter told me that all he was going to do for $200 was hit F8, take it to safe mode and try to restore it. Well duh!!! That’s what I have been trying to do for the last two weeks! I have spent literally hours on the phone and chat service with e-machines, trying to figure out how to do just that! And the worst part is every time I contacted them, they tried to trick me into spending $200 for their “Technical Support Service”.

Well, needless to say, between my mother (the computer expert) and I (the computer ignorant), we managed to take my system back to July 1st and it seems to run flawlessly now. I was able to bring it home and sign onto work without the slightest problem.

So, in the next few days, I will try to catch up on all that has been happening here. Just the tip of the iceberg include my trip to New York being canceled, Lee’s hourly pay being cut in half, my new job and Big C’s football. Wow, what a crazy couple of weeks!

Life has been crazy these last few weeks. I have neglected everything and anything that does not qualify as mandatory. I have been working from 9am to midnight on Mondays and Wednesdays with football practice in the mix, 8pm to midnight on Tuesday’s and Thursdays with Dance, Football and Bowling, Church on Sundays and work from 8pm ’till Midnight and Football games on Saturday mornings and Cub Scout Fall Fun Days Saturday afternoon.

Add to that my babysitter going into labor and having her baby so I have to stress over finding alternate care for Baby and Hurricane Ike taking it’s wrath out on my headquarters, causing our office to stay open 24 hours a day and me to be guilted into working lots and lots of overtime and I am ready to sleep for the next 6 days!

However, not to think that I finally get to take it easy just yet, I now have the stress of getting packed, finding accommodations for Baby and the rest of the children, not to mention actually flying into Houston which just got hit by a MAJOR hurricane and is still under quite a bit of water. For those of you who know me, you understand why this is an issue. For those of you that are just getting to know me, let me explain… I am scared to death of water. Swimming is not “fun” for me. Driving near any large, medium or even at times small bodies of water are cause for alarm and severe worry. You all might consider a hurricane “not a big deal” but having water flung at me at over 100 mph is not my cup of tea, thanks anyway! Flooded streets, not my idea of a “fun time”! So luckily for me, I get to stay overnight in Houston before heading onto New Jersey. This should be more laughs than a barrel of monkeys!

Anyway, due to the high amount of stress and incredibly busy schedule, please forgive me for not updating my blogs as often as I should or would like to. With a little luck and some sanity, I should be back blogging like a maniac soon.

I am finally working but not on my own computer. I had to drive to my mother’s house and bring her’s back to my house so I could sign on to work. Obviously, not on time! I got home from camping and came down to check on my computer that had been left all weekend. I entered my password to get it out of the screen saver and windows said I had corupt files and suggested that I run scan disk. So I ran my scan disk and it found and deleted the corupt files. I then ran my Anti Virus and Spyware programs which found nothing. Then I rebooted my computer to allow it to install the automatic windows updates.

Upon rebooting, it askes for my password again, I enter it, it says “loading personal settings” and then automatically reboots itself. I am stuck in the loop and can not get out. If I hit F11 it asks for a system recovery disk, which did not come with my machine. So now, I am using my mother’s computer until I can get mine fired back up again. Her’s is an eMachine too, so I was hoping she had a recovery disk, but her’s didn’t come with one either.

However, the drive to her house to get her computer took me 30 minutes round trip and it took me another 45 minutes to load and boot her system, download everything I needed to work and get signed in. Fortunately for me, the operations guy on duty tonight was very understanding and he just adjusted my shift backwards to start as soon as I was up and running and end 5 hours from that time. So I didn’t take a hit on my adherance or anything.

Now I just have to figure out how to get my computer running again. Any suggestions???

Ok, so Big C had a football game out of town, nearly an hours drive away at 8:30am on Saturday morning. That means he has to be there by 7:30 and I have 5 kids to get out of bed and ready to go. We decided that it would be better if we just drove up Friday night and camped in our camper so we didn’t have to get up quite so early. Brilliant plan. Someone forgot to mention that it was Labor Day weekend. Needless to say two of the three campsites I called were completely booked. The third however, said they would fit us in somehow. Sounded strange, but she sounded confident. So we pulled out of here at 7pm after picking Big C up from football practice. Then we stopped again at Payless to pick him up a new pair of cleats, since he has managed to lose his others. Once finally on our way, everyone was terribly excited and ready to get up to camping. We got to the camp site and paid our $20 and drove in. It was only then that my lovely husband mentioned that he had heard of this campoground and none of it had been good. Yeah?!? You could have mentioned that $20 ago!!! Needless to say, they pack you in like sardines, it’s a park anywhere you can find, we ended up parking on the side of the road. The cops were there around 1am and they finally turned off the blarring music’s around 2am. We were not going to stay there another night.

The football game was great. My mother had purchased a cell phone for Big C and she handed it to me just as he was taking the field. So being the wonderful mother I am, I yelled “get a tackle and I’ll give you a cell phone!”. He never did get his big tackle but, we won 7 to nothing with Big C making a HUGE play in the last 2 minutes, helping to hold them to no score. Their quarterback fumbled the ball on a bad snap and Big C came from the back field and recovered tha ball for our team. I figured that qualified him to receive his cell phone. He was a very happy young man.

After the football game we went to Lee’s parents campground which was 100% better than ours. They had a swimming pool, showers, hookups and higher class people. We parked outside and walked in, as it is a members only campground. We spent the day with them, swimming, eating and relaxing. It was great. We took a nap in our camper about 3pm but around 4pm we got a huge microburst come through that took down quite a few tree limbs and caused Lee and I to jump up and “rescue” the vent lids and towels. It even blew a sweet little baby bird out of the tree. The kids talked Lee in to returning it to it’s tree. Once it was stowed safetly back in the tree, the kids happily loaded into the truck and we drove down to the store to see if we could buy a pan. I had not intended on not having a fire pit. We found no pan, but we got some soda and chips and headed back to Lee’s parents.

We spent the rest of the evening swimming some more and snuggling down to watch Aristocats in their trailer. Before the night was over the campground manager told us that we could bring our camper in and park it on Lee’s parents spot so we could be closer to them. That was completely against the campground rules, but very, very nice of them. We enjoyed the rest of the evening and headed for home Sunday afternoon. What a weekend it was.

I just picked up a job at a Kitchen needs store in downtown. I work for the couple that live at the top of my street and they are just the sweetest, nicest, most wonderful people you could ever meet in your life. I love them to death. So when they asked me if I would be interested in working for them, I was thrilled. Not to mention that we are talking kitchen toys and food here! No that’s just what I need!

So today I went to work for my first day. I made sure all the kids got out the door and on their way and Baby’s new preschool teacher knew what was going on and I headed out. I munched on a granola bar on my way there and tried not to get too worried about my shift bid for Continental that was coming up today. When I got there, we had a team meeting and donuts and at lunch they made chicken cordon bleu and mashed potatoes. Then got to work. I wandered around the store, trying to remember where things are and getting a feel for the sales floor. Then I spent some time calling people who’s orders had come in. I bagged a little candy and enjoyed the little lemon drops that escaped the bags. Yummy! I helped fill storage buckets and carry them to their cars and I ran the cash register. Time to go came way faster than I expected and before I knew it I was headed home to see my babies.

When I got home, Big C was already home and Baby was still at the table with her teacher, working on her letter sounds. Her and teacher had played, colored and done hair and makeup. She had a great day and was really excited to hear that Teacher was coming back tomorrow.

All in all, my day was great and I am looking forward to going back tomorrow.

Well, the results are in, everything in my blood came back normal. Even my Vitamin D levels were normal. But the Dr. wants me to take 1000 mg., over the counter Vitamin D three times a week?!? What’s up with that?!? Since when do you treat a condition that you don’t have? I totally do not understand this at all. I think I need a second opinion. What about you? Not to mention the fact that my foot still hurts, it’s been well over a month now and she doesn’t seem to be too worried. I on the other hand, am rather concerned. It’s not broken so why does it hurt first thing in the morning, after I have been off it all night long? It’s right across the bridge and she was positive that it was a Vitamin D deficiency that was causing my foot to hurt, my entire body to ache all the time and my headaches. Okay, so it’s not. Now what?

Have you ever done something or thought something awful, when you were not in a heated rage and as suddenly as you thought it, you could actually feel the Spirit of God leave? It says that God cannot dwell in unclean places, we now I know exactally what that’s all about.

Today I was talking to someone and had an awful, mean thought. I wasn’t terribly angry, just tired of them lying to me. So just as quicly as the awful thought came, I felt the Spirit of God depart. It was a hollow, shallow empty feeling and litterally left me in tears and on my knees praying for forgiveness. If that is half of what Adam felt I can’t imagine that he managed to carry on.

It brings me to remembering something I read once. While in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus cried out “Father, why have you forsaken me?” I read that a better translation was “Daddy, why did you leave me”. Understanding that God cannot dwell in unclean places and Jesus had just taken on the sins of all the world, he was as unclean as any being has ever been.

Heavenly Father could not help him then. He could not be with him. The pain and agony of the sins had to be horrible, but to feel God leave him after having been so close for so long and at a time when the guilt and pain was overwhelming. Jesus paid the ultimate price for all of us, but more than that, he bore the pain of our sins, he endured having to leave the Grace of God, not only did he give his life, he never gave up. Through it all, he never gave up. Who am I to give up? To not repent? To walk away from gift He gave me? Who do I think I am?