The Return of Thursday Thirteen

I was thinking this morning of this Meme I used to participate in fairly frequently (back in the day when I was a decent blogger and not such a slacker that is always playing catch-up like I do now).  I think I’ll attempt to try it again, and I’m going to start with

Thirteen Ancient Thursday 13 Posts
(that made me LOL when I re-read them just now)

1. Thirteen Things That Should Be Done Before Having Kids – ahahahahahaha….I still agree with most of these…although some of them don’t quite cause such issues now that our kids are a little older (ex: carseats and diapers…lol)

2. Random Picture Edition = OMW…I can’t believe some of the things I used to post about…where can I go to get my crazy creative streak back? LOL

3. 13 Reasons I Haven’t Blogged Lately – Obviously, I was still a little of a slacker blogger even back in the day…lol

4. My Daddy – which reminds me…I forgot his birthday because I was out of the country at the time…note to self, do something for dad…wonder if putting up sheetrock in his kitchen would count…lol…jk.  =) =)

5. 13 Quotes – Oh yeah…I LOVE quotes…and I had forgotten how totally into the Pirate movies I was at the time…hahaha

6. 13 Emotions – As an aside, this post was written about 2.5 weeks before we got our first kiddo.  Probably would make an interesting update post one of these days…dare-say my emotions are pretty close to the same for different reasons now…hahaha. 

7. 13 Random Things I’m Thinking About – Hum….so much I could say…and well…I did.  LOL

8. 13 Things from our Fifth Anniversary – Woah…I got a little crazy with the thirteen lists here.  LOL.  Hard to believe it’s been almost 6 years since I wrote that…*great big googly eyes*

9. 13 Reasons I Should Be Blonde – I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist of it…YIKES.  I wish I could say I’ve improved in this area…LOL!

10. Thankful Thirteen

11. Thursday Thirteen – Friday Edition

12. First Ever Thursday Thirteen 

13…oops…ran out of thirteens.  Obviously, I’m not getting better at counting as I get older.  LOL.

Motivated Me

So I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately…I’m not sure what’s causing it unless it’s just me gearing up for leaving my 20’s in a few months. 

I’m considering going back to school for a few classes during the day while the kids are at school, maybe work toward a 2 year degree in photography or design of some kind.  I really want to, and thanks to this funk I’ve been in, I might be motivated enough to actually do it. 

My motivation has been really high lately.  The house is relatively clean, I’ve spent a few hours helping others, a few hours on appointments, helped KC work on the patio in back, trimmed mutilated the bushes along the sidewalk in front, cleaned out one of the kids rooms, mopped the floors (which is a rare occasion indeed), piles of laundry, ironing, prepped and froze another small batch of peppers from the garden, helped with homework, mowed and weedeated the yard…the list goes on…and that’s just since Monday. 

Blogging didn’t hit the list, so since I’m motivated this morning and I only have a small block of time before I have to go visit my Hospice patient that the other things on my to-do list wouldn’t fit in, I figured I’d sit down and write for a few minutes.  

Motivation is a funny thing.  I still haven’t found my self-control, but I’m definitely not mad about my motivation coming back.  Haha.  And I’m going with the theory that muscles weigh more than fat, and with all this working that I’ve been doing, I MUST be making muscles.  Yeah.  I’m sticking with that.

By the way, this Dr. Pepper is tasty.  ;-) LOL

Till next time. =)

Brain-Mush

Looks like I’ve gone to bed too many nights as a pumpkin…because this morning I woke up feeling like a vegetable. 

One that is well on its way to the rotten point. 

Must go to bed earlier.  I am blogging earlier today, but obviously, blogging wasn’t what was keeping me up late the last few nights.  Hahahaha. 

I’ve been working on a Shutterfly photo book of the Haiti trip and they were having a two-day sale that would have made the book totally affordable (since it’s stretching into like 47 pages and I haven’t been able to shrink it anymore and still be able to see the pictures well…lol).  SOOO…I was trying to finish it before the sale ended.  And…I failed.  But there will other sales…I’ll just finish working on the album in daylight hours and then hold the finished album until they have another (and hopefully even better) sale.  =) 

While we’re on the topic of Haiti, a recent message compared the trip we took down there to our pilgrimage on earth as Christians from another kingdom (heaven).  Something that stuck out to me was the way our actions reflect on our home country.  Going to Haiti, our behavior/lifestyles/attitudes determined what those we came in contact with thought about Americans.  Living in our communities (and also on mission trips), our behavior and lifestyles and attitudes will determine what people think about the Kingdom of God.

¹¹Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, ¹²Having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:11-12 NKJV)

There was a whole lot more to that comparison, but that’s just one of the things that stuck with me.  It seems like one of those things you kind of already know but sometimes it’s thought provoking when you come at it from a new angle. 

And that’s what’s been in my brain this week. That, along with a few weird dreams that I’ve since forgotten, and sheet-rock mud.  My parents bought a cute brick fixer-upper and are…er…fixing-upping it.  Starting with ripping out the entire 70’s brown and yellow, oddly-arranged kitchen all the way down to the studs, then adding more electrical outlets and putting up sheetrock.  New kitchen cabinets are supposed to be put in on Saturday, so they’ve been burning the midnight oil, too.  I’ve been over there helping dad a couple days while the kids were in school.  Yesterday we were slinging mud.  Neither of us are particularly good at it, except dad is good at slinging it, and I’m particular about leaving glopped amounts on the floor because it seems a little wasteful. So I kept digging in the tops of his dropped piles instead of getting more putty out of the bucket.  (Yeah, mom, this explanation is for you…it’s why there were piles of mud on the floor that had been half cleaned up…I would have used the whole piles, but the floor was dusty and I didn’t want to put that crud on the walls.  LOL)

Totally unrelated to the previous paragraph, I must make my weekly confession and say that I have consumed way too many delectable desserts, a couple of extra helpings when I really didn’t need them, and two 44oz. Dr. Peppers this week.  I walked once and burned 69 fat calories, but I’m pretty sure that’s at least 3000 calories short of what really needs burning right now.  =/  Oops.  If anyone happens to run across my self-control, please return it as soon as possible because I really, REALLY need it back.  LOL. 

In a very large nutshell, that is everything you probably didn’t need to know about my week. 

And now, I need to get back to work on my Shutterfly book before bedtime.  =) 

Faith The Grouch

All I need is a trash can and a green furry suit cuz I’m really in a yucky mood right now.  I have written several sentences and deleted them all because I just sound really whiny.  I have a headache, the spaghetti sauce from supper is giving me acid reflux and making me rather nauseous and the Tums is taking its time to kick in, so I’m just a little cranky.  I honestly have nothing to truly complain about, I’m one of the most blessed people in the world. 

So…trying to ignore the cranky and write a post that doesn’t sound cranky because I really have nothing to be cranky about….is really hard for me right now.  LOL. 

It’s kinda funny how when you’re feeling yuck, it’s so easy to think of things to whine about and so hard to be positive about anything.  I’m humming this song…I don’t know exactly how it goes but it’s something like:

Count your blessings again, again, and again,
Start with the one where He saved you from sin,
When you number them all, give the praises to Him,
Then turn around and count all your blessings again….

Or something like that.  I get the point.  I shouldn’t be cranky.  LOL. 

So…on the bright side:

KC checked this off my honey-do list over the weekend and finished tonight.  I was tired of the kids backpacks not having a good home during the week….

Before:

After:

Now I just need a little white bench with baskets under it to replace that chair.  =)  But the backpack part is awesome. 

Let’s see, what else…oh yes, let’s talk smell for a minute.  LOL.  Degree apparently stopped making my deodorant (the only one they made without aluminum in it—which, as a side-note, is in ALL anti-perspirants and from what I hear, isn’t so healthy) so I have been scrambling to find another option because Tom’s just doesn’t do it for me.  Adidas used to have a plain deodorant option, but they also stopped making it (at least for women).  That was about the time that Degree came out with the deo-only option.  So now, that’s gone and I’m down to my last stick… and I’ve been looking for a new option and the only thing on the shelf I haven’t tried yet was Arm & Hammer.  I figure, if it can take out the rotten food in the fridge smell, surely it can keep me from knocking over random strangers in a crowded elevator when I lift my arm to fiddle nervously with my hair (you know, nothing like picking a random example that only happens once or twice a year).  Well, I drop it in my basket in the bathroom and think nothing more about it (because obviously, I’m not overthinking this deodorant situation at ALL). 

Next morning, I get up and get ready and off to all my errands I go.  I got out and went into my first stop, and I get this whiff of something that smells like they just mopped the floor with Orange pledge or something. I thought, mmm…smells clean in here.

Next stop, mmm…wow, they cleaned here, too…smells like they even bought the same cleaner!! 

Well, about the third time it happened, (I’m not slow at ALL) I realized I was raising my arms to open the doors…hence the whiff every time I entered a place. 

DURRRR.  No, they didn’t all go and buy the same cleaner and all clean on the same day.  I’m a dork sometimes. 

And now I’ve spent MORE than just a minute talking smell…which might make me an even bigger dork.  But I’m a dork with clean-smelling pits.  ;-) 

I think I’ve proved my crazy…I’m going to slink away back to my green furry suit and Orange Pledge smelling trash can now.  =) Night.

Fi---fth Day Of School

So first of all…I did get pictures from the first week.  Go Self.  You can probably tell from these pictures which kid is excited about school and which one isn’t.  Also, the one who “Isn’t” was not cooperative for pictures this morning either. 

I don’t have a picture of me from the fi---fth day of school, but if I did, I’d look more like the excited one.  *GRIN*  I have been on a roll around the house…it’s shaping up finally. 

While we’re on the topic of rolls and shaping up…let’s just say I am turning INTO a roll and I need to shape up.  I’m not one of those skinny girls going around complaining about being fat, but when I have extra weight past my normal range, I just feel icky and it bugs me.  I have an ideal weight and I like to stay there.  Usually this isn’t a problem, but when we got back from Haiti and I weighed in with an extra five pounds (yeah, who goes to Haiti for a week and comes back heavier anyway…what’s up with that?!) and then I’ve spent the last two weeks since craving every sugary chocolatey thing I can get my mouth on…well…something’s gotta give.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me (except I’m NOT PG…I do know that).  So…I’m gonna start exercising and making myself not give into crazy cravings.  Starting…next week.  LOL.  Ugh. 

And for tonight, I’m going to go quench my thirst and go to bed.  Maybe I’ll have weirder dreams than last night (although, that would be quite a feat).  Apparently I woke up in the middle of the night last night and had a conversation about Russian wedding dresses with KC (who was suffering from insomnia and obviously needed to be entertained).  The thing is, I partly remember the conversation and I thought I was awake and making perfect sense about the logic of this wedding gown made of very heavy fabric that I was working on…then I tried to move the wedding gown and realized I was actually wrestling with the comforter and woke up.  Evidently we need a lighter blanket (since KC was having trouble sleeping because he was hot, and I’m assuming I had issues with the weight of the blanket also, given that I was wrestling with it in the shape of a heavy, green, embroidered, Russian wedding dress in my dreams).  Wonder what the meaning of THAT dream was…besides that I need a lighter blanket?!  LOL.

SO here’s to cooler dreams.  Nighty night. 

Rolling On…

Wow…it’s already Wednesday.  I miss the days when time moved slower.  The kids are already on their third day of school and I missed the first day photo.  I figure I’ll grab one from the first week and it’ll be good enough, but if I don’t get a move on, the first week will be gone and I won’t get anything.  Wouldn’t be the first time I procrastinated and missed something, but I’ll try to NOT let that happen. 

So…I’m slowly getting back into gear…I’ve got to get moving and get some things done while the kids are in school.  I need to make my list because without a list, it’s really easy to just go back to bed.  Hahaha. 

I didn’t have a list today, but I had a visit with my hospice patient, and she and her family member were in the mood to chat today, so by time I got back home, it was past the point of going back to bed.  LOL.  That was good, though, because I had a pile of ironing that has been stacking up for two weeks now (oops) and a giant bag of peppers that needed to be prepped and frozen for future use before they went rotten with the rest of the garden.  Yep, the garden is also on my to-do list.  I started cleaning it up a couple of days ago (hence the bag of peppers saved from the pepper plant branches that were being chopped off because they were so overloaded the plants were falling over in spite of being tied to stakes) but it’s not finished.  It’s what happens when you travel a lot over the summer and don’t keep up with maintenance.  My beautiful tomatoes are pitiful and so are my herbs.  The cucumber died a few weeks ago from exposure to deck cleaner so it was pretty easy to clean up since there was virtually nothing left except a few shriveled vines and a couple of rotten cukes.  *sigh*  And there ya have it…no matter how lofty my intentions toward growing our own food…in a tame and NOT wild manner….it seems to always end up the same.  Ah well.  I do seem to get a little MORE off of it before it ends up there every year, so progress is progress. 

How did I ramble off on to that anyway?  What I was REALLY going to say is that when you chop jalapenos for a couple of hours, your fingers will feel really hot and then they will feel better and you will forget that you chopped jalapenos for a couple of hours….until you are biting your cuticles and rubbing at a bump on your lip.  And then….HOT LIPS! 

Anywho, so back to this past weekend, which I never got around to blogging since I was busy working on the Haiti pics/post.  We decided to go back down to KC’s cousins’ at the lake near Atlanta for one last hurrah before the kids went back to school…as usual, it was a blast!  J taught the kids how to kneeboard and they adored it (and him).  LOL.  They did really good though, I was totally impressed with how good they did.  I took a turn on it, too, but no pictures of that…haha.  I impressed myself because I was able to get up on it first try.

This other picture is of one of their dogs, Rex.  I thought it was so funny because he looks a LOT like the dog at the mission in Haiti.  We all called the mission dog, “Sparky” even though that wasn’t his name, but it was really funny.  Maybe you just had to be there.  LOL. 

Random subject change: K-man was praying tonight at bedtime (as usual) and the end of his prayer went like this: “and help all the people who are sick to get band-aids. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.” 

Because as all six year olds know, band-aids are the cure for every sickness.  =)  Yes, I was guilty of smiling.  He was so sincere.  If only band-aids DID make everything better.  In my defense, I tried to keep a straight face.  I don’t think it worked though, because when I prayed, my voice wobbled a little and I paused a few times from trying not to laugh, and I got a whispered question in one of those pauses (also very sincerely) “Momma? Why are you pray-laughing?????”

Oops.  Sorry, honey…you caught me.  LOL. 

Random subject change again (cause that’s how I’m rolling tonight): Is it just me or is it like, barely more than 4 months till Christmas?  ACKKKKKKKK!

I’m not even going to apologize for this crazy post…although I probably should.  LOL. 

But I’m going to bed now.  Jalapeno Hands, over and out. ;-)

Haiti–the pictures

So I’m finally getting through all the pictures.  My mouse finger has gone on strike from all the resizing for the web.  I didn’t do much in the way of editing on most of these…just simply too many to go through.  But this is a window into our week in Haiti.  If I can come up with the time later tonight, I’ll try to come back and edit this post to include a little more of the written highlights of the trip.
*EDITED TO ADD TRIP HIGHLIGHTS BELOW PHOTOS*

Haiti - 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Okay.  It’s not last night, but I’m back.  Our internet was fritzy last night.  I finally gave up and went to bed.  But anyway…highlights of the trip. 

I’m not really sure where to start because there’s so much you could say about it.  I don’t think the pictures really give you a good feel for how life really is there—not like actually BEING there.  There are so many needs and no way to actually fill them all, that it almost just feels hopeless.  And then you realize that the Hope isn’t in “fixing” things, it’s in Jesus.  And while voodoo is huge there, Christianity does have a presence also, which is awesome. 

We visited two orphanages while we were there and did two “Vacation Bible School’s” with each (although VBS there is completely different from ours in the US).  They did the story of Noah at one orphanage and then let the kids have paper and crayons to draw/color about the story, and Daniel (complete with a puppet show) and drawing time afterward at the other orphanage.  At the second orphanage, there was more space and we were able to also get out and play with the kids (jumprope, frisbee, soccer, and blowing bubbles).  The kids were precious. 

We did lots of painting at the school in Barbancourt.  It was just concrete walls and windows and so hot and dungeon-like inside.  As much as I was tired of yellow paint by the time we finished, it was still amazing at how much it brightened the place up and made it so much cheerier.  I say we finished, but we didn’t get ALL the rooms painted.  We tried to get all the rooms painted but we were saved stopped by a bad batch of paint (wrong color and unusable) on the last day, so we had to leave some for the next team.  We painted for three days, so even though we didn’t get finished, we did get a lot done. There were no ladders, so we were climbing on barrels and buckets and desks to reach the ceiling to trim the corners and edges.  The first day, I was a little overzealous and was jumping up and down off the waist-high barrels with no thought for the morrow.  The morrow came with extreme soreness and moaning. 

Then came the day we climbed the mountain and I REALLY regretted that first day.  When I say mountain, I’m not talking a hill.  It was at least two miles up at 90% grade and no steps or handrails.  Chimney Rock times 10.  The scenery was gorgeous but I didn’t enjoy it at ALL until we reached the top.  Matter of fact, I don’t even remember seeing anything but rocks for the entire first half of the trip…all I could think about was how bad my legs were burning, I could feel my measly granola bar returning up my esophagus at approximately the same rate as the sweat was rolling down my face, and the fact that I couldn’t even see the top of the mountain, and how was I EVER gonna take another step???

No, I don’t know where Munchkin gets her tendency for drama.  LOL. 

But it’s not much of an exaggeration though.  I really was afraid for a while there that I was going to be sick and have to turn around and give up.  But we all made it.  And coming down was so much easier…which is NOT to say that I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the sight of the main road to the mission and that cold shower that I knew was awaiting…

ANYWHO.  So we worked and sweated quite a bit all week.  And by the way, those are two separate things.  They are not necessarily connected in Haiti.  You sweat whether you’re working or not.  LOL.  It’s just if you’re working, you sweat MORE.  Like a faucet that never turns off.  That was not my favorite thing, that constant sticky feeling that never went away. 

I’d have to say my favorite thing of the week was that little girl in the giant yellow t-shirt from the second orphanage we visited, that had the smile that could light up an entire village.  She was precious!  I had a hard time taking pictures when my hands were always being held by one child or another…or five. 

It was an amazing trip, but I was VERY ready to see the United States again.  I was singing God Bless America, land that I LOVE, when we started descending into New Jersey.  Just the huge difference of flying into Port Au Prince versus flying into the US.  No way to describe it.  Imagine the worst neighborhood ever, one that is completely un-inhabitable (to US standards) and then enlarge it by…oh…I don’t know….a million percent?  And then imagine landing a plane in it. 

I have a renewed appreciation for our country, to say the least. 

I know I’m forgetting a lot of great things about our trip…the evenings after working all day and hanging out with the team and playing Pit and Spoons and Dutch Blitz and Uno and Scattergories, devotions up at the cross, praying/visiting sick ones up on the mountain, playing basketball with the village kids…it just goes on…but I’ve rambled long enough.  Thanks for reading.  Pray for our brothers and sisters in Haiti…they can sure use our prayers. 

Recuperating

Well, we did get back from Haiti, safe and sound.  Thank the Lord.  I don’t remember the last time I was so happy to get home from a trip.  LOL.  I have lots of pictures that I’ve started going through, but I haven’t gotten them finished yet.  I’m really thankful I seem to have missed all but a little of the sickness that passed around our group, but I didn’t miss the exhaustion.  I’ve spent the last couple of days sleeping off and on all day and trying to slowly get back into gear.  I feel like an old lady…the folks in our group that were older than me were (and still are) totally running laps around me.  Anyway, just wanted to update and say that I’m back but not normal.  (Not that I could ever claim to know what it’s like in that seemingly unattainable state of “normal”)

But that’s where I’m at right now.  Just recuperating.  Craving chocolate and Dr. pepper in a very bad way. And working on pictures.  I’ll come back and talk about it (the trip, not the cravings…lol) soon.  Very soon.  =)

From Haiti

Well, we can use the internet for Lifeline purposes, so I volunteered for blog duty today.  Here is what I posted if you want to hear something before I get back.  Can't post many pictures without photoshop though....so more of those when I get back.

http://www.childrenslifeline.blogspot.com/2012/08/wed-aug-1st-2012.html