2013 Here I come

2013 is here and I have to say I wasn't fully prepared.  I played the Power Ball yesterday in hopes that the dreams I keep having that I win would actually come true.  Unfortunately I have no winnings to report as of yet.  No worries though, I'm sure it will eventually happen, LOL.

Our Christmas was great and my in-laws bought me a cedar chest at an auction and it's absolutely gorgeous... I love it and couldn't be more excited that I finally have one after all my years of wanting one.  Christmas day, my husband's family came over to eat lunch, open presents and hang out.  They ended up staying the entire day til around 6pm or so and I was absolutely exhausted after everyone finally left.  My biggest goal for the day was to get a much needed nap in before returning back to work the following day, but I didn't get my nap and I think I'm still trying to catch up on sleep from the holidays.  All in all... our Christmas turned out great this year though.

Sunday, December 30th was the annual Christmas gathering in Sulphur for my mother-in-laws side of the family.  Unfortunately we had a slight repeat of last years issues that morning and were off to a bad start for the day.  Even when I specifically asked my hubby the night before if there had been any prior driving arrangements made for our trip, he answered "no".  Funny though, that morning my mother-in-law called while we were eating breakfast to find out if I knew when my sister-in-law was picking us up?  A little confused, I said "huh, I wasn't aware she was picking us up" and was then informed that everyone had made the decision all the girls would ride together and all the boys would ride together.  Interesting... I basically told her I would discuss this with Fred and have him call his sister.  You can only imagine my frustration and hurt with this blind siding me at the very last minute.  It was obvious my husband had discussed driving arrangements and for what ever reason decided to lie to me the night before about them.  When I mentioned it to him, he only met me with resistance, raised his voice and then proceeded to tell me that I never listen so that's why he never said anything.  Again, I'm confused.  Long story short... we ended up driving ourselves down there and not riding with anyone.  For what ever reason I haven't stopped thinking about this since it's happened.  It royally bothers me that he would lie straight to my face about something so stupid and simple.  Then have his mom call me to drop the prior arranged plans in my lap the morning of.  Nothing about this sets to well with me.  I'm absolutely clueless what to even think of all of this.

Despite the crazy day it was, we had a very nice time that day and I can only hope and pray next year we won't have the same issues as we have the past two.

My New Years resolution this year is to lose weight!  I'm determined this time around.  The biggest key is getting my husband on board with it too.  For him not to bring home crap food, like donuts, candy, cookies or what ever else he thinks he needs to munch on.  That's one of my biggest downfalls is the crap he brings home... I can't sit there and watch him eat it and then refrain myself from eating it too.  That's just not fair in my opinion.

Well I guess for now that's about it for me... off to bed I go and tomorrow's Friday, woohoo!

December is almost over

Seems like I never take the time to blog anymore like I used to.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to do better about blogging more often.  I really do enjoy it!

Here's the last month recap...

Thanksgiving was nice.  We went to my big family gathering this year since not everyone had seen Kayla yet & others hadn't seen her in quite awhile.  We spent a few hours there then came home for naptime.

We had our family pictures made at Portrait Innovations, since Sears is going out of business at the mall.  I wouldn't recommend them to anyone if my life depended upon it.  I will have to write an entire other post about our experience with them & why I'm so pissed off about our experience.  Let's just say I hope nobody else I know goes to them EVER!

I took Kayla to Bass Pro again this year to get her picture made with Santa.  Now that she's older I wasn't sure how she would react, but she loved him!  It was so cute to watch her try to talk to him all serious, but the elves kept trying to get her to look at the camera & well that ended up making her a little mad, then of course that's the exact moment they snapped the picture.  Go figure.  I would have been ok with the picture of her trying to talk to him... to me that was just to cute.  Oh well.  Picture with Santa accomplished & it's something we can look back on again later.

Kayla's birthday party Sunday, December 9th went great.  She got a lot of stuff and enjoyed playing with all the kids and seeing everyone.  My BFF Kat made an awesome Minnie Mouse cake, it was so so cute!  Of course her birthday is so close to Christmas, that she's barely gotten to play with all of her birthday toys and bam it's Christmas & time for more gifts!  We did Christmas with my family yesterday at our house.  It was very nice, we had a great time.

I have to say that one of the biggest things that I'm thankful for is to be able to have family at our house for the holidays.  To have a big enough house to have everyone over is just the best feeling ever.  We were able to finish our den/office before the holidays too.  That was the best Christmas present ever.  It's so nice & beautiful, I love it!  It actually looks like a room now instead of a converted garage... just amazing.

I know this is short, but while I had a few moments I thought I would post a little update on what's been going on in our world the past month.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas & hope everyone stays warm in this chilly weather we're having.

Minnie Mouse success

I'm very proud to announce that Kayla's Minnie Mouse costume turned out great!  I will be the first to admit that during the process of sewing it together, I made several mistakes, had to take it apart a few times, lost some sleep thinking and worrying about it, but all in all... I'm so impressed with the final results.  Personally I think she's the cutest Minnie Mouse I've ever seen!

So here's how our Halloween week went.  At work we started decorating late last week and I must say I loved the way everything turned out.  It was a slight competition between upstairs and downstairs... and hands down... upstairs won (which is where I'm at).  All the girls did a great job and all the creativeness between everyone was amazing.  The night before Halloween, I got Kayla dressed up in her Minnie Mouse and took her over to my Uncle Earl's house to deliver some cookies we made for him.  He always likes it when I made him cookies or desert of any sorts.  My Aunt Oneta happened to be over there as well, so of course I had to snap some pictures.

Yesterday, on Halloween... we had a lunch pot-luck party at work along with costume contest.  Needless to say it probably wasn't the most productive work day ever, but it was definitely fun.  I left work early and headed home to get Kayla ready, everything packed and head out to Mustang to my brother's house for trick-or-treat.  I convinced my parents to come along so they could be there for Kayla's first trick-or-treat experience.  Fred was out west and was suppose to head in to meet us in Mustang, but ended up calling an hour before to say he wasn't going to make it after all.  Which was very disappointing to hear.  I really hoped he would be there for Kayla.

After a few houses she kinda started getting the hang of it.  The first house, she wasn't sure what was going on.  Second house, they had a dog and she wanted to go inside and pet it.  Third house, she was almost ran over by her cousin Katie and then wanted to give the people candy out of her bucket.  Fourth and fifth house she held her bucket up for them to put candy in... and of course never spoke a word to anyone the entire time.  After the fifth house she crawled into her stroller and was pretty much done.  I managed to push her to a few more houses right up to the front door to collect candy, but then I decided we should head back to the house.  It was an experience for her and she seemed to have more fun playing in the living room with all the kids rather than roaming the streets walking up to strangers hoping for them to drop stuff in her pumpkin.  I wish Halloween would have been on a weekend instead of a weekday, because we didn't stay long.  We had to get back on the road to get home so I could get my little Minnie Mouse to bed before it got to late.  I'm already looking forward to next year, especially since Kayla will have a better understanding of what trick-or-treat is all about.  Maybe next time Fred will actually make it too.

 

How lucky I am

I can honestly say that every single day of my life I'm reminded just how lucky I am to have the most beautiful, wonderful, and precious daughter in the world.  As crazy as it may sound, I'm completely addicted to her.  Her laugh makes me laugh, her smile makes me smile, she's just contagious for me and I don't mind it one bit.

Of all the jobs I've had in my lifetime or all the things I've ever done... being a mommy is the absolute best and highest honor I've ever had or could ever receive.

Tonight as Kayla and I were winding down from dancing to "The Hot Dog Song" and other random songs from the tv... I pretended to collapse in the floor with arms spread out.  Kayla jumps up, runs to grab a blanket and her "doggy" then comes to cover me up with the blanket then attempts to crawl under there with me along with "doggy" too.  Just warms my heart, she's so sweet.

Last Friday night for whatever reason, Kayla didn't sleep well.  At all.
She went to bed at her usual 8:30pm time but then around 1am she was crying.  I went to soothe her, lay her back down, cover her up, etc., but shortly after I had crawled back in bed there she was awake and crying again.  It's a very rare occasion that she will wake up in the night like that so I knew she wasn't feeling quite right.  After several unsuccessful attempts to get her back to sleep, I made the decision to bring her to bed with me, which was around 3am.  I tried laying her next to me thinking I could just cuddle her, but that didn't work she wanted to lay on top of me with "doggy" in hand of course.  So I propped the pillows up where I could lay slightly upright, then within minutes she was sound asleep and still laying ontop of me as well, lol.  I got as much sleep as I could for the next 3 hours and was partially still asleep when we stumbled out of bed into the living room to flip the tv on.  If I would have realized it was only 6am I would have not gotten out of bed, but well I was sleep deprived and a little out of it.  We dozed off and on while laying on the couch watching random things on tv.  I'm glad she just wanted to hang out with me on the couch and not run wild thru the house.

Even though I was seriously sleep deprived all day Saturday and was only about half way functioning most of the day... I enjoyed every minute of it.  It's a good feeling to feel wanted and to know that you are able to put your sweet baby back to sleep when nothing else works.  Apparently she was just wanting some mommy time and wanted me close.

She's growing so fast, so I'm trying to absorb all the sweetest she's willing to give while she's this age.

On another note... I had this bright idea awhile back that I would make a minnie mouse costume for Kayla to wear for Halloween this year.  What was I thinking?  There are times when I don't exactly think everything thru completely before diving off in the deep end.  Well there is no failing this project, one way or the other she will be wearing the minnie mouse costume I make when I finally finish it.  I was attempting to put the sleeves on tonight and well that proved to be a little more challenging then I thought it would be, lol.  I need all fingers and toes crossed and lots of prayers this will turn out good.

I will have to post pics when I'm done!

My cousin Gary

Well I have some very sad news... my cousin Gary has an in-curable lung disease.  Caused from having pneumonia so many times and it's caused a lot of scar tissue to develop in his lungs.  When my aunt took him to the dr the other day, his oxygen level was so low it wouldn't even register on the testing machine they wanted him to breathe in.  This is not good at all.

Unfortunately there is nothing they can do for him except make him as comfortable as possible with inhalers and meds.  My aunt said that slowly but surely it will start to cut off his breathing over time and he will eventually live on oxygen and well... that's about it.  Gary knows what's going on but doesn't know the severity of it.  Because of other health conditions he has, my aunt said that it's best he doesn't know how serious it really is.  It would only make him upset which would cause more harm than good.  Why does it always seem like when it rains... it pours?  He's such a kind sole and the most giving and loving person in the world, but yet he's faced so many challenges in his life that have caused him so much pain and now this.  One more thing to cause him discomfort and pain once again.  It just doesn't make sense to me why things happen like they do, but I guess it's not really up to me to understand the "why" in life either.

Growing up, my aunt was like another mom to me and my cousins, Gary and Sheri were more like siblings to me then cousins.  We've always had a very close bond from the start, that's just how it's always been.  It breaks my heart to know what he's going thru and the long road he has ahead.

We just have to put it in Gods hands and let him lead the way thru the pain.

As Gary always says... "I love you and God Bless"

Going back

Tuesday we had an appointment to see Paula again.  Unfortunately Fred was unable to make it because he was out west working ground in order to plant wheat this week.

I've been after him for some time to make another appointment with Paula so we could attempt to get back on track again... however he never did until late last week and then he couldn't even make it.  A little disappointing for me.

My chat with Paula was much needed and even though Fred couldn't make it I feel like maybe that was meant to be.  I was able to get a lot of things off my chest, I learned a lot and feel I have a new approach to take now.

I learned that I need to take care of myself first and most importantly take care of Kayla as well.  I can't change Fred's priorties to put myself and Kayla first.  I can't change his trail of thoughts or what choices he makes.  However, I can make the right decisions for me and Kayla.  That is what I do have control over.

I'm emotionally and physically exhausted from the continous conversations we have about why he never comes home when he says he will or the times he promises to be home at least one day on the weekend but yet something always comes up to drag him in another direction.

One thing that really hit home was "you can't love someone enough to change them, they have to love you enough to change."

Wow... so true, so true.  I guess I had never thought of it that way before.  It's amazing how one statement can make such an impact on how you feel about things.  Paula said that she feels like I'm holding back on life because I spend to much time trying to think of what's right for "us" when he is obviously not doing the same in return.  This only causes more weight on me trying to love him that much more in hopes the lightbulb will come on one day in his head and start putting our family first instead of everyone else.

It's hard to believe we've been going to Paula over a year now, but yet we still have the same issues and problems as we did when we first started going.  She said that when there's been little progress and the same issues are there as they were before especially in over a years time frame... chances are it's not going to change anytime soon, if ever.  She strongly suggested that I take a step back and focus on myself and what's best for me and Kayla.  And I think she's right... about everything.

I've "bitched" at Fred so many times about how things may change for a day or even two, but then we take 20 steps backwards all over again.  This is a constant roll-a-coaster that I'm tired of being on.  Unfortunately it just never seems to sink in though.

The truth and reality isn't always easy.  The time he's been away this week has given me time to think and to emotionally relax, so I'm thankful for that.

It's sad to say but when he's not here, I don't have to pick up things left around the house that Kayla shouldn't get into such as knives or medicine.  I don't have to worry about him coming home when he said he would because I know he's not coming home at all.

It's such a loss in so many ways.  I wish he knew the serious impact his behavior has on his daughter and on me.

If only I had some magic pixie dust to make it all better now.

In Remembrance

Lately I haven't the time out of my busy schedule to blog, but tonight I am making the point to.

I want to take a moment and dedicate this blog to several people in my life and you know who you are.

The recent loss of a magnificent woman Mrs. Orr, has saddened my heart tremendously.

I remember the last time I hugged her like it was yesterday.  Mr. & Mrs. Orr were officially moving to Houston to be closer to their daughter and that was really rough for them.  The moving truck was at the house and everyone was working hard to load everything for the long move to Houston.  Fred and I stopped in to say goodbye.  I knew at the time, chances were I wouldn't have the opportunity to see them again.  As I hugged and hugged her tightly that day it was hard to bring myself to walk out the front door to leave.  I managed to keep the tears from flowing until I approached the front doorway and had to force myself to continue walking through it.  Being pregnant at the time didn't help my emotions either.

Months before the move took place, Fred and I had discussed the option of buying the house to raise our family.  It was the perfect location, right down the street from my parents, close to town and work... everything seemed so right but at the same time it was sad too.  They had to leave their dog Spike behind and we took care of him until he passed away just a week after I brought Kayla home from the hospital.  I was devastated to find Spike and truly believe he was heartbroken after they moved away.  Even though we loved and took care of him, I'm sure for him it just wasn't the same without them around.

Mrs. Orr was more than just my best friend Kat's grandma, the neighbor down the street, a wonderful teacher, a great piano player... she was like another mom.  She always treated Kat like she was her child, not her grandchild and she was always so proud to talk about her every chance she got.  You could just see her face light up every time.  She loved all her kids so much and anytime you were around her you could just feel it.  Just being in her presence, with all the warmth she radiated, made you want to strive to be a better person yourself.  I believe she had that affect on everyone around her.

I will always cherish the times that I would call upon her for help with homework that I didn't understand and she was always more than willing to teach me.  Even though I never had her as a teacher in a school environment, she was the best teacher I've ever had.

It was because of her that Kat and I started hanging out together around the age of eight.  Of course our friendship developed into not only best friends, but family as we still remain today.  I can still hear Mrs. Orr telling me on so many occasions how glad she was that Kat and I had remained so close through the years, even though we lived far apart growing up.  Kat and I always looked forward to the end of the school year because she would spend the summer with her grandparents and we would get to see each other.  When we were young girls, we couldn't call each other on the phone because it was long distance and would cost extra money, so from time to time we would mail each other letters.  Her grandma always took us to the mall to shop and she would do her shopping and we would go roam the mall and meet her back at a certain time and she would always be patiently waiting for us in a chair just outside of Sears.

On September 8th, Mr. and Mrs. Orr celebrated 71 years of marriage.  How amazing is that?  Again that is something to look up to and truly appreciate all the love, work and rough roads it sometimes takes to get there.  I always thought it was so cute how you could just look at them and know how much they loved each other by the way they acted towards each other.  I can only hope and pray that someday my marriage can be that strong too.

With regret I won't be able to attend Mrs. Orr's funeral on Monday, because it is in Houston.  If I had the extra money to fly out there, I would do it in a heartbeat.  If I had the extra money to make the road trip, I would do that too.  Unfortunately neither of these are options though.

Even though I'm unable to physically attend the services, I know in my heart she knows how much I love her and will always hold close all the memories we've made through the years.

For my best friend Kat, please know that I will be with you on your 10 hour journey in the morning as well as your return back home.  You know for sure someone else will be watching over you too, and we both know she will most definitely ensure your safe travel!  You will be in my thoughts and prayers as always and if you need anything, you know I'm here.  I love you.

Mrs. Orr, you were an angel here on earth and now you're an angel in Heaven.  I love you forever and always.