Christian Momma

We don’t go on vacation every year, we haven’t went since 2006…other than camping here or there…that being said, our vacation is coming up…the boys are so excited!

As a child I went on vacation a lot.  I don’t remember much from our vacations (mom always says that the car accident I was in has affected my memory…it’s either that, or I have a horrible memory!!)

My vacations as a child…I remember going to Disney World, I was about 7ish years old.  However, I don’t remember anything but the electric parade, but I’m not sure if I remember that because I’ve seen photos or if I actually remember that.  I do remember staying at my Uncle’s house and his son’s pet taranchula got out…is that where my arachnophobia stems from?

We went to the Wisconsin Dells…I have no idea how old I was.  What I can remember from that is the boats that could drive on land as well as in the water (Duck Boats, I think they are called).  This was a pit stop of a trip on our way to South Dakota (we were driving my Uncle’s boat out to him).  What I remember most about that trip…sitting on the side of interstate for 5ish hours with the boat…just my mom, my sister, my grandmother and myself…while the guys (my dad, my grandpa, and my cousin) went to get a part for the boat.  This is something you can’t do in this day and age!  As far as South Dakota, I remember some little shops at the Black Hills and seeing a Prairie Dog for the first time…unfortunately, not much else!

I know we went to Niagara Falls when I was younger, but I don’t remember much of that, I do remember going with my youth group on a ski trip to New York and going over to the Canada side of Niagara Falls before heading home.  Let’s just say, some of those guys in my youth group should have stuck to the US age limit!!

I’m so glad there are photos that I can look at to help me remember things that we’ve done and/or seen that I can’t remember.

Anyway…as I was saying, we are going on vacation as a family.  We are bringing my mom along.  This vacation is so much different than any vacation I’ve ever been on…Why?  Well, my mom and I are making all the plans.  Neither of us have ever done that!  There’s always been someone telling us what we were doing or where we were going, so this is going to be interesting.  Kevin said he was going on vacation, but not planning it…so mom and I are doing all that.  We are going to Michigan to do some things and then heading over to Cleveland to do some stuff before coming home.

When I was an Avon representative, I would have my boys drive my route with me.  As a treat for the boys, I would take them to get them something to drink.  They loved it, especially on a hot day of running up to the doors of all the houses to hang the books on the knobs.

On this particular day, we decided to go to Caribou to get drinks (I’m sure mommy didn’t have any influence on that decision because I’m not addicted to Caribou Coffee or anything).

We get to the drive-thru and there are a couple people in line ahead of us.  And like any other trip to Caribou, I ask each of the 4 boys what they would like to drink.  We order our drinks (all 5 of them) and I dig out my money.  Once the gentleman in front of me pulls away, I proceed to the window.

The worker pops her head out of the window and asks if I would like to buy a bag of coffee.  I look at her a bit puzzled…they never ask that when you get to the window.  She proceeds to explain…

“That gentleman that was ahead of you just paid for all your drinks, so you don’t have a total.  So would you like to buy a bag of our coffee?”

SHOCKED!  I decided that since I have an obsession with like Caribou’s Coffee, that I would go ahead and purchase a bag of coffee…because, well, that coffee was a lot less than it would have been to buy 5 drinks.

What a great thing Random Acts of Kindness are!  Have you had someone do something nice for you?  Have you done a random act of kindness to someone else?

Y.M.C.A.

My wonderful husband ok’d me to get a family membership to the YMCA!  I’m so happy!  The boys are excited too!

Anyway, I just had to share!

I was reading Soliloquy’s end of year review that she wrote and thought…I wrote something like this last year, I should do it again!  Thanks Soliloquy!

So…Let’s begin, shall we?

January

I felt God’s direction about Vacation Bible School.  It was the beginning of January that I realized that God had been calling me to be the director of VBS for 2009.  I had helped run it in 2008, but the call to lead was stronger than the year before.  So by the end of January, it was decided that I would be the director of VBS.

February

Daniel and Andrew turned 4 and I celebrated my 35th birthday.  There was that LONG gap of my internet time.  From the moment that we decided to drop the DSL line and get the Cable line…December through February!  WOW, I remember being so upset that it was taking so long and we would get the run around!

March

The stress of VBS was in full force.  My dad struggled with clots one big one that he had been hospitalized for that ran from his groin to his ankle.  I was so happy that he was able to get that taken care of and sent home.  Kevin and I started our online search for a house.  Our intentions were to get a house big enough that my parents could come and stay when a kidney would become available for my dad, since dad’s Kidney doctor was down here by us.

April

I was so excited to be joining in on the A Woman Inspired online conferences!  My dad’s kidneys were getting worse and the doctors were moving forward with getting dad ready for dialysis and his kidney transplant.

May

God began speaking to me about a ministry that my heart had desired to work with.  At the time (May) I didn’t mention the ministry and I really hadn’t mentioned it much since…things just recently came to pass.  I was speaking of the Ladies Ministry at our church.  God had began to open the doors for me to work with that ministry.   I also began writing about the Road to a Kidney and the feelings regarding my dad and a kidney transplant.

June

We were packing up our place and getting ready to move into our new home.  What an exciting time!

July

Michael turned 12.  We had a 4th of July party in our new home!  My dad had to have open heart surgery in July.  It was a triple bypass.  How hard that was to know that my dad going into this surgery would cause his kidneys, that weren’t functioning properly, to completely stop working.  It was extremely hard for me to be there and see all those tubes he had when he came out of surgery.  At that moment, I had realized just how hard it was to watch my dad struggle and be in so much pain.

August

VBS month!  Wow, it was such a whirl-wind and a blur!  I was so happy when the week was over!  The day after VBS, however, I jumped right into working on the Women’s Ministry Retreat.

September

Noah turned 9!  We had the Women’s Retreat and I had so much fun!  I enjoyed every minute of getting all the things together as well as participating.  I started my research on 2010 VBS’s…I was overwhelmed again.  While praying for which program to run the next year, I felt God telling me my time as the director was over.  I was actually very relieved at that, but decided to pray more to be sure it just wasn’t my will.

October

An amazing month.  How I realized that distance doesn’t matter when God is involved and how God was using technology to minister to someone first hand!  My dad’s feet had began to turn purple from lack of circulation.  I had mentioned it to a pastor/friend who had mentioned it to a pastor/friend of his who just happened to be having revival services at his church…streaming online!  So I was able to get online with Larry Silverman’s church (who, by the way are STILL in revival and stream their services online) and hear them pray for my dad while having my cell phone up to the speakers of my computer so my parents (who were on the phone) could hear the prayers for my dad.

November

Unfortunately, my father passed away at the beginning of November.  It was very hard to watch him die.  My heart was split from being happy that he was no longer in pain to being sad that he was no longer with us.  I still struggle with this!   Kevin celebrated his birthday, it wasn’t much of a celebration time (sorry honey!) since it fell between my dad’s viewing and his funeral.

December

Our first Christmas without my dad had it’s moments, but we all had a pretty good time.  We celebrated this Christmas by having my mom spend Christmas Eve/Christmas Day with us.

As an overview, the beginning of 2009 was really great, the ending, too many deaths in the family!

I am looking forward to a new year!  Happy 2010!!

It’s Black Friday!!   Kevin and I are out shopping…getting all those sales, yes we are one of those crazy people that go out at 3 am!!   The boys are with my mom…they went home with her and my sister after Thanksgiving yesterday, we will see them on Sunday!  Yep, that means a Kidless weekend for us!!

Have a wonderful day!!

With all the thoughts running through my head right now, I know this post is going to be all over the place.  Consider yourself forewarned!!

I, along with many others I know, have bronchitis!  Not fun!!  Because of this, I missed church…again!  I didn’t want to, I was scheduled for singing…but I couldn’t hit any note, and my “sexy voice” just wasn’t going to cut it!  Not to mention I didn’t want to get everyone else sick.

So, today was another lazy Sunday for me.  I got to sleep in.  We did run out and get groceries this afternoon after Kevin got back from church.  I am so glad we didn’t send our boys to church…Daniel got sick on our way home from the grocery store.

I had to miss my niece/God Daughter’s 2nd birthday too.  That was hard for me…I hate having to back out of plans, but I didn’t want to get their family sick too.

Noah has surgery on Thursday.  He’s getting his adnoids taken out and tubes put into his ears.  I pray that this will help with his hearing and that he would stop getting ear infections.  He’s struggling with reading and we have been working alongside his teachers getting him the help he needs to catch up.  I can’t help but wonder if his ear infections and him not being able to hear properly doesn’t have something to do with his reading.  I guess time will tell.   I just got to keep him healthy between now and Thursday.  I don’t want to have to reschedule his surgery.

Prayers would be greatly appreciated!!

We were so exhausted from the past few weeks of having something to do all weekend, we decided that when we got up this morning to make it a “lazy Sunday”.

We took our time getting up and around, went out and got coffee, then headed to the grocery store. Came home and just lounged around for most of the day.

*gasp* We skipped church *gasp*

My sister drove down to drop her son off at college with our mom. We decided to meet at IKEA and do some shopping, then went out to eat. Kevin decided to stay home and watch football. Didn’t buy a thing, but had a lot of fun!

Here I sit, it’s almost 12 am!  What am I still doing up?  That’s a really good question…but I’m not real sure what the answer is.  I am tired, I should be in bed, but the quietness of the night is so peaceful.  I get so much done in that time.

I have been working on getting my binder together, I have one specifically for out home and another (planner) that I take with me wherever I go.  The planner is all up to date, the other binder, however, has been MIA since we moved…until tonight!  Good thing we found it, school starts on Wednesday and I need to have a central place to put all of the boys’ school stuff they get…the handbook, how to contact each teacher, etc.  It’s nice to have it all in one place so I can find it.

As I was looking through this binder tonight, I realized I had created this binder last year in hopes of taking full advantage of all the sections in the binder…but I didn’t because some of them are specifically for owning a home…which now we do, so I can use it!  YEAH ME!

Anyway…that’s what’s keeping me up late tonight…working on that.  There’s no way I could work on it when all 4 boys are running around!

Literally!

Dear Meijer,

While at Meijer today, I was filling up the cups of pop for my family.  2 Employees were messing with the slushie machine…they filled a cup 1/2 full with RED slushie…when finished one of them (XXX.) threw the slushie into the trash causing the red slushie to fly into the air and land on my head and on my white shirt.  They left laughing about it…when I went to customer service to get my apology (which I shouldn’t have had to ask for) I was given an attitude from this XXX saying “I’m sorry, I had no idea it happened”, yet he was laughing and telling all his friends about it.

I talked to one of the managers at this store (XXXX, OH on XXXX) and another manager came up and listened in.  They said they would take care of it.

My only issue is HE NEVER SAID SORRY without me prompting him!  If he would have said sorry, it wouldn’t have been an issue and I would have laughed it off.

This is a Customer Service Employee who did this.  If he can’t even apologize for something he KNOWINGLY did wrong, how can this employee begin to help YOUR customers with their issues?  Is it not your store’s policy to keep the customers Happy?  I left the pop area VERY UNHAPPY.

I am VERY Disappointed in the way this situation was handled.  My own children (ages 11, 8, 4 & 4) all kept saying that guy never said sorry and he should have.  How can a child know better than one of your Customer Service employees??  That’s not right!

Saying sorry when you do something wrong could go a long way.  In this instance, you wouldn’t have had to read this long comment…in his instance, he wouldn’t have gotten into trouble with his manager.  In my instance, I wouldn’t have been mad, would have even probably laughed with him about it!!

Yeah, I’m over it…and YES, it is funny…now we’ll have to see if I can get the red slushie out of my white shirt!!

It’s been such a long time since I’ve posted!   I bet you are wondering where I’ve been…well, maybe not, but just humor me!

In December, we decided to change from DSL to Cable internet.  Little did we know how long that would take to happen!  We finally got the cable installed and up and running on Feb. 14th!

Can you imagine being without the internet for that long?  Yeah, I can’t…I hit the coffee shop many times in the apst 2 months just so I could keep up!

However, that lack of internet has allowed me to turn off the computer without thinking twice about it…a newfound freedom, so to speak.

I did miss you all and keeping up…

During my time without the internet, I have played more games of solitare than I care to admit and started a new craft…book thongs!