Hand it Over

I have decided tonight to completely ignore the load of whites in the dryer that need to be folded and the sink full of dishes leftover from dinner that need to be washed, because I need therapy. This whole blogging thing really is therapeutic and actually a little addictive.
This great need for therapy stems from last Tuesday morning. Out of the blue, I woke up with Bells Palsy. Sunday, a week ago, I had began experiencing a really bad earache never ceasing through Monday night. When I woke up on Tuesday morning I got straight into a shower as usual, and noticed that my right eye felt really weird. I got out and looked in the mirror and discovered that the right side of my face wouldn't move. I couldn't smile normally or blink my right eye. Naturally I go into freak out mode - thinking I have had a stroke or my ear infection is blocking a vein or something to my face that's going to make my whole face stop moving.
After a quick trip to Urgent Care I discovered that my diagnosis was in fact, Bells Palsy.
Bells Palsy Info.
It's actually quite common, little did I know.
The doctor put me on a steroid, Prednisone and an antibiotic, Acyclovir. And told me that MOST people return back to normal with complete facial function after 10 to 14 days.
Through this whole week I have been at war with myself.
When will this go away? What if it doesn't go back to normal? Why has God put me through this? Did I do something to deserve this? Am I not thankful enough for my health?
This week is my last week at work. Wednesday will be my last day, and all I can think of is how much I hate seeing these people who I won't see for a while- the way I am now. When I smile, I look like Elvis. I can only imagine the things going through their minds when they look at me. "Why did she make that face? Did I offend her? What's wrong with her?"
It's all very very frustrating.
After our sermon at church this morning and then talking it over with Chris this afternoon, I've really come to terms with this disease. Why would God put me through this? - because - he wants to be glorified in my healing. No one deserves the things that happen to them - they all happen for a reason. I know that everything we go through makes us stronger.
For now I have not seen a whole lot of improvement from Tuesday. I am able to close my right eye, not completely but almost. I still lack the ability to smile, taste things with the right side of my tongue, sip out of a straw normally, rub my lips together with chapstick, etc. Little things that I just took for granted - I now long to have back.
But God has a greater purpose than I can realize right now, and that is that. For now - I hang in there, have faith and give it to God. Because HE heals!!

Everyday an Adventure

We had planned on Saturday to have a photographer take family portraits of us for Christmas. We all know how when you 'plan' something, it always, well I won't say always, but sometimes will fall through. And, well....That's what happened.

We wanted to get pictures done this weekend so that we could go ahead and order Christmas cards to ship out this week. So - we just decided we would get dressed up in the clothes we had planned to wear and take the pictures ourselves.

It was fun needless to say.....Totally more work than it was worth.

Braeden running away, Izzy totally distracted.

Oh I know this is going to be bad...





Daddy making noises to get the kids to smile, but instead it makes them look at him...

This one's not so bad, but just having the chair in the backdrop instead of more of the Christmas tree, irks me a little bit.

Oh, I give up. And now have a headache.

I think this one is the best one we came up with. Even though Chris' face is a little blurred, his feet are in here and neither kids are smiling.

It looks like next year we might just go with plain ole' Christmas cards with no picture.

Differences

Well one thing that I've noticed these first couple days of being at home is how different my children are. Here is a picture of Izzy eating her lunch yesterday. She is ALL about NOT making a mess. And if she does get sticky, mess or gookeyness on her fingers - she freaks out! Literally freaks out until we get her clean.

My other child; however, wears it everywhere. Doesn't matter if it's on his face, his hands, in his hair - he could care less. As long as some gets in his mouth, he's happy.

We never had an issue with Izzy climbing things either. It seems as though boys must have a natural instinct to want to see what is at the top. And chairs are NOT meant for sitting. They are clearly made for standing, jumping, dancing, etc.




And lets mention the toilet. Yesterday Braeden discovered that you can lift the lid and put things in. We lost 2 bubble wands to the trash and were 2 seconds shy of losing the ipod - thankfully I got there quickly.

At the risk of embarassing my son one day - the one thing that my children have in common is dress up. When Izzy dresses up, Braeden has to dress up too. Here is Izzy wearing purple hair while Braeden rocks his blue hair - and a pink bracelet in his mouth. :)











Needless to say, I have not lacked for amusement these past 3 days.
It has all been worthwhile - this transition. Thursday morning Izzy made that very clear when after praying for her breakfast she prayed, "and thank you for letting mommy stay home with me today". - Broke my heart!!! and brought tears to my eyes!

And then today I was in the kitchen and I could hear Izzy singing in her room. I thought I could hear her singing the song that we had been practicing to learn a Bible verse, "Jesus is the Son of God - Acts 9:20" but I couldn't tell. When I got to her doorway she stopped singing and just mumbled and when I asked her to sing it for me again - she did. And it was totally what we had been learning since Tuesday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YfKoyPgIVs&feature=youtube_gdata_player


On a side note - please keep my mom in your prayers this weekend. She will be having her gall bladder surgery on Monday morning in Charlotte. With any hospital stay comes anxiety so please remember her and our family. Love you all!!

Our First Day

Yesterday we decorated the tree. This year it has been a process. In the past we've just been able to put the tree together all in one day. It's taken us 4 days to actually complete the tree this year. But...sigh.....it's up and ready now!




Below is the picture of the completed tree. I plan to have the kids make construction paper garland and maybe a couple of ornaments to add to it.

Today was our first day home together!! It was definitely scary for me. I sat down last night and prayed that everything would go well and that God would give me the confidence in myself that I CAN do this. The thing that has been worrying me the most is naptime. We never really have enforced naptime when the kids are here....so on weekends - unless we take a trip in the car - they go without naps. It's not because we don't try with them - we HAVE. But everything we seem to do never works. Dimming lights, naptime mats, blankets, milk, etc. We have just gotten to the point of being discouraged and not even wanting to try. Today - I CONQUERED naptime. :) They both went to sleep for an hour and a half - together! Now that I know it's possible, I have a lot more confidence in myself to do this everyday. The trick for them is running them and exercising them until they've used all that energy up and they're tired. After that I fed them lunch and got their bellies full and they were more than ready to rest.

But as for the rest of the day - it was great. I had put together a lesson plan last night of different things we could do today - to encourage learning but also be fun. We sang (and somewhat learned) two different Christmas songs and a Bible verse. We made a snowman door hanger for Izzy's door and watched "The Grinch" movie. And we played and played and played. I'm so appreciative to have this time with them. It's such a gift.

Daily Blessings

Oh my goodness, so much for which I am thankful!! It was a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend. It all happened so fast. It seems like we always wait weeks and weeks and then cook for hours upon hours and then the meal seems to last minutes and then it's gone. :(

I'm going to highlight some of the intriguing moments from this weekend....

These are ridiculously awesome "Sweet Potato Dumplings" that I made. You can find the recipe here: YUMMMM. I actually used real cooked sweet potato though - I'm not too big on the frozen yam patties. And I only cooked them for 20 to 25 minutes and the recipe calls for longer. This is a definite do-over :).

Loved getting to spend time with my family. Especially my brother, Eyan who I never see anymore and his girlfriend Kristi. That's why I love the holidays so much - not because of food (although it is always amazing), or presents. But because I always get to spend quality time with the ones I love. And this year was especially amazing because we got to spend Thanksgiving at Chris' parent's cabin in Tennessee where it's impossible not to step back from reality and really take in God's beautiful creations.

We picked out our Christmas tree today on our way home. Actually Izzy picked it out. Chris and i agreed that it might be fun to let her decide. I was afraid that we would end up with a Charlie Brown tree - and we slightly did because it's not as full and perfect as our past selections, but she did pretty well.

Hey Mommy and Daddy - we found it!!!

We spent the rest of the day doing Black Friday shopping with my mom for her 50th Birthday. Found an amazing deal on the one item that I was really hoping to get Izzy for Christmas - so YAY and Thank you Lord for that!!

After dropping my mom off we started home and then into the garage and heard a loud crunching sound as we entered the garage. Chris stopped immediately and started backing up. I just knew we had ran over our cat and we were going to see him laying there after putting the car in reverse. For a few brief moments we had no idea what we had hit. Oh yeah....

The tree was still on top of our car.

Lets just say, thank you AGAIN Lord for looking out for us, because there was no damage to our garage - AND no damage to the tree.

Pre-Thanksgiving Weekend

Saturday morning we got to sleep in - 7:00 a.m. :) Got up, made breakfast and by 9:00 a.m. we were bored. We never really stop - we have to be doing something all the time. We decided we wanted to do something educational with the kids but didn't know what. Chris suggested Barnes and Noble for storytime - perfect! Well not really. We didn't decide until 9:00 a.m. that we were going to go - after showers, dressing all 4 of us and packing the neverending "day" bag, we didn't get out the door until 10:00 a.m. and storytime started at 10:30 - we crossed our fingers that we would make it. We got to the doorstep at 10:45, storytime was WAY over. But we made the best of it, let the kids run around, play with the cool Thomas the Train setup they have and take a million books off the shelf that we had to run around behind them and put back. Izzy's finally at the age though where she will sit still long enough to read through an entire book.

Braeden not so much....

hahaha.

He actually does pretty well - I think at this point though he was ready to sleep.

We decided to meet one of my really good friends, Sarah for lunch at Dos Amigos. Izzy calls her, "Tia Sarah". And Braeden officially has a crush on her.

Thank you to Dos Amigos for cleaning up after our hour and a half stay there. While we were busy chatting - Izzy and Braeden found ways of amusing themselves.

Izzy made pie.

And yes, this is her shoe and some splenda packets. At least we know she's creative.

A New Night Out

It's so funny how much your life changes after having children. No one really tells you how much it's going to change. It's like everyone keeps it a secret so that you will have kids too, so that they're not the only ones that have kids. Nights of relaxing watching t.v. turn into "mommy read me a book, daddy play with me," and followed by that is bath and bedtime and by that time - mommy and daddy's bedtime because it's too late and we're too tired to even think about doing anything else.
The Friday night dates with your sweetie are LONG gone unless you have prearranged a babysitter. Like tonight - instead of candlelight dinner for two - we did McDonalds and Bouncin' Kids in Morganton. For those who do not know what this is - it's an indoor arena of all of the blow-up inflatable jumpy things that kids LOVE. And I have to admit, after tonight, adults LOVE too. :) Having younger children, we can't really just let them run wild and free in that place. We have to follow them and also help them up the ladders to be able to slide. Izzy does great on her own these days. But is still very likely to get trampled by an older, much bigger child. So - needless to say, we follow them everywhere on their heels the whole time. Embarassing, but pretty funny - here's the kids and I in the belly of a dragon.




Now for those of you who know Chris and I, you are probably thinking, whatever - they would be there without the kids anyways. Yeah, probably true! ;) But we cherish these moments and wouldn't trade them for anything - even a candlelit dinner for two.

The Little Things

For those of you who are wondering - my official last day at work will be December 21st. My last full time day is actually next Wednesday, but I'm going to do four weeks of 10 hours a week training my replacement. It's so bittersweet these past few days. I keep going from packing things out of my desk to sorting through emails that I have saved for 3 years. One of the saddest I found today was a video of Izzy's first steps. Wow that seems like yesterday, it breaks my heart. More evidence though that I'm making the right decision.

After work today Chris and I decided to go to Quest4Life to work out. He usually goes about 3 times a week, but I really only like to go when they have Zumba. Tonight was Zumba night, so we packed the kids in the car after a 20 minute rushed dinner. I always feel guilty for taking that time for myself, but I think God gave me a little "it's ok, pat on the shoulder kind of thing" tonight. The kids came home with a fingerpaint-Turkey hand that they each had made while in the child care there.

How cool is it that the daycare providers took the time (and had the patience) to put fingerpaint on them, draw the rest of the turkey and then help them get cleaned up. And how BRAVE they are for doing that with Braeden who is only 16 months - haha. It makes me feel better to know that they have something fun to do and aren't just sitting in there lonely and bored.

The Journey Home

Currently I am a full time employee for an awesome non-profit organization. I've been here for about three and a half years now, LEARNING everyday! I love my job and it's taken me a lot to get to where I am. AND - I have a family. I have a daughter, Izzy who will be 3 in January and a son, Braeden who will be 16 months sooner than I would like. Oh my goodness how much I love them! No one can really describe how much you will love your children until they are conceived, born and then you hold them for the first time. Its just a completely unfathomable LOVE. I also have an amazingly wonderful, supportive husband, Chris.
Needless to say, I am BLESSED.
I have battled for these 3 years whether to stay at home with my children. It's kind-of been an impossible goal, since Chris and I both have a mortgage, college loans and of course - credit card debt. So, finances have really just stood in our way of me even "thinking' about staying at home.
After an amazing bible study this summer of a book, "Lies Women Believe, and the Truth that Sets Them Free," I have struggled on and off with the decision to stay at home. I miss my children, but is this the right thing for them? Do I really think I can handle being at home ALL the time? What about money?!?! But listening to God, and really trusting him, has lead me to this decision - that we can do it. HE will make a way for us and HE will provide what we need. The line from this book that keeps me trusting that this is the right decision, is "there is no greater servitude from a woman, than to serve your family at home". I believe this is true and hope to live this each day.
I am scared, nervous and worried but also excited and joyous to take this Leap of Faith.....