My Grandparents House

My last living Grandparent died the end of August. While I was not real close to my Grandma, it's still weird to think I no longer have any grandparents here on earth. My grandfather passed away nine years ago, and now that my Grandma is gone, the time has come to sell the house.

This house is filled with many, many years of memories. My grandparents were the original owners of the house, it's the house my Dad grew up in as a teenager. 

Growing up, we had a family tradition of a Christmas Progressive Dinner, whereas we went to the four houses within the family, always ending at Grandma and Grandpa's house for dessert and a fun activity.    Grandma always did things up creatively and fun.

Almost my entire life, with the exception of the last couple of years, this is where we spent Christmas Eve. The family would gather together for a traditional Christmas dinner  and a gift exchange, and in the last twelve or so years, a fun game or activity that the entire family would participate in, organized by my Uncle. Over the years, our family has grown with the adding of spouses, us grandkids getting married and having kids of our own. We kinda outgrew the house years ago as far as big family functions went.

Within two weeks of the house being on the market, it sold! And after a couple of trips to go through things, as of this week, escrow has closed, and it's no longer "my grandparents house", but it's a place that will be in our memories for many years to come. 

Getting Married the "Right Way"

In the last couple of weeks, there's been some postings on Facebook from people about their impending marriage.

For days leading up to their special day, the bride posted about how excited she was for the big day, how she couldn't wait to spend the rest of her life waking up beside her soon to be husband, and other statements like that. One bride put as her status the morning of her wedding that she felt like a kid on Christmas morning.

Those are all very touching and meaninigful statements when you're embarking on the adventure of marriage. I know I said the same statements. However, in my opinion, those statements loose something when you've already been shacking up and already sleeping together. Really, what's changing, beside the fact that you'll now have his name, and have made a life long commitment to one another (which in this day and age, sadly, we know for a lot of people isn't really true). You're already living with each other, already having sex, already waking up to the man. Not much is going to be different, aside from the titles and such.

Steven and I were both excited to get married. Our lives, once we said those vows, were forever changed. I had still been living at home, with my parents and brother,  it was AFTER we were married that I moved in to Steven's condo. We hadn't already been sleeping together, we were saving that until AFTER we were married. There was so much for us to be excited about.

Over the weekend, we were sitting and chatting, and I was telling him about my Facebook friends and their statements and how it made no sense to me, he told me about this article, Getting Married the Right Way and it hit the nail on the head, it was a really great article for those of us who've gotten married the "Right Way."

Helloooooo Out There!

It's been a very long time since I've updated this blog, or any of my three blogs for that matter. I've missed writing, I've missed keeping a journal of what life has held for me, for our family.

It's been well over six months since I've last updated and so much has happened in that time. I have been putting off blogging until I could go back and write 'catch up' posts from everything our life has held for us since my last posting in January. But I've come to the conclusion, that if I want get back into blogging, I need to just start afresh and not try to go back and write posts from the past. However, I will highlight some of the big things of the last 8+ months.

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My position at school kept me very busy. In addition to my duties as PTA President, I was the chairperson for Teacher Appreciation Week, headed up the Year Long Perfect Attendance Lunch with the Principal, and many, many other little things that definitely kept me busy. As for this current school year, I am once again PTA President, but know the role better this year and have learned to really delegate and not overextend myself. I'll be honest and say I've lost some of my steam as two of my closet PTA girlfriends have "abandoned me". LOL. One left the school completely, and the other was just fed up with all the drama and isn't a part of PTA at all, I don't blame her one bit.

The beginning of May found Steven scheduled to go to Maryland for a week on business. The company in which he is employed with, is located in Maryland. This company bought out the old company last October and have expressed interest in him coming out once or twice a year. May was his second time in going out. There's been several times through the years that he's been scheduled for business trips and he always suggests finding a way to have me join him, etc. But it's just never worked out due to finances, the girls ages, their school schedules, and just life in general. But this time, it was looking like I'd be able to join him! And I was beyond excited!

He flew out early Monday morning and I would join him Thursday and together we'd spend the weekend touring Washington DC!! I flew out Wednesday night and took a red eye flight, my air travel coming to an end around 9:00 Thursday morning! I picked up my rental car and found my way to the hotel in which Steven had been staying. I had all of Thursday to relax, nap, and unwind from what had been an extremely busy few weeks, while he worked his normal work day.

On Friday, I met a dear, dear girlfriend for lunch. She lived a little over an hour and a half from where we were and there was no way either of us was going to miss the opportunity to see each other. We met for lunch and spent hours talking. That evening when Steven was done working we made our way to our hotel in downtown Washington DC. We had booked a room on Priceline.com that landed us just two blocks from the White House! We dropped our bags in our room and set off to see the first thing on my list...The White House!

There are no words to express the emotions of seeing something you've always seen in pictures, on the TV, heard about. I was truly in awe, and couldn't believe I was actually in Washington DC!!

Saturday morning we hit the ground running. We spent the next 12 hours INTENSELY sight seeing!! You name it, we probably saw it. We packed days of sightseeing into that day, as well as the few hours on Sunday morning we had before flying home.

We flew home Sunday afternoon (Mother's Day). I am so incredibly thankful for the opportunity to have had this trip. The girls stayed with my parents, and I had a girlfriend pick up the girls from school along with her daughter and drop them off at my parents house the two days they had school while I was gone.

To see our Nations history left me speechless. Seeing the White House and the Lincoln Memorial brought tears to my eyes. And all I can think of is I cannot wait to go back! There is still so much more to see of our Nation's history. I loved traveling, I'd never flown by myself but enjoyed it, and I LOVED the red eye experience and having an entire extra day on that end. I can't say enough great things about those four very full days. I will say that within weeks of getting home, we'd opened up a credit card that gives you points that can be applied towards traveling - hotel, airfare, etc, and I've started using it EVERYWHERE I can to earn more points! THAT's how much I wand to go back. And in my mind, it's not a matter of "if", it's "when", because as long as Steven works for this particular company, there's always the chance he'll be going back!

Once the girls finished the school year, we had 8 1/2 weeks of summer break and we tried to make the most of it! We took day trips to the beach with friends, went to Hollywood, to the movies, and so much more! Including a week long of VBS where Steven and I were both very much involved.

We also spent a week camping at our favorite beach campground! Normally a large group of people from church go, but no one got reservations this year, which meant, there'd be no kids there to entertain our kids. But I had the bright idea of taking our nieces with us for the week and that worked out wonderfully! The four girls had a tent to themselves and got along all week and had a blast....all the while making memories!! It was a great way to end our summer break, as Rachel started school the very next week!

The school year started with a bang....Rachel fell and hit her head and sustained a concussion and couldn't go the first day of school! But she went the second day. Hannah started Jr High a week later, which gave her and I some mother/daughter days....shopping, shopping with a friend and her daughter, lunch, etc. And then once she started school....my taxi services started right back up, however, now I go to two different schools. I think I'm finally used to it, however, it's the afternoon pick up time that's starting to really wear me down. Rachel gets out of school at 1:55 and Hannah at 3:00. There's no since in coming home for such a short time, so Rachel and I have to find things to do in that hour between schools letting out. I created a homework basket that is stocked with everything needed for doing homework (pencils, crayons, scissors, gluestick, etc) and we've gone to the library, gone to my parents house to visit Gramma, we've run errands, and this week, with the temperatures cooling down a bit, we've been able to go to the park. But there's two hours every day that's taken up with pick up, waiting, and then pick up again. Once the weather cools down even more, I can have Hannah walk to my parents house some days and she can spend time with my parents and come home after dinner.

There's so many more things I can think of to write about, but we'll save those for another day. I'm happy to have written this post and look forward to blogging again!

A Special Project

Thursday evening, we attended a reception for participants, and their families, of a recent project done at Loma Linda University Medical Center, the place where Rachel has had all of her surgeries, where her team of doctors practice.

The special project was that of a makeover to a major hallway on the 1st floor of the hospital. It's the hallway that leads from the elevators to the cafeteria as well as connects the Medical Center with the Children's Hospital. So it's a highly traveled hallway. The project name is called the "I Am Hallway". And in this hallway, now hangs about twenty pictures, up and down the hallway. These pictures are huge, maybe three feet by three feet?? If not bigger. The individuals chosen for the project have each been given an "I Am" statement. For example, "I am a Survivor", "I am a medical marvel", "I am Loved", and the list goes on and on. In the corner of each of these pictures, there is a paragraph that tells the story of the person and how it is that they represent their "I am statement".

Rachel's "I Am Statement" is "I Am Beautiful". To read and see pictures of it, visit her blog, Rachel's Journey, and read the post titled "The I Am Hallway".

So back to Thursday evening, this reception was attended by all the amazing people that participated in this project. There were young (one little girl was younger than Rachel), there were not so young, there were men, there were women, there were perfectly healthy looking individuals, and there were some that weren't. But every participant had a story. And as we got into the car after this event, I felt exhausted, emotionally and physically exhausted. I'd been fighting tears back most of the evening.

When Rachel was born with undetected birth defect, we were devastated. Deep down, we knew things were going to be okay, she had a long road ahead of her. But it was still hard nonetheless.

The evening represented a few different things in my mind.

For us, it was a celebration of how far we'd come with Rachel. That picture that now hangs on the wall in a major medical establishment, is a testament to God's unfailing love, His unfailing concern, and of answered prayer, many, many answered prayers.

The evening also made me think about people's outside appearance. To look at quite a few of those people, you would have no idea what things people had gone through. Others, it's obvious what people are going through, or gone through, - the boy in the wheelchair suffering from muscular dystrophy or the little boy about Rachel's age walking around the room with a walker and a tracheostomy, living his life with Spina Bifida, but just as happy and outgoing as he could possibly be. Every person has a story, some stories just aren't obvious. I need to take more time to learn people's story, who they are, how far they've come in life, do they know Jesus.

This week, one morning while the girls are in school, I want to go back to the Medical Center and stroll down the hallway, looking at every single one of the pictures, reading each and every one of the stories. The few I did read the other night were touching, I'm sure the rest will be too...

Happy New Year!

Happy 2012!

It hardly seems possible that Christmas has come and gone and we are almost a week into the New Year! Growing up, I always felt as if it were a lifetime between Christmases and now that I'm grown up, it just doesn't seem that way.

The last month has been a busy one with lots happening.

The last week of November/first week of December had me living the Single Mom life, as Steven went to Maryland on business for a week. I was up really early most of the mornings, and staying up late most evenings. I don't sleep well when he's away, which isn't very often. And life around our house is very different when Steven's gone. He works from home and very rarely leaves the house with the exception of Bible Study every other week and a meeting here and there. So to not have him home, is strange to say the least. But we all survived. :)

The early part of December, our school district and the teachers were struggling to come to an agreement on their contract that was time for renewal. Upon returning to school from our Thanksgiving break the teachers were working only their contracted hours (7:45-3:00) and nothing extra. There was so much going on, and for someone like me who is always at the school, involved, I had no idea. So at for our December 6th PTA meeting, I invited the Superintendent to come speak and give the district's side of the feud. When opening the meeting, I said that PTA was not endorsing one side or the other, but were acting as a means to getting the word out. Sadly, the responses following that meeting that I received, as well as other PTA board members were not good. Some of the teachers became bullies and told PTA we needed to pick a side, and it should be the side of the teachers. It became a huge mess that resulted in myself, the Vice President, and the Parliamentarian having a meeting the very next afternoon, whereas all but six of our thirty three teachers were present. They gave us their side, and we were able to share how we'd felt after being treated the way he had in the previous 24 hours, and defend ourselves. In the end, for the most part, things are okay between the PTA and the teachers, but upon going on vacation, there were some teachers who still were not speaking to us. Time will tell how things are next week when we return to school after a three week holiday break.

The final week of school, both the girls tried out for our schools musical production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. And after four days of auditions, letters went home on that Friday letting the students know if they had or hadn't landed a spot. I was very skeptical of my girls trying out. I know the commitment for this production is HUGE. And I was praying that both the girls got a spot, or neither of them did, so as to not mean so much running for me once rehearsals start (next week!). I am proud to say that both the girls were accepted and will be performing in this grand production. Dates are April 12, 13, and 14th.

On Monday, December 19th, Steven and I went into Hollywood to the Pantages theater to see WICKED! He bought me the tickets for my birthday as I absolutely fell in love with the production when we saw it for the first time three years ago. It was amazing. I loved it and of course left wanting to see it again, just like the first time!!

Christmas was very different this year as it fell on a Sunday. Not only did our church have our usual Sunday morning service, but we also did a Christmas Eve service. We attended both. We had a good Christmas. And again I'll say I can't believe it's come and gone. Every year, I say to myself that I want the season to just slow down so that I could enjoy it, and while I did enjoy it, it wasn't quite slow enough for me. LOL. Picture taken on Christmas Eve
With the way the holidays fell this year, and the need to take a personal day from work, or he'd loose it, Steven had two four day weekends! We did several fun things as a family.

On Friday, December 30th, mid morning, we headed into Hollywood to the Pantages Theater to participate in the matinee lottery for $25.00 Orchestra seats for WICKED. With the girls getting ready to embark on their own broadway-like adventure in performing Beauty and the Beast, we wanted them to see something big and spectacular. And with the months and months of being subject to the listening of my soundtrack, as well as viewing a recorded show on DVD, Hannah was interested. Unfortunately, not one of us won the lottery, but following the ending of the lottery, the Pantages offers discounted tickets for $45.00. We decided that price was still a great deal and got in line to purchase tickets. Originally they had announced these discounted tickets were for the Mezzanine seats. But upon my purchasing the tickets, we were given seats for not only the Orchestra floor section, but it was the 9th row, four seats on an inside aisle!!! I was so excited to discover the location of our seats, and for the price!! We paid $45 a seat for seats that normally go for $163.00!!! The show was just as amazing as it had been eleven days earlier. Although this time we were close enough to see a lot of detail you miss when you sit in the balcony, even if it is first row balcony. This time, not only did I leave loving it just as the times before, so did Hannah, and before we were even out of the theater, she was stating the fact that she'd love to see it again! That day will forever be etched in my memory of a wonderful spontaneous adventure!!

The consolation adventure, had we not scored tickets in the lottery for WICKED, was that we had free tickets to the Long Beach Aquarium that were expiring on the 31st. When Rachel learned that we would not be going to the Aquarium that day, we promised we would take her the very next day. Which was the adventure for New Years Eve Day. We hit the road by 8:30, stopping at McDonalds for breakfast and got to the Aquarium an hour after it'd opened. Steven and mines goal was to get there and get home late afternoon/early evening before the craziness of New Years Eve set in. We met up with our good friends who also had tickets for the Aquarium. We spent the day together admiring the beautiful creatures that God placed in the sea and ended our time together with a late lunch / early dinner. We spent New Years Eve home, just the four of us. It was a quiet evening and relaxing for me as Steven worked on church work on the laptop. It was a nice way to end our two days of great adventures!

The New Year is off to a good start. I hope do get back to blogging more regularly in 2012. The girls go back to school on Monday, so it's back to our school routine. The next few months are going to go by rather quickly I have a feeling. And before too long, we'll be attending our daughters promotion ceremony from Elementary School!

This and That

The girls returned to school on Monday after having had a two week break.

It was a nice break from the regular routine of getting up and out the door so early every morning, from homework, and for me, the busyness of being so involved at school.

While we were off, I didn't touch my black PTA bag once! I vowed to finish up all my little projects on the last day of school and then put my bag away for the two weeks and I was able to do just that! Yea Me! LOL.

I had every intention of catching up on my blogs while we were off, but I never accomplished that. I'm such a slacker. I do miss blogging.

We had a great time off. The girls and I got one trip in to Disneyland, in addition to the private annual passholder party that Steven and I got to go to one weekday night! The girls spent the night with my parents and Steven and I went with some good friends of ours. It was a great date night and we had a great time! I love Disneyland this time of year!!We had a nice Thanksgiving. I cooked this year for the four of us, my parents, and my brother and sister in law and two nieces. It was a quiet very low key day with lots of yummy leftovers!

This is the second year in a row that I've pulled an all nighter for Black Friday shopping! And boy, is it ever fun, especially when you go with a couple friends! I scored some amazing deals and think this very well be my new tradition of literally shopping til I drop. LOL.

We went back to school on Monday for three weeks and already I'm back to the busyness of projects. The PTA recently sold See's Candy for a fundraiser and that arrived yesterday, which required it to be sorted and bagged for all the orders the kids brought in. Today is pick up for the candy. So I'll be at school a few hours today for that. Next week is Hannah's Christmas Choir performance and the teacher has already cornered me into video taping it and processing it, there's the December PTA meeting next week. The following week is our last week of school before going off for three weeks for Christmas and the New Year. And that week holds a field trip for Hannah to Medieval Times, musical auditions that Rachel is participating in, and Christmas parties for each of the girls classes. This busy and this is just my school projects. LOL. But I love it and I love being able to stay home and be so involved...

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

For most of my life, I've always had long, long hair. But at the beginning of summer, two years ago, I had ten inches taken off and I donated my hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths.

I donated my hair on behalf of three women. My longtime friend Diana, diagnosed with lung cancer in the summer of 2008 and went home to be with the Lord in January 2010, and for the sister-in-laws of my friend Amy, both who had been diagnosed with breast cancer earlier that year.

You can read about it and see the before and after pictures on the post I wrote "Taking a Load Off".

Who would ever have thought that as my friend Trudi cut my hair that warm summer evening, that less than two years later she too would be diagnosed with breast cancer.

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This afternoon, I went to "Dancing for a Cure", a dance recital put together where all proceeds go to breast cancer research. This afternoon, and at the show this evening, Trudi got up before two almost sold out audiences, and told her story.

She told her story of how one weekend morning, as she rolled over in bed, she found two lumps and how she put off going to the doctor until weeks later when she couldn't lift her arm up to get something high out of the cupboard without pain.

She told of the day she and her husband were told that the biopsy revealed, "it's Breast Cancer".

She told of how she thought that having only 9 of the 31 lymph nodes testing positive for cancer was a relatively positive thing, while her doctor thought otherwise and upgraded her to Stage 3.

She told of the two rounds of chemo. The effects of loosing her hair. The five weeks of radiation, five days a week.

She told of the booth at opening day of our local town soccer club. They were taking pledges for an upcoming walk for Breast Cancer. Trudi signed up to walk. A year ago, breast cancer awareness wasn't as close a topic as it had become in the last nine months.

I'll never forget the morning she told me. It was at school, kids were running about on the blacktop, waiting for the bell to ring to begin their school day. She wanted to be the one to tell me before I heard it from anyone else. Her news hit me hard.

I've known people who knew people diagnosed with breast cancer, or so and so's Mom, or the friend of so and so. Or so and so. But never had I had a friend who'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. Now I personally KNEW someone who had breast cancer. She's my age (a couple years older, but close enough). She had two kids the same ages as our girls. I remember calling my mom once I got in the car and tearing up upon telling her. Trudi's cancer has touched many a hearts.

This is Trudi with her eight year old daughter. Trudi is a Breast Cancer Thriver. The last eleven months have been horrible ones. Filled with doctor appointments, Chemo appointments, radiation appointments. But she's alive. She's thriving. And she's an inspiration to many....

It's been a Busy Month!

October has turned out to be a very busy month for me. And slowly, one by one, I'm checking things off my list!

Myself and another Mom were in charge of the 6th grade fundraiser that ran the last part of September into the first week of October. The kids sold raffle tickets and are raising money for Science Camp in April. There were three different deadlines for the kids with and each deadline meant a trip to the classrooms to pick up any tickets that had been turned in. And then there was the counting of the money and the raffle tickets, etc, etc. The buying of the prizes to be raffled off, etc. I spent countless hours working on the record keeping and making sure everything would be easy for the teachers to stay informed of the students who paid, who still have a balance, etc. Last week, myself and the other Mom were finally able to turn over all the money and the balances to our office manager and to the teachers in preparation for parent conferences to be held this week. I was sure happy to hand all that over!

On October 13th, our family attended our first Fall Ball at the school. In the six years that Hannah's been attending the school, we've never once gone to any of the dances. But this year, rather than the traditional Monster Mash that's been done in recent years, our Fall Ball Committee did a Country Hoedown! I had the best committee chairmans overseeing and planning the entire thing (Thank You Letti!!!) It was a fun evening of line dancing, face painting, food, and a country photo booth! We had all kinds of props that made for great and fun pictures! I've heard nothing but wonderful things about the evening and how much fun families had and what a great change it was from years past. I think we may have a new tradition!Members of the 2011-2012 PTA
In addition to to 6th grade fund raiser, and the hoedown, I also had a school wide Box Tops contest come to an end last week. Which for me, means counting all the Box Tops that have been held on to until the last minute and then verifying the count and ready them for shipment, and then printing up notifications for the winning classes, etc. We collected almost 20,000 Box Tops!This is what 15,800 individual Box Tops looks like. 316 bags of 50!
The other thing that's been on my plate this month is a project at church. October is Pastor Appreciation Month and for the second year in a row, I've taken on the project of collecting donations and special cards, etc, and then purchasing gift cards and putting together a gift for our Pastor and his family. Numerous emails having gone out, as well as printed copies of the letter handed out at church, proved very successful and we were able to bless our Pastor and his family by presenting them with a package of beautifully written cards, gift cards for dinners out, as well as a Visa gift card to go away as a family for a few days. That was presented to them yesterday, and thus another project finished for me for the month...

My Day in Pictures...

I had nothing on the calendar today. Nothing going on that needed my attention at school (PTA, 6th grade science camp fundraiser, Box Tops, etc). My laundry is all caught up. It was a day that was totally open. So what better way to spend the day than make a trip to My Happy Place. It's my favorite time of year at the Disneyland Resort - Fall and soon it'll be be Christmas. I dawned my tennis shoes, transferred the necessities from my big purse into a small shoulder purse, and once the girls were dropped off at school, I was on my way.

There was a little hesitation when I first hit the freeway. The weather forecast had rain forecasted for tomorrow, so I thought I'd be safe. But there were reports of rain in the neighboring cities between here and Disneyland. I called Disneyland to see what the weather was like there, and while it had already rained there this morning, the sun was beginning to make an appearance.

I debated back and forth on whether to continue going and finally came to the conclusion to go anyway, no matter rain or shine. I hit patches of sprinkles here and there, an the morning traffic was cooperating all the way from here until I had to get on the other freeway. And then it was STOP and GO for the entire time until my exit!!!! Which I think is approximately 20 miles. It took me an hour and a half to get to Disneyland, when it normally would take me about 50 minutes!!!

This picture was taken as I was getting off the freeway! Yippeee! I reached my off ramp!Upon arriving to the parking structure I had already decided to throw caution to the wind and just deal with the sprinkling rain which had started when I exited the freeway, but once a few cars from where I'd parked, I noticed it had begun to rain harder, so returned to the car to get my umbrella. Now only if I'd had a jacket in the car, I would have been set!

And this is the view I saw quite often throughout the morning, the bottom of my umbrella in my line of vision. It began raining once I got inside the gates. Main Street was clear as most people had gathered into the shops of Main Street or under the eaves to get situated with rain ponchos, etc. I had my big umbrella so I waltzed my way down Main Street. I strolled through Tomorrowland to see what the wait was for Star Tours, only 30 minutes, but the line was outdoors and I didn't want to wait in the line. So I kept strolling. I ended up riding the Monorail and taking in the soggy sights of the park and some of the construction going on over at California Adventure that is hidden to the eye at street level.

People everywhere obviously came prepared, or found the nearest Dollar Tree, and had ponchos. I couldn't help but snap a picture of this adorable line up. All these little Asian girls had matching rain jackets!! That was sure going to make keep track of them all a lot easier!! And for the rest of the people who didn't come prepared, good ole Disney was prepared with their ponchos for sale! There were lots of these! Walking close to any of the people who had Disney ponchos on you could smell the newness of the poncho. LOL. I must have hit the line in the bakery just right, it was actually short. So a chocolate chocolate chip muffin and a nice cold Coke was my breakfast for the day and I staked out a dry table along Main Street to sit and people watch. I love to people watch at Disneyland. It's entertaining. I browsed through the stores of Main Street, and then through the big Disney store in Downtown Disney, as well as the candy store in Downtown Disney. I eventually made my way to the car. I wanted to give myself some extra traveling time back to the school just in case there were accidents on the freeway from the rain. I stopped off at the discounted Disney Warehouse to see what they had in stock. Christmas is coming and I was keeping my eye open for POTC shirts for Hannah. The warehouse didn't have much that caught my eye, except for this purse. It's a pin collectors bag really, that comes with an album to display your collectors pins, but I've had my eye on it for a long time to use as a purse. It had been $64.95 when it was in the parks. And now at the discount warehouse, it was $49.99, which really wasn't that great of a deal, so I passed. I left empty handed. And on the freeway I got.

Heading back towards home, there is one more Disney discount warehouse right off the freeway on the way home. I wavered back and forth on stopping. I decided I had the time to stop, so I might as well stop. They had practically all the same stuff, a little more clothes. But they also had the purse I had just seen!! However, here, at this Disney warehouse it was $20.99!!! Almost $30.00 cheaper than where'd I had just seen it a half hour before!! I had a gift card I'd recently been given by a teacher at school, so I bought it! I have a discount card for the discount Disney warehouse (isn't that a funny one) and it gave me an extra 15% off! So I got it for $19.80!!! When it was originally $64.95! I was pretty happy, even more happier that I hadn't bought it at the previous discount warehouse!

The other thing I contemplated briefly buying, was for my Star Wars loving geeks in my family...They were $27.99 each. So I passed.

It was a wonderful day! I love my quick trips to Disneyland. I love strolling through the park, seeing what's going on, people watching, and just taking a day off from the busyness of life outside the magical gates. I'm thankful to be able to do such days! And I look forward to more in the future!!

A New Bible Study

Fall.

The time of year when the kids have been back in school for a while.

When the weather starts to cool down a bit.

And the time of year when new Bible Studies within churches typically start up.

The Women's Ministry at our church offers a Women's Bible Fellowship, however, it is held in the evenings. I am one of the very few women in our church who do not work outside the home, and after a long day of playing taxi back and forth to school, household chores, school obligations, and an afternoon of homework, toss in preparing dinner... I'm simply ready for a quiet and slower paced evening with my family. Not to mention that by the end of the day, my brain is fried and I just can't concentrate very well, therefore evening Bible Studies just don't work well for me.

A few months ago, my Mom approached myself and my sister-in-law, as well as her mother, about starting up a Beth Moore video series. The four of us don't work outside the home therefore a morning Bible Study was PERFECT for us. As I've mentioned before, we've been watching Beth Moore's video series called Wising Up, a study in the book of Proverbs. It's been wonderful and full of applicable things.

It's been working out perfectly for us and Beth Moore is an absolutely amazing Bible teacher. The Lord really blessed her with a gift. As our video series has been winding down, we've decided to start another of Beth's Bible Studies. This one has a workbook and homework to do.

Today was the start of our New Bible Study! And now until the Spring time, we will be doing Beth Moore's Believing God series. "Originating from a concept introduced in Isaiah 43:10, Believing God examines what it means to believe God rather than only believe in Him. Participants study the lives of Abraham and others from Hebrews 11 as examples of people who believed God. This study parallels a personal journey Beth took in coming to understand what it means to believe God."

Today was our first day! And not only are the four of us continuing, but the girlfriend of one of the nephews is joining us as well! She's young, a fairly new Christian, never been part of a Bible Study before, and is excited and hungry for what the Lord has in store for her. And we're excited to have her join us!

Today was the introduction. We have our workbooks, our index cards for writing down scriptures, and our schedule for the year ahead. It looks like it's going to be a GREAT study and I am very much looking forward to it!

Tired?? Nah, Exhausted is More Like It.

I'm not sure anyone could be more happier than I am that today is the end of the week and the weekend is upon us.

This week has probably been one of the busiest weeks in my grown up life. LOL. Yesterday when I was grocery shopping I felt as though I could have just sat right down in the canned good aisle and have a good cry, that's how exhausted I am.

On Tuesday, when I left here to take the girls to school, we did not return until twelve and a half hours later. I had Bible Study that morning, a PTA meeting, following by a parent meeting for 6th grade Science Camp. Which may not sound like a lot. But a lot of preparation work goes into my PTA meetings, and for the Science Camp, I am one of two Moms who are heading up the fundraiser, which has had me busy as well. Last weekend, I counted out 5500 raffle tickets and divided into 100 envelopes and stapled and sorted packets for the meeting Tuesday night.

It's still the beginning of the school year (even though we've been in school almost 2 months), and things are still getting going. We've had school wide fundraisers, PTA membership drive, planning meetings for the upcoming Red Ribbon Week and the first ever Family Country Hoedown! Lots going on, especially this last week. In a few weeks, the fundraiser orders will arrive and then we'll kick off our Christmas Sees Candies fundraiser, and then officially be in the final months of 2011 and the holidays will be upon us.

Devotional by Liz

I have 'met' tons of people over the internet through the years. Quite a few of them have become good friends.

Liz is one of those friends in particular. While she lives in Texas, and we've never met face to face, she's a true friend who I've emailed on occasion sharing prayer requests, life frustrations with, and answered prayers.

She keeps a blog, which is how I 'discovered' her so many years ago. Recently, she shared this devotional on her blog and I loved it so much that I thought I wanted to share it here, on my blog.

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I didn't forget 9/11.

On Sunday, I remembered where I was on the morning of 9/11 like so many of you did. Our pastor's sermon began with remembering the day, telling us where he was when he heard the news. We talked about it with our kids like we always do. We watched videos on youtube about the planes crashing into the Pentagon & World Trade Center towers. I paused to think about the awesome stories of heroism in the biography I read a few years ago "Let's Roll!" by Lisa Beamer, whose husband was on the ill fated Flight 93 that crashed into an open field.

But something struck me part way through the day.

I am, by no means, diminishing the power & importance of September 11, 2001. I will never forget the horror of that day. But it hit me like a ton of bricks that so many of us have our own 9/11s in life. We measure life that way, creating a roadmap of our life based on what happened before or after our 9/11. Those milestone dates will never be erased from our memory. Without thinking at all, I bet you can tell me exactly where you were when you got the news about 9/11. You can tell me how old your kids were. You can tell me what you did the rest of the day. And maybe even the day after. You can remember vividly who told you what was happening or whom you were with when you found out. And most of all, you can remember the terror that filled your heart. The questions that spewed from your mind. The fears that we all felt.

Maybe your 9/11 was the day you found out you had cancer. Or the day your child died. Or the moment that your spouse came to you & said that he/she wanted a divorce. Your 9/11 might be when the doctor walked in & told you that your dad was dead or that your friend would never walk again after the accident. Maybe it was the day that you lay in a hospital bed & handed your child over to his adoptive parents. It is different for all of us.

Life is like that. Horrible, awful things happen. We think we are safe, protected, secure....and then something slams into our life that reminds us we are just humans and that we're as fragile & weak as the rest of the world.

Today might be someone else's 9/11. Keep that in mind when you face the world today.

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Fall Has Arrived...at Least at our House

My favorite season, if you can call it that here in Southern California, is the season of Fall. Love the warm colors, love the coolness of the mornings, love the clear views of the mountains once the Santa Ana Winds have come and done their thing. I usually wait until October 1st to decorate for Fall, that way it's up the month of October and November. But this year, Fall came early for our household. I had some ladies over from church last night as we finished up a book that we are going through and I wanted the house to be decked out for Fall. So I decorated over the weekend. I'm ready for Fall. I'm ready for the recipes I only cook in cooler weather - stew cooking all day in the oven, tortilla soup, chili, and other recipes I don't cook when it's hot. I'm ready for a trip to Oak Glen and to the Pumpkin Patch. I'm ready for Fall to fall upon Disneyland. I'm just plain ole ready to be done with summer. LOL. Even though we really have had a mild summer for the most part here in Southern California.

Remembering 9/11

Every blogger across the internet world will be dedicating a post today to the significance of today's date and what happened to our great country ten years ago.

September 11, 2001.

It's one of those days in history where you know exactly where you were. Much like the events of the Challenger explosion (for me), or an example of my parents childhood, the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot and assassinated.

It was a Tuesday. Hannah was almost 17 months old, not walking, and an only child at the time. She'd had just woken up for the day and Steven had gotten her up, and was changing her wet diaper.

The phone rang, it was my Mom calling. She knew we weren't morning TV watchers, therefore she was calling to tell us that the Twin Towers had been hit. We turned the TV on and there we sat for hours and hours and hours on end, glued to the ongoing news, just like everyone else in the country.

I remember going over to our neighbors house and telling her to turn her TV on. I remember Steven not working that day. I remember at the end of the day sitting outside with the neighbor friend talking and taking a break from the nonstop coverage on TV. I remember hearing reports of people we knew, acquaintances from the church we were attending at the time being stranded somewhere as air travel had been stopped.

What do you remember about the day?

Helmets

We've always been a family that pushes the wearing of helmets. The girls wear them when they ride their bikes, their scooters, and I've even made them wear their helmets when we've been the local skating rink.

When my brother was 14 years old, back when helmets weren't a law, he had a skateboarding accident. His skateboard hit a rock and he landed on his head, resulting in a basal skull fracture. He survived and didn't suffer any long term brain damage. Although he did loose some capacity to smell and taste as a result.

So helmets aren't ever not an option in our family.

What happened on July 20 of this year only confirmed the importance of helmets.

Hannah was in an accident on her bike which resulted in her being transported via ambulance out of the campground to the local trauma hospital whereas she was diagnosed with a pretty bad concussion. To read all the details, visit the post on her blog.

Her concussion was pretty bad and she had a helmet on! Had she not been wearing a helmet, the outcome would have been a lot different than it was. After a few hours of repeating herself and asking the same questions over and over and over again, she was practically back to herself by the time we were discharged from the ER shortly after midnight. Had she not been wearing her helmet, she might have ended up with a much more severe head injury.

The purpose of this post you might wonder?

It's for those of you who don't enforce your kids wearing helmets. This post is to hopefully to get you to change your thoughts and views on helmets. And start making your bike riding, scooter riding, four wheeling kids to wear helmets! Helmets can save lives!

August 31, 2004

On this day, seven years ago, in the early hours of the morning, I was admitted to the hospital to be induced. An ultrasound done the day before estimated the baby I was carrying to be between 9-11lbs, with eleven days left until my due date. Given my history with my pregnancy with Hannah, going over two weeks and her being 10lbs at birth, my OB felt it best to induce me, and avoid the baby getting any larger. Shortly after arriving to the hospital, I was hooked up to the drugs that would bring on labor and after ten hours and not making any decent progress, my OB felt it was in my best interest for the safety of the baby, and for me, to proceed with a c-section. I was prepped, Steven was gowned up, and two hours later I was wheeled into the delivery room.The delivery room was cold and sterile. Nurses were busy about their business while they finished up last minute preparations for the soon to be delivered baby. They made Steven sit on a chair just outside the door until they were ready for one more body to be in the room.

And then the time came...

My wonderful OB came in, and someone escorted Steven in to be by my side. I could see nothing as a curtain had been put up across my chest. Blocking me from seeing what was going on. There was the smell of cauterizing flesh. There was tugging. And then there was complete and udder silence. It was my OB who kept moving forward in a business fashion sort of way giving the medical team in the room the news they all needed to know, "We have a baby girl with a unilateral cleft lip and palate". The way she said it, was calm. And upon hearing that, I knew I had just given birth to a baby born with an undetected birth defect. I remember that moment like it happened yesterday. I can tear up just thinking about it, as I am writing this post, reminiscing about the day our Rachel was born.

The days that followed Rachel's birth were very tough ones for our family. We had been praying for nine months for a healthy baby. We had already had a difficult babyhood with our first baby, we were ready for a healthy, normal baby. It was very much like a time of grieving. I remember being very removed and detached for the first few days in the hospital. I know a lot of it was due to an anti-anxiety drug I'd been given in my IV following the immediate delivery of Rachel. One thing we did know was that we had a long journey ahead of us with Rachel. A long journey that has been blogged about and shared all along the way at Rachel's Journey.I had Rachel on a Tuesday night (9:21pm to be exact) and I remained in the hospital until Friday. In the evenings, after all the visitors had gone home, after Steven had stayed late into the night and went home for some rest, I was left at the hospital alone. The baby went to the nursery. I had my iPod with me and the song I remember listening to over and over and over again was Fernando Ortega's "The Joy of the Lord". And that's kinda been my 'theme song' all theses years...

The joy of the Lord
Will be my strength
I will not falter
I will not faint
He is my Shepherd
I am not afraid
The joy of the Lord
Is my strength

The joy of the Lord
The joy of the Lord
The joy of the Lord
Is my strength

Thy joy of the Lord
Will be my strength
He will uphold me
All of my days
I am surrounded by mercy
And grace
And the joy of the Lord
Is my strength

The joy of the Lord
Will be my strength
I will not waiver
Walking by faith
He will be strong
To deliver me safe
The joy of the Lord
Is my strength

Here we are seven years later, and I am extremely thankful for the gift the Lord gave us in Rachel, birth defect and all.

God Works the Night Shift

I read the following devotional on Greg Laurie's blog over the weekend and I wanted to share it...

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It is 3:00 A.M., the house is quiet, your family members are asleep, it is warm, it is dark, and you should be asleep too . . . but your mind is racing, your heart is pounding, and worries overwhelm you. You might be thinking about the pressing needs of a tomorrow that will find you unprepared, or it may be an area of concern—financial, relational, or employment. You may even continually find yourself in a place where you are out of hope and out of peace. A place that points to a spiritual separation from God that leaves you vulnerable and open to attacks of anxiety from the enemy. There is something about this part of the night that seems to magnify all of these problems, and I am not sure exactly why that is. Maybe that is why the psalmist said "He guards us from the flaming arrows at night."

I am convinced that we need God's help, not only when we are alert and awake, but even when we are sleeping. As you get ready to go to sleep, I think that it is a great thing to end the day in prayer. It has been said that God works the nightshift, and it is so true.

The best place to start is back at the beginning of each new day. Start your day in prayer, committing your decisions, your challenges, and whatever you are going to face that day to the Lord. Then, as I suggested, end your day with prayer as well. In each instance, our prayer should be, "Lord, here it is. I commit it to You." It reminds me of a quote from Martin Luther, "Pray and let God worry." I like that. Not that God worries, but the idea is that you should pray about it, rather than worry about it.

Let me ask you right now, is there something troubling you? Is there something eating away at you? Bothering you? Irritating you? Causing you to be afraid? Pray about it, right now. Just say, "Lord, I can't handle it." Philippians says, "Don't worry about anything, but pray about everything. The peace of God that passes all human understanding will keep your heart and mind in Christ Jesus."

So don't worry. Pray. You will sleep, and live, much better.

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I love the title that Pastor Greg gives this devotion, "God Works the Night Shift".

It is the nighttime when I often find my mind unable to shut off.

Just like Pastor Greg wrote in his opening of this devotion, it is in the darkness and the quietness of the house, when the girls are sound asleep, Steven is sleeping, when the day has come to an end, it is then that the enemy gets foothold of my thoughts and I start thinking, dwelling on things, worrying about things, pondering things.

Often times the longer I lay in bed, the worse it gets. So most often times I get up, sometimes busying myself with surfing the internet. But more and more times, I'm going into our family room and praying. There's always things to pray about. People to pray for.

Perhaps there's someone reading this today that needed to hear, needed a reminder, of who they can call upon in the night, when they find themselves lonely, alone, and afraid. Always remember, that while stores have closing hours, God is always working, and He's always working the Night Shift!

Pioneer Woman is Coming to Food Network!

I don't think there's many people out there in the internet world that doesn't know the name "Pioneer Woman".

Her blog 'Confessions of a Pioneer Woman' is read by thousands every day. She has a cookbook, a book sharing the courtship with her now husband, and starting this weekend, she's coming to Food Network!!! We already love to watch Food Network, and I love to read PW's blog, (even met her in person once), combining the two are going to be awesome!

Check your local listings for the Saturday Premiere specifics. For me, its shows at 8:30. In honor of the day, I think a special PW breakfast might have to be in order!

Being a Wise Woman

Have I mentioned before how much I'm loving these Beth Moore Bible Studies?? LOL.

The last Beth Moore video we watched was on being a wise woman. The wise woman...

...Is a former fool - Proverbs 26:11, Proverbs 22:15, Proverbs 15:5

...exercises patience - Proverbs 14:29. Proverbs 29:11, Proverbs 14:16-17

... is not easily annoyed - Proverbs 12:16

... makes amends - Proverbs 14:9

... knows that God's way is life's ultimate way - Proverbs 19:3, Proverbs 19.8

So, truth be told, Beth was going through the first part of her message, and nothing was hitting home for me. In fact, I was thinking about some women who'd I'd encountered in recent weeks that were acting as fools. LOL.

And then, Beth got to her third point. The wise woman is not easily annoyed. And had scripture to back it up! YIKES!

Am I an easily annoyed person you may ask? Yes, yes I am.

You know what Beth had to say about the person who is easily annoyed? That it is a character flaw in me, not that of the person who I am being annoyed by!

Since watching that video, I've really, really (and man is it hard sometimes!!!) been trying to remind myself when I find myself annoyed at someone, that it's me that has the problem, and not them. It's been tough. But I am finding myself just a little bit more accepting.

How Quickly Life Can Change

Last week, I learned that a little girl who was in Rachel's class last year had lost her Daddy unexpectedly. He had died the Thursday before, due to a massive heart attack.

As I learned more details throughout the week, I learned that the morning he died, he had actually gone to Urgent Care with chest pains, they sent him home with an aspirin and never batted an eye any further than that. No EKG. No blood work. At the end of the day, he suffered a massive heart attack in the midst of his seven year old daughter.

He leaves behind a loving wife. His seven year old daughter as well as a five year old daughter.

I didn't know the man other than the fact he was "Lindsey's Dad". Every day last school year he would walk hand in hand with her in to the playground, and stand with her until the bell rang. Always smiling, always the example of a loving father.

Since school started this year, the girls and I have been walking in with Lindsey and her Mommy. Always nicely put together, on her way to work, a beautiful woman, on the outside and the inside. This last week my heart has been so heavy for her. In my thoughts and prayers. I could barely hold it together when I offered her my condolences last week when I found out.

Her life is forever changed...

Her kids lives are forever changed, as well.

It really struck me this week just how quickly life can change. Who would have thought that at as the sun rose and the day began on August 11, that by the end of the day, her husband, and their Daddy would be forever gone. Thankfully, this is a believing family, and they have that hope of seeing him someday again in heaven...

What a Week

The end of another week and what a week it's been!! I've been the PTA President officially for over 2 weeks, but I feel like this week was the first real week of that position. And I'm tired. LOL.

Tuesday after school we held our first PTA meeting of the new school year. I must say I was nervous leading up to the meeting. I kept hearing that many people were coming, but truth be told, people like to talk, but not commit, so I wasn't really holding my breath until the meeting actually came about.

We had over 40 people in attendance for the meeting!!! That is the most people we've had attend any single PTA meeting in YEARS! Last year, the most we ever had at meetings, not including the teachers and principal were a dozen. I was overwhelmed with the support and it was refreshing to see so many people come to the meeting, and offer up ideas when it was appropriate to do so.

I've learned quite a few things this week:

1) My crockpot is still my friend. There was one day I had a meeting with the 6th grade teachers after school and while it didn't last long, the other little 'hallway meetings' I ended up having did. I was happy to not have to think about dinner when I didn't arrive home until after 4:00.

2) I need to take a couple days a week where I'm not so visible at school. Because I am the new kid on the block, and people and teachers are excited that I've taken on this position, and I'm approachable, I appear to be the 'go to person' for everything, even unrelated PTA things.

3) People have misconceptions about what it is that the PTA does and does not do. Here are a few examples:
* It was not the PTA's choice to do away with the crossing guard, nor will we pay to have a new one put there.
* It was not the PTA who thought up Saturday school.
* It is not the PTA who came up with the nutritional rules that we now must abide by in our contest rewards, etc.
* It is not the PTA who buys 5-6 dozens of donuts every Friday for the staff and teachers and places them in the lounge.
* In addition to a few other misconstrued thoughts of PTA.

4) I do know it was the Lord who put me in this position. It is my hearts desire to be the best example I can when dealing with tough situations, tough emails, and tough people. The vice president is also a believer and it was such a blessing to quickly get together prior to our meeting on Tuesday and pray. And after dealing with some unhappy people this week, I think prayer is going to play a lot bigger factor for us as we endeavor things this school year.

I've probably put in 20-25 hours this week of time between the many duties I have at the school - Box Tops Coordinator, PTA President, Room Mom, and another committee I got involved in this week. My goal for the weekend: NO PTA or work associated with school. I'm taking the weekend off.

Tonight, Steven and I are going on a date night and I'm very much looking forward to that!

Separation of Church and State

This evening, I went to the city council meeting in the city where the girls go to school in, the city I was raised in.

I was there as our schools PTA President, on behalf of the concerned parents and families of our school in regards to the recent elimination of crossing guards as a result of budget cuts by our school district. I got up before the council and spoke.

As I stood there, with my eyes shut, listening to the opening prayer of one of the community's pastors, and then following the prayer with the reciting of the pledge of allegiance, something struck me as funny...

The world is so worked up over "the separation of church and state" and yet, we just opened up the city council meeting with a prayer, followed by an allegiance that states we're "One Nation Under God".

What is wrong with society?? Choosing when to let God be a part of government, etc.

It reminded me that it's how sometimes we as Christians can choose the things that the we 'give' to the Lord to work with, have control over, in our own lives. Do I have a "separation of church and state" attitude in my life?? Do You??


******************* The Outcome of my Speaking: After I spoke, I left the meeting. I needed to get my girls home to bed, and about an hour ago, I received word that the city council voted to approve paying for three crossing guards for 30 days until a volunteer program can be put in place!!!! Yipppeeee!!!

Acquaintances VS Friends

We are continuing on in our Beth Moore Bible Study Video Series. Last week's video was on Friendships and boy did I learn a lot and it confirmed a lot of feelings I already I had in regards to friends.

But before I share about the teaching, a little history about me and friendships:

Growing up, I did not have a lot of friends, it was that way all through school. Having been raised in a Christian home, where I knew what was right and wrong, I was set apart in High School, I wasn't doing or into the things that the other kids were into. Which also made me different, and not really wanted much as a friend.

In the years to follow, I came to realize that while it was at times painful not to have a lot of friends growing up, I came to appreciate the specialness of having just one or two close friends. The kind of friends you could confide in, share things with, not be judged, etc.

That thinking stays with me to this day. I don't need a lot of friends. I am not one of those people who share everything to a lot of people. I don't need, or want, a lot of people knowing my innermost thoughts and feelings. I have one or two friends whom I confide in, look to for support, ask for prayer from, lean on. And I am perfectly happy with that.

Beth's Video on friendships hit home in so many areas for me. It was just the confirmation that I needed to hear.

First off, Beth Moore gave the difference between acquaintances and friends.

Acquaintances can be classified as those types of relationships that are "head to head relationships" and are socially satisfying. The types of people you can sit down with and have a conversation with, doing things with, but not really sharing a piece of yourself.

Friends are the types of relationships that are "heart to heart". They aren't relationships that are staged in an environment or setting. They happen freely.

I have a lot of acquaintances. Which when you use that word, seems so unfriendly sounding. But they are those relationships that are social, ones I can carry on conversations with, are pleasant to be with. But I don't share "me" with these friends. And then I have a few very close friends whom I call upon, text, and share my heart with, prayers with, etc. Those are my "heart to heart" friends. They encourage me, pray for me, comfort me and I hope I do the same for them. They are treasures.

The book of Proverbs is full of verses on friendships. And I could go on and on about this wonderful Bible Study on friends, but I'll just leave it at saying how blessed I was from this study and how much I gleaned...

Box Tops Bulletin Board

I have once again taken on the role as Box Tops Coordinator for our school this year. We are currently within the top ten schools in the State of California and I want to be the one to move our school closer to the top. How's that for being discreet about the specifics! LOL.

I hold a couple contests throughout the year and it gets quite competitive amongst the classes, and even amongst the teachers in the final days and hours of the contest. So every year a bulletin board is created that sits on the cafeteria patio to show how the contest is progressing.

This is the bulletin board I made for this year. It was my goal to have it up for Back to School night for all the families to see and remember that Box Tops collecting is important. The red colored flowers are for the intermediate classes, grades 4-6th. The purple flowers are for the primary grades, Kindergarten through 3rd. As Box Tops are turned in, flower petals will be added to the class flower stem with the amount of Box Tops turned in. I'm thinking for every 300 turned in, a flower petal will be added.

Here's to a great year of "Watching our Earnings Grow...!"

New School Year, New Position

Before the school year ended, the PTA board positions for the 2011-2012 had already been filled and voted upon. But two weeks after school got out, I received a text that our voted in President had to resign. Her husband who had received a pink slip at his current job, had found a job, two hours away. She was now on a mission to seek a replacement for PTA President.

Within minutes of her text I was on the phone with her asking the details of the job, specifics, etc. And then over the course of the week to follow I thought about it. Talked it over with friends at the school, with my sister in law who was the PTA President at her school last year, and then once I came to the conclusion that I was interested, I asked Steven what he thought about it all. He was very encouraging and told me to go for it.

I texted the resigning President and told her I was interested. An email had already gone out soliciting other people who were interested and no one was, so the position was looking like it was mine. It would become official once I was voted in at the Association Meeting to be held at Back to School night, which was last night.

It's now official, I'm the PTA President for the 2011-2012 school year!

Call me crazy. Call me out of my mind. But I think I can do a great job at the position. I'm a very organized person. I can delegate things well.

I'm excited about the school year ahead. Today, I put flyers in the teachers boxes to hand out to their students to take home, inviting people to join us at our meetings. I also wrote a letter to the teachers letting them know the PTA was there to help and support our teachers and that I was available for their ideas and thoughts, including my personal email address at the close of the letter.

There's a lot of changes at our school this year. We lost a lot of longtime dedicated PTA members who put many, many hours into projects and events. I'm hoping our first meeting will be filled with a lot of new faces (fresh meat as we call them!) and that our year will be a successful one!

How We Pack for Camping

We have a minivan.

When we camp, we tent camp.

When we camp, we have a lot of stuff.

When we camp for an entire week, there's even more stuff.

Which means you have to be very precise and organized as to how you pack your car.

My father in law has never seen how loaded down we are when we go camping, so I took these step by step pictures to share how it is that we pack our car.

We start by removing the last seat in our van, and switching it with the middle seat. The back seat actually allows for better positioning and adjusting than the middle seat. The spare seat is placed in our dinning room for the week. Then we load our camp box and large ice chest. They must be placed on the sides. Now is also the time to pack the boogie boards and large flexible freesbie against the seat. Our EZ Up and double camp chairs and umbrella go in next, in between the ice chest and camp box. The single camp chairs for the girls are then positioned onto the ledges of the back windows. Our small camp table is also slid in alongside of the ice chest. Next to pack are the rubbermaid boxes. Usually two are filled with non perishable food, especially if going for a week. One box has our air mattresses and tarps. The other box is a one filled with other camping necessities - hammer, mallet, air pumps, lanterns, etc. More stuff is also strategically positioned along the sides of the cars in the window spaces. Next comes the beach chairs and blankets and bedding. Chairs laying flat atop the ice chest, blankets being stuffed into every nook and cranny that could possible hold something. The girls luggage and beach bags of beach towels are backed and our tent is packed at this point. One of the last things to be packed into the car so that it can be easily accessed and set up so everything else can be loaded into it. LOL. The only thing missing from this picture is the large duffel bag that Steven and I pack our clothes for a week in. It gets shoved in last minute along with our pillows. The one picture I failed to get was the front of the car. This trip, there was an ice chest between the girls, sitting on the seat with our electric coffee pot in it, bike helmets and scooters fit in the nooks beneath the seat, bucket of sand toys beneath Rachel's feet. As well as stuff between mine and Steven's seat. We were loaded!!!

And as if the inside of the car wasn't fully loaded, we have a bike rack that straps to the back of our car. Normally there are only three bikes, but this year I had a bike, therefore Rachel's was strapped to the roof. In this picture, Rachel was upset and crying because she feared her bike would come off in the drive to the campground. LOL. Daddy assured her if it did, he'd buy her a new one...after the tent was put up. LOL. At the end of our camping trip, and we're loading up the car to come home, everything pretty much has to be packed the same way! There's no way if we want to continue camping that we could ever get a smaller car. LOL.

God's Hand

Have you ever gone through something and after it was all said and done, after the dust had settled, you could see God's Hand all over the situation, all over the events of the circumstances??

The day after Hannah's accident, we saw just that. We saw how the Lord's hand was all over that day...

* My parents were at the campground for the day visiting us. Had they not have been there, they would have been the first ones I had called about the accident and I know they would have been making their way to San Diego in rush hour traffic, not really knowing where to go.

* Because my parents were visiting for the day, the friends we were sharing the campsite with parked their truck out on PCH for the day so that my parents car would be right there at the campsite for them to work out of (their chairs, extra shoes, jackets, ice chest, etc, etc). And because their car was RIGHT there, it allowed us to jump right in the car and follow the ambulance right on out of the campground.

* Hannah fell off her bike in front of a campsite that belonged to friends whom we were camping with. Our friends son saw her and knew exactly where to go to get help. Had she fallen at some other location in the park, no one who knew her might have seen her, therefore we might not have been alerted as quickly as we were.

* Hannah's accident happened in front of a campsite where off duty firefighters and paramedics were camping. They were able to jump right in there and start assessing the situation, asking the right questions, giving the right instructions until the on duty medical professionals got there. They were also the ones who ultimately cut her foot free from her bike.

* Because we were camping with friends and family, all believers, they began praying as soon as the urgency of the situation came to light. I know they were praying throughout the evening as updates were texted to them, etc. I believe with all my heart, it's because of all the prayers said on Hannah's behalf that the CT Scan was negative, the foot xrays were negative, and the blood results checking for brain trauma was negative.

I know God's Hand was probably on many of the other details surrounding this accident and we may never know the others. But His hand was on the evening, and I'm so thankful, very, very thankful.

Back from Camping

We were camping last week at the beach. We left on Sunday afternoon after church and came home on Saturday afternoon. We had a great time away. In the middle of the week, Hannah was fell off her bike which resulted in being taken to San Diego Children's Hospital via an ambulance. You can read the entire account on her blog.

And now, we are vacation detoxing.

There's a ton of laundry.

A kid out of commission.

And school starts one week from today!

So much to do and so little time left!! So many more adventures I wanted to do while on break, but seven weeks just isn't enough time.

Dressing Modestly

Dressing Modestly. Not a subject often talked about these days. It's certainly something that is becoming more and more less seen in today's society. Billboards. Commercials on TV. Magazine covers. Sales Ads. Are all guilty of not promoting modest dress. The majority of women, teenage girls included, lack modesty in this day and age. And sadly, a lot of Christian women fall into this category as well.

The Bible tells us in 1 Timothy 2:9-10:

"I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."
We were somewhere recently surrounded by other Believers, where the teens were swimming. The girls were wearing bikinis. Very low cut bikinis. The lack of covering wasn't leaving much to my own imagination, so I know it wasn't leaving much to the imagination of the teen boys that were swimming in the pool with the girls, much less all the single men and married men sitting poolside.

I have two daughters and it is my job as their mother to teach them how and why we need to dress modestly. Summer time is upon us and when it comes to bathing suits, my girls wear one pieces. Yes, when they were toddlers, they had cute little ruffled two pieces, but that was when they still had some baby chub on them and it was cute. But we're at a stage now where we're trying to teach them modesty, and it's tough, especially when fellow believers don't hold modesty in the same regard.

Hannah recently attended our church Youth Lock In, aka all nighter at the church with devotions, music, games. There was a young lady who spoke on the topic of what things are pleasing to the Lord. One of the things she addressed towards the girls was the subject of dress and presenting themselves in ways that are pleasing to the Lord. The days following the Lock In, Hannah asked me if I thought the purple nail polish she was wearing was displeasing to the Lord. Of course it wasn't. But it opened the doors for me to tell her exactly what would be displeasing to the Lord as far as clothing went.

A couple weeks ago, my Mom and I took the girls to the beach, to escape the Inland Empire heat, and to have a picnic on the beach. We were all set up, chairs, blanket laid out, just chilling and relaxing under the umbrella, when a teenage girl and her boyfriend set up their spot down a ways in front of us. It wasn't long before she was peeling off her clothes, reveling the bikini that laid beneath. The topic of conversation that came next for us, was explaining to Hannah the lack of modesty the young girl exhibited.

I'm not saying that two piece bathing suits are wrong. In fact, Old Navy and a lot of other stores these days sell very cute two pieces that include board shorts and rash guard shirts. Very cute. What I am saying is that we as women, especially those of us who claim to love and follow the Lord, need to think about our bathing suits, in fact think about our entire wardrobe, and ask ourselves if the article of clothing might be lacking in modesty, perhaps even displeasing to the Lord.