A trip back in time

What a week it has been! It has been very nice to spend time with my mom for a week and chauffeur her all around our new town. I say it's our new town, I'm not sure how long after you move that it's still considered the "new town." For me, I still recall myself saying,"I just moved here" but I guess it takes time to get out of that habit.

So, we had a pretty eventful week, but what sticks out the most for me was my trip to Dawsonville today. It was my whole family, including my mother. My 91 year old grandfather recently spoke to an old friend of his that he was in the navy with back in 1942. They were talking about old times and he asked him where he was living now. When the man stated Georgia, my grandfather said "What part, my granddaughter just moved to Georgia." The man said his town, and my grandfather asked me how close is that to where I live. I had to just laugh because I thought to myself, wow, that's crazy. "He only lives 20 minutes from me, Grandpa." We talked and visited last weekend while in Florida and as I left to get on the road, he said "will you do something for me?" I said "sure, what's that?" He said "I may never get there to see my friend again in this lifetime, so will you please make it a point to go by and take your mom and the family and visit him?" I gave him my word, and that we did.

After church today, we headed home and grabbed that lunch as we all know it as the rapid lunch. We all changed clothes and anticipated the arrival time to be about 2:30.When we arrived at the house, there was no cars in the driveway. We got out, knocked and rang the bell and to our surprise, the 90 year old couple was not home. We began to stake out the property as if they maybe couldn't hear the doorbell well. I made it around to the back of the house and was met by a younger couple coming out of the basement and their appearance came as a bolt from the bleu.They began to ask who I was, and I explained and they couldn't of been more excited. The woman began to tell me that she remembered at some point recently, her dad mentioning my grandfather and the lengthy talk they had just had. We sat and chatted awhile and we waited for "Paf" to arrive back from their late afternoon church visit. Considering Paf is almost blind, he greeted us with a huge hello and was unsure of exactly who we all were. When I introduced myself, my mom and family, him and his wife of 33 years, were in complete shock. The happiness that came from this 90 year old man was amazing. He just started saying all kinds of great things about my grandfather and the time they spent together in the Navy and at Imperial beach with their girlfriends in which they soon married very shortly thereafter. It was like a time capsule had erupted and we were living in the 40's. The moment was indescribable, and it was a time that I will cherish forever.

Wow! I still can't stop thinking about it! I had the opportunity to spend some time today with a man that was 90 years old and as sharp as a whip. He was one of my grandfather's best friends in 1942 and they served in the United States Navy together and they are still both alive to talk about it today. My grandfather went his own way in 1943 and they both had separate callings for their lives, at which my grandfather had the honor to be upon the USS MISSOURI when the Peace Treaty was signed. The stories from these men are remarkable! I am so proud to have him has my grandfather and that I was able to meet his high school best friend and share some of our stories as well as he shared his. He is our neighbor. God brought us to him for great reasons. My grandfather was in awe over the fact that we were able to fullfill his request and we did it with much gratitiude. As I close today with my trip back in time, I have to say that it was a day well spent with a man that is still alive to recall the times he spent with my grandfather before he married my grandmother, to which they will celebrate their 68th anniversary this year. Now that's something to talk about.


What do you have to talk about? Has anyone out there taken a trip back in time lately? I'd love to hear about it. I'd love to just hear from you! Hope everyone has a great week.

A word from Braden...." Mommy, do you know anyone that has ever been sent to the devil for being bad?"

Until next time,
S~

Where dreams come true

What an eventful week it was! My 6th anniversary came and went and I even got a dozen red roses sent to my work from my amazing husband!

We packed up and headed to Orlando, Fl for a quick weekend at Minnie and Mickey's place and got a little bit of China Town from Epcot along the way, too! It was an adventurous and fun filled weekend all crammed into suitcases. We stayed at the Pop Century Hotel, which was another story of its own, and would not be my next pick on hotel stays that's for sure! When you find a used bar of soap under your bed, it's usually not a good sign. However, we didn't make our stay there to long, it is what it is I guess. Our long journey at Magic Kingdom was of course fun as always. The kids enjoyed every minute of it and it was exhausting that's for sure. You kinda see someone from every side of life. Especially, when your five year old isn't afraid to hold in his opinions of people with pink hair and tattoos. I thank God everyday I was a shy child.

We concluded our weekend with Chase's scholastic banquet which was such a treat. Not only did we get to stay at a top notch hotel on Daytona Beach, we got to participate in an evening which I will never forget. I watched my 13 year old son take awards and a trophy for his achievements and "Job well Done" for a 3.9 GPA that was recognized by the POP WARNER Scholar Athlete Program. I'm so proud of him and his accomplishments and that evening was proof of the possibility to go through an entire day either stuck in your ruminations about the past or anxiety over the future, never really seizing the moment and noticing the pleasant things that are happening right now. Sometimes in life we forget to stop and enjoy the things that really matter. For a few hours, I was able to see my son shine, no stress, and being able to savor the moment with loved ones. It can bring a stronger connection and sense of appreciation, which leads to better quality relationships, and all the benefits of social support that they bring. It was definitely a time I will cherish forever.

So I celebrated my 6th anniversary, got to see Minnie and Mickey, ate at China Town in Epcot, spent a few hours with my 92 year old grandparents and watched my son receive awards for a job well done! Wow, what a weekend it's been!

Disney world really is the place "Where dreams come true!"

Until next time,

S~

My absence in leu of our "BIG GA MOVE"

As I welcome you back, along with myself, I do want to apologize for the long time it has been since I have posted. My family was all settled in living in the beautiful sunshine state, Florida! With that being said, we had many opportunities come alive and my husband was given several new job prospects. As we continued to gravitate on the few that were very appealing for us, we prayed and prayed that one of them would take us to the beautiful peach state, AKA, Georgia.

Fast forward from my last post, every thing happened as fast as lightning. In no time, we had a job offer, made 2 quick trips to see the area, secured the job, secured the new house, after 3 years of homeschooling, my kids are all now back in public schools, and I have a part time job for the greatest company I've ever worked for! Wheeeee, that was a lot to say all in one breath! Needless to say, we are now living as happy as ever in Georgia, the hubby loves his new job, we love the new house, the people up here are awesome as ever and we love our new church family! God is just that GOOD!

I am back, alive and blogging as ever! I will do my best to keep up with it on a regular basis again, with in mind that I am working now, running a house of 6, 4 kids to and from school, laundry, cleaning, dinner and of course I have the best husband God could ever give me! He definitely is a life saver! So for now, I hope you can draw the pretty picture of our new GA life and I hope you will be back to hear all the new and great exciting things I have planned for my blog this new 2013 year! Coming up this week, don't miss it!

***My 6th wedding anniversary on Valentine's day, as the family heads to Florida for a mini Disney vacation***

Until next time, please share with anyone that you may know, I'd love to get feedback and get my blogs generating!

Ciao!

Stacy

Bear sighting..It's what you see in the movies

We packed up and headed to Ocala National Forest. We spent a whole week preparing for this trip. We brought along 2 other families, one being a black couple. They are very close friends of ours, but have never been camping. They pull into the driveway and they say "Are we ready?" we head out thinking, "This is going to be interesting." We have a couple here that continue to reiterate the fact that "blacks don't camp" our friend Dave told me "You wait Stacy, I'm going to poll this whole campground and I bet I don't see one black person"  and he continued to say "I better not see any other things that are black either, like black bears." I just kinda laughed and said, "you may or you may not, but either way you are going to have fun." We pull into the campground 2 hours later, and I start looking at their facial expressions, they were quite the abnormal. Jon gets out and starts to look around and realizes we are in Mosquitoville City, not to mention in the middle of the forest. We were graciously greeted by the owners and presented a binder of useful information. On one hand, I felt it was quite good information, but on the other hand, I had friends that didn't quite feel the same. I look at the cover of the binder, it read something like this....

"Welcome to Lake in the Forest...Black Bear Resort" 

I was thinking, oh great. Dave and Kim see the binder and when we opened it up it said "The guide to living in bear country" I started to breathe heavy and kinda panicked, for them I tell you. I continued to remain positive and I said it's all good, lets head over to camp and set up. Kim said "Yea, it's all good for you until we spot a bear, and she chuckled. I tried to give positive conversation pieces, but I'm not thinking they went over as well as I planned. I think we finally got past the whole black bear scare and we unpacked and set up camp.

The kids made themselves at home as the guys continued to set up the tents and gather firewood. The mosquitoes were outrageous and us girls did everything we could to find repellent. As it got later into the evening, our third family arrived and they got all set up as we continued to prepare for our smores and fire stories. The night was prolonged by an array of things and I finally was able to get some sleep about 1:00 am.

We woke up to our 3rd family having all of their bread, donuts and chips that were left in the bed of their truck, demolished. As you can imagine, that started the first of the bear stories. I tried to remain positive and do all I could do to blame it on the coons, but I'm not quite sure how well I pulled that one off. We had a great day doing ceramics with the kids, as we swam, played football and sang karaoke by the fire. As it became dark Saturday night, we all made dough babies over the fire and that was a first for me. Growing up camping all my life, I was pretty sure I had done it all, but a boy scout leader showed me different.

4am and I hear "Hey, Jon man, JON!!!!! Jon jumped up and said "What?" Dave said, "It's Dave man, get up, there is a bear right here in our camp" and we both were thinking he was pulling a joke on us. We unzipped the window in the tent, and son of a gun if there wasn't a black bear about 350-400 lbs sitting just a few feet in front of us. I said, "Dave, where are you?" He said "We are right here watching this bear with some other campers from up the way" Jon grabbed his gun and we proceeded to walk out very quietly and calmly. At this point, all I could help to think was, my raccoon stories were squashed. All I could see was a bear not budging, ransacking our trash can. The other campers came through our camp and brought their dog that continued to bark and bark as the bear slowly scampered away. Did I really just see a black 400 lb bear just a few feet away from me? I was like "KIM, grab your camera and she ran over to her tent and was rummaging through her stuff to find it, as she approached the bear closer, her flash was unable to produce a clear picture. She continued to tell us that this was the 2nd bear they had already encountered this morning, the first one was a bit smaller and he decided to climb on top of Kim's hood of her car and look in her window because he smelled food. So, the bear stories continued all night, as the other families slept through it all.

We really saw a bear!!! The crazy thing was, our friends that we joked about it with and then was handed a book on it, I thought "Nah, bears only invade campsites in the movies" I guess they do until you have to do a bathroom run." We are a week passed our camping trip and the bear stories are still traveling town. It was quite the experience and one I will never forget. I guess I can't tell anyone anymore that they won't see any bears. The kids were sad they missed it, but I'm not.

Braden got mad at Jon while at the campsite, and he ran into the tent and started pouting...Jon said "come here Braden" he said "I'm not coming out until you take the mean face off." 

Have a great week. Hope you have the happy face on!

Stacy
xoxo

Can you take a number please?

That's about how I am feeling right now. I leave for a little mini vacation with a friend of mine, and it seems like I have taken part in a time warp. I go and sit down today and say to myself, "I'm feeling really guilty for not blogging in a month, and then I sign on today and I see that I am not the only guilty victim. OK, so after getting "the" text from my mother-n-law that read "I don't like to criticize, but it is not nice to get someone hooked on your blog and then just stop blogging!" She told me "the only thing saving you is Facebook" I was needless to say, feeling quite culpable and decided I'd better get back in gear of things.

So you ask, what have I been up to? Well, we have had quite the summer thus far. Nickelodeon Hotel was a great escape..Lots of sun,sun and more sun! Camps out the kazoo, and lots of time with the honey. In the midst of it all, I was inspired to loose wight, so on top of all my summer activities that I have been ambushed with, I have managed to eat extremely well and I started the Atkins diet a month ago, and today I am down 10 lbs! Boy is this diet hard, but when you want something SO bad, I guess you will do whatever it requires to get there! SO..on top of my diet, I have been faithfully exercising and keeping busy and am so excited about my accomplishments, I just had to come on a blog a bit and share it with the world!

My summer is far from winding down..my 3rd cousin flew in today from DC, and she is staying with us for a month and Morgan and Skylar are only a year apart, so it's always good to have her. This next month will be a busy one for all of us, as we continue to do all of the fun things that kids do in the summer, on top of gearing up for the fall football season that both boys will be playing in. Jon will be coaching and I will be team mom. Whew, boy do we have a busy half of year left!

Well It's sure nice to be back on here and able to share a little of what has been going on. I have been doing tons of scrap booking and have actually just finished the boys football albums and I just started my vacation theme next, so I am attacking all of our family vacations starting way back when..It's fun and such a great way to cherish the memories.. How is all of your summers been going out there? Anything you just can't wait to talk about? I am hoping to sit down tonight and catch up on all my bloggers...It's good to be back..I promise I wont take this long off again..Truthfully, it wasn't intended to be this long..time just gets away from you...

Braden told me last week "You know what? You are soooo mean...you are mean as the Hulk...(I didn't respond as usual with this type of behavior) so he sat and pondered a minute and he said, Oh yea and you are quite ridiculous, too! It took a while to digest that one!

Have a great week! Some summer pics of the kids below..

S~

Summer fun

It's nice to be able to sit down and blog today. It's been awhile, and I have felt many times, the need to blog, but just haven't seem to be able to fit it in with all going on. Anyone else out there feel that way? I sure hope so..

My three older kids left for church camp this week..They have been SO excited to go. Morgan and Chase are counselors this year for the first time, and Zach is a camper. We spent all weekend getting them ready, washed clothes, packed, last minute trip to Wal-mart, we all know those, and then off they go. The preparation for this was exhausting, I tell you. Everything I bought, it was X three. Bug repellent, suntan lotion, bible and notebook, bedding, washcloths, towels, pillows, all the bathroom necessities of course. I was thinking "Man, I am going to need a vacation myself after this." Needless to say, everything was checked off the check list and I just got it done, ya know?  Sunday as we were finishing everything up, I told Zach "You must be going through a growth spurt, because none of his clothes I tried to pack, fit him." I told him "You need to stop eating so much" and he kinda laughed.

Sunday evening approached and it was time to get them all showered and bags by the door. I looked at my front door, and it looked like I had a soldier going off to boot camp. I had them all get ready for bed, showers, snacks and off I sent them, since we had a early morning ahead. It wasn't but 15 minutes after Braden and Zachary went to bed, that I hear Braden pouncing down the stairs. As of late, Braden has become Zach's messenger (I know someone who is going to get a kick out of this) when they go to bed. Braden says "Mommy, Zachary is still hungry" I said as always "Braden, go to bed" five minutes later stomping, stomping, "Mommy, Zachary's ribs hurt"  Braden, go to bed! Ten minutes went by this time and Braden comes down the stairs very quietly.."Mommy, Zachary says he is hungry and needs to eat because he is going through a grope spurg" really? the kids doesn't miss a beat. I think it is hilarious.

Well, the kids are gone and Braden and I have been little fish all week..We haven't been out of the pool one time. I have taught him in 2 days, how to swim, dive to the bottom and retrieve swim rings and jump into the deep end and swim to the side..I am just amazed at how fast he has learned and it's just amazing to Jonathan and I. It is definitely a Braden and Mommy week and we are sure living it up! By the end of the week I should have a good case of sunburn, exhaustion, exercise and swimmers ear!

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer as much as I am!

S~

Servant Mom

Wow! It's Sunday night and I can actually sit down and say..<sigh>  What an interesting weekend it has been. It was the first weekend in many weeks, that we just didn't have anything scheduled, so we just kinda took it easy and did things around the house and spent some quality time with Braden, since the other kids were out and about for the weekend.

We headed out to Sonny's Friday evening for a carb free salad bar, well close enough and we had to listen all the way there "I'm not eating at Sonny's, you are taking me to McDonald's" and I just had to kinda keep reminding myself who the parents were and we continued to drive on. We passed McDonald's and I heard the scream get louder, and of course the "I want McDonald's got louder too." We pulled into Sonny's, ordered, ate and then Braden said "I'm not eating here!" Jon and I continued to eat, when he said "I want a grilled cheese" I laughed and said "coming right up." I knew once we got there he would be OK, and the cycle continues..We headed out and asked for our drinks to go. Braden was walking out and said "hold this Servant Mom" I kinda said "doo what?" Jonathan said "NO SIR!" Braden said nonchalantly, "What?" I said "you don't talk to mommy like that" he said "ahh, it's just what they say on Backyardigans" I had to laugh as I continued to get rained on as we walked to the car.

We made our umpteenth stop at good old Wally World, picked up a few things, and of course the McDonald's trick didn't seem to work in his favor that night, so he pulled the all time famous "I just want to go to the toy section for one minute to see if they got any new toys in, but I'm not gonna ask to buy one" of course we didn't fall for that one either, and we headed on home for the night. Strike 2...

We are home, getting ready for bed, not 15 minutes later, he came crawling in to the room, with the "I'm scared, mommy" I said " Braden, go get in your bed" well guess what? He slept with us...No strike 3 for him that night. I guess after Mcdonald's, and Walmart, he finally got what he wanted...that day, the next day, and the next...Even managed to get some bubble time in there..

Much DVR time calling my name! xoxo

S~
                                                      Braden having some bubble time