PIE!!!!

I just checked John's blog and noticed my total for the Children's Christmas Challenge was at $315. I decided to add up what I'd received this weekend from: Stephanie and Brad, Mike and Maggie, Jennifer, Dianne and her coworkers and the money I've been holding from Amanda, Leigh, Lynnette and Mary.

I HAVE EXACTLY $500.

PRAISE BE TO GOD that He has provided the money for 100 kids from this wonderful group of people. I will be making my PayPal donation on Tuesday after I deposit the funds on Monday.

I also checked the total number of kids that have been funded (and went ahead and included what I'll be adding on Tuesday). The current total is 1317 kids!!!

I will be continuing to pray that the rest of the 683 children will receive funding before Thursday!!! Please pray with me.

AND, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart to every single person who made a sacrifice adn donated to these children!!!

Josh's Sleepover

I have never laughed so hard in my entire life as I think I did last night watching Josh's friends at his sleepover.


We were supposed to be having his birthday party/sleepover, but after hearing that Josh had only had an hour's worth of sleep while at Mickey's sleepover, we decided it would be best to postpone until the weekend of December 11. Kevin is going to try to see if we can use the church's gym and let them play basketball and have pizza there.



However, since many of the parents had already made plans, we ended up with 4 of the 5 still coming over. We decided it would just be called a sleepover at that point.



So, all the way home I laughed at them talking about their "girlfriends" and music and the basketball game they just had. My mom was outside when we stopped by and she said she heard their music when we turned in at the corner.


THEN, we got home and Kevin suggested (facetiously) that they get out Josh's Dance Dance Revolution. NOW ... Josh, I don't think, has ever played with it since we got it two Christmases ago. We were surprised when they all said they wanted to play. Hmmmm... didn't expect that from boys. So, we got it out and got it set up and I laughed and laughed and laughed at them. Photos just cannot do the experience justice. Anyone who's ever had a 12 year old boy knows that if there is a dance -- they don't. Apparently dancing for boys isn't cool. I know why now. But, in their defense, they had a great (and gassy) time. After it was over, I passed out Gas-x to several boys. Ellie had SO much fun with the boys that she almost had a breakdown at 10:30 when we made her go to bed.


The boys did well and all passed out relatively early (before midnight) and slept until 8 this morning. I consider that FANTASTIC. They are currently down at Tommy's house down the road and I've got a few seconds of peace and quiet until they return for more laughter!

The last I heard was a phrase from Zach, "Yeah, we learned how to do it on YouTube", referring to mixing baking soda and vinegar in a bottle. *sigh*

Zach and Braiden playing Guitar Hero:

Josh and Tommy (being cool) watching GI Joe on the computer:

And then the DDR started ...

It took three of them to get it set up...

I told Tommy I was going to post this picture on Facebook on his "girlfriend's" page telling her that Tommy was cuddled up on the couch with a younger woman (ha!).

Ellie has always had a "thing" for Zach. Look at her giggling!!

Then the DDR got wild.

Look at these moves!!

And the more movement came about, the more, um, smells, came about ...

These boys had some MOVES going ...

This is Braiden "shaking his booty"

So... what do you think about that??

Yes, Jarret DID dance, but he hates to have his picture made, so we didn't get too many of him. In fact, he WON round one.

Finally, after realizing they weren't very good on their own, they decided to tackle it as a team ...
Even that was a lot of work, so they just sat down and used their hands.

The results, unfortunately, were still the same - check out the screen:

It was a LOT of fun though!!

Happy Birthday Kevin!!!

Today is Kevin's birthday. I won't tell you how old [45] he is, but we celebrated his birthday on Thursday night since we knew we would have kids over on his actual birthday.

Ellie thought us singing "Happy Birthday" to Kevin was the funniest thing ever. We finally managed to get her to say something that pretty closely resembed, "Happy Birthday, Daddy!" which was so sweet and probably the best present a dad can get. :-)

Here are photos of him and Josh lighting the candles on his cake.

I can't wait to celebrate 45 more years with you (and more!!!). I love you, Kevin!!!

Helper Ellie

Ellie loves to help out around the house. And even though sometimes her helping is a bit of a challenge, I like for her to be able to try.

When I was little (I'm not sure how old I started), my mom would have me pull a kitchen chair up to the sink and wash the dishes.

The other morning when I was washing dishes, Ellie wanted to help, so I pulled her up a chair and let her "help". We had to quit letting her help when she poured a cup or two of water out on the floor. I thought it was cute though!!

As a side note, we DO have a dishwasher, and for this amount of dishes I would have normally used it, but we were trying out our dishwasher cleaner stuff where you put it in an run a load and it cleans the spouts and inside of your dishwasher to make it run better. It worked pretty well and, with my coupons, I think I paid $.25 for it!! YAY!!

Another View: Josh's birth

I got this from my mom last night. It's her view of Josh's birth. Granted, I was a little too busy to know most of this was going on and probably didn't care if I did know! HA!! It will be nice for Josh to have one day.

****

Have you forgotten that I was in the room all day with you and Kevin and your daddy was outside in the waiting room running out the side door smoking one cigarette after another? Someone showed him how to go out a side door, and he took advantage of it. I tried to get Kevin to go get something to eat, but he wouldn't leave you.I went out and got Charlie, and we went downstairs and ate. I brought Kevin some crackers back, but he wouldn't eat them. I can remember the chair he sat in all day {I might say his jump-in-the-box chair} because every time you moved he jumped up and ran over to the bed and asked you if you were alright. He would get a wet rag, and wipe your forehead. I also remember the chair I sat in. It was a bit softer than the one Kevin was sitting in. I remember sitting there thanking God, you and Kevin for letting me stay in the delivery room with you because I missed that with you, and I felt like God had given me a chance to be there when you had your child. It helped relieve some of the emptiness I had felt all those years for missing the first 22 months of your life. Somehow that made up for some of the feelings I had carried around with me all those years. I did, and still do, miss that part of your life just as you miss that part of Ellie's life. Your friends came pouring in about 1:00, and I would go out in the waiting room and keep them posted on your progress. Thank God they kept your daddy entertained or he would have had a nervous breakdown or smoked himself to death. I remember after you had him they all got to come in the room and was passing him around like a sack of potatoes, and I thought to myself they shouldn't all have come in here at one time. I had never heard of that before. Now that I think about it they did that back in the old days. When a woman would have a baby at home all the women would be by her side and all the men would sit out on the front porch and wait.

I will never forget what I wore that day and every one of Joshua's birthday's since. I even wore it today even though I didn't get to see him till tonight. I will never part with my gold and black jacket and will wear it on Joshua's birthday as long as I live.

I remember his birth just like it was yesterday. I didn't think his little {or I might say big} was ever going to come out, and when it finally did I thought he was the prettiest thing I had seen since we saw you for the first time. My heart was pounding so hard until he made that first sound. I remember the nurse telling me I could come closer to him. I bent down and said,"Little Leroy it's your grandmamma {that is what I was going to call him and called him that while you were carrying him, but that changed after he got here} and he open one eye and looked straight at me and melted my heart right there and then and still does to this day. I love hearing him say I lub you tooooo. MeeMee will always love you, Joshua; you are very special to me and Dee Dee because you are our first grandchild. Now we have two to love. We love you too,, Ellie, and I hope someday I will hear you say I lub you toooooooo. I love you and Kevin too for giving us two special grandchildren.

Love You
Mama

Reminiscing

Throughout the last year, we have lost a lot of pet friends. Today while I was scanning the pictures of Josh's birth, I found several pages of the pets who have left us and I wanted to share some of the sweet memories I have of them as well as a few of when we got Bear.

I still find my heart missing Punch on a regular basis. Last night I dreamed of her. She and I were on an adventure involving a float of some sort and a river or a ride. She was swimming and I grabbed her up and put her on the float. Then we were climbing out of the water and I had her in some sort of pouch on my chest -- like a baby. I so miss my Punch! These were taken of her when she was five out in our yard. They have always been my favorites.

And sweet Duke. He was such a mild mannered cat, allowing us to do funny (cruel??) things to him like dressing him up in a witch's hat for Halloween. Excuse the scrapbooking -- it was a LONG time ago. I still find myself gasping when I pull into the yard and see his sister, Duchess, out in the yard because I think it's him. I miss him a lot too.

And, speaking of mild mannered -- you can tell from these pictures that Sunshine was the epitome of mild. She was Josh's horse and his pillow -- but more importantly, our friend. I miss that sweet old girl!!

And these are from the day we got Bear -- isn't he TINY? Considering he's now a 110 pound ginormous dog, I can't believe he was every this little. He's just a big ole' luv bug though!

Happy 12th Birthday Josh

Twelve years ago I was in the hospital giving birth to Joshua. I went in at 6 a.m. and was hooked up to pitocin to induce at 7 a.m. I remember being so scared because I didn't have a clue what to expect and HOLY COW was I right. I suppose, looking back, that I just wasn't quite as prepared for how bad the contractions would be with the pitocin. While I was hitting the highest you can hit on the contraction monitor, I wasn't able to get an epidural because my contractions were being "productive". Leave it to me to have unproductive pain. It was a long day of contractions until I begged and pleaded to get an epidural. As I remember I got it about 1 p.m. By that time my mom and dad had arrived and were ready to become grandparents.

Unfortunately, I was unable to produce that grandchild in a timely fashion. My dad sat out in the waiting room telling my friends, "If she would quit talking she could have that baby." Yeah, right.

Finally after having been dilated to a 10 for quite a while and doing a whole lot of pushing, I developed a fever. At this point (around 5:30 p.m.) they called my OB who came in and asked them why they let me push so very long. I was hooked up to an IV of antibiotics. She got out the "vacuum cleaner" and about 12 minutes later at 5:42 p.m., Joshua made his debut into the world. Kevin was able to cut the cord and got blood squirt all over his shirt (why didn't he have "the garb" on??). Josh weighed in at 7 pounds, 15 1/2 ounces. He had a huge head (which was the delivery problem) that came out pointed.

I remember thinking he was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen!!!

When we brought him home, we were concerned about how the four cats we had would respond to him. They were fine with him and very curious when he was sleeping. When he was awake, however, they gave him wide berth. Here are some sweet pictures of my dear Punch smelling of him the day we brought him home.

I used this cartoon when I scrapped this cat page. Who knew at that time just how very true it would be??

And, here is sweet Duke propped up on the side of Josh's bassinet peeking at this new "hooman" that we had brought home.

Now, here we are twelve years later. Looking back at these photos, it seems like another lifetime ago. But to think my baby is twelve seems unreal. He spent the night last night with his friend Mickey whose birthday is a day before his. I talked to Mickey's mom this morning (and Josh who will not remember the conversation he was so "out"). Apparently, many of them stayed up all night long. Josh apparently got a spray bottle and sprayed people's hair while they were asleep -- great! Of course, I'm sure he wasn't the only prankster -- there were 20 boys there. This morning Maggie called back and told me she "got him back" by painting his toenails pink while he slept! HA!!! She's supposed to take a picture of it so I'll post it when I can.

We have plans for his birthday, but I'm thinking we might have to postpone them due to his late night partying last night. He also has a basketball game tonight, so.... a lot going on.

I love you with all my heart Josh -- no matter how mad we can get at each other, I want you to always know that there is nothing you can do that will make me love you less. You were the baby who introduced me to parenting. I know I haven't done it all right -- or, honestly, even a lot of it. But you have remained a willing pupil at my attempts to learn. Know that it is all done in love. One day (as my mom said), you will understand when you have kids of your own.

Daddy and I love you so very much and hope today is a wonderful day for you!!