Monthly Archives: June 2008

I’m still here

Hey there, I really am still here and do still like to blog. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve posted something. I’ve tried twice, but the girls usually demand attention before I can finish the post. The middle of the night use to be my favorite time to blog since everyone else is asleep and I can actually hear myself think. But lately I’ve just not had the mental energy. I promise to try to do better!

Last Friday I took the girls to meet my Dad for lunch at his office. He loves to show off the girls, which is so sweet :) We went to eat at Castle Heights Chop House in Lebanon, TN, yum. We were there with my would be step sister, Leeanna (I think I’ll refer to her as my honorary sister since my Dad calls her his honorary daughter), her cousin Joy, Joy’s daughter Ella Kate who is 3 months older than Hannah, Luann and Kathy (they both work with my Dad). Luann and Kathy were great with Reagan, I actually got to eat some without holding a baby! :) Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!

After lunch Dad, the girls and I went to a custom frame shop. Dad is being awesome (once again) and having all of Zale’s diploma’s and his law license framed. I can’t wait to see them! I’m hoping Zale will be okay with the frames we picked out. From the frame shop we went to Leeanna’s grandparents house for a visit. Leeanna joined us and Ella Kate was there. It was so much fun to see Ella Kate and Hannah play. They “played” hide and seek, dolls, pretended to take naps, and ran around the house wearing Leeanna out. Reagan crawled around after them, I’m surprised she didn’t take off running after them. Ernest and Lois (Leeanna’s grandparent’s) are such great people, I really enjoyed our time with them. It was a really fun day, and exhausting, but mostly fun! I’m looking forward to doing it again, in a month or two :) .

Friday night I got to go by myself and get things for Hannah’s birthday. She’ll be three tomorrow (hard to believe). We’re having her party at my Dad’s on Sunday, I’m really looking forward to seeing her enjoy her day! What’s even more unbelievable is that in just two months I’ll be planning Reagan’s 1st birthday. The time is going by too quickly!!! I enjoy seeing them get bigger and experience all the firsts as they get more independent, but I miss them being small and cuddly too. I think Zale panics a little when I get that little gleam in my eye around a new baby, but I think he’s safe :) Just a few weeks ago my clock was starting to tick away again, but now I think I’m good!

I’m looking forward to having a little more freedom myself. Besides, we’re already outgrowing our house, there’s just not anymore room.

There’s much more to blog about, but I think it will have to wait. The girls are needed my attention again and the house is a disaster that really needs to be cleaned, again…

I’ll try to post more later, if I can steal a few minutes to myself.

work out diary

Sunday I was able to mow again, in between rainy days. A little hint, if you’re going to be out in the middle of the day in the hot sun, drink water FIRST! I had the thought before I went out to mow that I really should drink some water. Then I had the thought of not wanting to have to come in and use the bathroom in the middle of mowing and have the girls all bent out of shape because I left again. Silly me forgot that it wouldn’t have been an issue because I would sweat it out within 2 minutes of being outside. Oh well, I think I’ll remember next time!

Tonight I finally made it back upstairs to work out on the torture machine/elliptical and treadmill. I made it 15 minutes on the elliptical, then I did 10 minutes / half a mile on the treadmill, and another 10 minutes on the elliptical. A funny thing happens with my feet when I’m on the elliptical. They start to feel tingly and numb, almost as if they’ve fallen asleep and are waking up. I wear good shoes that are pretty new and only used for working out, so I’m not sure what the problem is. But I think if that wasn’t happening I could handle 30 minutes, maybe even more on the elliptical. If anyone else experiences this type of thing and has a solution I’d love to hear it.

Bonnie update

I’ve blogged about Bonnie before, she was once my step-mom but I now consider her a dear family friend! Bonnie is a missionary in Cambodia, here’s the latest e mail from her:

Hi,

Although we miss family, friends, our church, and CBS, we are in awe of how good God has been to us.

First, we have found a wonderful young man to work with Luka – he does his eye therapy with him, helps him with homework, and teaches him Khmer. Luka is also in summer school at Logos and will attend Logos next year, which will be great for us as a family. He is happy to be seeing other kids his age every day. He has also been really helpful to me… he has become like my social secretary, reminding me of what we need to do each day.

Second, after seeking God for a topic for my grad school research project, everything has come together to allow me to be able to do something that excites me and hopefully will benefit the school at the same time. I will be helping to do teacher training in August and may also take on a supervisory role after December. I love teaching, but a supervisory role would mean no lesson plans and no grading.

Third, my wonderful antique dealer friend has sold a LOT of my mom and grandmothers’ things in her booth at an antique mall and the proceeds go into a scholarship fund for at risk Cambodian girls. I’m so thankful to my mom for “letting go” of things dear to her heart so that some young Cambodian children might have a chance to escape poverty!

One of my Cambodian daughters, Chenda, had some conflicts in school last year. That may seem like bad news, BUT, God has used those events in her life to cut through those protective layers that keep God out. She is such a thinker and so smart… but now she is becoming aware that being smart is not enough and is beginning to understand her need for God. That is a huge answer to prayer.

We do have some situations that need prayer…

My youngest Cambodian daughter, Tabby, spent several days with us and when it was time for her to go back to her aunt, her eyes filled up with tears and she told me that her aunt doesn’t love her. The aunt wants me to help her young son go to school, so I have been thinking and praying about using that as leverage to get her to give me legal custody of Tabby. I could not adopt, however, so that would mean that I would be committing to staying here for at least 10 more years and also not being away from her too long in the summers. Please, please lift us up in your prayers… Tabby wants so much to be with me and really thinks of me as her mom.

Also, Chenda’s family are technically squatters. They live on prime real estate near the riverfront and the government is in the process of revitalizing the riverfront. It’s very possible that the government will take the land and give Chenda’s family land far away from Phnom Penh. That would mean that Chenda would probably have to live with me again in order to keep attending Logos. That would be okay with me… even though I thought that I might be down to only two children this year, and now it looks like we might be back up to 5, but we would need a larger house.

Thank you SO much for writing, praying, sending financial support, and taking an interest in people so far away.

Love,

Bonnie

I think Bonnie’s life is a true testament of how many people a person can touch when they follow God’s will for their lives. Please check out Bonnie’s blog and Missions to Unreached People, listed in my blog roll and links to the right.

Father’s Day

Happy belated Father’s Day to any father’s that are reading….sorry I’m almost a week late! I hope you all had a wonderful day!

Money is a little snug at the moment as Zale is working hard to get the law firm off the ground, so I wasn’t able to get him anything on his wish list. I did give him a card and a framed picture of the girls’ hand prints. He seemed to like that, but I felt a little bad that it wasn’t more. To make matters worse I found myself watching him turn into a cleaning fanatic. Admittedly my house isn’t as clean as I would like for it to be. It’s usually always picked up and no obvious messes, but I don’t always get to deep clean. When Zale started doing it with a determined look on his face I knew that wasn’t the Father’s Day he needed.

So an idea popped into my head, the driving range. It’s affordable, he gets to have time to himself, and he finally has time to do something that he enjoys. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll relax! So I sent him out the door, under a little protest, and told him not to come back until he was relaxed!

fun memories

Tonight we were leaving my Dad’s house and I saw a few fireflies. Immediately I went back to my child hood. My Dad lives in the house that he moved into when he was 10. I have wonderful memories of visiting my Grandparents in that house when I was a kid. It’s on about an acre and is completely fenced in. Seeing the fireflies brought back vivid memories of my Mom and I in the front yard catching fireflies as soon as it was dark enough to see them. I don’t know what it was about that yard that attracted them, but it seems like they were everywhere. I hope that we’re creating good memories like that for our kids too!

arts and crafts

I’m really not that much of a creative person, but with Hannah’s birthday coming up and not being able to find invitations that I liked, I decided to try something new. My wonderful Aunt Jean gave me a gift card to Hobby Lobby (for $30.00) on one of her recent visits to TN. (Thank you Aunt Jean!!!) I was able to find a box of 50 multi colored cards with envelops, a “please come to my birthday party” stamp, ink, and four packages of Dora and Diego stickers for $30.17. How cool is that? The really great thing is that I still have more than half the box of cards left, I can use them for thank you cards, more invitations, or whatever comes up. I can use the birthday stamp again and again, but the best part was that Hannah got to help make her invitations. I know she won’t remember it, but I will! :)

just a little worried…

WordPress is really good about giving stats for their blogs. It tracks how many views per day, which posts were viewed the most, what links were clicked on from my blog, and even what searches brought views. You know how I refer to my elliptical as a torture machine and have a post titled torture machine?

Apparently people are actually searching the internet for torture machines. In the last week or so I’ve had three views because of searches for torture machine…..that scares me a little. Maybe everyone else refers to ellipticals the same way, so they are really searching for exercise equipment??? We can hope!

Sun Suit

Last night I was reorganizing Hannah and Reagan’s sock/underwear/bib/PJ/swim suit drawer. I came across a couple of swim suits that GiGi brought with a huge basket of hand -me-down clothes a few months ago. (Thank you GiGi!!) As soon as I showed Hannah the suits she wanted to try them on. Immediately after she had one on she wanted to go swimming. And she didn’t want to take off the suit. She slept in the suit and woke up talking about wanting to go swimming. It went something like this…

“Aber (means after) we go to Grammie’s aber we get in the water we’ll be swimming in our sun suits”

My Mom is Grammie and she does have a pool. She came over today to spend some time with the kids. Soon after she got here Hannah was ready to go swimming. Before Mom left Hannah wanted to know if the swimming pool was in Grammie’s car. Pretty cute.

I’m a little surprised that she has this desire to go swimming all of a sudden. She doesn’t even like to get her face wet in the tub, so we’ll see how it goes when we make it to the pool.

Fasting cont…

Yesterday I fasted from food until about 6:30. I did pray a bit more than usual, but I didn’t get a chance to read the Bible. I did get a chance to read John’s Story by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins, the authors of  The Left Behind series. Wonderful story and there are many scriptures in the book, so I still felt like I was spending time with God. One of my prayers was that my Mom and her husband would come to church with us. Once again God blessed my fasting. I called and invited them to come, and they said yes! Praise God!!!

Today I fasted from TV until around 10:30 tonight. I normally go to sleep with the TV on, sound low, but the light from the TV is enough to tend to the girls if I need to, but not bright enough to keep me awake. Our TV is normally on all day long. I’m usually only watching it if I’m nursing Reagan or eating, but it’s almost always on. Many times just for the noise. Fasting from the TV may have even been harder than fasting from food. It’s hard to sit still and nurse without having something to occupy my eyes and be a little entertaining. Don’t get me wrong, I love to stare at Reagan while she’s eating (and usually going to sleep at the same time), but sometimes if I’m staring at her she won’t go to sleep. So instead of watching TV I read or prayed. I was even beginning to enjoy the TV not being on. I think I’ll have to do more days of no TV.

Anyway, God blessed this time too! Zale was put on a new prescription and we don’t have the same kind of insurance we had when he was working for someone else full time, so I was a little worried about the out of pocket cost of the script. But I got to the Pharmacy and wouldn’t you know it was on Kroger’s list of $4.00 prescriptions. I was pretty excited. I had gone into the store alone while Zale stayed in the car with the kids.  When I got back out to the car I said, “Well, it started with a 4″, he immediately thought it was $400.00, so he was just as excited as I was when I told him, “nope, just $4.00″.

God is so good! He continues to provide for our every need.

Micro Mission

Tonight our church joined in a micro mission to go to downtown Nashville and minister to the homeless. I stayed home with the girls while Zale, Anthony, and one of his friends went. I know Anthony wasn’t too happy about going, but he went willingly, I think it gave him a bit of perspective about his life and how good he has it. I wasn’t even there, but the stories Zale told me about the people he met helped me put some things in perspective too.

Many times I take my blessings for granted. Some of the things that we wouldn’t dream of living without aren’t an option for these people. Running water, electricity, AC in the summer, Heat in the winter, food in the fridge or the pantry every day. I have gotten more spoiled than I care to admit. Stuff is just stuff, and quite honestly our family has too much. We make a point to go through closets and drawers and give away what we aren’t using or don’t want anymore, but I’m thinking maybe we need to step it up a bit and purge a little deeper.