My front yard - new and improved

I thought I would share some pictures of my front yard. Phil and I have been working really hard on getting it in shape and looking good.

This is the "mature" flowerbed (ie., this is the 2nd year for the grass, boxwoods and hostas - the Japanese maple is 5 years old - we brought it over from our old house):

This is the left side of our house. We just added the evergreen tree and the three boxwoods down the side of the house. In the corner where that hiddeous gas meter is, there is a very small yucca plant but you can't see it in the picture. It's planted right in front of the meter in hopes that it will grow big enough very soon to shield it:

This is a new bed that we just planted on the far side of our garage (right side of the house). The tall evergreen tree will eventually get up to 12 ft. high and 5 ft. wide. The small plants on either side are just some perinneals that bloom in the fall:

These plants were also planted last year. The evergreen tree to the right was about a foot smaller last year when we planted it. The two grassy-looking plants are miniature irises (dark purple) which are getting blooms on them now. The plant in the middle is a hosta. The chair in the background was my special project. It was an old white wicker rocker that my aunt gave me. It had a hiddeous flowery pillow that I quickly got rid of, and I painted the chair a dark brown. I LOVE it, and it adds SO much to my front porch:

Finally, our labor of love and most recent accomplishment...my newly painted door!! The door before was the same color as the trim and was completely dirty and disgusting looking. I repainted the trim while Phil painted the door, and I personally think it looks FABULOUS! Really adds a lot to the curb appeal of the house. The color is actually a reddish-brown color, though it difficult to tell from the photo:
Hope that you enjoyed the pictures. We've worked SO hard on making everything look and feel like home. OK, so Phil did far more of the "grunt" work than I did (thanks, Honey!!), but I'm still really proud of it. Plus, the artist ideas of it all can be attributed to my brilliancy! LOL!

So now the fun part starts...next project - tiling the master bathroom floor. Anyone know how to do that??? Lots of indoor projects to do (painting, laying tile and laying wood laminate downstairs)....followed by backyard projects (landscaping, adding a sitting/firepit area, getting the playground layed out and done). Should be fun...yeh, right. I'll keep the pictures coming as things progress.

Cheers!

Maddie and Mackenzie

I haven't given an update on my girlies lately. They are both doing so well! I should really talk about them more here and complain less, huh? : )

MADDIE

Maddie will turn 4 in just 8 1/2 more weeks! : ( Where does the time go??? She is pretty much fully potty-trained now, with the exception of a few "LAZY" accidents here and there. She does wear a Pull-Up at night, though. We'll work on that next. She is about to graduate from her very first ballet class...recital will be on June 7th. Mommy will cry. I'll be sure to post pictures of her in her pretty, frilly costume. After that, on June 19th, she will begin swimming classes. She's very excited about it, and I'm excited that she'll be learning how to deal with being in the water...just in case.

She's very funny and inciteful! She has made up at least a dozen of her own songs, my favorite of which is "3-2-1...Blastoff...b-b-blastoff...blastoff all day!" My second favorite is "Katie's coming over today, Katie's coming over today, Katie's coming over today and we're gonna play." (Have NO idea who Katie is...) She tells me things like, "Mommy, you're making me EXASPERATED!" At church this past week, she was sitting there really bored listening to the sermon, then the communion and offering, and when the piano player started playing, she leaned over and whispered to me, "Mommy, it's going off now." (As in the credits rolling after a show - LOL!)

MACKENZIE

Mackenzie is a little monkey. She's constantly climbing, jumping, throwing (or more like FLINGING - her food)...she's a ball of energy. Loves to SCREAM at the top of her lungs. She's starting to say more lately...I'd been a bit worried about her lack of speech, but it seems she's finally beginning to say a little more now. I keep forgetting that she was a preemie...that I really have to adjust her age and remember what she should and shouldn't be doing right now. I guess taking that into consideration, she's average on her speech.

She loves to dance! Any time Maddie sings one of her songs, Mackenzie will just stomp and march and carry on along with her. And she LOVES her big sis! She's constantly hugging Maddie and loving on her...and sometimes Maddie doesn't want her to do that. I just figured out yesterday that she's addicted to her blanket. I put her down for a nap, and her usual blanket that's been in her bed with her forever wasn't there. She would NOT take any other blanket that I gave her. We finally found it, and she just hugged it and tucked it up between her shoulder and head and laid down with it. Oh boy! This should be interesting...it's kind of sweet, though.

So here's a few pictures from Easter and some other things (better late than never, huh?):
This is Maddie and her friend, Jada. Jada is Jamie's daughter, my good friend who posts here sometimes. This was the morning after we all went to see the Disney Princesses on Ice.

Here's Maddie and Mackenzie in their Easter dresses. I can't believe that Mackenzie actually left her hair bow in all day!!









Maddie kept picking the pretty blooms off of Nana and Pappy's tree, but I thought this was a cute picture of her anyway. : )

I think this is my most favorite picture of Mackenzie ever! (Actually a picture that she sat still for!) Take notice of the phone she's holding...that was my very first cell phone!!! LOL! Look how HUGE it is!

And finally, this is Maddie with her "friends!" They're actually her second cousins, Gracie (left) and Emma (right). They are the daughters of my cousin, Kathy.









Hope you enjoyed!!

Going Backwards...

Bad news...as of yesterday, I'm officially slipping back into another Flare-Up.

I'm SOOOOOOO mad at myself! It all started last Thursday night. I had been feeling SO well for the last couple of months, and especially on that particular day, that I did 30 minutes of aerobics (which made me sweat profusely) and I followed it up with 15 minutes on the weight bench and 10 minutes of crunches. That's all it took.

All day the next day, I felt so tired and run down (not sore, mind you), and it's just escaladed. On Sunday, I cleaned a lot and did so much around the house. Combine that with the fact that our A/C stopped working on our 2nd floor of our TWO YEAR OLD HOUSE! It made me very overheated, and all of that combined has worn me to the core.

Welcome back, fatigue, weakness, shaky right hand, dizziness, burning and numbness. Welcome back falling asleep at 8:30 on the couch! I sure did miss you! NOT! This might be too much info for some (sorry in advance), but last night I went numb on my right side from my buttcheek all the way up the crease of my leg and up to the right side of my pelvis. That's new! Geez! What next??

I'm going to give this a few more days before calling my Neurologist. I want to make sure this isn't something that will go away on its own (I highly doubt it, unfortunately). If by Friday, I'm not any better or feeling worse, I will call and make an appointment.

Thanks for listening to my griping. I like to document all of this in this blog so that I don't forget it and can go back and make a list for the doctor when I go.

Cheers!

An Update

Oh my gosh! I can't believe it's been 18 days since I updated this. Sorry, everyone. Things have just been SO hectic, you would think it's tax season all over again. Sheesh!

I started working with a new client over the last few weeks...they are an Aflac affiliate and have not done any bookkeeping for the entire year of 2005! My job is to catch them up all the way through today, especially so that their 2005 tax returns can get done. (Yes, they filed an extension -heehee!).

Funny thing is that they gave me two of the plush Aflac ducks to give to my girls. The duck says, "Aflac....Aflac....AFLAC!!!" Well, Mackenzie now apparently thinks that all ducks say "AFLAC!" LOL! She's a mess!

Let's see...what else...

Thanks so much for all of your prayers for my Dad. They are working! He has been getting up and out a lot lately. He still can't be up for long, long periods of time, but he is able to run to the store quickly with Mom, sit outside, and he even dropped by our house with Mom for a few minutes the other night. He's got a good few more weeks to recover, but overall, he's doing very well.

I'm still doing Weight Watchers...but not very well... : ( I'm struggling lately with my will-power. I just CRAVE all foods - any foods, and it's keeping me at a plateau right now. I GAINED 2 lbs. last week. I'm back down now, but not by much. It's so much harder this time around, for some reason. I'm down by 8 lbs. right now, but I still have about 20 more to go. Bleh!

Maddie is about to graduate from her first ballet class soon. Her recital is going to be on June 7th! I'm SO excited!!! She's got a new best friend from her class, too - Melody (who is the daughter of Leslie (Trana) Gilpin for those of you who know her). Everytime they get to class, they both make a beeline to see each other and hug. After ballet is over, they are going to take a swim class together. Maddie's excited for the swim class, but she's even more excited that Melody will be taking it with her!

Mackenzie is a little mess...but she's SO sweet. She's gotten into the habit of hugging and kissing us all day long, and I'm just eating it up! She's been pretty slow at talking (unlike Maddie who exited the womb talking our ears off), but she's really good at communicating non-verbally with us. I think she doesn't say much because Maddie does the talking for her. She CAN say words, but she usually will just shake her head or point, etc. At night, I always sing the "Barney" song to her - "I love you, you love me..." Whenever she's ready to go to bed, she started point at herself with both hands, and that's the cue that it's time to start singing. :)

I've been feeling VERY well still, which I'm happy about. I did exercise the other night, and I got overheated...it's set me for a bit of a loop, but I'm hoping that the leftover feelings from that will go away soon and not spin me into a new flare-up. I went to pick up my MRI film from the Clinic, and it was fairly disconcerting. The doctor who read my scans (just some doc from the clinic) seemed to only focus on looking for large masses and/or degenerative problems in my spine, etc. He really didn't mention even looking for lesions or anything like that. I'm glad that my doc will be looking at them. In looking at them myself, I found a couple of places that I want to show him that look "not normal" to me, but then again, I'm not a doc. ; )

Phil is still on the hunt for a new job. Please pray that something wonderful will come along for him soon.

That's pretty much it for now....we're pretty BORING at this time, but I guess that's good sometimes.

Hello to all of my buddies reading!! I hope that you are all doing very well (especially you, Tabitha, if you haven't disowned me as your best friend by now. I hope that you are feeling very well...and I hope to see you VERY soon!). Oh and Rhonda...I guess I'll be seeing you really soon, too!!! YAY!! Can't wait!

Take it easy!!

Just Some Stuff....

Hello, dear family and friends! Hope you all are doing well. I am FEELING BETTER!!! WOOHOO!!! It's nice to get back to a "normal" life. I was able to clean the house really well this weekend...something that's been needing to be done for a long, long time. I've also been able to exercise quite a bit. Things are good!

Weight Watchers report...I've lost a total of 8 lbs. now! Eight down...20 more to go! EEK!

Have to tell some cute kid stories:

Maddie and I went shopping yesterday...just around town to K-Mart, Cato's and then to the grocery store. Cato's, if you don't know, is a women's clothing store, and it is literally the only place in town, besides K-Mart, to buy clothes. So Maddie is going through the store picking out things for me to try on, and mind you, she's doing a FABULOUS job at it! So we go back in the dressing room, and she critiqued every thing that I tried on...and she was right on the money every time! I tried on a pair of shorts that were, #1, too short, and #2, too tight, and Maddie says, "Mom...those shorts are fat on you." LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!! I heard the lady in the dressing room next to me snort! BUT(T)...they were too tight...she was exactly right. I bought the things that she told me to buy (yes, my 3.5 year old) because they were the exact right things for me to wear! I think I have a little fashionista on my hands!

Mackenzie and Maddie were playing with their Barbie's last night. I was cracking up the whole time watching Mackenzie. Now, she totally has the "second child syndrome," aka, she barely talks because Maddie talks for her. Well, she would pick up two Barbies, put their heads together and make a kissing noise...then she would make them "talk." She would make them look at each other, and then she would look at them very seriously and say, "Me, me, mo mo mo." The funny thing about it was that she would do this exact same sequence every time she would pick up two Barbies - pick them up, make them kiss, say "me me mo mo mo" and put them down. Repeat with the next two Barbies. I was just so cute! (And no, I have no clue what "me me mo mo mo" means...)

On a more serious note...

Will you all please pray for my Dad? He is having surgery tomorrow...he has discs in his spine (in the neck area) that are crushing down on his spine causing a lot of problems for him. He is pretty nervous...this is his first major surgery, so I think that is worrying him. If you will just pray that he comes through the surgery successfully and has an easy recovery, I would greatly appreciate it.

Also, you all remember me talking about my friend, Brian, from church who killed himself...well, he was "replaced" this past week with a new guitarist/vocalist in our praise band. I'm having a very difficult time accepting this person, though I still don't even know him. Thankfully, I didn't participate in praise team this week...I cried through a big part of the service yesterday. There is a song called "How Great is our God." Brian brought this song to us, and I can't even listen to it on the radio anymore because it just reminds me so much of him. Every time I hear it, I can just picture Brian up on that stage with his guitar singing so gently. It was my understanding that we were going to "bury" that song since he brought it to us. Well, this new guy starts singing this song...and he changed it from how we normally sing it. I don't know why, but I immediately felt so overwhelmed and hurt that I wanted to run out the door. I know that I have to get past this...and I know this poor new guy is probably having a hard enough time dealing with filling the shoes of someone who is gone and was so very loved. But I sit here typing this with tears in my eyes. When do you stop hurting over something like this? I have to get past this...

Anyway, that's life right now...good and bad! I just have to thank God for my family, friends, the health that I still have, the roof over my head, the food on my table, the work that helps me to support my family...all of it, I lift up to you, Lord. Thank you for your marvelous blessings. I don't say that often enough...

Much love to you all!!