Just Thoughts

I fully recognize that I've been extremely blessed. I absolutely believe that this life that I've been given is a gift. Every single part of it. People tell me all the time that my family is beautiful. I have been given all of my limbs and all 5 of my senses. Both my parents and in-laws are alive and still happily married. We have jobs. Income. A way to provide for our family. I have an outstanding husband who lives to make me happy. My kids? Healthy. Perfect. I live in FLORIDA, which was our dream. What do I have to complain about?

But tonight my heart is heavy. It feels weighed down for several reasons, but mostly because I know that not everyone is as content and blessed as we are. Many people are sad and hurting. Lonely. Missing someone and wishing they could have done things differently. Scared. Nervous for the future. There is so much pain in this world that sometimes I can hardly bear to think about it. Tonight, my heart goes out to those people. Those who are waiting for it to be their turn in the sun. When the path that they're traveling starts going downhill instead of up.

I wish I could just wrap my arms around all those people and give them one giant hug, but I can't. But I can lift them up in prayer. Tonight I will close my eyes and pray for healing, forgiveness, wisdom, and peace in their lives. I wish I could tell them, "It'll be okay."


I know it won't always be, but the season I'm in right now is a good one. Tough at times, but overall, breathtakingly beautiful. 

This is my happy place.

Jasper chased a little crab,

Reese tried to back float,

Mama sipped her Starbucks,

Henley decided she did not like swimming in the ocean, 

Daddy got sunburned, and

Beckett stomped on his sister's sandcastles. 

Memorial Day weekend at the pet beach was awesome. :)

This is EXACTLY why we moved to Florida!

A Questionnaire

Currently listening to: Collide by Howie Day (♥) on my Train Pandora Station 


What's on my nails: silver/purple glitter nail polish


Sipping on: a Vanilla Iced Coffee from Starbucks (Target run this morning...)


(**just reread this, wow, I wound like I'm 15.)


Current length of my hair: short. Karate chopped it off about a week or two ago. Hilights and lowlights as well. I just tried to take a picture of it, but I'm not posting it. I thought I looked good today, but those pictures tell me I actually don't.


Last movie I watched: Jim Gaffigan Mr. Universe. Oh, Jim. Always funny :)


Currently feeling: content and caught up. last week it would have been stressed and overwhelmed. 


Plans for the weekend: Wade works tomorrow (as he does every Saturday. I've come to terms with it.) and the kids and I will party it up without him at a birthday party for a one year old little boy. Jasper will be one in a week, too!!!!!!!! Maybe beach on Sunday?? Either that or a Sunflower maze. Wade has the day off.


What the kids are doing: watching a movie. The Smurfs. J's sleeping.


How I currently feel about the dog: oh, we've come a long way! The less she pees on the floor, the more I tend to like her! She did chew up another window blind though. Not good. But she does keep me warm on the couch when Wade jacks up the air conditioner... 


Currently reading: Cesar's Way by Cesar Millan. A neighbor lent it to me. INTERESTING!!!!


And now some random pictures from my camera:

Always such a sad face! 

Me and my baby. Don't mind the disgusting onesie.

Learning to walk. We can do about 5 steps then he drops and crawls. 

Beckett with a reeeeally big smile

Pink cheeks to match her pink skirt

Playing babies and dress up with the neighbor girls. Beckett is a "scary bear" :) 

6 teeth! This little guy's an eating machine. 

Brothers. Who both chew on their blankets. 

Today we got out the "put away toys". I put away one big tote of toys and rotate them every couple of months or so. It's like Christmas when they get to see all the toys they haven't seen in months!

Reese took this one yesterday. Not sure what's going on? Dad cooking supper in the background. Pink cheeks from swimming at the pool all day!

Busch Gardens - Then and Now

One thing I love about living here is that we are close to several awesome attractions and vacation destinations. It's no big deal to hop in the car and hang out at Clearwater Beach for the day, or decide last minute to go to Busch Gardens in Tampa with a neighbor on Wade's day off. They have a fantastic deal right now where Florida residents can go once and then can go back for free the rest of the year! So far, we've gone 4 times in the past 3 months :) It really is a cool place and I'd definitely recommend it!

But the sweetest thing is, it's where Wade and I went on our honeymoon when we got back from our cruise. This was us almost exactly five years ago: 

And this is us, last week, in front of the same grassy lion, three kids later:

*sigh*
So blessed.

(OH, and Reese can ride rollercoasters now. Like real, super fast, upside down rollercoasters. And she LOVES them!)

Meet Henley!

Getting dried off after her bath this week.

So, like I mentioned in the last post, part of the reason it's been crazytown around here is because we got a dog. Yup, remember this post? Didn't take long, did it? ;)

Anyway, her name is Henley and she's a one-ish year old puggle (pug/beagle mix). We adopted her from the animal shelter at the end of March. She has a sad/angry looking face, is medium sized (27 lbs), is suuuuuuper snuggly, was kind of potty trained, and is still very much a puppy. It's been fun and uh... interesting.

It happened kind of fast. Reese had been going on and on about how she wanted a dog. We kept telling her maybe someday. Well, the persistent little bugger finally got to her daddy enough that he agreed to go to the animal shelter on his next day off just to see what there was.

So we went to two different ones and they were all big dogs or older dogs - not quite what we were looking for. So we came home and looked online and found pictures of Henley and her brother at a neighboring shelter.  The next day I called and took the kids with me to check her out. She was calm, adorable, the perfect size, and was really good with the kids. I was sold. The only small problem was that she had a generalized case of demodectic mange (which are tiny skin mites that are on every dog, but when they're immune system is compromised the mites go crazy and the dog gets super itchy and rash-like.) Not good. Treatable, but not good. Nevertheless, without Wade even seeing her, he told me to go ahead and pay the $70 to ensure no one else would get her. We had to wait another week to go pick her up, but before we knew it, we had a dog!

Look at that face! She's like, "Can I  please come out now?"

We've had her for a month now and we're still working out the kinks. She's still learning not to pee in our bedroom, not to jump on the kids, not to dig up my plants, not to chew on toys & shoes, and all that other fun (!!) puppy stuff. We're still working on commands like sit, stay, and come. I think she likes us, I mean, we've got to be better than the last place she came from. Wade loves her, the kids love her, and I'm..... learning to love her. It's a totally different feeling than what I thought it would be. To be honest, it's been hard.

You can kind of see in this picture some of her spots from the mange. When we got her, it was raw and bleeding from where she had scratched it so much. She's on antibiotics, which means two pills a day, an liquid oral medicine once a day, and a 20 minute bath with special shampoo once a week. It's gotten soo much better and she hardly itches at all now. It's definitely cost us a little money, but we really wanted to give her a shot at a better life. Her hair is growing back and she's DEFINITELY more energetic than when we first got her.

I love this picture. It's what they look like every night before bedtime. Oh, Henley. The newest member of our family. The beginning has been tough, but I'm hoping one of my favorite sayings holds true:

"Nobody ever said it'd be easy, 

they just promised it'd be worth it."