Sunday May 23

Now that we are actually in Fla and we are in our own place. I guess it's a good time to get on the ball and get back into blogging again.. Even today in church Paster Dave said, "need to take a twenty mins to half hour to jouralize your life." I'm not sure if I'm ready for that long of journalizing but at least a few mins. a day is sufficient enough. He also stated that we should use "the word" as part of our journalizing..
Well today is such a perfect place to start. The lesson today was on waiting rooms. We are in the waiting room of our life, what are we to do with it and what NOT to do with it. We are suppose to serve others. For example if we pray 95% of the time for others, the Lord will see to it that the other 5% is taken care of for us. The scripture that he used for "waiting rooms" was of Paul (acts) in prison and how in the years he was there what he did while waiting for his release. He wrote the most spiritual of letters while in prison. He continued to make the best of his life even though people were trying to take the best of it away. That is what we are suppose to do. NOt complain, not stress, not doubt God in his inentions. BUt have the faith in God and serve where you can and let everything fall into place.
This couldn't of been any better for us. We have had life pretty easy here and there. Granted never perfect, but easy. Now just as I was telling Mike, we started to see things fall into place way too quickly and we took advantage of it. Then just when we think all is perfect, the rug comes out from under us and we struggle a bit more... Just like our house. WE have it, but, just as easy we can lose it.. We pray for the rent to be there every month, while Mike is waiting for his job to open up the training class so he can work.. The electric deposit, we had no idea where it was coming from. Tri-County Communitee center would only pay for half. We had to find the other half.. God furnished that for us.. We were in hopes of help from a food bank, I have volunteered to work the soup kitchen in return. I will be calling Monday to discuss the needs on Weds..
Even growing up I was always taught how service to others is very important and the blessings that come from it. Todays lesson was 110% on the money...

what week/Glad it's over

I tell you.. It has been a week from hell. My poor honey has that fluid back behind his eyes again.. you know the macula edema. Well, granted it's leaking.. He has scheduled for the laser surgery AGAIN come Jan 7 and another the 14th. Well to top it off Mike lost a very close friend and what is still considered a family member. Debbie, is Faith's sister, so it was his sister in law. When Faith and Mike divorced, her whole side of the family kept him as family anyway. (awesome family mind you, they are even great to me) After she past on Sunday at one o'clock. That night while laying in bed his left eye just started draining a reddish fluid and he got up and ran to bathroom.. The sack errupted and was draining out of his eye. The stress just was too much and escaped the only way it could, I guess. Anyway, so Monday morning I called Surgeon and got an appt for him that afternoon. Dr checked it out and said no damage done, it will be a little while but it will finish draining and you will see better again. Mind you he only seen a big yellow glaze as it was... Poor bugga..
Then come Last night (weds) we went to Debbie's wake and then after the funeral we went to the Half Moon restraunt where Debbie's husband Don works at and had a gathering in her honor. Well, just as we were taking off our coats, my phone chimed saying I had a voice mail message. It actually never rang. But anyway, I normally would of ignored it but had the impression, better check. So i called it to find out that my Aunt Carol left me a message to call back as soon as I could... So I went outside and rang her. Only to find out that My Aunt Marie had a heart attack and was in Newport ICU and in a drug induced coma to help heal her from her surgery that she almost didn't get b/c she had a major infection spreading through her body. Through testing they found she had a mass in her lower bowel. So they had to operate before that killed her. They gave her a 50/50 chance on it.
She came through the surgery with a colostomy bag and until the surgery starts to repair itself and they are sure she can physically handle any type of pain, they will leave her in the coma. If all goes well and she wakes up, they are hopeing eventually to have her sent up to Miriam Hospital in Providence and then from there to rehab.
So now, I'm like, Ok Lord.. It's Christmas, how much more bad news can we handle? A friend of mine that I grew up with in Newport reminded me that Father doesn't give us any more then what we can physically handle. SO Please Lord, I'm at my limit. I've had all I could possibly deal with. I am driving Mike to work nightly and picking him up and getting approx five to six hours of sleep each day. I'm trying to maintain stability on a man that has been stressing over this loss as well as his health. Trying to maintain feeding this house on very little until the 23rd of the month when more money comes in for food. We are down to bare bones, But we are surviving. Going to take some money out of xmas shopping and get a few staples until then. I'm dealing with cranky babies that don't know what's wrong with them, which makes their mommy very cranky.. So LORD like I asked, Am I done yet????
All I can say is, Thank you Lord that my Fibro hasn't had a flair up and I'm down and out. But chances are when things start to settle and I can go back and concentrate on myself, I'm sure it won't pass me by...
Ok enough venting.. LOL usually I don't do that on here. But I needed the vent.. Thanks so much for having the patience to let me and read through to the end.. I love my friends and family and I am so very thankful for them for loving me..
If I don't get back here before Christmas May you all have a wonderful Christmas!!! Hope Santa is good to you all.... HUGS

my Xmas deco in the kitchen...

as Christmas slowly arrives

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone and we are almost in the middle of December, getting prepared for Christmas. Amazing! This year has really gone by very quickly. I guess when you spend your life half in the bed and the other half doing everything you possibly can before you get knocked on your butt with the fibro. I guess it would go by very quickly. We have had a decent year. Mike and I have gone to different places this year and enjoyed the time we have had visiting with friends and family. Hopefully this upcoming year we are able to be able to do it again.
I just got decorations up last night. Didn't do a whole lot this year but it looks pretty good. We haven't put the tree up as of yet, though. We are going to see if we can find one that isn't so much. We like having a real one over a fake one any day. But have to see, what the prices are. We don't want a huge one, but don't want a tiny one either. I will take pics of what is done and show ya how I did.
I still need to post pics of Thanksgiving.. LoL it was a good day over at Michelle's. Jw came and spent the four days with us. Which made that very nice also.
We are going to be doing volunteer work next weekend at the Harley shop. It's customer appreciation days. So we volunteered to help out where needed. It gave us each a 30% discount on any merchandise for those days. That will help, ALOT! Mike wants a new Zipped sweat shirt.. His that he wears for work is all tattered. He's been wearing it for two years now and with carrying wood and such, it can wear clothes out..
Well, that's about it for now. I will do my best to try and keep up with this as much as I can.. Hugs and loves to all who read this.

cleaning

I'm still not very good at this. But getting there. Been busy the last couple of days cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Yesterday was the BIG clean in the master bedroom for us. Mike did his side the day before, which puts me on alert to get mine done. So of course then, right after supper I picked up all off the floor, organized all I could and vaccuumed. Then I finished all the wash and my blanket. With having dogs you have to wash blankets a bit more often then I really would want to.
Today I finished supper and with the help of Kyla we swept the floors and then after Mike left for work I bleached and washed them. I did it on my hands and knees to make sure they were good and clean this time. Nothing like washing the floors and go to walk on them with white sox right after and have the bottoms turn black anyway. So I tried it the hard way. By the time I was done, my arms and back were sore and my hands were shaking. But it is all done. Thank goodness.
Tomorrow Mike and I go and pick up Jw for Thanksgiving break. Can't wait, we'll be together for four days. I'm excited. As much as a child can drive a parent right up the walls. You do miss them so when they are not around.
We are going to Michelle's house for Thanksgiving dinner. WE both got a turkey basket from church, which was a huge help. B/c we are struggling financially this year. But we chose to combine our baskets and the gift cards for the turkeys and get one big turkey instead of two small ones. Dougie is going to get a ham so we have a little of both. He cooks them so AWESOME in the crock pots, I can't wait. It's going to be a really good day..
Well, Melissa announced to us last night, that come Jan. 1st she is moving out. She is going to move into Michelle's house for less money. So now we get to re-tighten our belts yet one more time and struggle through till we get taxes done and see where we end up from here. We are really concerned b/c we are not sure what we are doing in the near future. Mike wants to enroll in a school, possibly motorcylcle mechanic or diesal or even marine. BUT he is at a loss at to exactly where right now. So in the mean time, we really don't want to move another time before he determines where exactly he is going get excepted. So we may just stay here and struggle it out until he figures it out. Will have to see.
That's about all new right now. Will catch up more after Thanksgiving..

most updated pics of the family

This is Melessa from this past summmer. She looks so good.


Mike with the dogs. He was teasing me, b/c he knows I hate different things on the table. he was putting Haylee on the table. Everyone was laughing at me.. I wanted to kill him..


This is last Sunday Nov. 1st. We were just leaving church.


This is the most updated pic of the kids. Emma Michelle's daughter, Xavier, Valerie's grandson, Kaylee is in the chair and Kyla on far right. They have gotten so big...



This pic was taken end of summer of JW. He was on the phone with one of his "girlfriends" man they start younger every generation.



This is Mike and I just this past Sept. We were in NJ. We went down to meet a couple friends from Facebook. One flew in from Australia to come see NY and meet us. The other from NJ. He hooked us up with the great extended stay hotel. Great people they are..

Well, I hope now that I've gotten back to this blog thing, I can continue to keep up with it. Sorry I've been so neglectful of it. Facebook is so addicting that I've neglected everything else on here. Hope all is well and we can stay connected again.. HUGS

our weekend

We had a great Weekend. Friday night we took off to Ct and decided to go and visit an old friend. We popped into Lynn Gabbert Labrie's for a surprise visit. We were the one's surprised b/c the only person that was home was Justine and her son Ethen. She invited us in to wait and graciously cooked us an awesome chirouco and pepper dinner. Around ten thirty at night Lynn, Walt and DJ came in. They had taken off to Foxboro Mass, to pick up a tent for their family camp out to Palmyra, NY. If you are Mormon, you know what's in Palmyra around this time each year. My mind is so blank and I can't think.. Maybe b/c it's one thirty in the morning and I'm starting to get tired. Sorry... Anyway, we visited with Lynn till around 11 and let them go to bed.
We headed back toward Groton to get a hotel for the night. Our whole reason for heading there. To escape for the night and be alone. We hadn't had an alone time by ourselves in two years. We were heading for the Econo Lodge in Groton. But they only had a room for smoking for $89.He said he would drop it to $79. I was like ummm, no is there another Econo Lodge around here. There was one in Mystic. So I had the clerk call Mystic, to see if there were an empty "NON" smoking room. Not only was there one, but he said he would give us a deal of their price ten percent off. Which brought it down to $76. So we won out an both parts. So we took off for Mystic. The cool part was it was right across the road from the entrance to Mystic Aquarium. Mike said if we had brought kyla, we could have brought her there. But as I reminded him, This was our weekend, not anyone else's. I'm not usually selfish. But We deserved it!
Mike was getting hungry again, so we went on an adventure in finding a place that was open to eat at. After riding around another forty mins. We determined that the only place was McD's. I got some chicken nuggets and a McFlurry.. And Mike got two Big Macs. Big mistake. he has been sick from it, ever since. Poor guy...
He spent the entire night off and on in the bathroom. He probably only had gotten like two to three hours sleep the entire night. So needless to say, we slept right through our free Continental breakfast. (that was 7-10) we didn't get up until ten fifteen. Check out was at eleven. We flew into the shower and flew around the room getting ourselves ready to get out on time. We made it with five mins. to spare. Depressing though, as you see from the picture of that tub, it was HUGE... I wanted to badly to crawl in that tub and soak and soak and soak. But being that we checked in so late and then searched everywhere for food and then by the time we got back, I just stripped and jumped into bed and past out. And then waking so late, no way, could I. Oh well, I dreamed of it. lol (why I say huge, is b/c we have what we call a half tub. It has the same width but only half the legnth. It was built for a midget I swear it was)
The other pictures we what we did all day Saturday. We decided to make it a Harley shop adventure day. We started in Groton at Mike's Famous Harley dealer. Which of course I never got a picture of it. So now we need to go back.. lol We did get Tshirts for our collection. Mike got the blue one with the Submarine on the back and I got the orange tank..
Then we headed for Columbia TSI Harley. And we had missed it. It had closed at three. We missed it by 30 mins. I wonder if we didn't stop for Dairy Queen, if we would of made it.. Besides the idea we kept missing how to get to it. So we called TSI in Ellington and learned that it closed at five. So we had just enough time to make a forty min. trip up. We got the directions and stop halfway for gas. And made it in just enough time for twenty mins of shopping. We grabbed Tshirts from there. The red tye dye T is mine. Mike got the cream colored one. It has a cool 1903 bike on it with a side car. Really cool.
The pic of the stone picture of the Harley is the Ellington TSI. That's the sign that doesn't have the town on it. Where the Columbia one did. Go figure, same owner.
Anway, after then, we took the long way home and traveled all the back roads we could toward Exeter, RI. We decided to end our great time together at our favorite restraunt, Middle of NoWhere. Which did end our fantastic time. Afterward, we came home crawled in bed and relaxed until we both fell asleep.
Needless to say, Mike still has the upsetness in his belly. I had to go to CVS and buy him more Immodium AD. I was so sore and my back was killing me, that we decided to just stay in the bed and sleep our morning away. So we didn't make it to church. Oh well. It was worth it.
But to top of a great day, Melissa got up this morning and made her dad and Bruce pancakes, for Dad's day. And she was awesome enough to make some for everyone. She even saved a few for me, when I finally crawled out of bed at one PM. LOL. and then at two thirty Jw called Mike and wished him a Happy Father's day. How sweet and no one told him to. he was riding his bike alone. How cool!
So our great weekend finally had to come to an end. And now, Monday must come and Mike must go back to work again. My poor baby. I just hope his belly is better.