Welcom to Holland

My friend Cherish is going through a pretty rough spot right now and although she feels so torn and like she isn't doing enough, I can honestly say that all of those who are blessed to be in her life have learned so much from her & her husband over the past weeks. Their little boy Noah was born with a congenital heart defect and has had a rough go. He is a strong little boy, and he finally had his first surgery last week and then they closed up his heart this Monday. Noah has to undergo 2 more surgeries by the time he is 2, but I know this little guy is a fighter and he is going to be okay. The outlook is great, he will have to be on meds, but besides some restricted activity he should lead a normal life. What better outlook is there than that when your baby is born with something wrong. I can't even begin to imagine what Cherish & Bill are going through emotionally. I mean I know what I felt like when they told us Kolby had hemophilia. I was shocked, then I felt guilty, a long time to just accept it for what it was. And there is a lot of learning and there is going to be a lot of learning for a long time. My heart goes out for Cherish & Bill knowing that they to have a lot of learning left to do, a lot of scary situations to deal with. But I have hope that all will be well and that God will walk them through each and every situation and that they will always find the good in what they are dealing with. Cherish posted this short article on Noah's Care Page and I just had to share it. Beware, I cried an awful lot because it is might beautiful.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by Emily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.


And I think I will just leave it at that...

Toys R Us

Work is simply consuming me and all of my time. I never have time alone anymore. I am either taking care of kids, running household errands, or working. Lately I have been working 25+ hours a week which is like 10 hrs more than I signed on for. I know as Christmas gets closer the work load is only going to get worse. I expected this and I thought that I was prepared, but lately I am just feeling worn out. For the past month I have been working everyday except Mondays & Saturdays which my schedule doesn't allow me to work. It really sucks. On the other hand I am not complaining about all the extra money I am making. I have been able to finish almost all of my Christmas shopping. I have Logan just about done and now I just have to finish Kolby. This is a big, big deal. That means that most of the extra money that I usually use for Christmas I will be able to save. My goal is to have a lot of money saved by Aug so that I can go back to school full time and get my degree in Nursing. Then when Kolby starts school I will be able to work full time and really help out with money. It's kind of weird to think of that day coming b/c we will be doubling our income. That is scary. As for now though I am enjoying the extra money and hopefully I will be able to save some of that also. If you don't hear from me for a while it's because I am working and getting ready for the holidays, but I promise keep checking with me and I will be back on here eventually.

Scrapbooking Room Overhaul

So we got the cabinets that I have been wanting a couple of months ago from my grandparents (Thank you very much) and they have been sitting in the garage. Finally today we decided to start this process, which is going a little better than I expected. We moved about 80% of the stuff out of the room and into our dinning room and started painting. We also went and bought the primer for the cabinets so that we can successfully paint the formica. The room is a soft pink color and the trim & cabinets are going to be chocolate brown. Quite a stunning contrast! I love the color combo and have known for a long time that I wanted the room these colors. I am going to stencil some butterflies and dragonflies on the walls in the brown and on the cabinets in a cream color and some in pink. On the wall that faces the door I am going to put up stencil some quotes that inspire me. I really want this room to be an inspiration every time I sit down to work. The closet is going to hold all of my quilting and sewing stuff so I am also so excited about that. I figure once we get the room painted and the cabinets hung the organizing and getting it ready will take till the end of the year. Come Jan. I am going to start up with my creative energy and get back to what I love doing. Hopefully all will work out as planned and I won't be disappointed. I often envision my plans and then they don't quite look like what I envisioned. I guess the bottom line is that when I get done I will have an organized place to work and be inspired and do the things that I love.

I have a ton of scrapbooking stuff and I started to go through just my paper today. Tons and tons of paper. I couldn't use it all if I scrapbooked continuously for the next 100 years. I sorted out a lot of it and I am going to give it away. I still have a lot to go through. I told Eric to be patient with me while we are doing this because I really want to organize everything right. Even though I have a room for this, it really isn't a big room and to get everything in there I am going to have to organize wisely. I suspect that within a couple of weeks it will be done and we can start moving the stuff back in. HOPEFULLY!

Other than that today wasn't too busy. It rained a lot of the day and the kids were kind of couped up, but what am I gonna do, send them out in the rain? Well I am off to take my shower and watch the last part of God's Warriors that CNN aired this past week. Very interesting programs and when I finish this last one I am sure that I will be sharing my thoughts on it. God knows that it caused me to think a whole lot.

Good Night

I'm back...

I am finally back and I have finally set up my blog site and I am working on the boys. Just have some patience while I get them going and I get use to writing again. This site is mainly for me and my rambling thoughts that I often have no one to listen to. So I decided that I would make my blog about me and my thoughts and then each of the boys will have their own blog that I keep up with. On my sidebar, under Places I like to visit, I have added a family picture section. Please be really patient with me on this because I have to upload the pictures to this site that my mom has and I can store all of our pictures there, but I do need to organize and make galleries and sub galleries and it is already beyond me. Anyways, once I get this going like I am hoping then it will be really great. I just need some time to get back in the game. It takes dedication to blog daily and I am attempting to do 3 blogs all at once. I know that's not that big of a deal, but I have to get use to sitting down and doing it. Anyways I just wanted to make my first post so that I could send out the site and be done with it.