It’s a new day, a new year. Well technically, it’s the 3rd new day of the new year, but who’s counting anyway?? Probably my Sister… <wink>
I’ve looked back on the last year and to tell you the truth, it has sort of sucked. Here’s a short recap of the year’s events.
January: Found out MDO was in jeopardy of closing.
February: Found out Dad had cancer.
March: Pretty much the same as February.
April and May: Wrapping up the closing of the school and the end of my much loved job.
June: Went to see Dad and visited during his Chemo treatments.
July: July was actually a pretty good month.
August: School started and I got to experience my first school day alone. Heaven!
September: 2 birthdays and lots of school activities, and the news that our dear friend Matt has lymphoma.
October: I can’t really remember October, except the last part of the month. I do know it felt pretty long and I thought it would never end. I did make a halloween dinner and then promptly got sick. Coincidence?
November: November brought a painful personal crisis, but somehow I made it through and am stronger for it.
December: Filled with lots of change and drama; new jobs for both my Sister and I, Sister decides to move to Utah, Christmas without family again this year, tight finances, car repairs, arthritis in my foot and general anxiety about life.
This brings us back to January. Reading the highlights or lowlights doesn’t seem so bad, but the emotional rollercoaster that our family went through with our Dad’s cancer diagnosis, threw us all in a tailspin. I think it’s been the hardest year of my life.
I can’t even say I am willing to make resolutions about going to the gym more, losing weight, or any other thing I think I’ve failed at and want to be better about. I wouldn’t mean it if I did.
I don’t know what this year will bring, but I hope and pray it’s better than last year. I think the best thing to come out of this year is the closeness I feel with my Dad. The possibility of death can bring people closer together with a sense of urgency. I want to squeeze in as much time with my Dad as I can. I feel so blessed that I was able to see him twice this year and got to spend some quality time with him. I’ve been praying that his cancer will be all gone when his next PET scan is done at the end of this month. I think I’ll even throw a party when he comes to visit us in February when he tells us the good news!
I pray you much health and happiness in the next 12 months. In the mean time, I’ll meet you back here regularly to update you and fill you in on the strange going-ons in my brain. I can’t guarentee they’ll always make sense or be intelligent, but I can promise they’ll be amusing at least.
Until then, I leave you with my slogan for the year: “CANCER BENIGN IN 2009″
Play Guitar Hero World Tour until my eyes bug out and wrists and fingers hurt.
That’s pretty much it.
Jon and I decided last night for my birthday that we would go to dinner and then see a movie. We made an attempt to go to Chuy’s last night for like the 3rd time since I went to lunch there with Felicia and Andee. There was an hour and half wait; on my BIRTHDAY!!! How rood! Because I was in the mood for some good salsa, I remembered just how good Cristina’s salsa was and so we were off to McKinney for dinner. It was convenient for us to be that far north because the movie theater was also up there. Four Christmases sounded like a lot of fun to go see. By the time we ate (wayytoomuuuch) and rolled walked out of dinner, we had over an hour to kill before the movie started. We drove in circles for a bit because I was the navigator who was answering Happy Birthday wishes/phone calls from friends while I supposed to be giving directions. LOL We ended up at Best Buy over near Debbi’s house to look for another guitar for my our new addiction game. No such luck as they had been wiped out of all Wii GHWT paraphanallia. We did find a stand for our guitar, drum sticks, mic, and soon to be 2nd guitar. Seems like I’m going to have to get used to having that home decor accessory in the living room for a while! Anyhoo…
We headed over to Fry’s hoping we would get there before it closed because Jon saw a guitar there for about 30 bucks and wouldn’t you know it, we got stuck in traffic because of a major 3 lane closer accident. We would have been late for our movie anyway, so we ditched the idea of a movie in lieu of the search for the less than holy grail of Guitar Hero WT single guitar for the Wii. We got there at 9:39 pm and there were still poeple coming out of the store. We waited and watched to see if some other chump would try to walk in after the store was clearly closed, and sure enough, we saw this poor guy try to walk in only to be met with confusion and agnst because he couldn’t go shopping for a GHWT guitar for his wii to use his new gift card.
We didn’t want to go home too soon because that would mean putting the boys to bed, so we decided to head over to Wallyworld to see if they by any chance had any. Nope, not them either! Dangit!! We were so close!! While we walked around the romantic atmosphere that WM offers, we bought some cereals. Raisin Bran for Jon’s digestive health and 2 bags of gut rotting cereal for the kids and that later night snack that comes after a very satisfying meal that I’ve made.
We came home and after everyone was in bed, I couldn’t just sit there and watch plain old TV!! I had to play. So I played and played and played. I played until my fingers hurt, my wrists felt like they would fall off and my eyes, oh my eyes! They were bloodshot and burning. If you play long enough, when the scrolling hyway that shows you the notes you are supposed to hit stops, the screen comes up that gives you your stats looks like it’s floating up and so does everything else in the room. If I were on drugs it would have been more than a psycadelic experience for sure!! I think I fell into bed around 1am. Annnd I slept until about noon.
Overall, it was a fun, relaxing, awesome day! I plan on entering a 12 step Guitar Hero Program as soon as I can find one and if I can’t find one, I’ll just have to live with my addiction. I think I’ll need to get Wii fit so I can work off all the extra calories I consumed from the chips and salsa and the sitting for hours on end!
In other news:
I plan on doing my very best to keep my blog up in the new year. I got a new job working in Medical Records at a Back Clinic at the beginning of December and it threw a huge wrench into my life. I am only working 4 hours a day, but what I have to do to get ready and drive to work and then work and then drive home, it feels like a full time job and it’s all I can do to come home and make dinner. The last thing on my mind is blogging, but I am going to make, as Brenna likes to call it, a “New Years Revolution” to blog more and complain less.
Happy New Year ya’ll and I hope that the next year brings much happiness (because remember Happiness is a choice! my new painting says so!) and joy. Seems like the most important things in life are being happy with those you love and squeezing as much joy out of life as you can!
I’m not normally the Halloweenie type that really gets into the decorations and such, but this year I found some really cute stuff at my favorite place, the Dollar Tree. Cute plates and serving bowls. Skeletons and Frankensteins, so fun! One wouldn’t think those things fall into the cute category, but these do! They have candy corn that ring the rim of the plate and are black and white. I mean, come on, you can’t go wrong for a buck! I plan on picking up some more plates for next year, one can never have too many ghoulish plates and cups!
So I was looking through a magazine last week and I was inspired to make the kids a Halloween dinner and then carve our pumpkin afterward. Like I said, I don’t normally go all out for them except I gather and purchase their costumes every year. This year I decided it would be fun for us all to have a haunted Halloween feast!
Here is what I picked up at the dollar store:
a purple table cloth
6 spooky plates
2 spooky serving bowls
clear plastic short stemmed glasses
black plastic utensils
I asked the boys what they would like to eat for dinner; either Boo Burgers and Frankentots or Spooky Spaghetti and Monster Meatballs. Spooky monster won them over. Spaghetti is one of their favorite meals.
I would love to show you how the bloody finger breadsticks turned out, or the oozy alfredo sauce looked, or even the spooky spaghetti and pumpkin juice turned out, but my blog is telling me that those files are too big. Not sure how to make them smaller, but trust me, they were awesome!
Ok, well……I figured it out.
How fun is that??? I drew faces on the cups and made “Pumpkin Juice” out of orange juice, orange pineapple, and sprite. I added a few drops of red and yellow food color to darken it up and the kids loved it! I tinted the alfredo with black food color paste and even though it tasted as good as it always does, the color threw everyone off and dare I say even gave Jon a bit of a stomach ache! LOL!! I love it! The meatballs were a hit as well. Dan loved calling them monster meatball brains and at the end of the night, all but three were gone! The breadsticks with almond sliver nails and bloody marks…tasty!! Brenna joked around and said, “Yummm, I always knew chewing on my nails tasted good!”
All in all, it was a fun night and I enjoyed making a spooky, not so scary dinner for my family. I think next year will be even more frightening…we might actually carve a pumpkin!! Muuuuaahahahahaha!!
I know it’s been at least 5 days since I posted last. Sorry about that.
I am not sure when the blogging bug will hit again. Maybe tomorrow, mabye next week.
Right now my heart and my mind are focused on the people I love who’s lives I am in constant prayer for. I pray for complete healing for my Dad, who got the word today that his cancer isn’t in remission, but new spots have reared their ugly head. I pray for Matt and Debbi who will be going on the rollercoaster ride of their life when the cancer treatment for him begins. I pray for Valerie who is still fighting for her life with Cystic Fibrosis and the battle that rages on in her lungs that her body is rejecting. I pray for Laura who is awaiting the arthritis confirmation her doctors believe she has. Only God knows what he has planned for each of them, and I trust that He does. I also ask God to help me through each of these relationships, that I can be there to meet their needs what ever they may be and that I remain strong in Him because when I am at my weakest God is at his strongest and will provide me with all things, big or small.
In the mean time, I will be keeping busy with life in general. Keep checking back- you never know when I’ll be moved to write something…and hopefully it’ll be worth reading!
My Sister (visit her here) did this really cool mosaic. I thought I would create my own Here Am I meme just like she did. She makes it look so easy! Let me tell you how long I have been working on this stinkin’ meme! Oh, no long at all…only 7 hours!! It’s really hard to find all the things on the list that start with the first letter in your name. To make it visually even, I added my own name graphic. I’m sort of anal that way. Ha! Another A word. You get that one for free!
So, here it is. This is what you are supposed to do. Take the list below and come up with examples of things that start with the first letter in your name. You can do like we did and make a mosaic here or just write out the list, either way; it’s fun!! Come on….you can do it!!
1) Angie-Here Am I!
2) Famous Singer/Band -Aerosmith
3) Four-Letter Word -Army
4) Street Name -West Angela St.
5) Gift/Present -Anklet
6) Color -amathyst
7) Pro Sports Team -Anaheim Angels
8 ) Movie Title -Aquamarine
9) Boy’s Name -Alton
10) Girls Name -Audrey
11) Vehicle -Aston Martin
12) Flower -Amaryllis
13) Drink -Alabama Slammer
14) Magazine -Allure
15) U.S. City -Adak
16) Item found in a souvenir shop -Alligator Totebag
17) Celebrity -Angelina Jolie
18) Reason You’re Late for Work -All Nighter (I pulled an all nighter and I over slept!)
19) Fruit -Apple
20) Cartoon Character -Alvin
21) Anything else about you that starts with your letter -Absolutely Fabulous!
22) Body of Water -Atlantic Ocean
23) Occupation -Archaeologist
24) Something you Shout -Amen!
25) Something you recycle -Aluminum Foil
I feel better today than I did yesterday, so that’s something to be happy about. My wise husband made me take some Advil and after a yummy dinner of egg sandwiches and biscuits and gravy, I felt a whole lot better. I guess I should listen to my husband more often. Shhh..don’t tell him that though!
Tonight is Ladies Night Out. We aren’t meeting for dinner at a restaurant like we normally do. Instead we are going to meet at a local church for a “Cents-sible Celebrations” and dinner. This speaker will show us ways to get ready for the holidays without spending too much money or time. The tag line was “Get us thinking INSIDE the box for the Holidays”. I’m looking forward to seeing what ideas she throws out because I tend to do the opposite during the holidays by thinking outside the box as far as menu’s and decorations, all at the expense of my sanity and bank account. I have a lot of neat stuff tucked away, I hope they come up with creative ways to use what we might already have in our homes for the upcoming holidays.
Speaking of holidays. I vow to put up my Fall decorations this year and not let another year go by with those pretty decorations sitting in my closet collecting dust. It’s my promise to myself to pull out the things that make me smile and bring out those warm touches that usher in Fall and make me feel cozy inside.
Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler…70 degrees! Can you believe it?? Here in Texas, we get so excited when the temperature falls below 75! That means Fall is here and soon after Winter!! And no more mosquitoes and sweaters and hot chocolate (like this one! OMG I’m in love!!) and fuzzy warm socks!! Can you tell I love Fall?? In fact, I think I’ll go put my Fall door bucket up right now!!
I might even post a picture or two after I’m done! Stay tuned…
**edited**
Here are some pictures of what I did on the front porch. I didn’t take a full shot because I have to find a place for all the crap the kids leave at the step, so I didn’t want to show you that part. Isn’t it pretty??
I have a horrible sinus headache that has been coming on for days.
I am still in shock about Matt having Lymphoma. I hate cancer! I just want to kick it in the ass.
I worry about my other friends who are dealing with health issues.
I’m still waiting to hear from my Dermatologist about my biopsy test results. I had one mole removed and a suspicious spot tested for Squamous Cell. Of course they take 6 to 10 days to get the results back and today is day 7 (not including weekends! grrr…)
I haven’t been sleeping well. Lots of neck aches, back aches, and tossing and turning. To add insult to injury, I wake up exactly 4 hours after I manage to fall asleep and then wake up every hour after that. It’s no wonder I sleep in the mornings to make up for the lack of sleep at night. And yes, I have tried staying up in the mornings and being really tired at night, but it doesn’t seem to matter how little or how much sleep I get, I still sleep crappy at night.
We are behind schedule on our sorting/ reorganizing plan. We got 4 rooms done and sorted, but stalled out for a week when Jon was sick. Saturday I worked on my closet and dresser, sorting and purging. Still a lot to go. Not really motivated to keep going, but we must press on.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. Hopefully this week will go better than I feel right now.
