How was your Thanksgiving?

This is a question that has been put before me quite a bit lately as many have been aware that this was my first trip away for the Holiday weekend. It was crazy, fun, amazing, and emotional all wrapped up in one great package of fun.

The first thing I learned was NOT to travel on the day before Thanksgiving or the Sunday AFTER thanksgiving ever again. Hwy 10 is what we travel on the majority of the time traveling back and forth to each other and it usually pretty empty. Of course you have the large semi trucks to contend with but after all the road trips in the past few years I have made, they no longer concern me. Give them the respect of the road and they give it right back to you. (usually...of course truck drivers are not really known for their smarts...but thats besides the point) So the drive out took us a bit longer and the drive home took us a LOT longer to get home then I would have liked. I am glad we decided Dennis would fly out this weekend instead of me driving back out because I dont think I really have it in me to make that drive for a bit again.

We headed out and arrived and the kids (yes all 8) had a ball. The most interesting part of our mix is seeing kids who have been raised outside in the country mixed up with kids who are pretty 'city'ized' (is that a word?). It is good for my kids though, as I was talking with Dennis the other night about it. I see them growing up in a way they haven't before because of getting this experience. We spent the day at home cooking and playing on Thanksgiving and then Friday and Saturday we hit the dirt. Literally! Too too much fun. I feel like I have been missing out so much by not having had road quads before now. Dennis took me out on an long run while the kids played in the creek (lol, my kids had never experienced MUD before in their lifed.....something that didn't bother me much since as kid I grew up playing in the dirt quite a bit) The smell of the trip and the thrill of driving up and over pretty tough terrain was such a thrill. Id feel as if the quad was going to tip and full throttel it, (not suppose to do that) and my heart would race as it had never experienced before. The thrill of this was so much greater then that of a roller coaster ride. Driving with the dust in the air brought back childhood memories of jeeping out in the dessert and hillsides. The biggest difference was when I was behind the wheel. You can't but help think as a car would when driving out there at first. If a car couldn't drive it I couldn't picture a quad driving it. As I watched him take the hillsides on and then turn to watch me I wanted to scream no no no no! But I saw the twinkle in his eye and had to try it. The quad could handle it. Each hill, each difficult terrain he had me manuever over was a huge learning curve and confidence builder. Watching him smile at me as I handled it did a tremendous amount of confidence building as well.

Since the trip home I have been overwhelmed, with Christmas decorating, laundry, unpacking, rain scare with the roof, and dealing with my ex over renegotionating the business loan buy out. So much going on its been hard to break back in, fotunately they kids schooing is coming to an end here really soon and it will be winter break....I need that!

Tidbits to remember

In my frantic pull it together, pack, think and do it all mode Im in already this week I had time this afternoon to sit down and talk with Luke. Luke and I have known each other for a very long time. We knew each other early on in our 'other' lives. The lives we no longer lead, the lives that were left in shambles and reconnected again as we began to piece ourselves back together. He is great at giving me the 'male' perspective of how 'men' deal with life. Goodness knows I need as much help as I can get, and to have a clearer persepective now and again, Ill take it whenever I can. Today as we were catching up on our 'dating' lives I told him of that nagging 'fear' and apprehension I struggle with. I want tomorrows life NOW. I want to be in a marriage again, I want to have the life I have visioned, did vision, want more then I can describe. I want to live my life side by side with a man who will face life head on and not quit on me. I hate waiting. This was what he told me and it left me speechless.

"Jenice" he said, "the things in life that cost us the most, are the things in life we will value the most". "The things in life worth having are worth waiting on." I sat there for a minute and didn't know what to say. He was dead on, and 100 percent right. To have 'the life I want and desire", is worth waiting for, worth the cost for and worth seeing how God will bring it all about. Patience Jenice, Patience. Arrrrrrrrgh, we all know how good I am at that! So I told him, "Please feel free to remind me of this.....regularly, and often!"

So back I go packing to head out to Arizona for Thanksgiving. This is another 'new' or 'first' in my life. The first time away from my family for Thanksgiving (no the kids will be going with me), and I will be the one cooking the Thanksgiving meal....of course with lots and lots of helpers!

Grand Prix Update!
How did the races go? Sad, very very sad. They changed the track on me, so this year instead of all the time I spent working on the outside of the wheels I should have been working on the inside of the wheels and I should have drilled holes into the body to insert the weights, instead as in the past gluing them under the carriage. So my children sat by and watched their cars slowly go down the track, yes I wanted to cry. But, Jessica....she proudly took 1st place in the most Christian Design Category. One out of three, not to bad! :)

Romanticism

This thought has been on my mind the past few days. Ill blame it simply on 'emotions', we women have the benifit of using that as an 'excuse' so I decided I will use it and maybe even abuse it :).

Its been two days since the workers left my yard a complete disaster. The plumbing part is fixed (as they explained to me they are plumbers not masonary workers) but the cement is ....well hmm an 'art form'. There thats putting it nicely! :) If you are really curious you can puruse my Flickr account to see more of what it currently looks like, sad part is my eldest daughter had been working on a school project "How to" and she used photos from the back yard on "How to Train a Puppy", the cement was pretty back then....of course the pipes weren't, but then again that was inside the ground, WHO KNEW! So how have I been coping? Jane Austen!

I have had a full fledged Jane Austen Movie Festival in my living room. Much to my children's whiny, quarlsome attitudes about having to watch time period movies, I have lost myself amongst the English romance that Jane Austen wrote and movies were portrayed over. The first to go in the DVD player was the newer release of Pride and Prejudice. This weekend I intend to watch the full length version, my preferred version of this book. I've watched all the movies this week in my attempt to loose my thoughts, Emma, P&P, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Northhanger Abbey, and Persuasion and to lighten the kids up off of me I even popped in Bride and Prejudice...cute cute. So with the idea of 'true' Old Fashioned Romance burning in my head, I wonder does this leave me more vulnerable to does it leave me more hopeful? (I don't have the answer Im hoping someone else will!) When did we loose the romanticism this period of time? Do we get so self absorbed in our own lives we forget to 'win' the fair maiden? Do we forget to croon over the men in our lives? What it would have been like to live as a 'lady' in this age of living.

A Bit of humor in the midst of........ well, dung :)

My son came home from school this week bursting at the seams about what he has been learning in Architecture. They have had an assignment to blue print the homes they live in. I find that kind of funny (funny ha ha) considering the state of our home lately. Anyway, addtionally they learned about toilets and lavatories and were asked to add them into their drawings. The teacher also decided to share some history that I found, well very humorous. Back in colonial days ships would sail to the New World with bags full of well, ok fertilizer in them. They would keep these bags at the bottom of the ships ( highly approved of by a simple female mind like mine). The ships would leak though and water would seap into them, so the sailors had to check on the bags reguarly. At this time, ships weren't equipped like they are today with running electicity. So they would walk down the ships with laterns, and with the gas that the bags of fertilizer had acquired in a small confined space (methane) , many of these ships blew up. So to take care of this problem they changed where they stowed the bags and these bags were labeled clearly so that they wouldn't mistakenly place them into the wrong location. The bags were labeled Ship High In Transit. Being sailors they shortened the phrase to the acronym. Hee hee, that did make me laugh. Ill admit I had to look it up to make sure the teacher wasn't creating something new and sure enough, I did find it :)

Humor has been greatly needed and appreciated this week :)

Progress on the cars begun again last night....here they are with the wheels attached and sanded and such. Tonight is check in, so we shall see, we shall see! The question Im pondering right now is if graphite makes the car wheels really speed up or slow down, hmmmm.

Completely Wipped Out

Thats the only way to describe me at the present. The past two days have wipped me emotionally, physically and in some sort of strange way taught me something new about myself.... or maybe its about men and women.

I suppose I should go back to the beginning and explain what has taken place, but a big part of me wants to just forget it all. It has been a literal nightmare. Yesterday when the Plumbing company got here I wasn't prepared to hear what they had to show and tell me. I had been walking around really believing that we had already done in the past so much work on the pipes I wasn't going to have anymore problems. That is my first lesson, in a old home like mine, dont ever assume you have it all fixed. So the blow of hearing that I need to have my bathroom demolitished and a huge part of the cement in the back was just the beginning. The next lesson I have learned is to follow my gut. See I didn't agree with what they were saying. My ex had really tore out a huge section where the bathroom is and replaced it all. To have roots inside the house, where he had done all that work around 8 or so years ago, just didn't make sense. I asked specifically, could you have dragged roots up with the snake. The manager replied no, as he went on to explain why not. Well, later on that night after I had given approval to begin work, or more like after I had signed my life and credit line away, the main guy overseeing this job sticks his arm up the pipe and sure enough.....roots that had been drug up. Good news! The bathroom didn't need to be redone. But he instead offered to pull instead of 5 or 6 feet of pipe out of the yard, more like 10. All for the same price. In all honesty, it really seemed to make the job easier on them to do this. He disagreed of course, but in my mind it seemed easier to have a huge section to work on instead of 2 splices. So what was suppose to be a 9 foot redo, ends up being about 17 feet redone. Manager wasn't too happy. He apparently forgot his comment that if they had to do a few feet more then wouldn't charge me any additional, and they didn't have to enter the house and demo it. Thank goodness or I would have had to quickly learn how to lay tile, since they don't replace the tile. Arrggh. OK so the pipe is repaired, and then the next hurdled. The guy decides to stick the camera even further down the line. Bad news, two more sections they believe. I don't, want to accept this, I didn't see it in the camera as they insist it is, so my blind faith is going to try some product called Root-X and hope for the best. I didn't even ask them to quote what that would cost, I know I can't afford it, and at this point, Im just getting more emotional and more frustrated with the job. The workers spent more time on the phones and chit chatting then doing the job. Thats fine, I honestly didn't care how much time it took after they had the pipe reinstalled, but please....where has the job ethics gone about doing a job well and doing it to a customers satisfaction. Ha! That leads us up to last night.

Its now about hmm, well its dark, and the kids are ready for bed so lets say around 7 ish. They start to lay the cement. Its a large area, and anyone who knows anything little about cement knows you can't stop once you start. About 10 I head outside and Im amazed watching them mix one bag of cement in a small wheel barrow after another. Ok Whatever, but then I look down. Its horrible. My beautiful cement porch backyard, a MESS, and thats putting it mildly. At this point they are thinking they are almost done. I look at them and say, "there is about an inch gap, downward between the old and the new. You need to add more cement!" They look at me kind of stupid like and say, oh really, you think we do....I insist and then they get back to work. I come out a few minutes later and say this wont do, its rocky looking, full of air pockets, its near the drain spout from the rain gutters, its going to fall apart. So they continue working for about another hour. At 11:30 they stop. The next morning I go out, my heart sinks. Its horrible looking, and worse looking in the day. They had smoothed out some of it, but Im sure it was layered dry and wet and you just can't do that with cement. I talk with Dennis, I talk with my dad, and Im upset (to put it mildly) but Im not sure what to do. Im a female dealing with a bunch of men, most of who can't speak much english. I don't want to be a pain, but I want what I paid $800 to have the cement redone, I could have spent the say $60 bucks on the product and redid it better then they had. So I stop and pray.

The manager comes by later, he sits outside kneeling down looking at it quite seriously. Im positive he has to see what a mess it looks like. So I walk outside. He asks how Im doing and I am honest and say Im upset because it looks horrible and all of my concerns about it. He assures me almost to quickly they will redo it. So today, I have new pipes, but a patch that has been jackhammered, but still sitting there in place. Its a huge mess, but they promise to take care of it. This is just a few of the issues. They billed me before the job, instead of after as they stated. The toilet they put in, leaked...no thats to kind, poured out, after they left.

So that leaves me............spent, whipped out, and with absolutely no desire to make any decision, opinion or thought to anything, including those daunting pinewood derby cars sitting on the fireplace haunting me. The element most struggled with that only a female could really comprehend is this. When faced with this sort of ordeal, you struggle not knowing if they are honestly being nice and trying to help you, or taking advantage of your vulnerablilty and emotions and getting the most out of you. A constant battle of the mind to fight through the emotions a woman is made with and designed as, but trying to see things as a man would. A perfect illustration as to why, 2 becoming one is the way God has designed us to be. We can feel complete in each other having the part we don't have acting on our behalf.

This will be looked back at as one of those footprint moments Im quite sure.

The LORD replied:

"My son, my precious child,
I love you and I would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints,
it was then that I carried you."

Trial three hit

Well, I knew a small issue with a car was to easy, or maybe I should say I should have known. Today after a few incidents leading up to this I had to have a plumber out to look over the sewer lines from downstairs. I don't deal well with things like this. In fact this kind of thing really makes me want to go back to renting again and not being a home owner. The feelings from a few years ago when the house flooded and I knew the cost of repair was going to be HUGE, hit me all over again after they brought me back downstairs and showed me all the roots lining the line. My heart sank after they showed me one spot after another that I knew was smack dab under the concrete slab in the back yard.

You have my attention Lord, whatever it is I need to recognize, learn or grow from, you have My full attention. The bill for this is going to be $4500. Yes ouch, not something I keep handy. The yard and possibly the bathroom will all be jackhammered up. They started today, and I fell on my knees again today. Tender and listening.

One nemesis of single parenting

Im sure there are several more if I really thought about it, but for me trying to be "All Parent" is one that I struggle with the most. To describe what "all parent" is kind of difficult but essentially it is trying to be both mom and dad and doing a great job at both to my children. This is a constant struggle for me and has been for the past 3+ years as I have taken on the role as single parent. I can even recall a thought I had early on that my children would not feel the effect of only having a single parent, they would't have to hear their mother say, "Im sorry hun I just can't do that for you." (for either financial or physical restrictions) This motto of mine is running me ragged as Dennis and I have talked about even very recently. It feels like a cop out to me to have to remind my children to " remember I am a single parent while your friends have fathers who can help their mothers with running you around I don't." Even just typing that out gave me a shiver down my spine. Its not what I wanted, its not what I want and yet it is what I am living. One of the greatest struggles I have is this time of year.....Awana Grand Prix. Pinewood derby racing. Each year I have tried so hard, spent hours of my time working on these silly little pine cars to help my children fair and have a chance to win. Creatively we have done GREAT. Last year I think two of the kids took top awards in the creative area. Speed however, blah. My heart sinks. I even own a DREMEL! Is what I tell many who I share this silly sob story with. I own it but have't a clue as to what to really do with it. Im not dumb, I could figure it out, but time......we only have so much time. While I really didn't like the movie "Click" all that much, I did find humor in the idea of pausing life so you could catch up. And so this week as Friday approaches (check in night) I am sure I will be sharing the struggles on and off (if I can find the time to figure out HOW to make these wheels run FASTER!) Keep me in your prayers to keep it all balanced....please :)

This years entries.......a pig (with pearls...bible competition), a tinker bell float (yes cute), and a slice of cheese (who would think finding a small mouse would be soooo difficult!)

Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces." (Matthew 7:6).

Complete Honesty

On Postsecret I saw this card come up and it made me cry.

I was married for almost 14 years and it came to my understanding later on in my marriage that neither of us shared everything with each other. I think we might have started, sharing our dreams, sharing our hopes, sharing our aspirations....but when did it end?

Complete honesty is something I decided a while back I have to have in any relationship. If you can't be completely honest with each other, your relationship is doomed to end in some sort of disolutionment down the line. Being able to share exactly who you are and where you want to go in life. Sharing what scares you, what holds you back, what motivates you. Sharing your strengths as well as your weaknesses. Complete honesty isn't easy.

Even today I have to check myself a lot of the time. Am I sharing who I am, or who I think he wants me to be. I did that for such a long time, try to be the 'woman' I thought my husband wanted, that it is an easy place for me to fall back into. Dennis has made it easier on me, I can be who I am with him and not feel like Im a disappointment. I think the worst judge of me, is myself and that is something I am still working on.

Arrgh Patience, Arrrgh!

I am having to learn yet another lesson in the realm of patience. I think that in some ways Dennis is getting quite a kick out of this....arrrgh! Last weekend while I was out in Arizona we went quad riding. Ive been with my father but this was the first time out with Dennis. big big GRIN! Oh my, yes I loved it! So much so, well :) hee hee I own one as of today! :) My baby however, is now sitting at Dennis's home WAITING for me he says.........arrrgh!!!!!!!!!! The thing with a ATV is its like riding a jeep but convertible style! It is just too much fun! I can't wait! But I have to wait, but I CANT WAIT but I have too ................see the problem??????????? ARRRRRRRRRRRRgh!

Trials times three

Have you ever noticed that when things start to go off track, things start to go wrong, or when thing just appear to no longer be going your way....it happens in batches of three?

We have had a lot of things hitting us lately, not as painful as it has been in the past, but still the same events that leave me wondering...Ok Lord Im listening, what is it you are trying to tell me or shake me up to see now?

Last week I was busy, very busy and in the midst of it I realized that it was time to treat the pup and cat with flea medication. My ex had given me a batch of samples and I decided to use the sample cat medication on the cat. This turned into a horrid 24 hour period ahead. Apparently the product was actually dog flea medication and relabeled for a trade show up and coming. The product inside of the tube has actually killed cats since the main ingredients for dogs is different then what a cat is treated with. "Kitty" went into a sort of shock and was having nervous twiches, her eyes became dialated and well suffice it to say, she just wasn't herself. I immediately got her into the vet that morning after giving it to her and she spent the remainder of the day under a vets watch, and that left me with a nice vet bill. I stuggle paying for things like this, cats aren't people and to spend money on having an iv, pain killer, etc given is hard for me to decide to do. My eldest daughter was so distraught over this and knowing how messed up she had been from loosing our dog Sadie 3 years ago, I did what I needed to for her. That evening when we brought her home, she wasn't fully recovered but was acting so much more like herself I saw my daughters face completely change, it was that realization that made every penny I spent worth it. Then we headed into the weekend.

Saturday while I was in Arizona, I get a call. Mom, I am going to the vet with Cleo. This was the first time my ex had allowed the kids to bring the puppy over to his home. I was tickled at the thought of not having to pay a boarding fee for her. Something took place with my ex's son and he broke the dogs leg. She now walks around with a purple cast on it. I am grateful that my ex has taken his share of the responsibility for both of these instances. I think it shows a huge growth in how we can deal with each other, but that was instance or trial number 2. Puppies are only puppies for such a short time, so even though it will only be 2 weeks or so she has to wear this, it still makes me sad. And that leaves me wondering.....trial number 3?

Yesterday while driving the car stalled. So something else is up with it. Im not sure if this is trial number 3. Seems almost to easy, but if thats the case Ill take it. That or Im just getting use to having to face new and difficult trials each and every day.