MomMom is coming!!!

My mommie comes tomorrow!!!! She is staying here for 2 weeks! My dad comes next week and will stay for 1 week! I am soooooooooo excited! I probably won't be able to sleep tonight!!



I don't know what exactly we'll be doing but I'm sure it'll be fun fun fun.. I won't be journaling as regularly, so anybody who actually reads my ramblings, God bless you and I hope you have a great week!

Yay! Changes!

I really do love every season, but there is something about the cool air that starts to come at the end of September down here that just makes me feel so ALIVE. It brings renewed energy after weeks and weeks of dog hot weather. I LOVE heat, especially since we live right near the beach - there's nothing better than jumping in the ocean on a blistering hot day. But with a 1 year old who gets overheated fast... we are so glad to welcome cooler temperatures!

It is probably around 80 degrees in the sun and real breezy today and it feels GREAT. I have opened up all the windows and letting that breeze flows through is just incredible. I LOVE air conditioning, but I love fresh cool air more! The fans are going, the breeze is flowing, mommie's energy is rising, and I can FEEL the germs leaving the house!

We spent the whole morning playing outside, walking all around the yard, playing with the dump truck and it was great. I had my cup of coffee outside the screened porch watching Raymond and Lennox and I just had an... "ahhhh life is good, God is great" moment.


My personality makes me obsessive for change... and so here are a few little house decor I've put up recently that I really love:

At night, the car headlights were waking Raymond up.... so we had to put up this gorgeous red curtains. I used to have just a valance up there, but I didn't have enough money to get the double curtain rod system... so we just kept the one rod, and I put the valances as a bedskirt on the double bed in his room! It looks like a bedskirt doesn't it!? I was soo proud of myself. That's about as creative as I get... to me this was one of my best creative moments! haha. And I think the room looks so cute!

I also bought these brown baskets a long time ago but were using them somewhere else... so now I use them to separate his toys on and put on his shelf. My next "house to do" is to clean up his shelf in his closet! ahhh! The bookshelf and baskets still look pretty sloppy in this picture but that's because it was the middle of the day. We hadn't had cleanup yet! It looks real good all straightened up and put away.

This sailing thing was on top of a corner curio in my bedroom... but I think it just looks great on the wall... and matches the rest of the master bath as seen. We had our vows right there on the wall, but the frame was starting to break... so I put them in different frames and have them on our bookshelf in our room now.

And yes that's Lennox, the dog, drinking out of his dog bowl right there. Didn't feel like waiting for him to be done so I could take a picture!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE change! Actually I CRAVE it quite often. That's just part of ME!

Soap Opera at Lake Shawnee

I mentioned on my post about growing up at little Lake Shawnee that soon they were filming the Guiding Light, and that took place yesterday.



http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070913/COMMUNITIES21/709130358



There's the first article I found about it. They spelled my dad's name wrong though, it's RON Wolfe haha. Even though I don't watch soap operas I will have to tape it for the 2 weeks these scenes will be on!

This picture that was in the paper is actually of our row boat! That little red boat is ours... how funny! They used it for the day. And the club got paid pretty well for the shoot. One of the lifeguards I trained growing up actually got to lifeguard at the shoot and made a couple hundred bucks for the day.

My dad couldn't believe how LONG it took to film such short scenes. It took the ENTIRE day and will probably boil down to 30 minutes total shown over 2 weeks of show. And that whole day process cost the show over $100,000 just for these scenes. That is crazy to me how much money flows through our entertainment industry. And this is just one production of hundreds that are being made right now. I would have liked to see how the whole process works.

So there you go, my little Lake Shawnee is still New Jersey's best kept secret... but now just a few more people know about it! :)

Crazy Day

I just had to write what a crazy day Monday was...

It actually started Sunday when Brandon used the wrong contact lens cleaner in his case. There are some contact lense solutions you use in this special case with this neutralizing tablet to disinfect and clean your lenses. We only have that solution in the house because it cleans up blood really well and my doggie, Lennox has prostate problems so drops blood unexpectedly (sorry I know it's gross) and it's not the easiest thing to clean off carpet, walls, hardwoods, fabric, etc. So anyway, that's why we have it. Well Brandon ran out of his regular contact lens solution so used this other kind I have. He soaked it over night and put his contact in and then I heard the bloody murder screams from rooms away! I knew that for my mild tempered phlegmatic husband to be screaming like this something was REALLY wrong. He ended up getting a really nasty chemical burn in his eye.

Sooo all day Sunday I had to deal with a teething baby (or maybe it's a cold or something that just hasn’t gone away for a week and a half) and Brandon who was even more sad acting than Raymond. So that was Sunday… just trying to keep up with taking care of my 3 kids (son Raymond, husband Brandon, dog Lennox).

Monday morning I woke up early to cook Raymond breakfast… I had to get Lennox to the vet before 9 so I ended up waking up Raymond early so we could eat fast so we could drop Lennox off to get neutered. Neutering we hope will solve his prostate problems. Dropping Lennox off took at least 20 minutes to fill out all the paperwork and to try to find a way to buy some time for us to find this 'extra' $700 to pay for neutering... to follow the $300 vet bill we had the month before.. and the $250 the month before that (for his prostate problems).

I then drove all the way back to Leland, a 30 minute drive back, and picked up Brandon so he could go to the eye doctor. While he was seeing the doctor, Raymond and I just walked around and did anything we could to keep him busy in the waiting room. Then I drove the boys back home and got everybody settled for a nap. I think we all ate lunch at some point, but I can't remember when or what it was. Then Brandon was supposed to have a dentist appointment at noon, but with his eye emergency all he wanted to do was go to bed, so we just switched appointments, I went to his and he will go to mine next month.

(With all these appointments we've had in the past 3 months, I am so thankful for our insurance. Even with the great insurance coverage we have,..... with all our copays on top of all Lennox's needs, I just don't know how we make ends meet. Somehow the money is always there though... and I give 100% credit to God for that. He always provides and protects us.)

The dentist told me I have 2 cavities! My first 2 EVER!!! So........since I've had Raymond, my body has changed a LOT! Pregnancy changed my mouth a lot - especially my gums, making them sooo sensitive. My eyes have gotten so bad (probably from working at the call center part time though) so now I need glasses for distance (first time ever!) and now this..my first 2 cavities. Am I just getting old or what!?!? I couldn't believe what one baby could do to me!! haha and then people ask why I'm not planning on having another any time soon! Ha! :) Look at what one has done to me in all areas of my life haha... and really, some days I feel like I already have 3 kids!

I don't know if God has more babies in store for us or not..... I'll let Him decide that, just like He decided it was time for us to have Raymond when we were least expecting him!

So anyway, I got back from the dentist, showered extremely fast and headed off to work leaving the babysitter to take care of the 2 babies (Raymond and Brandon). Then after work, baby # 3 had to be picked up from the vet from being neutered. And so since Monday I’ve just been trying to help everybody heal and get back to normal. I have to keep Raymond separate from Lennox which both of them hate... and Lennox won't stop messing with his wounds so now I had to get him one of those cone head things. The poor thing. As if he didn't hate me enough for removing his doghood.

WOW things have changed since I met Brandon in 2001! Who would have thought this is what my life would look like now...... but I wouldn't change a thing. :) God knows best

Visit back to my fairy tale childhood

I just wrote an entry about my visit back "home" to New Jersey where I grew up. I finally uploaded my pictures and so here they are. What a fairy tale I grew up in. In a small lake community, about 500 houses, around 900 acres in a private lake setting, where we could ice skate in the winter right off the backyard; Swim, fish and go on the boats in the summer and ride bikes all around the lake, with our parents never having to worry. We had friends all over the place where we could meet up with at the parks or at each other houses.. and we just had to be home by dark!

The lake has 3 beaches, 2 which people can swim at, and lots of little coves and beautiful peaceful settings around the lake. I never realized how full of color it was until I went home this past visit. During the winter it's soo COLD and GRAY and boring looking there (except around the holidays) but the summer and fall it's just GORGEOUS. I'm so used to the palm trees and sand and flatness around here on the coast so I had brand new eyes when I went back this time. I am soo blessed to have grown up in such a beautiful place. I always felt secure and nurtured there, surrounded by lots of people who knew me and stopped me to chat. My own little glimpse of mayberry.