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.

Uninhibited

Something on my mind a lot recently....

WHEN do we lose our unhibited youthfulness? Is it those horrible awkward teenage years when all of a sudden anything fun is just not "cool"!? I don't know! WHY do the majority of people lose it? The Bible says that when we are adults, we are supposed to act like adults - but I believe that we have changed what it means to be an adult. Does being an adult mean you always have to be insecure and care what others are thinking? Does it mean you can't be involved in something over the age of 18 unless you are a professional? I don't think so!


It is okay for a 5 or 10 year old to dance on the dance floor at a wedding by themself - but you'd rarely EVER see a 20, 30 or 40 or even 50 year old like that (unless you assume they are extremely intoxicated) ---- or unless they have been able to FREE themselves from being a slave of their own mind - which is just uncommon.

And yet you would see 70, 80, and 90 years old out there regularly and think nothing of it! That is SO intriguing to me!!!! Why can't other people see this!? We are stolen of our joy but who is stealing it!?!? I have so much respect for the elderly and I really connect with them - because they live unhibited lives like children. They have realized that what society says really doesn't matter anyway.

Brandon and I are always the first to eat at the weddings so we can be the first on the dance floor. It's always the two of us and the kids on the dance floor for quite a while - nobody else joins in until much later in the night. It shouldn't be this way!

"Inhibited" according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: an inner impediment to free activity, expression, or functioning: as a) a mental process imposing restraint upon behavior or another mental process (as a desire)

We are a SLAVE to our own mentality! It's a mental thing. All that has to change is your OWN mindset!!! So fight that mentality. Why do we have to stop doing all the things that are joyful and just plain FUN because we're not great at them. Society tells us that it would be okay for an adult to be dancing in front of everybody by themselves IF they were a good, professional dancer but otherwise it's not okay. And this isn't true in all cultures! It seems to be an American mentality.

Well I am fighting that mentality.... and at Jim & Jennifer's wedding tomorrow -- you better believe we'll be the first ones on the dance floor to get the party started! :)

There's no place like "home"

We just got back (yesterday) from a trip to New Jersey to see my side of the family. Although my home now is wherever Brandon (and now Raymond) are - I'll always call Lake Shawnee in New Jersey where I grew up "home" too. My hometown. It was sooo great to be back.

We flew up on Friday - the flight was pretty horrible because Raymond's teeth/ears were hurting him and all my medicine for him was in the packed bag not the carry on - because they were 4 oz. container instead of 3 oz. container..... So he was miserable - which in turn made me and the poor people squished next to us miserable. It was just so hot - those were the hottest days of the summer in New Jersey too - not just in North Carolina where we left from. It was extremely crowded on the flight which I'm not used to. Once we finally did land (it's only an hour flight thank God for that!) we waited over :40 for somebody from the Newark Airport to come and open the gate. What is WITH Newark Airport anyway!? GEESH. They are the hub for continental - so whenever it's bad weather or some air traffic control person sneezes the wrong way - there's a delay that affects every flight in the whole country. haha. But we made it!! I was soo happy to see MomMOm waiting for us!! We drove home, picked up dinner from Frank's and went back to the house to play. Man I miss that food! They have the best pizza, garlic bread, salad, ziti, everything! I haven't found a pizza place down here at all that compares to that!

on Saturday we went to breakfast at the Diner - Papa couldn't believe how much Raymond eats! haha Then we all (except Roxie & christian since he was sick) went down to Aunt Laurie & Uncle Bill's house near six flags and had a surprise 75th Birthday party for Nana. Her birthday isn't until November -- but since it's so hard to get the family together when it's cold/possible snow/when everybody's in school - summer is the best time.

Nana has 8 kids, 22 grandkids and 11 great grandkids (plus all the spouses) and although not everybody could come - there was a good crowd so I was excited for her. I saw cousins that I hadn't seen in 5 years - some I hadn't seen in 10 and some I hadn't even met!! It was great! It was soo hot - you'd think I'd be used to it being down in North Carolina but I'm not! I'm glad they had the kiddie pool set up for the babies.

You could tell we were all from the same blood - all the little ones that were there had blond hair blue eyes!

On Sunday we just played at the house. There are so many fun toys at MomMoms. Papa took Raymond for a bike ride! We went for walks down to the beach and to the elementary school down the road. We saw swans, ducks, and of course stupid geese haha and at night we went to 2nd beach where we played at the park - on the swings and slide.

I'll have to do a post on Lake Shawnee where I grew up. But basically it's just a fairy tale. It's a small lake community - I think there are 500 - 600 houses and it's a private community with only 2 entrances and 1 exit. People can't believe that such a peaceful, quiet, small town community could exit in NorthWest New Jersey. I always appreciated the lake - but I appreciate it soo much more now that I live on the coast. I LOVED seeing the mountains/hills and seeing everything so GREEN. We have a lot of sand, palm trees and flatness -- so this was a great change of scenery. I love Lake Shawnee and I loved going home. I especially love it up there in the summer and fall - and I haven't been up there just to have fun in sooo long. It was such a great trip. I loved being able to walk around the lake and recognize so many people. I LOVED seeing old friends and friends that have known me for so long and to have people be soo excited to meet Raymond. I also came across people I was trying to avoid -- but that is the catch 22 of a small community.

Hunter came and played Sunday night while Bonesy hung up shutters for MomMom and Papa. Then on Monday we went to the beach. I LOVED watching Raymond in the water of course. and I loved being in there myself. I took some great pictures of the lake, some beautiful trees, and views.... and my memory card had an error so I can't retrive the pictures! I am sooo disappointed!! So I told MomMom she just HAS to get soem pictures for me. I miss it up there so much. It's so beautiful --- so beautiful in fact that it will be on an upcoming episode of Guiding Light real soon!!

Lisa kayak-ed over while Raymond was sleeping and was even able to spend some time with him after he woke up so that was great. It was great to see her. We will always be best buddies. We can go forever not seeing each other or even talking that much - and then we're together again and it's like nothing's changed, except we both have changed a lot. We still have a great connection -- and always will. I love how I have grown since I lived in Lake Shawnee. Going back there brings so many memories up --- and I can even feel a glimpse of what I used to be like when I lived there... and it makes me proud that I have grown so much. In so many ways I'm not the same person at all. One of the things I see a difference in myself is my patience and my acceptance of others. I just appreciate people so much more -- especially people that have been a part of my life for so long. I have learned that friends and people are going to disappoint me.... but I stll need to seek out the good in everybody. I have to just accept them for who they are, appreciate the good parts pray for the bad parts of them. I can't get frustrated over tiny things about people that bother me, that I can't control. Really, that's between them and God - and I am no better than them so any time I feel critical I'm learning to bite my tongue and just put my eyes on my own faults, God knows I have so many. I'm glad to have moved on from Lake Shawnee...and I have so much peace and just feel happy about the woman I have become -- and am still becoming.

Tuesday we spent the day at Roxie's - they have such a fun home. Beautiful spacious house, lots of land, a pool, swing set, sand pit, so many fun toys! Raymond LOVED it! He even took a real long nice nap in the afternoon and we had a great day over there. Marilyn and Nicole came over and that was just awesome! Just like Lisa - they are some of our best friends and that bond won't be broken. I was so happy to see them. Bonesy grilled out steaks for us - and Raymond ate it all up along with his watermelon, pickle, and Hunter's spaghetti. He's a great eater and sleeper - I am so blessed.

Mom had done such a great job on the house. Everything was decorated so nice and smelled just the way I remember it. Man I miss living with them. Yet I love my life now.

While I was up there, I even found some special treats .....pictures of Mom, Dad, PopPop and Grandma that I hadn't seen before. Knowing how special these people are to me and knowing how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE history and memories... you can imagine how excited I was to find these:

I love how friendly Raymond is. That makes me proud. He is so funny with people. At the airport he was just waving at every single person we passed. Which is a lot of people! I love that he thinks that everybody is family. He thinks everybody is going to come and wave and smile at him and hug or pick him up or play. We were standing near this crowd of Middle Eastern men who were being really confrontational about something and causing a scene and it was pretty intimidating to me. If I didn't have to go through the door they were near, I would have left right away - but I had to wait in line right near them.... instead of being scared of the loud noises, angry tones, or men that looked a lot different... when we got right up on them... Raymond just started talking and smiling and doing his silly little wave that I've never seen any other baby do haha I don't know where he learned that wave. And the men were shocked! It actually stopped them in their argument and they turned and were talking to him and waving and being silly.

Nothing like a baby to solve the world's problems. Why can't we all be as friendly? I continue to talk to people all the time and smile at everybody so Raymond will learn that same trait - I think it's a people skill and just a healthy habit that is a lost art. I think it's so sad. I'm not going to teach Raymond to be afraid of strangers - I'm going to teach him to smile and show love and acceptance to everybody he meets.

That was a long post -- geesh! I guess I had a lot on my mind. But the bottom line is -- we had a great trip!! I miss it already - but it sure was sooo good to come back to Lennox & Brandon. I can't even describe how excited Raymond was when he saw Brandon - it was unreal haha. He had a spaz attack haha. So cute! I wish I had the camera

When we got home to our 'real' home... we went to Andy's - Raymond waved and 'made conversation' with everybody in there. Then we went to the dollar store and everybody was allowed to pick out one treat!! We had a CSX train pass on on the way home that we had to stop for....which always excites me and we even got to see a coupole of horses walking down our street! Oh how great life is! It is filled with so much beauty and interesting things!! I love seeing things like the freight trains and cargo ships coming in to port. It's just amazing to me that there are still those things in the high tech world we're in. I love things like that... I can't even describe the word for them... old, traditional? classic? primitive? what is that word... I don't know. But whatever it is - I love it!

I love that little things like a train passing us, seeing a freight train and seeing horses can make my night --- I am so easy to please.

Life is good - God is great.