Fun day at York's Wild Kingdom, ME

There were 6 kids and 4 adults yesterday. We had a lot of fun and the day was very long. We got to Yorks about 11:30am and we stayed until nearly closing, around 5:30pm. It was me and son and daughter, karolyn and her three kids (Patrick, Victoria and Charlie), Julie and Jacob and Erica. We first went to the kids area and let the kids play on the rides and such. The haunted house was hilarious as at the end there is a buzzer that goes off when you step n the floor and when the buzzer went off son and Patrick started to scream a shrill scream and would not get off the tiles that were making the noise. We stood there for about 30 seconds while the boys screamed. There was also a fun House that was wild and Julie and I brought all the kids through with us. We had to carry some of the kids through as they were scared of the moving floors. I would go ahead while Julie would pass the kids one by one over to me. son was Mr. Brave and ran through it all by himself a few times. He also enjoyed the Haunted house a lot too and went through that a few times.

We went to the zoo last and had a lot of fun with the deer. They were so pretty and very friendly. They were stealing the food right from the food dispensers before we could even feed it to them. I touched one of the antlers of the deer (before we saw the sign that said not to do that) and when I turned around the deer nudged me with his antler and then another deer came by and nudged me again. It was funny. They did not want me touching their antlers. The antlers were soft and fuzzy and looked kind of pink. I had no idea how sensitive they were to the deer.

Julie and I went on the paddle boats with son and daughter and cousin. We had fun but got really wet. Julie and I got a defective boat that would not do anything but go in circles. We did eventually get the boat to paddle down the small pond but it was hard and we kept running into ducks. It made us laugh so hard. The kids officially think their parents are out of their minds.

We left York's and went to Burwick,ME and had Pizza at a pizza house. We then headed to Karolyns House in Somersworth, NH. We stayed until about 8:45pm while the kids played the adults talked and looked at scrapbooks. We got home around 10:00pm and put the kids to bed. The kids all slept in until 8:30am this morning. We are all sore and tired but it was really fun.
here is a link to the pictures of the day. Ok, hopefull I did this right and you will see the pictures on picasa. :)

Spiritual warfare is going strong!

Boy, lots of things to tell. Yesterday with my sister, we had a blowout on the highway at high speeds and a lot of traffic. God was there and more on that later.

I have a heavy burden on my heart now for my friend Cindy Gille. She is saved and she and her husband took me in for awhile after Word of Life Bible college and they became family to me. Cindy's mom and dad took me in when I was 18 and gave me a home where I got saved and finished school. I learned a lot of God's love living there. My burden if for prayer for Cindy and Paul Gille. Ciindy has had cancer on and off continually for the past few years and yesterday my grandparents talked to Cindy's mom and dad and they said to just pray for Cindy to be able to keep up her spirits for as long as she can hold out. The prognosis is bleak but only for her presence here on earth. She will be in heaven, sooner than expected, but she will be free of the cancer. She wants to keep up a good testimony and she still wants to lead a woman's ministry in her church and Paul still leads the teen groups for the Word of Life events in his area. I see that they have not updated their website recently. But you can check out who they are at it. Cindy is strong and I know that with the help of prayer, she will keep a good testimony for as long as the Lord allows her to be here on earth.

FREE Stuff..

We had the yard sale today at Bruce and Steph's. It went well at the beginning. People were flocking to it rather quickly. We had priced things ridiculously low , for example a dresser went for $5.00 and a double stroller for $1.00. We were not out to make money, just get rid of things we do not want to take to Florida with us. Well, after about three hours of basking in the heat and humidity I got up to take a break and Bruce asked me to go to Dunkin doughnuts for ice coffee. I drove off and when I arrived back there were a ton of people grabbing up stuff at the yard sale. My husband took over the reins when I went for ice coffee and I guess he lost patience as I saw he made a huge sign that read "FREE STUFF!!" and put it right out front so everyone from the street could see it. We got rid of everything we had. It was nice not to bring anything home with us. I was a bit upset though about one thing. I had marked a few AVON sun blocks at the AVON price and was trying to sell them as a customer of mine had changed her mind about buying them. So, instead of sending it back to AVON I thought I would try to sell it. Well, when I had gone to get the coffee's, I thought I would hide those AVON products and sell them when I got back. My son had thought I forgot to put them out on the tables and got them from my hiding place and set them out. People thought they were FREE as they saw the "FREE STUFF" sign and snatched up six brand new bottles of AVON sunblock and two bottles of new Bug Guard plus. Eek!!! I was a bit upset by this but oh well, C'est la vie, right?

I am excited though, to hear that our best friends are moving in just down the road from us!! My brother and sister-in-law are selling thier house to our good friends (my SIL's, sister and family). I am so thrilled! It will make bussing the kids to and from school this year a bit easier too. Since we live about 45 minutes from the Christian school they will attend, my friend will take son and her kids to school in the morning and I will pick up son and one of her sons who is in son's class, at 11:00am. This way my friend will not have to drive back and forth to Concord 3 times a day and I will not have to do it 2 times in only 3 hours. Things always work out. You know, of course, I will be taking Caleb to school, the first couple times. After all, it is my first child on his first day of school. I can't wait to take pictures and see him go to his class that first day. I was told they have a chapel service the first day, first thing. That will be neat to attend. (parents can attend this) daughter will be next year and it will break my heart to not have her home all day. But, I may not have to go through all that if the Christian school in Florida is not set up by the time we move there. I may have to home school daughter her first year. We'll see.

On your mark, get set....GO!

I am so sad. I just received my race registration form in the mail for the CIGNA healthcare race in Manchester and I am not able to do it this year. Bummer! I had so much fun in last years race and my goal this year was to beat my time from last year. ....Oh well. I will just keep swimming at the gym until my back is healed and maybe someday I will get the go-ahead from the doctors to be able to race again. If you have never run a race before (or even walked one) then you have no idea the thrill you are missing out on. It is such a good feeling. Even if you do not win the feeling of accomplishment is great. It is all for a good cause as well.

I have a few things to do today, one of them including picking up the new Stampin' Up! Catalog from my demonstrator today if she is not on vacation. I love to look through the catalog and see all the different examples of stamping projects I can do. I also have to clean the house and prepare for my sister to come on Sunday. We are having a yard sale at our friends house in Concord tomorrow and so we are going through all the stuff we do not want to lug to FL with us and hoping it will sell in the sale. If not, then we will give it all away to charity or husband will have fun burning it in the back yard. Here is a picture of husband burning a chair we hated. He did this last winter. The chair was old and some friends sold it to us for $50.00. It was not worth $1.00 but we bought it anyway as husband wanted a chair. That thing was a mess. When husband lit it, it became ball of fire in seconds. Good thing a spark was not close by when someone was sitting in that thing. Sheesh!

Fun day at Karolyn's

The kids and I hopped into the van and drove to Somersworth, NH and spent the day with Karolyn and her kids. The kids had pizza and played and watched movies together. daughter and Patrick liked sitting together all snuggled, while watching a movie. It was cute.

Karolyn taught me a few things I could do with my blog and as soon as Metrocast fixes their "technical difficulties" then I will be able to access my webspace and have pictures of the kids on this blog for you to see.

Karolyn and I started to do some rubber stamping but of course when you have five kids there will always be things to do. Then Jay and Kathy and timothy stopped by and of course we were thrilled to see them so we stopped everything to visit as their stay was very short. I will add a picture of them too when I can. They live in Jacksonville, FL, now so we do not see them often anymore. :(

It was fun and I hope we can do it again real soon. (hint, hint, Karolyn if you are reading this, *smile*Thursday, don't forget!)

here is a neat trick Karolyn taught me. Click HERE to see a really neat place I have enjoyed visiting since I was a kid.

Ho Hum..

today seems to be a ho hum kind of day. I am doing what I can and cleaning the house and trying to prepare for my sister to visit from Connecticut. I want to have a birthday party for her as well. Her birthday is July 20th. I think that will be fun as I have not had or been to a party for her in many years. She will also come to church with me and I am very excited about that. I pray that she will accept the Lord as her saviour.

I have errands to do today and at some point I will get to them.

What will I make the kids for lunch? Hmmm... Shall I take them out for lunch? I am not sure. I better decide fast as lunch is quickly approaching. Maybe I will pack a lunch and we can eat it at the park! Hey, that is a good idea. They would love that.

nothing more to say for now.

...

ugh, my back!

Ok here is the gist of what is going on here. I went in for the scary MRI. I am extremely claustrophobic and I did panic but I was able to calm down a bit and I tried so hard to think about not being in the "coffin". I got through it and the results have come in. I have herniated discs in the lower spines of my thoracic region and all of my lumbar region and S1 of the sacral region. "Gee Wally, how did that happen?" EEK! No wonder I am in so much pain! So discs T11, and T12 and L1-L5 and S1 are all messed up. I have a very large herination on the right side in L1 (I could have told the doctors that as that is where most of the pain is besides my right leg pain) My entire right leg goes numb and has a burning sensation all the time when even the slightest amount of pressure is applied to it.
My doctor has recommended I see a doctor at Concord Hospital and I found out that orthopedist has a surgery based practice! I am not thrilled about that. #1 back surgery always poses the risk of becoming paralyzed when you come out of anesthesia. #2 my husband and I do not have insurance so we are not sure where the money will come from. The bill, we were told could run anywhere from $20,000.00 -$50,000.00! Yikes!
Today I woke up with no feeling at all in my right foot and leg. All I feel is a cool sensation but nothing else. It is kinda of weird and scary too. I have lost patellar reflexes in my right leg already and I get stabbing pains in my right knee whenever I go upstairs and my knee gives out on me. I need to hang on to the railing whenever I go up the stairs now. Sheesh I need a cane I guess. :) My husband was joking the other day and said I should apply for a handicapped sign for the van. I asked someone at my docs office and I actually may qualify for on. Too funny. I am only 32! I have a friend in FL who has Lupus and she has one for her SUV. She hangs it from the mirror whenever she parks the vehicle and then takes it down when she drives. If I were to get one, that is what I will get.
I got a membership at the local health club so I could go swimming everyday I can. My doctor said I need a very low to no impact exercise if I want to exercise which, of course, she highly recommends. I am to do very little house work and no lifting at all. This is hard as I have 2 preschoolers.
We are keeping our faith in God to provide for us and get us through this. God has helped me to deal with everyday life so far. I am on pain killers everyday and I am still able to function and I am not too tired. God is good and we know His plans are always good so we will have to be patient and wait to see what He has in store for us.
thanks for being patient with my rambling, but hey, it is my blog and I will ramble if I want to. :)

We broke down and got one!

Well, to start I will say that after plopping down over $1000.00 on our minivan again, the other day, we decided to get a new mode of transportation. We found a Toyota Camry that looked good on the internet so we drove down to test drive it. We had decided to get a car verses a new minivan as the minivan we wanted would be out of our price range as we did not want to go into debt to pay for it. We had the cash and owned our current van so we wanted to buy the car outright.
We test drove the '98 Camry and I found it to be way too small for me. I have very long legs (nearly 6 feet tall!) and I currently have a severe back problem ( more on that later but I found out I have 5 herniated discs in my back. No wonder I am in so much pain!)I also knew I would miss the room of a minivan. So after we test drove it I told my husband that we could just keep the current van until the transmission drops, which sounded like it would very soon. Hey, it has 96,000 miles on it! And, it is a Ford. My husband told the sales guy that we were not going to take the Camry and as we were about to leave the guy said he had a couple Toyota Sienna's that we could test drive. My husband and I already talked about that and we decided that maybe later but NoT now. TO my surprise, my husband said ok to test driving on and we did. We both loved it and we were able to get a great deal and pay for it in CASH! Yup, we paid in cash. We did not go into debt over a Toyota Sienna! It has a few amenities and it is not all souped up but we like it. It is a nice color too. It is a dark blue with a dark grey panel along the bottom of the van. We both like that it has a CD player and a tape player. My last van only had a tape player and we had listened to all the Adventures in Odyssey tape a dozen times. I like that I can listen to the Anne of Green Gables CD with the kids, in the new van.
Now we only own Toyota's! We love the company as every Toyota we have ever owned we have loved and not had a problem. Why we ever got anything else is beyond me. We thought we could get a different model and hope it was as good but a cheaper price and we paid the price!
Anyway, more on the back issues later.