As I mentioned in my last post, we have been super busy. I thought I would use a post to catch up on what we have been up to lately. As I mentioned, Luke and Abbey just finished AWANAS, and we just finished BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) as well. We have only lived in our home for a couple of months, so we have been slowly moving in, organizing, decorating, and remodeling. Our house actually included a guest house/pool house, which is really wonderful. But, it appeared to have not been touched since the 80's (as far as flooring, lighting, wall colors, etc. goes). So, we spent a lot of time these past couple of months remodeling it. We replaced the vinyl floors with mostly wood laminate, tile in the kitchenette and bath and carpet in the bedrooms. We also brightened it up by painting all the woodwork white, we removed the popcorn ceilings and we painted the walls a nice neutral light color. Want to see a couple of before and after pics?
Main room in the guest house--a before pic from the original house listing
After
another after picture
the biggest bedroom before
Before picture, looking into the kitchenette and bathroom area.
We still want to eventually replace the countertops, sinks and faucets. But, a fresh coat of paint and new flooring make a huge difference!
There are two upstairs loft bedrooms which we also painted and replaced the flooring, light fixtures and door hardware.
We painted black the stairway rails that were originally beige and the flooring installer did a great job replacing the old carpeted steps with stained wood.
One of the loft bedrooms before the remodel.
Here is one of the loft bedrooms after the remodel.
Outside of the pool house/guest house
We still need to replace some of the windows and window coverings, but we decided to wait a little while, since the renovations we have already done cost plenty! Plus, we just need a break to enjoy it for a little while!
And, we got the house ready just in time! 15 of my family members from Oklahoma came to visit us last weekend. On Memorial day, just a few days before they arrived though, we had the craziest rainstorm I have ever seen. It was a night that we were expecting friends over to celebrate the Holiday with some fellowship together. But instead of fellowship with our friends, we watched rivers (literally rivers) flowing from our home's front yard all the way down the back of our property. Never in my life have I witnessed rain coming down so hard and for such a great length of time. The whole city was flooded. It was the first time I have heard the "flood emergency" warning signal (usually I just hear the flood watch or the flood warning signals). It was so bad that there was a raging river that went through the black mulch we threw down a few days before around our backyard trees and picnic table, and the river spilled out right into our pool. So, when the rain was all finished, we had a black (I'm not kidding) pool! The pool was full of dirt and mulch. So, I had just 3 days to get the pool back into working order before all my family arrived. After a TON of hard work (including tons of vacuuming, tedious instructions for when to do which step) and lots of chemicals I finally got it looking normal again. Oh--we also had a lot of flooding into our front formal dining and living room, which warped our gorgeous hardwood floors. So sad! But, I know a lot of people who lost much more, so I really cannot complain. On Thursday night, my family began arriving. My brother Jason, and his family were the last to arrive around 12:45am. Then, at 1:30am, we lost power due to another crazy storm that blew through the area with over 60 mph straight line winds. It was a rough night--most of us getting little to no sleep. And, when we awoke, we realized a tornado must have come down our street. Every home on our side of the street suffered some big tree damage. These were not weak trees--these are huge, old live oaks. We lost enough limbs out of our large live oaks to create a new tree! The power didn't come on for 12 hours later--so we just stayed away from the house until then. We have a well which provides all our water and that runs on electricity. So, no well meant no water and no flushing toilets. That's not the most ideal time for that to happen when you have 15 guests in your home. But, it didn't get us down. In fact, when we came back from doing some fun things away from the home, the power was on and the weather was just perfect for swimming. So we did that. And, we did a LOT of it. We all had a blast and enjoyed the rest of the weekend!
Here are some of the photos of just some of the fun we had. I didn't get the camera out much--we were having too much fun!
There were pool races.
Abbey chatting with cousin, Lilly.
our sweet nephew sawyer, enjoying some relaxing time poolside.
Our sweet niece, Natalie.
Abbey was pretty much attached to cousin, Kaylee the entire time! :-)
And while the little kids were all enjoying some pool fun, even the "big kids" were having some pool fun. My brothers, brother in law and hubby, Drew, practiced many times to get the following ball throw trick down. It just wouldn't be right if I didn't include a video of it in this post--ha!
We hung out most of the time at our house. Here's a photo we took on the bridge behind our house right before taking a little hike:
It looks like Natalie and Abbey were less than thrilled with the photo op!
We get to see all these wonderful people again really soon when we travel to Oklahoma for my cousin's wedding. I'm so glad we get to all hang out more frequently than usual over the next couple months. My mom's health is really deteriorating quickly now. She was diagnosed with something called Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease (CDJ) earlier this year. Although, we are actually awaiting confirmation on the diagnosis from the experts on the disease out of California. We are all praying it isn't that, but rather that it would be something treatable. My mother can no longer care for herself. She can't speak well or form thoughts. When she does speak, it usually doesn't make sense. She has a lot of difficulty walking and uses a wheelchair when going out and about. It is such a strange disease. It is aggressive. I really miss my mom. I miss our daily phone calls. My heart breaks for my mom, as I am sure it is awful to watch basic skills deteriorate rapidly like that. And my heart also really breaks for my dad who has to endure the stress of taking care of my mom (showering, dressing, cleaning up messes, etc), and taking care of the home and their small business. My mom used to work 12 hour days at their business just before her sudden diagnosis. She did all the grocery shopping, and cooked all the meals. My dad is having to pick up all those responsibilities she once held while also on a chemotherapy drug that makes him feel ill every day. Please pray for relief for my dad (good at-home care for my mom), and that they can find a suitable buyer for their small business. Also, prayers for healing for my mom would be greatly appreciated. Thanks as always for reading and for your prayers! They really help immensely.
Anyway, that's what we have been up to lately. More posts to come soon!
We have been super busy these past few weeks. I figured it was about time for a blog post!
The completed "A" on his cubbies' vest stands for "All", because all have sinned. The completed "C" stands for "Christ" who died for those sins.
Luke and Abbey just recently finished another year of AWANA. Well, it was Abbey's first year and Luke's second. Abbey was in the adorable "Puggles" class for 2 and 3 year olds. Luke was a "Cubbie" again. In case you are wondering what the "AWANA" program is, here is a little blurb from their website: "Awana is a global, nonprofit ministry with fully integrated evangelism
and long-term discipleship programs for ages 2 to 18 that actively
involves parents and church leaders. Each week, more than 2 million children and
youth, 330,000 volunteers and 260 field staff take part in Awana in 30,000
churches around the world. Offered through local churches, Awana reaches kids
where they’re at and walks alongside them in their faith journey." For Luke as a Cubbie, it involved memorizing scripture each week for the past two years. I love that it requires a lot of involvement from the parents, which means that I am reminded of the awesome gospel truths as well throughout the year. The kids also do activities during the week at home in preparation for the weekly AWANA club meetings.
I am so proud of Luke these past couple of years. In the past 2 years as a "cubbies" he has recited 85 verses at club, memorizing 49 unique verses. He is so serious every week about making sure he has his verse memorized. This makes momma happy, as I know that the verses that I memorized when I was 3 and 4 are still hidden in my heart. In fact, those first verses taught are the ones that come most frequently to mind. Here is a fun throwback video clip of my brothers and I when we were little, reciting verses we had memorized. My brothers were 11 months younger than me--I'm not exactly sure how old we were in this clip. I would guess we were around 2 and 3 or 3 and 4. My sister was probably in my mom's belly, just born or a little baby and I am 3.5 years older than her. My siblings and I were very close in age and played together a lot. I am pretty sure we developed our own language. At least our parents could understand us! We also had very thick Texas accents! Ha!
Also--I love the "ever Latin life" (instead of everlasting life) for John 3:16 in my rendition! And of course, we have to debate the actual verse numbers--so competitive even with Bible verse reciting! And then there is Jeremy pestering Jason just like he still does. That video is just the best!
Flash forward about 34 years or so and here is a picture of Luke and Abbey, who just finished another year of AWANA:
Here is Abbey in her Puggles shirt and Luke with his fully completed Cubbies vest. He received an "emblem" for each completed milestone--which includes several weeks of verse and Bible truth memorization, and activities for each emblem.
And, here is Abbey....being "Abbey". And making Luke laugh, as usual.
In case you are interested here are a couple of little videos from their awards ceremony. I love how Abbey seems to be really feeling the beat in that Puggles song--ha!
Drew and I did something last weekend that we have never done before: we competed in the Spartan Sprint Race. We have been participating regularly in boot camps through Camp Gladiator since last September. When they offered an extremely discounted opportunity to participate in the Spartan race, we jumped at the opportunity. We have been looking forward to the race for the past few months and last weekend, the time finally arrived to participate. We were so thankful for Drew's parents ,who came up for the weekend and watched the kids while we raced. Of course, the kids were super excited to get to spend some time with Mimi and Papa as well! This gave us the best. date. ever! We had an hour drive to get to the race, about 30-minutes to an hour to get through parking, get shuttled to the course and then go through registration, etc. Then, we got to hang out the entire race (1.5-2 hrs), and another 1.5 hours to get back to our car. Then, another hour drive home. And, it was all definitely quality time spent together!
On the way to the race!
What is the Spartan Race you may ask? When we signed up for the race, which is actually held all over the world, several months ago, we were under the impression the race would be about 3.5 miles long and include 15+ crazy obstacles. But, a few days before the race, we received an email with our heat time, as well as information about the course. The information indicated the course was actually over 5 miles long and included 20-25 obstacles. Just a couple miles extra and about 10 more obstacles--no big deal, right? The run was no joke. The obstacles were no joke. This was a crazy hard course. But, I had a blast!!!! If you want to see what some of the course obstacles looked like, here is a video I found from other race participants on youtube of our actual race course. They included most of the obstacles but didn't really show the running parts (that may be a boring 2 hours if they had):
Running: The running was never on a straight, simple path. The course path was rocky, wet, went right through full creeks, super hilly but so much fun. This is the kind of running I enjoy--it feels so much more like hiking and there was so much to look at along the way. Running in shoes and socks that are soaking wet and had tiny rocks in them from the creeks you ran through though is not ideal. After one obstacle where we carried heavy sandbags through a long path through the creek, we had so many tiny rocks in our socks and shoes that we (and many others) ended up having to take off our shoes to dump out the tiny rocks. Drew and I weren't worried about our times, as we weren't looking to win this race. So, we decided that it was worth extra time to prevent blisters. The course was absolutely beautiful. We saw at least 30 different species of wildflowers. The weather was perfect, and ended up being overcast almost the entire race for us.
Obstacles:
This was the part I was most excited about. And most were so much fun. Drew and I were both surprised that on the obstacles where we had to climb up 30 feet or so we were both pretty scared going over the top to the other side. I think we both realized that one slip of the foot and we could literally fall to our death. We encouraged each other and got through those parts. I surprised myself at being successful on several of the obstacles that I thought I would likely fail. And, if you do fail an obstacle, you have to do 30 burpees (which is also no joke). Poor Drew failed 3 in a row and had to do 90 total burpees. I had to do 60 in a row, and then I did 10 for Drew on the 3rd one he failed that I surprisingly completed. My 3rd failure of an obstacle came later (and he was successful at that one), so my burpees got broken up a little bit. The hardest part of the course was the final mile and a half. I am pretty certain they stacked up all the hardest obstacles there together--after you have already run 4 miles and are all wet, bruised up and scraped. Another of the obstacles I was afraid of was one where you had to climb up to a huge platform and grab onto a rope above a knotted section. You had to grab on there, because you then used the rope to swing over a large pool of water many feet down below. If you grabbed below the knot, you would certainly crash into the water. Drew went first--he crashed about 2/3 of the way across and it looked a bit painful. People were crashing into that water left and right and moaning afterwards. I didn't want to get an injury! Drew was coaching me, "you can do it Heather" he kept saying. But, I couldn't reach that knot. It was way too high and far out for me to reach. The only way to reach it was to jump and hope I had a good grip. Otherwise, it would be a very hard fall (maybe not even into the water), and would definitely result in injury. I finally decided to just jump for it. By the grace of God, I jumped, grabbed the rope in the right place, held on the whole time and made it to the other side without even touching the water. That was totally God's protection, folks, because I foresaw some pretty bad stuff happening there. Thank you Lord! That was one where I thought I would definitely be doing burpees due to failing. In fact, I told Drew before even attempting it, I think it may be better just to do the burpees. But, he encouraged me. I am so glad I faced that terrifying situation and just did it.
enjoying our "date"
lots of quality time together. :-)
rolling, rolling, rolling! This was one of the easiest ways to get through the barbed wire. Except there were many rocks sticking up from the ground..ouch!
And then, in order to complete the race, you have to jump into a huge pool of muddy water. In order to get beyond a tall wall that is in the middle of the muddy water, you have to dive under the wall. That was definitely the nastiest part. After that, all that was left was a quick jump over fire into another huge pool of muddy water. Then, there was the finish line. Volunteers were there to put medals around our necks. I was thinking, "please don't put that around my muddy neck!" They did though, and even though I quickly removed it, it is still stained. But, I guess it added a little additional character and a great reminder about the course!
Drew after going under the wall.
This picture cracks me up. We were jumping over the fire into the muddy pool of water. our faces though.
After the race, Drew and I picked up our finisher shirts and then grabbed our bag of clean clothes and began looking for the showers. We finally found a row of hoses with spray guns attached---these were the "showers." You just grab a hose and spray yourself down as good as you can. The water was ice cold. Then, you make your way over to either the men's or women's changing tent. This is pretty much a big open area within an enclosed tent (with the sides flapping open to the public). Each of us women were inside trying to peel off the wet spandex as discretely as possible. I imagined myself getting stuck trying to remove my tight sports bra with prosthetic breasts attached inside and needing assistance. I imagined someone trying to help me after seeing me struggle for a bit by pulling the sports bra over my head and then realizing "Oh my goodness, your boobs are coming off." After thinking through all that, I decided to dry my sports bra off the best I could, and just leave it on, putting a clean shirt on top. An hour and a half later when we finally found our car (funny story), I would more discretely remove my bra and prosthetic breasts. Oh, the life of a breast cancer survivor who had failed reconstruction.
At the victory wall right after finishing the race...before the "showers" of course!
That was definitely the hardest workout I have ever done. Now, you may ask, "why in the world would someone sign up and pay money to do such a thing." Honestly, I asked myself that around mile 2, but the thought quickly went away. Then, I asked it again around mile 4.5. But, then once you complete the race, it feels like such a huge accomplishment. I am so thankful to be alive. I am also so thankful God has given my body the ability to do such things. My body has been through so much over the past few years, so it definitely was a big milestone for me. Drew asked me in the car on the way home if I was ready to do it again next year. When he asked me, as I sat there with a tired body I thought "I can't imagine that." But, then about 10 minutes later, I got really excited about the next race! I equate it to having a baby. Right after you deliver a baby, if someone were to ask if you were excited to do it all over again, your answer may not always be "yes". But, soon, your body forgets about the pain and lack of sleep, etc., and you are excited to do it all over again. I am so glad the Lord created us to easily forget physically painful events, so that we can move forward and go through them again. Otherwise, our world would look much different, ha!
I will finish with an explanation of the title of this post. When we were getting ready to race, the announcer gave us some motivational words. When he said certain things, the race participants responded with "Aroo Aroo!" I had no idea what I was doing, but I said it anyway. I had to look it up later. Apparently, "Aroo" is the Spartan's response to their king's call for strength. Thank you Lord for the strength to complete such a fun race!
And the after photo. Drew said I looked a bit like a Zombie! I certainly did. Drew's hair suffered a bit as well. :-)
I guess this post could be my second post in the series, "My Favorite Spaces," because I can tell there will be many fun memories created in our pool. When we purchased our home, honestly, the thing I was least excited about was the pool that came with it. I think it was because the fun and excitement of it was overshadowed by the safety concerns and the upkeep of it. However, I am learning that so far, it really hasn't been too difficult to take care of. Also, I have made it a mission to stress to the kids how important it is not to ever go near the pool unless an adult (mom or dad) is with them. And then, they need to wear a floatation device until they know how to swim! I feel like they understand now how important it is to adhere to those rules, but I am REALLY looking forward to them getting swim lessons!
We moved into our home in mid-March and we have been taking care of the pool since then, excited for each day that we got closer to pool season. Well, pool season is now here in central Texas and we officially opened our pool a week ago or so. We have had a lot of rain since we opened our pool, and the water temperature hasn't quite gotten up to the point where you can just jump in and not get hit with the shocking effects of the cold. So, this was only our second time swimming in it. You have to put your feet in....then gradually go down the steps and let your body adjust to the temperature. Drew decided to push me in on Saturday to give me a quick introduction to the cold temperature. Then, he pushed Luke in (while he had a floatation device on). So, of course Luke and I teamed up and Luke pushed daddy in when he least expected it. Now, we were ready for some fun!
Abbey was pretty brave adjusting to the cold temperature. Here, she is getting her little toesies used to the water temperature.
Ready to swim.....oh, and that is a size 5 swimsuit. How is my baby wearing a size 5 already?
After getting used to the water, the kids had a blast swimming back and forth across the pool, practicing kicking their feet and paddling with their hands. They were both in floaties; but still it was great practice for understanding the science behind swimming. I love this picture of Luke in mid-air jumping from the top step.
Abbey's turn to swim to daddy.
It looks like Abbey is keeping an eye out on Luke to make sure he isn't going faster than she is....ha!
This is the face Abbey makes when we mention her "look of determination."
Fun times---and looking forward to many more fun pool days this summer.
First off, Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there! I hope it was truly a blessed day. I am so thankful for the blessings of motherhood. I know it really is a gift and a miracle and will never take it for granted. And Drew and I have some amazing role models as mothers, so our kids are also blessed with awesome grandmothers to look up to.
One of the activities I love to do with the kids is puddle jumping. Following rain showers, we love to jump in all the puddles we can find and see how big of jumps and splashes we can make. This seems to be the season for it. With all of the other things there have been to explore at our new home, we totally forgot about the fun that can be had by puddle jumping. On Friday night, after we ate dinner together as a family, we decided to take a walk in the beautiful weather to find some puddles for jumping into.
And, I grabbed the camera to document our fun...
This puddle was in our driveway. It ended up being the best one we could find. I guess we waited too long after the rain and the ground sucked up the much needed water. But, we still had plenty of fun. Here Abbey is pre-jump.
Look at that height--and why does she look so much older in this picture. Please stop growing up so quickly, Abbey!
We finally decided to venture beyond our driveway and see if there were any larger ones to jump in. This one was near the end of our driveway, but the kids are testing out the muddy-ness of it. They decided it may be a bit too muddy for early jumping.
We ended up finding a small puddle at the opposite end or our street. It was tiny, but that didn't stop the kids from seeing how large of splashes they could make.
So much higher than her jumps last year!
Luke tried to get some height.
They love their special daddy time. Both kids know in this picture that they get two whole days with daddy as the weekend is here!
headed back to our home for a little more splashing...
