It's been over 13 months now that we've lived in our home.  Sometimes things seem like just yesterday they happened, but not moving here.  Actually it seems like we've been living here forever.  For me it was just so normal to get settled here.  I love our home!  For my husband I think it's a completely different story.

As a matter of fact I think mentally my husband is still moving to the city.  He labels himself as a country boy... Even though I wouldn't say he's from the country.  Just a small city in Northern IN.  It's been 3 years that he's been here in the "big city" and so far we haven't had many spasms about it.  I know he gets homesick often, but I also know now that he's been exposed it'll be hard to return to small city mentality.

So we've been here in our home for this time and it's interesting what you do with rooms until you can furnish them.  This house is three times bigger than our previous home and my husband will tell you that I've found plenty of things to put in our newfound space.

I finally committed to using the color scheme and decorating they way I planned before we actually moved.  Had we done this originally I wouldn't have lived so long with white walls feeling like I live in an asylum.  Dear just couldn't see how I had picked out colors and materials without living in the home yet. lol.  He didn't realize that after he talked me out of it that it would take me this long to come around again... poor soul.

Now while it's been 13 months not many of the plans have changed.  I mean I'm still w/ the original colors for most of the rooms.  The guest room is up for debate right now... and I changed colors for my office, the kitchen and the family room.  So far we've gotten 2 rooms done as planned.  The guest bedroom looks wonderful.  I still have to hang one more set of drapes, but the decorating is done.  We actually had our first guest in it a couple weeks ago.  I guess we got a thumbs up.  Put it this way, we didn't get any complaints... but the guest we had wouldn't have complained if it wasn't.  My office is almost complete.  I still have a couple pictures to hang and some plants to incorporate in, but I think it looks great!  It's sunny yellow and red, but not overpowering.  I'm loving it.

Next... the master bathroom and then the kids' rooms.  I guess I need to go ahead and finish our room too while we're in there, but nobody ever sees it but us.  Although that sounds like more reason to finish it.  So that we'll have our own sanctuary behind closed doors.

So over the next couple weeks, we'll have our paint brushes out paint our home beautiful!  God I thank you for sight... I can't imagine the world without color.

 

I hope I tell my husband this everyday, but just in case I haven't today... I love you Dear.

Momma, I love you.  Daddy, I love you too.

First, I want to thank everyone for sending the search party out for me. I appreciate your prayers as I was MIA.

Just so you know I was missing in body, but not in spirit.

Secondly, I want to thank the old management "team", my employer, and my new manager for the reason I was MIA:

The management team did a wonderful job of informing me of the projects and where I should be in the planning stages. But I had no clue that my old manager leaving me (well us... the rest of the team) would put us knee high in crap that I had no clue was going on or how to resolve. Kudos! Those actions gave me the push I needed to become something and determine what I want from my J-O-B.

My employer for keeping me gainfully employed even though I had no clue about the projects that were left in my hands. I appreciate your patience and giving me a limb to walk out on and test the waters.

And definitely my new manager.  How awesome is it to just figure things out... Because of the patience extending to me I did finally figure out what was going on and where I needed to be working on those projects.

 

I also could not have done this without my family. My husband, parents, son, and extended family who handled this like a charm.  Thanks for not letting me skip a beat, take a breather, or miss a step.  I'm sure i would have definitely gained some sanity had any of those happened. But I acknowledge your diligence and look forward to much more pressure from you all.

 

If you were not mentioned above, let me take the time now to say thank you __________. Good looking out!

 

Now that I've taken care of all the accolades I just want to say that I will be back here posting and blogging and everything else. Nothing has changed. I'll update you over the next couple of weeks on things that have happened. My lovely digital camera seems to be working fine and will be put to use as I decorate this place and drive a nail to hang my apron on.

 

And of course.  I love you MOMMA, and I love you Dad.

 

(ps. & on a serious side note... today was one of the few days my mom said she loved me. I almost couldn't believe it, but I seized the opportunity and told her back before she lauged me out of the moment.)

 

MOISTEST LEMON CAKE

1 box mosit/pudding yellow cake mix 1 small box instant lemon pudding 1/2 cup powdered milk 1/2 cup sugar 3/4 cup lemon juice 1/4 cup water 1/2 cup oil 5 large eggs Glaze: powdered sugar 2 tbsp butter, melted lemon juice Mix powdered milk with water and lemon juice. Beat in one egg at a time.  Add remaining dry ingredients and oil, and then beat entire mixture for 2 minutes. Pour into 9 X 13 pan and bake at 325 degees for 50-60 minutes. To Make Glaze: Place powdered sugar in medium mixing bowl and whisk in melted butter and lemon juice to taste and consistency. Poke holes in cake with skewer/toothpick and Drizzle glaze over cake while warm.

 Hope you enjoy the cake. Love you Mom and Dad!

Let us get one thing clear. I do love winter. Absolutely without a question in my mind. So much so that I almost don’t like summer… other than baking in the sun around the pool out back.

While winter is a joy for me, there are a few things about it that I don’t like about it.

I don’t necessarily enjoy those frigid days if there is not any snow on the ground. Nothing is worse than freezing your tail off when it doesn’t look like a winter wonderland outdoors. I mean if it is going to be cold, let’s have some snow with it. It was explained to me once that it was too cold to snow. Nonsense! Really. What is that about? Too cold? You mean to tell me it has to warm up to snow. Wow! Oxymoron if I ever heard one.

Since I am on the subject cold temperatures, another thing I don’t like is walking to the office from the garage a full 8 blocks in this weather.  By the time I get halfway to the building the lower portion of my thighs are numb to the point where they are tingling and the feel of any material rubbing against them is even more irritating. I don’t care how many layers I put on… pants, skirt, tights, under slip, etc. for whatever reason nothing protects that spot on my legs from freezing.

Winter also brings all the extra personal maintenance that I normally skip any other time of year. Lip balm: I do not like the taste of it. Do not like when crumbs from what I am eating get stuck to it then your lips feel gritty. Don’t like the fat that in order to apply more you have to clean off the previous application because of the aforementioned. Don’t like that the best lip balms cost too much for them to be lost in the bottom of my purse, pants pocket, or frozen from sitting in the console of my car. And lotion: Man do I hate putting that stuff on more than once a day. Really, isn’t once enough? After a shower is plenty, but if I want my hands to stay soft and my skin not to feel like it’s crawling then I had better keep an economy size bottle on me. My goodness!

Of course, with winter people use their ovens more for whatever reason. I mean we have central air so turning the oven on in the summer should be no different from winter, but it is. Anyway this bothers me because I usually run out of casserole meal ideas pretty quickly and since I don’t bake I still don’t get the benefit of using my oven… whatever that benefit is.

I still have a few thoughts floating around in my head about the bad part of winter. The more I think about it the more I’m wondering if I really do LIKE winter anymore…

I love you Mom, I love you Dad!

Yippee! That has been the alert sound on my corporate email for quite a while… so long that now there isn’t any excitement anymore when I hear the yippee. However, yesterday I bellowed out yippee for so many reasons that I cannot remember them all, but here are a few:

• Yippee to having the Thanksgiving gathering at our house. Cooking for long periods or for an abundance of people induces taste testing throughout the preparation. When dinnertime came, while everyone else pigged out on dinner I sipped on a soft drink with plenty of ice. I was full from all the tasting so I didn’t overstuff myself with the dinner.
• Yippee, for having a very handy man as an uncle who stayed with us during the holiday. He fixed the hot water supply to the 2^nd bathroom, he tapped and ran the water supply to the automatic ice/water dispenser on the refrigerator, he transported tables to the house for everyone to sit at, and he motivated Dear to finish picking up all the fall leaves in the front yard.
• Yippee for the Black Friday early bird specials. I almost knocked half my list this year in about 2 stores and 3 hours.
• Yippee because my husband was given an extra day off on Monday. The downside of having guests over the weekend altered our tradition of putting the tree up on Black Friday. That also delayed the decorating of the six trees and putting up the house decorations. We were able to put up our “main” Christmas tree yesterday though since he was home with me. Otherwise, we would’ve had to wait until this weekend when we plan to have a few friends over anyway.
• Yippee, for vacation that was actually vacation. I didn’t do the “ball and chain” at all on the days I scheduled off.
• Yippee, for the many blessings that is bestowed on our family. We gathered for another year to give thanks for ALL the wonderful things God has done for us. After watching a special on Africa this week I remembered that while I was grateful to have water coming out of my refrigerator now instead of the kitchen faucet for cold drinks there are several places on that continent that do not have plumbed water. No water for facilities, faucets, or even to drink which is further creating a vicious cycle of disease, infection, malaria, and unwarranted deaths.
• Yippee for having a ball and chain to go back to after a vacation. I really enjoyed my time off this go around and I look forward to the next one starting the middle of December, but it’s also great to have a place to go to that isn’t all that bad. I love what I do and while I do not always like the job, it is a very honest living that has afforded me travel and luxuries I may not have seen had my occupation been different.
• Yippee to having our home to ourselves again, making the late night run downstairs for a drink of water very simple… in skivvies only!

In retrospect, I guess Yippee is just my way of saying Thank you Jesus! Not to discount him or the blessings I receive by any means. That is just my lamen terms to communicate to the world how blessed I am for the simple things. To often we do not take the time to thank him. There are so many small things to be grateful for... like the vision to see what he has enabled my fingers to type at this very moment. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. I have experienced that much to recently or deeply… His blessings will not be unrecognized by me.

I love you Jesus, I Love you Dad, I love you MOM!

Today was the third day of my vacation.  Seems the days are coming by quicker than I can adjust to time off from work.  I worked over the weekend leading into this vacation just so I wouldn't have the urge to pick the laptop up and log into the network... yes, some things about me are workaholic traits.  Thus far it has seemed to suffice.

What baffles me is how hard I'm 'house working' on my vacation.  I've cleaned every room in the house including the refridgerators, I've ran more errands than I care to recall, and I have visited more friends this week than I have in a very long time.  Now I know why people say they need another vacation after their vacation.  Since I have been playing catch up this week on a lot of 'like to do things', I haven't had a chance to do another one of my favorite things... sleep!  I was up this morning at 4:30.  Cooking on my mind for the festivities tomorrow.  But I haven't slept in or taken a nap all week!  That's just unusual for me.  I was beginning to doze off today and remembered I had a load of clothes drying so I never took that nap.  Dear says that the naps I take are sleeps... because I'm resting for more than an hour.  That is a gene I inherited from my dad.  Dear is right.  We both could sleep the day away.  But I just haven't had a chance to do that on this vacation.  I'm working my little hiney off!  I guess that is what I get when I commit to having a very large group of people over smack dab in the middle of my time off.

So if I really work hard around the house, running errands, cooking and I do not get at least ONE good nap (sleep) in... is it really a vacation? IMO, I cannot see how it could be.  I am sure if I explained to my manager that the last few days was not vacation time, she would have a totally opposite response.  One thing is for sure.  I have already resolved that when I take my 3 weeks off next month there will be plenty of sleeps, days of doing nothing, and definitely no errands!  Now that's really a vacation...

I love you Dad, I love you Mom!

One thing that I really, really enjoy more than the average person is cooking.  It is something that I think comes naturally, when you are the oldest child of more than a few.  (Somebody has to help momma out sometimes.)  So for years (decades) now I have experimented, revived, and perfected a few dishes as well as “canned” a few (figuratively and literally.)  Some things you have to work at and this just happens to be one of those that I don’t.  After being the understudy of my mother and honing the skills of both of my grandmother’s, I feel like I could fry, boil, broil, sauté, simmer, baste, or grill anything.

The one thing that I cannot do well at all is BAKE.  I am horrible!  I believe it is because I am the kind of cook that is 'a little bit of this, taste of that'.  Very Rachel Ray-ish.  No measurements… not even after looking at the recipe.  I cook by taste and experience.  Therefore, to bake which is truly a science is very difficult for me. (Science wasn’t my strong subject while I was in school either.)  This is where Dear comes in.  He is an awesome baker!  His tasting skills are very developed as well, but he can really bake.  He is good at cakes, brownies, pies, cookies (my favs), and about anything else baked.

Being the Tuesday before the biggest eating holiday of the year, I decided to get a jump-start on my Thanksgiving dinner.  Especially since the maternal, half of my family will be gathering at our home… all 72 of them.  So me and my non-baking self started making sweet potato pies.  I made the first batch blind, without tasting any of the nine of them.  I didn’t put nearly as much sugar in them because they were for the dinner baskets that our church made for the neighboring community center to give away to those in need.

The second batch I really put my foot in!  After tasting a sliver, boy did I feel good.  My baking skills are improving!  My husband tasted it and agreed.  Three of the second set was for my mother’s friend, one for my husband to carry to work and the others for us to enjoy on Thanksgiving Day.  Now my husband being an expert on all things junk food or dessert, felt the need to keep “tasting” the pie we had cut.  After about his third taste I reminded him not to burn himself out on sweet potato pie before the holiday.  (He is known for overdoing it on the sweets.)  When I finished with my baking expedition for the evening, I cleaned the kitchen… and the “taster” pie pan, considering Dear only left 1 piece.  I wrapped that piece up carefully and washed the tin to make dinner rolls in later.  We turned out the lights and called it a night.

This morning I awakened to the sound of the “facilities” being flushed.  While still stirring in the bed and trying to clear my mind to begin my day, Dear informs me that, “The pie made me sick!”  I reminded him of all the rich factors in the recipe:  butter, sweetened condensed milk, eggs, sugar, etc.  I told him that it doesn’t surprise me.  “Everything is moderation,” is the comment I left him with for the moment.  He left the room to head to work and after about 4 minutes, he was back.  He had to visit the facilities again.  Yet one more trip later, he was finally able to venture to work.  I chuckled as he finally pulled out of the driveway with pie in tow.  He’s had a hard time over the years learning this lesson with sweets and his highly volatile stomach.

Since this is day 2 of my much-needed vacation, I went to my mom’s house to help her with her in home daycare.  Did I just say vacation?  Skip that.  Nothing about today was a vacation.  Eleven kids between the ages of months and five years old all screaming at different times for various reasons is not a vacation.  Anyway, from exchanging text messages with Dear I can tell the richness of the pie in his belly is not getting any better.  The butter, sugar, and milk are having an all out war with the walls of his stomach.  Then at about noon Dear calls my cell phone.  I missed the call, but it was rather surprising to see him calling since that rarely happens.  About an hour passes, and I get another call from our house.  It is Dear.  He is home… and very sick... calling me in desperate need of some fluids in the form of Gatorade.  I feel sorry for him, but still kind of chuckle to myself that he jumped off that bridge once more.

So I was a good wife.  I left my mom’s, stopped and got him some fluids, and hurried home to play doctor.  I walked in the bedroom to find him in a self-inflicted comforter burrito, but his feet are out.  (He’s only 6’4” and 275 pounds! Lol)  I administer my assistance where I can, try to force him to drink, and get him another comforter to throw over him.  Then he tells me his stomach hurts, his chest hurts, he is cold, he is sweaty, and he has a headache!  Just as I was starting to feel bad about the pie and remembering just how horrible I am at baking.

I told him two things… 1) “the next time you take a pie to work to promote my ‘good cooking’ don’t eat a whole one the night before.  Its bad advertising!” 2) “The last time I checked, what you’re feeling are the exact symptoms of the flu or some form of virus… not a botched pie!”

Shortly after his mother called and confirmed my diagnosis.  Need I say more…

 

I love you Mom, I love you Dad.

I am venturing into new seas.  Ok, maybe not completely new, but still something outside of the norm for me.  I have decided to join the “real” world and leave a piece of me out there periodically.  I started this somewhere else, another time for another reason, but it did not go as planned.  As a matter of fact, after reading and silently viewing other welcome mats I decided I wanted to change mine around a little bit.  So here I am.  Not perfect by any means or necessarily decorated yet, but a work in progress.

I am challenging myself to stay committed to this… unlike the last time.  Though I think I have more to share now… unlike before.  Besides there are three sides to every story… mine, yours, and the truth.

This is mine…

I grew up in a loving family.  Dysfunctional like most but loving.  I am the oldest of four natural children, one legally adopted and several surrogates.  There is almost four and half years between me and the “stair steps.”  My parents had me in their teen years before they got married, but tied the knot shortly after I was born.  They have stood the test of time and their years of marriage equals my age.  My cousin and I resided with my paternal grandparents for most of my early years and were able to see their love as it aged.

During my childhood, my parents surrendered to God’s call and became faithful Christians.  My grandparents are believers as well so my upbringing was reflective of Pentecostal Apostolic beliefs.  (More on that at another time.)  I am now a member of my dad’s growing church where my grandfather is a member as well.  The “stair steps” all live their own lives, but my youngest sister does actively membership at my dad’s church as well.

I was recently married (2 years ago) in a very meaningful ceremony and I now share a home with Dear, (my husband,) and his clone.  These are the thoughts, afflictions, sacrifices, triumphs, memoirs, celebrations, occasions, conquers, and depressions of my life…

...or least how I see it.

 

After all, this is My Rendition(s)…