A thankful me - 43

I feel better now

My view for sunsets and sunrises for the next couple weeks.

This girl is happy.

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His blessings

As of Wednesday night, my friend’s daughter was released from the hospital. An entire day early! She spent a total of 8 days in the hospital, where they said she screamed in pain and fear for most of them. Her heart rate would jump over 30 beats a minute the moment anyone in scrubs walked in the room. The moment they were told she was going home was a very happy one to say the least.

They shared they have their good moments and bad moments, and thankfully, I happened to visit on a good moment. I don’t think I could bear seeing a bad moment. I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived. I prayed I wouldn’t be standoffish because I get uncomfortable around things I don’t know how to be, but when I walked to their back door, I saw through their window, them sitting at the table…eating. Like any normal family.

I just stood there watching for a second amazed.

There she was…sitting, eating pasta and chicken. I praised God right then and there.

She was nothing but smiles as we sat and talked about the past 9 days and how it effected their lives. Amazingly, they felt so grateful for their situation as they were around many less fortunate parents with children far worse off than their daughter.

They know they have a long way to go with her recovery, but she’s doing just that. Recovering. The more she walks and eats, the more she heals and is able to do the things she’s always wanted to do.

I asked permission to share the few shots I got last night as well as an email she sent out with an update the day she was released.

”One concern right now is that she has been having rather severe bladder spasms at times and, as thought, she reacted very badly to the medications the doctor tried.  We only have two more options, however, insurance doesn't want to cover either of them.  We're praying that as she continues to heal the spasms will go away, but the doctor isn't so sure.  We are so grateful for the prayers, gifts, and support as well as to the nurses and doctors that have done so much for her in the last week.”

So if you can continue to pray specifically for her bladder spasms, I know they’d really appreciate it.

They loved the cards that were sent. They couldn’t believe how far they traveled and she loved knowing that she had so many people throughout the entire country who loves and prays for her.

The stickers were a huge hit with her and her brother!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Squeeze your little ones tight…and your big ones too.

I have big plans tomorrow, and I truly can’t wait for them to be underway, this week has been nothing but crazy leading up to it.

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In all honesty

Where have I been lately?

Maybe you've wondered this the past couple months, maybe you haven't even noticed, but I haven't really "been" here for awhile. To me, I think its obvious with my quality of posts lately, not to mention the lack of. I'm in this abnormal groove these days where it leaves me out of sorts. Kind of withdrawn, kind of uninteresting, and kind of indifferent to things. {lost another follower on twitter?? meh, oh well.. not getting nearly the comments on the blog that I used to?? well, can't really blame them w/what I'm writing about..}

My routine is the exact same every single day. As I'm sure yours is. Its not worth mentioning that I was asked to take on someone else's position in the office so they can be fired, because I turned it down. Its not worth mentioning that I got a "title change" at work, not promotion, because they're reluctant to give me a raise past fifty cents, so I don’t feel I can call it a promotion. Its not worth mentioning that I go home every day and eat sometimes just broccoli alone for dinner, or that I have no motivation to make anything other than that and the occasional tuna sandwich.

I'm in this rut. This tiring emotionally numb rut and don't feel like you should be dragged into it. Its boring. Its mundane. Its made me not want to blog.

And that's the truth.

Come Saturday, I hope things will change around. I know they will, but its the waiting for it while simultaneously being content in the busy chaotic days leading up to it, that's what's important and not always easy to accomplish.

If you’re up for it, bear with me. I’m going to come out of this eventually, and when I do, I’ll have my fun self back full of stories. I just know it!

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A thankful me - 42

Happy Monday everyone. Did your daylight savings workout alright for you? I happened to wake up at 6:30 but forced myself back to sleep until 8. I hear its pretty tough with little kids not getting them to sleep, but I heard a parent say awhile back that a few weeks before daylight savings happens, they begin to have their kids go to bed a few minutes early every night to get them adjusted to the hour change, so when the full hour jump happens, they’re already adapted to it.

Has anyone done this before? I’ve tucked it away for the ‘some day’ but wonder if anyone’s done this to see if it worked for them.

Over the weekend I went to get a pedicure to right the horrible one I got a few weeks ago. While I was there, I mentioned to my new manicurist that I needed the gels taken off my nails because they were catching on everything. She looked at them and couldn’t believe how bad they were! Conversation ensued about them and who did them and she insisted she give me a free gel polish so I could have a good experience with them.

At first I wasn’t going to do it. It wasn’t my intention going in, but after I got a healthy push from a friend to take advantage of the free polish, I went ahead. But not before the manicurist saw the absolutely horrible pedi I had and not before talking to the manicurist who did it. Who became extremely defensive.

I didn’t know she’d tell her how bad of a job she did! Now I’m kind of hesitant to go to that salon on the chance I run into her.

This one did a lot better job, but all in all, I’m not sure I'll be going back to that salon again.

This week I’m thankful for:
- a delicious home cooked meal cooked by someone other than myself.
3 carnitas, rice, beans, 1 tamale and peach cobbler ala mode… my belly was happy! ((clearly I was starving))

- a free manicure. I honestly can’t complain about any of it when its free. It was very generous of her to fix it.

- soft waves all thanks to my flat iron. 7 more days until my cut and color!!

- knowing God’s healing my friend’s little girl. She might be able to eat for the first time today since the surgery, so HUGE prayers needed that she’s able to successfully eat!
- my health. I complain about my neck, my hips, my knees, my feet, but as a whole, I’m pretty healthy and I thank God for that blessing.
- my brother running a 5k on his birthday, Saturday and finishing second in his age group, all while not even trying on a bum knee. Pretty proud of that!

I put this up for debate on IG and had the opinions split down the middle, so friends, I need your honest opinion. I made this to give away for a drawing for a few ladies and need to know if its lame, cheesy, okay, worth giving or well, whatever else you may think it is.

I’m not “crafty” at all. I would like to stress that, so this is me being ‘creative’. Its cinnamon scented pinecones and I threaded the ribbon through (obviously) and made the bow at the end.

If you’re not feeling it, what other ideas do you have for it? If I got rid of the bow, what should I do? I don’t want to leave the ribbon twirling around the only thing on there. I do have more ribbon if you have different ideas with that. I don’t want to spend more money on this since my intention was to keep it under $5 (which I’ve done so far) unless of course you say its obvious its an “under $5 gift”… and if that’s the case.. just say “I’m sure it smells nice” to spare me.

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A total freak out

A very big and warm thank you to everyone for praying for my friend’s daughter as well as those who’ll be sending her a card (and even more!), I can’t wait for them to arrive for me to give them to her. I did get to talk to my friend during and after the surgery and she said the surgeon said everything went ‘textbook and without issues’, so that’s a huge blessing.

It lasted 7 hours and when she came to, she asked if they had done the surgery yet, so she didn’t remember nor feel a thing at that moment. I haven’t yet heard how her first full day of recovery went but I pray they have her on good pain medication.

Again, thank you everyone.

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On Monday, I had a bit of a freak out. Ok, it was a massive one. One that lasted 3 hours long. Where I knew I’d break out in the worst way, I was the most stressed I had ever been in years.

I turned my computer on like I normally do every morning before work, only that morning a diagnostic check popped up. It acted like it wanted to restore everything to its original settings after it ran it’s check, which would mean wiping out everything on my hard drive.

I started freaking out.

I have nothing backed up. All my pictures are only on my computer. The photo shoot I did for my friend, wasn’t 100% complete and I hadn’t backed them up anywhere and I started panicking thinking she’d never get them.

I closed the lid, only it didn’t go into sleep mode but stayed on and was getting extremely hot. I took it to work with me, called the IT guy and begged him to come out. As I explained what had happened, he casually mentioned that it sounded like the hard drive crashed. My heart dropped!

As I wait for him to come, the laptop goes black. I thought it was all over!

All while this is going on, I’m fighting meeting a 10am deadline with lia sophia that only heightened my stress to epic proportions. The IT guy took my computer and found it ran so hot, it drained my full battery in less than an hour. Thank goodness I brought the power cord!

He ran several checks, found it had a couple infections, cleaned it all up and had it working like it never had a problem. I met the 10am deadline by 15 minutes, had a working computer again and didn’t know how to come down from my stress.
It took another hour before I was able to feel calm and answer work related questions from my coworkers.

Thank goodness it was a slow morning, since it was well after 2 hours after arriving that I even thought about the actual job I was there to do.

You can bet I went home that night, finished editing all my friend’s pictures and saved them to my thumbdrive until I get the chance to buy an external hard drive. There’s nothing like potentially losing 6,000 photos to make me want to speed up the process of getting an external hard drive.

Any suggestions on a good one?

Oh, and just like I thought, I have a massive “third eye” on my forehead. Absolutely worth it for surviving that morning.

Happy November everyone and have a wonderful weekend. The leaves are just starting to change color here, so I hope to capture a shade of red or two over the weekend with my new camera and lens! And by “just” I mean 1 tree for every 15-20 have about 10 leaves that are reddish..

clearly not taken by me but by "Joel”.. a girl can dream this was near her though.

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Praying today

This beautiful little girl is undergoing a major major surgery today and could definitely use being lifted up in prayer. Not to mention the long long recovery days to follow, for her and my friend who’s pregnant with their third. They survived the month long ‘house arrest’ where they couldn’t leave the house to ensure she stayed healthy and now faces an even greater challenge.

She’s expected to stay in the hospital for upwards to 7+ days after the surgery where they won’t let her eat the entire time. My heart aches for what they’re about to endure, but I pray God heals her and makes this surgery a success.

My friend doesn’t know I did this, but I know the importance and power of prayer, so I ask for yours today for their entire family. And if you would like to participate, I would love nothing more than to shower my friend and her daughter with get well cards. I know you don’t know them but I think it would be a great brightener to her daughter’s tough days ahead. Not to mention my friend’s, who will be under an enormous amount of stress these next few weeks.

If you’d like to mail a card, you can email me, amazinggrape81{at}gmail{dot}com, or say so in the comments and I’ll provide an address to mail it to where I’ll collect them and hand deliver them to my friend.


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A big huge thankful me - 41

Hidee ho, Ranger Joe (name that tv show)

I’m sitting here picking away at my gel nail polish. pick pick picking. They’re driving me nuts! I’ve been lazy and won’t make an appointment at the salon to have them take it off for me for a measly $5, so instead I choose to have them snag on everything they come in contact with. Anyone else like that?

This past weekend has been one big ball of Captain Insane-o! From Friday morning to well after 11pm Sunday night, I was zipping here there everywhere and this girl is a big haggard.

I had many great parts to my weekend. Met w/some lovely ladies in the morning, followed by having lunch with a good friend with shopping immediately after. There’s nothing better than having someone trust you with picking their outfit choices. And there’s nothing worse than going shopping and not being able to buy anything…or I should say, not buying the 2 things you absolutely die for, because they happen to be the 2 most expensive things.

You can bet I’m keeping an eye on them in my virtual cart online, waiting for them to go on a 75% off sale… it could happen!

What are the 2 things, you may ask? Red corduroy pants and an emerald green silk top that I’m positively in love with! The pants are just a hair too short and I can’t decide if I’m ok with that, but they fit everywhere perfectly and I haven’t found a pair of pants that fit perfectly in months!
{side note: did you know Ann Taylor offers customers wine, Saturday nights?!}

For the rest of the weekend, the only sad thing about it was that I didn’t get to play with my new baby. My sweet and glorious beauty that arrived Friday. Things were too incredibly hectic, that I only got to touch it for 10 minutes after getting home Friday and it breaks my heart.

Please, I’d like you all to officially meet Montague

He goes by Monti and Gue as well and answers, “as you wish” when I ask him to do something for me. He’s remarkable and you wanna know the best part!??? I told G-man I was going to buy him because he went on an amazing sale, and G-man said he’d buy it for an early Christmas present!!

I nearly leapt out of my skin, I was so elated!! My very owe 5D Mark III. I’ve wanted this camera for so so very long and I can’t wait to learn it. I feel so blessed that my sugar daddy love would do this for me. It truthfully was the last thing I was expecting.

So now I have 2 cameras. But I would love nothing more than to sell my first camera to a blogger who is wanting to start out with their first DSLR. My original camera is a Canon Rebel T1i and it comes with the 18-55 kit lens, plus the battery charger, cables, and manuals (that were bought in addition to the camera). It’s a wonderful camera to learn from. Super easy to use and as you’ve seen in my past posts, it takes beautiful pictures.

I’m asking $400 for it w/$5 shipping and I’ll send it insured to anyone in the US. :) It could be your’s or someone special’s Christmas present, as it was for me almost 3 years ago. If you’re interested or know anyone who is, email me: amazinggrape81{at}gmail{dot}com


How were your weekends, friends?? Pin It Now!