9 Years ago today....


...I met my husband. Nothing romantic about the meeting, no blind date, or anything else along those lines, but the night I met him I knew I would marry him. He surprised me tonight by giving me a card and roses for our 'anniversary' of the nine years we have been 'together' eventhough our seven year wedding anniversary is on Monday. I think it is the first time since we have been married that he has done anything to celebrate this anniversary. I have joked and told him that I am going to be getting him Benedryl for this year as a gift, just in case he has any problems with the 'seven year itch'...but I don't think I have to worry about that. I am a lucky girl, I have been blessed with a very good man, and let me tell you, those are few and far between! So please bear with me this post as I get all mushy on you about love and marriage and all that....I just really love this man!

~Mrs. Wright~

Conversations via blogspot :)

So...how are you today? What's going on with you? How are the kids? the job? the weather? How you feeling? ......................
My real quesiton is: How do you have a one sided conversation? That is what I am struggling with... I have been wanting to post something, but I am having a hard time figuring out what, and I just figured out the reason why...blogging is like having a one sided conversation. You are basically typing about things that you would normally say to someone else if 1) they were to ask, and 2) give you the opportunity to answer fully .... but even though you get the chance to answer in one great big windy, run on answer... you can't ask any questions of them...you can't inquire into their life, their thoughts, their view. You can't pick up on body language as they hear your stories, or facial features, or tone in their voice. You don't know if they are laughing, crying, bored, indifferent, or even reading it at all.... there is no true communication... it is all one sided, lop sided, 'my sided' and that's kind of weird. It is just unnatural! MUST HAVE FEEDBACK!! And so I thought that today I will ramble a bit about nothing really, because well, that is the beauty of a blog is that you can...without interuption, without anyone really being able to send you any clues whatsoever that they have no interest whatsoever in what you are saying..... So, go ahead, roll your eyes, get up for a drink or snack, scan the blog for important content and then move on when you see none... that's fine with me,really, after all it is just me sitting here typing right?..... and everyone else sleeps.....


I wanna talk about procrastination - because there are allot of things I am putting off right now as I sit here in front of the enticing glow of my pc monitor...first there is the laundry that I realized just today is so out of hand that it just might mutate and eat my whole family in the middle of the night if I don't get it seperated and in the dreaded assembly line also known as 'wash week' (cause with a baby, toddler and teenager 'wash day' just won't cut it!). So, the dryer is running...... The second thing I am avoiding is the dinner dishes.... meatloaf night, it was yummy!.... but the smell coming from the kitchen of the caked on grease in the meatloaf pan is truly tormenting me and I HAVE to get it scrubbed and clean before I go off to bed....but here I sit, stalling........ Number three on the list of things I need to be doing right this minute is my bible study homework. We have homework every night for five nights total per week, and I am about three and a half days through and bible study is @ 9 am tomorrow...yeah, need to get busy on that. Okay, what else is there to do.... planning for our 1st annual family Halloween party.. (wanna come?).... or maybe I could be working on web design for the All About You website I am currently 'webmastering' (check it out allaboutyou7.com).... or wake up my husband who is asleep on the couch and carry him to bed and tuck him in :).......
yeah I am a bit of a mess tonight with too much to do and no motivation to do it!! ever have those days? those nights? surely not! Ever left the dinner dishes? (Mom, I know your answer is no... you don't count!), ever forgot wet clothes in the washer? ever think that just having everyone fed, bathed, content and asleep is enough of a task in itself and therefore you should get a 'pass' on everything else? Well I do, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way...cause if I don't do it, nobody else is gonna do it... and I don't want to wake up tomorrow to a 'meat loaf kitchen nightmare', and wrinkled clothes...
And so, I guess I will hit the power button, and go have a one sided conversation with the dishwasher, then do the laundry shuffle quick talk, and then off to a very sleepy, rushed 'quiet time' with my bible homework (Lord forgive me for my unwillingness to obey and get up early and meet you at my kitchen table for coffee... I am working on it!) .... So Goodnight and until next time~
Love and Blessings,
TeReSa

Stanley Gunner


Ok...so I can't post pictures from yesterday when I got to go and play with Stanley :( his mommy told me so..... those pictures are going to be Christmas presents...so they are under lock and key. But I just wanted to share one because Bridget got all prettied up and she looked GREAT! And you can just see in the pictures how happy she is, how she glows with love for her baby boy. I am honored that she asked me to take pictures for her...(someone needs to tell her that I am not a 'real' photographer, only pretend! :~) So, here is one that won't spoil anyone's Christmas present, and won't get me in trouble!


~Teresa

My Best Friend




"As we pass through the phases of our lives, we lose certain friends along the way. But those who travel with us, sharing our personal journeys, reveling in our private growth, are much more than friends. They are our sisters."



Well...enough said. And I could just stop there. That quote, says pretty much what I am saying, but I just can't help it, I have to expound on it a bit. I have to brag a bit and share my blessings and my joy they have brought me. You see I have this friend, and she's my best friend. She and I have been best friends for almost twenty years (yeah girl...it has been that long) . In that twenty years time we have only lived in the same place for about three years, but those three years seemed to last a lifetime and gave us a lifetime of memories. Since then we have been about as far away from each other in distance as we can get, I was in Missouri and she was in Germany, then in Iraq, and Iraq is always as far as one can get from the ones they love! But no matter how long since our last talk (sometimes months, and months) no matter how far away (sometimes thousands of miles), we always pick back up right where we left off. We don't miss a beat. Like no time has passed and no miles have crossed. In the recent year I have had the joy of getting her back in my life ...and we have grown closer and are enjoying this time in our lives where we get the opportunity to be mommies together. She is an hour away (which is still too far), and always just a phone call away, a text, an email, a MS message... And I appreciate and love her even more these recent days because I have realized the true value of a true friend. There is no replacement, no substitutions, no imitation. She is my girl- let me tell you a bit about her: She shoots it straight from the hip, but straight from the heart. She's a no nonsense kind of girl, no drama, no jealousy, no competition, no betrayal-ever. She is a mans woman just like me, 'lets just skip over the petty stuff and get on with real life and real relationships', and I LOVE her for it! She knows me at my worst, and sees me always at my best, or what my best can be. She rants with me when I need to rant, cries with me when I need to cry, she dreams my dreams with me and tells me I can have them. She'd fight for me, she'd fight beside me, but in twenty years I can not remember a time that we fought each other. She keeps me accountable, she's no pushover. She is the person that with one call would come get me in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of my worst day, without explanation, without question she would be there, even if she was on her last tank of gas, down to her last dollar. She would offer me her shirt, her shoes, her home, her shoulder... And she knows that I would be there for her just the same. And there have just been allot of moments lately that I have been reminded of why she is my best friend! We are getting into a new area of our friendship, we now share in the experience of motherhood, which for some reason neither one of us ever thought we would share...why I don't know. maybe because I was married so long before she settled down, maybe because our lives seemed at times to be going in total opposite directions...and yet here we are with two little boys that are three and a half months apart and we are just sure that they are going to be best friends too, whether they like it or not! Ha Ha :~) Just one more thing we get to experience together and share in the joys togehter... Yes, she is my best friend, she is my sister and I am so glad to have her back within my reach and in my everyday life again! Love you Bridge~ looking forward to the next twenty years of laughs, tears and friendship with you. And birthday parties and playdates with our babies.



Love~Teresa

Hayden's 6 mo photos

Hey just a quick note to anyone who hasn't seen the proofs of Hayden's 6 mo photo session yet: you can do so by going to creationswithgrace.com and clicking on clients, set up an account (you will use this to view proofs and order) and then you can view Hayden's pictures. They turned out great, we will be heading back over to get family pictures done within the next few months for Christmas time.


TeReSa

Adventures in potty training and solid foods...


Our most recent adventures... trying to get Hailey out of diapers, and going on the 'big girl potty' and trying to get Hayden to eat baby food and give his poor nursing mother a break!!! Needless to say, its messy at our house these days! We will start with the messiest part... house training Hailey! Our landlords said NO PETS, they had just put in all new carpet and flooring after the last tenants and so they were not going to chance any more pet problems...and the last couple of days I have wondered if a potty training two year old falls under that category! Bless her heart, she really is doing a very good job, she gets to the potty more often than she doesn't, but the times she gets busy watching cartoons or playing... she leaves puppy puddles. And she hollers at me from right where she is standing, pee trickling down her skinny little legs, and says "Mommy! Me PEE!" ( and the laundry multiplies!) So I brought out the reinforcements, Hershey's chocolate kisses for her special 'prize' when she goes! and then the kicker, I unpacked the singing potty chair! It has a motion sensor and sings a Ta-Da tune when anything passes through. So, today she has been peeing in the kitchen, in her potty chair of course. I am wondering if I need to use it like puppy pads, you know start moving it closer and closer to the bathroom and sit it next to the BIG toilet?.. Heck I don't know, this is my first rodeo with big girl panties and celebrating with the pee pee dance! I am used to being able to rub their nose in it and throw them outside (real puppies of course) and I am just not sure that will get the job done with this house training... wish us luck!

Now for Hayden... he is hungry, growing boy, that grabs at all food and drink in anyone elses hand. He eyeballs it, reaches for it, and will even put it in his mouth. But as soon as he realizes it doesn't taste quite like momma milk... he's done. So we have been working on (wasting) the baby food. And he is messy!! He is finally letting me get some in his mouth without clamping his jaws shut after the first bite! But the thing is that he wants to do it himself, and he really does a pretty good job considering he is only six months. Yesterday we tried peaches for the first time, I have posted a picture of him right before I put him in the kitchen sink. The best part of the day is that while I am trying to get him cleaned up and wash the peaches out of his ears, hair, and everywhere else, Hailey needs to potty, and needs a clean pair of panties, and wants to potty again because she wants another chocolate kiss, and I am up to my eyeballs in baby food, and pee and kids hollerin and crying and needing cleaned up and...wow! Sounds like time to start trying for number three!!! Ha Ha, just kidding, not funny.... FORGET IT! Stick a fork in this momma, I am done. But I am loving every minute... even through the chaos, it is great fun. The next adventure we have planned for sometime this week is finger painting! I will let you know how it goes.



Love and Blessings

Teresa

Hailey's MRI results and surgery update


Hailey had an MRI on July 21st at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. The purpose was to check her shoulder and make sure that the joint was healthy and not dislocating, causing her to be unable to raise her arm above 90 degrees. So after about five or six weeks, I finally got an answer from the surgeon (well his nurse), and they said the MRI results were normal, which means she is a candidate for the 'muscle transfer' surgery. It has a long, complicated medical name but I can't even begin to tell you what it is, and if I could say it, I sure wouldn't be able to spell it! Anyway, they will take a muscle from the back, underneath of her right arm and reattach it to the top of the shoulder to give her, hopefully 30 degrees or so, more range of motion in moving her arm up above her head and out to the side. She has healed well over the last two years in terms of her Brachial Plexus injury as a whole- she averted nerve grafting surgery due to the nerves regenerating and healing on their own (we all know God healed her) and so we dodged that bullet. This surgery I have expected for at least the last year. With all the therapy, and all the exercises, and all we have tried, she just has not been able to build up the strength to bring that arm up past her shoulder. I know it is because her body is physically unable, she wills it to move allot, compensates for it allot, and if it was a matter of determination and work, she would have been raising her hands high above her head praising Jesus a long time ago... oh yeah, that's one of her newest adorable, heart melting 'Haileyisms'- at church during worship she will just lift her hands up and sing and praise him and it just melts my heart every time! So, we have a 'tentative' date for the first part of November for surgery and an appointment to talk to the surgeon face to face and get all the facts and information we need before going ahead and setting the date in stone. And that apt is scheduled for the 16th of October. After the surgery I believe he said he would probably have her stay in the hospital in KC for a couple of days, and then her recovery time with a brace/cast will be six LONG weeks!! All that being said, please pray for her and us through this... I have known it would probably happen, but as we get closer I am dreading it more and more, the thought of them cutting my baby open, and the pain she will be in, and the fear and confusion she will experience, it makes me wish I could go in her place. But she is strong, and so am I, and where we are weak our Lord will pick up the slack. I will give more updates after the October apt when we have some more definant answers.

Love and Blessings,
Teresa
Hailey pic: 2006 (7 months old)