Beautiful Day

Today was an absolutely beautiful day! I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE fall. Haylie and I went to town this morning and picked up some fall decorations and spent after lunch decorating the front porch then after our Sunday afternoon nap we went back outside and stayed out until about 8:30. I realize that after my little blogrant yesterday, I do have so much to be thankful for. I let the physical part of this world get to me too much sometimes. Boy, the devil was sure working some overtime yesterday. So instead of focusing on the bad, I am going to focus on how I have been blessed. Here we go.
Jason, Haylie, Cash, my mom and dad, my sister and her family, Jason's family, the Theilen's, Goodson's, Haworth's, Robertson's, Cell's, Moore's, Buller's and so many more, my Grandparents, my heritage, the work ethic instilled by my parents, my job, my co-workers, Emmanuel Christian School, Family Life Missions, The Ringwood Methodist Church, my faith, my convictions, my type A personality, my daughters smile, her laugh, her imagination and her silliness, my husbands determination, his dreams, his friends, the way he puts up with me, my mom's text messages, Tana's e-mails, LeAnn's texts, going to lunch with my mom at least twice a week, girlfriends I can call or text anytime, realization that these women's friendship is more precious to me than anything, Jessica for letting me be the mean friend, sock monkies, Harley, our law enforcement family, my country, my freedoms, my health, cancer fighters, cancer survivors, cancer, Tara, Blair, Trudy, Jessica, Cindy, Leann, Monica, Gwen, Sarah, Kelly, Amy, Betty, Roiann, Margo, Erin, Robin, Lana, Dr. McNall, Dr. Petersen, Dr. Meyer, Dr. Mallory, Dr. Sexhaur, Dr. Wasti, Monica, Nita, St. Mary's, Children's Hospital, Linda Webb, Kelly Hartling, Aunt Mary, Aunt Anita, Aunt Jackie, the food they brought to the hospital, Vanessa, Brock, Shannon, Kaden, Amy, Madison, Jenny, Halynn, Mimi, Amanda, Britta, Crystal, Courtney, Asher R., Kayla, Asher E, Cash's Crusaders (just too many to list), my church family, mexican food, spontaneous trips to OKC, checking cattle with my dad, memories of riding horses with my sister, working cattle with my family, Thanksgiving with my mom's family, Christmas with my Dad's family, fall leaves, Christmas snows, spring flowers, summer days, and most of all, I am blessed because I am a child of God and I have the promise of an eternal life in paradise and a Father that loves me and forgives me of my sins.

Amazing

It is so amazing to me how family members can hurt one another so badly by "offering advice" or talking to other family members. Jason and I feel that Haylie really missed out on a lot of "normal kid things" last year because of Cash being sick. We are working very hard on trying to give her as normal a life as possible and we tried very hard to make sure she did not miss out on anything last year well, as much as we could. Yet we heard that she was being neglected and that she was sad. Really, Hayie was sad because she missed her mom and brother when they were gone, she was definitely not neglected in any way. Haylie had five count them 5 Halloween Costumes, got to have her very own Halloween Party at home, still got to trick or treat (limited of course), had a completely normal Christmas and her school life was normal and she stayed on schedule with everything. So now that we are able to spend as much time with her as possible, we are ridiculed for it because we are not bending over backwards for people who want us to change our plans to fit their needs. We make plans. We do things with Haylie almost every weekend, we go A LOT, and we are trying to soak up as much of the weekends with her as we can before it gets too cold. Haylie has not missed out on anything in the past year if we could help it, and she is not missing out on anything now. Now on to rant number 2. Cancer will tear marriages apart. It almost happened to ours. Jason and I learned how important it is to spend time with each other and not take our marriage for granted. Please be supportive of this. I will say this yet again - Unless you have walked in our shoes, in the journey we have traveled then you have absolutely no right to offer advice, opinions or especially criticism. I don't want this to sound mean or hateful, but please just let us heal. Let us do what we feel we need to do as a family unit. We will continue to smile and tell everyone that we are doing OK, and we are, but we are still healing and trying to catch up on really not living together as a normal family for a year. I should not even have to be saying or blogging any of this. We realize now more than ever how fragile life is and every day truly is a gift and we will not live this life with any regrets or look back and say "we wish we would have with Haylie"