Hoarders and motivation

I am OBSESSED with the show Hoarders. I LOVE IT and they had two hours of it on last night. When I watch this show, I can feel the stress come in and I can't not watch it. So I got home from work tonight and completely cleaned out my utility room. The cabinets above my dryer had become a catch all for the family to put things. Not any more!!! I have CLEANED! It's like my new happy place!!!! So tomorrow is work out night, Thursday is planned, Friday is another work out night and then Saturday, I have nothing planned, so it's more cleaning! YEA! YEA! YEA! YEA! Oh, and I cleaned out Haylie's clothes tonight too! I love organization, I love having everything in its place and I live with two people who don't share this same priority. So Saturday is cleaning out the kitchen and throwing things away!!! If I can keep Jason out and Haylie out, I will be able to get rid of things we have not used in years. If they are in the kitchen with me, they will say "No, we have to keep that". So see then Sunday, when we go trick or treating we can come home to an entirely clean and organized house. Monday, I've taken the day off of work to go to Children's in OKC. Monday would be Cash's 2nd Birthday. It's very hard to know your child's birthday is coming up and not be able to throw a party or buy presents. So, I am celebrating the 1st anniversary of Cash's 1st Birthday. I have asked a lady to make a cake that is a sock monkey holding a cheese puff. We (me, my mom and Tana) will be taking the cake to Children's to celebrate with all the people that helped us get to his first birthday. Jason thinks its weird I am doing this, but I have to do something. I need to do something. I want to have a birthday cake for his birthday, and I want to celebrate that we got to have a first birthday. So a sock monkey cake it is!!! I will try to post pics later.
Well, it's been an eventful day, an accomplished day and a very blessed day.
Hope everyone has a great week!\

OK, so I was in church today and listening to Pastor speak on prayer. He was talking about how to pray. How often do we ask for things when we pray. Why do we do that? Doesn't the Bible say that God will provide? So why do we feel the need to tell God what we want Him to give us? How often do we not repent of our sins? How often do we pray the same things over and over again. If we truly repent, aren't we supposed to make a conscious effort not to keep doing those same things over and over and over again. Being a Christian is not easy. It's not supposed to be. The more you live a life that is right the more the devil works on you. Why wouldn't he? He already has the non-believers, there is no challenge there. I do feel challenged in my Christian walk. I could block things out when Cash was sick, well, most things. But it seems to me now, that I am challenged more and more each day, especially when my walk gets stronger. I was raised by parents that taught me to stand strong in my beliefs. I do. I will not compromise my beliefs or values to suit someone else's needs. I have said this before and I will say it again. I have to only answer to one person at the end of this life. I have enough to answer for, trust me. I don't divulge everything I know to everyone, that's not who I am. I have about 3 or 4 women that are my most trusted friends. They are probably who know me best, besides my mom. But I will not compromise my values to tell someone what they want to hear. That is the exact same thing as a lie. I also have no tolerance for those that find pleasure in gossip. I have cleaned off some of my FB list for this very reason. We heard so many stories about what was going on with us while Cash was sick, and most of these people were my "friends" on FB. I don't have time for that in my life. It's negative talk and I don't like it. And really, how small is your life if the only way you can feel good is if you know information about someone and then tell everyone else? I feel sad that this is what brings someone pleasure. I feel sad when someone thinks they need to tell me something tragic (sickness, divorce) that has happened to someone else to see what I will say. I will not say anything. The same thing is done if people try to get information out of me. I will not say anything that I don't feel needs to be shared. My first thought is, why do they want to know? The second thought is, what are they going to do with what I tell them? If we spent as much time spreading good news, and positive conversations as we do with gossip, the world would be a much better place. All it takes is one person to start. I will start, will you?

I took a couple of days off of work this week, because of Haylie's fall break. Thursday, she had a half day of school, so instead of going home, I decided to run some errands. One of those errands was something I have been putting off for a while. I bought Cash's Christmas blanket. This is a service that the cemetary offers, its an evergreen blanket with bright red flowers and bows. After I talked to the lady in the office and wrote the check, I thought to myself, that's all I get to do for Cash this year for Christmas, our first Christmas without him. And then, IT hit. I haven't had an "uncontrolled emotional event" (aka crying) in quite a while, but I had it. Sadness is not my emotion. I don't understand it. I like anger. Anger I can turn in to something good. I can deal with anger, I can focus, I can get busy with anger as the force. I can't do anything with sadness, but be sad. This is no good for me. I have to be able to vent an emotion in a physical or verbal way. I can't quite figure out how to do this with sadness, so I just don't do sad. I wait until sad turns into anger and then I use it for good. One thing about grieving is that its different for everyone. Jason's grieving is not the same as mine. One thing I have learned is that my body will take over and not let me do what I need to do. If I come home from work and sit down, I fall asleep. I have been told this is my body's way of compensating for the emotional and physical stress I have put is through over the past year. So what is Stacie's answer to this - don't sit down. It's seems like a logical answer to me, right? But eventually, I have to stop and sit down. The really weird thing is, I don't sleep that well at night. I can't fix this process, I can't research what is going to happen next and I don't like it. So I guess I will let go of some of my control issues and try to go with the flow.
Cash's birthday is coming up and I am getting anxious. I am taking that day off and going to Children's to take some toys and birthday cake. I know that may seem weird, but it's like a birthday cake for all the birthday's they help people celebrate. I am having a lady from Ames make the cake. I have told her what I am looking for and then started to tell her why, and she said "Oh, I know who you are, you don't have to explain". WHAT? My world was so little for 6 months, I forget people know who Cash is. So we are taking a birthday cake that is "so Cash".
Hmmm, I just realize I 've been sitting here for about 15 minutes and am not tired. Maybe when I sit, I need to blog...............

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"

August events and ramblings..........

A year ago this week, we were in St. Mary's with the "mystery" illness. Jason leaves for the Oklahoma Sheriff's Association Conference this week and he is a little anxious. We have already faced our first Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter and Haylie's Birthday. But this will be the first "Cash Anniversary". August 16th will also mark two days. 1-it is the day we brought Cash home from the hospital thinking he had a Wilm's Tumor and 2- it is our 6 month mark. I don't know why I needed to make it to 6 months, but I feel it will be a significant mark. Around the 6 month mark, we will be starting on a project that will hopefully expand into something bigger. You may or may not notice the last blog was deleted. I have decided to keep some of my opinions to myself. There has been some conversations in the last couple of weeks that have been extremely tough to handle and very hurtful. I am asking all of you to pray for us. No, we are not having marital problems, but we need prayers for soft hearts and easy tounges and tempers. We know something said in anger is a sin, so we both (Jason and I) are trying to not quickly respond in these situations. I'm very proud of Jason and how he is handling himself. However, I am having a little bit more of a struggle. I am a fixer. I need to fix a hurt, and I can't. I will not elaborate on this any further, but I am asking, like I have in the past, please pray for these things.
I am going to try to start working on my book this week. Since Jake is going to be gone, and we are trying to get Haylie into the swing of school, she is going to bed earlier so I will have some time at night to start typing on this. The one thing I needed so desperately was a mom. I needed another mom who had been through what I was going through. If my book can help just one mom and Cash can still touch lives, it will be worth it. I have also been feeling the tug for a change. It really pulled at me while Cash was in treatment and it has really been working overtime the last couple of weeks. I have made a decision to go back to school. This will not happen for a while because of some goals Jason and I have set for him, but probably within the next 2 to 3 years I will go OU and get ANOTHER degree. My, OSU family, please don't freak out!!! OU offers an accelerated RN, BSN program and since I already have one degree, this program works well with that. I have been trying to fight this urge, but when you are led to do something, you really can't ignore it. UGH, I guess I should have just finished this degree the first time, then God wouldn't have to be working so much overtime to get me in gear. I hate it when God kicks me in the butt. Gonna go for now, I need to get some sleep so I can be at my best tomorrow!

Changes, healing, prayers and ramblings