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

Vacations over

Well, today is the last day of vacation. We finished the girls' room on Friday and everything is done. Today is church and trying to get the rest of my house in order from vacation and getting ready to go back to work. Jake and I went with a group of people on the bikes yesterday to Pop's in Arcadia. It was a really great ride. On the way, I started thinking, it has been almost 5 months since Cash passed away. It doesn't seem like that long, and some days it seems like it has been forever. The reality of it all still doesn't seem real sometimes.
We received a notice in the mail the other day telling us that Haylie needs her immunizations brought up to date. UGH! I threw away all of Cash's EMLA cream. I wish I still had it so I could numb her legs before she got her shots. We haven't told her yet, we may do that towards the end of summer vacation.
Back to vacation. We had a blast at Six Flags. I did however wake up the night after and think "what did I do" because of riding the Superman Tower of Power and the Titan. I guess I can say that I rode them. It was a ton of fun and we had a really good time. My little daredevil LOVED the roller coasters and is ready to go back. She is such a funny little girl! We practically had to force her on the first ride, but after that she was all about all the rides she could get on.
Time to get the family around for church, hope you all have a great day.

Somebody actually had the audacity to say to me "why are you taking a vacation, you just had a bunch of time off". REALLY? WHATEVER! So anyway, we leave for 3 days then come home and HAVE to get the girls' room ready. We start our classes soon so that means our homestudy could happen at anytime and I HAVE TO HAVE EVERYTHING DONE. Jason and I said today, that means that in just 2 months, we could be done with everything and be ready to bring our daughter home.
We are going to clinic and the hospital tomorrow. We are taking some pull tabs to the clinic for a friend of ours, bandaids for the kiddos, and goodies for Cash's girlfriends. Part of me still really feels the need to be there. I guess this is normal.
I find I have no patience for stupidity or ignorance these days. Maybe this will pass soon. I also have absolutley no patience for people who scream hateful things at their children. I never really have, but it has been a very low tolerance level lately. So no WalMart for me for a while. '
OK here comes the soul bearing moment. I feel really bad for admitting this but here goes. I am having trouble praying. I can pray with my brain, but have a hard time praying with my heart. Does this make sense? I am getting better, and I think that being able to admit this means I am realizing this is something I need to work on. I know that the devil has been taking advantage of this situation and that just makes me mad, that I have allowed my self to become weak when I shouldn't have allowed it. I can't even say I'm mad at God, I just don't know how to explain it. I guess I want my answer to "Why" and I know its not my question to have answered yet, but my type-A personality doesn't accept that. I am getting better. I find that I pray better on the back of the bike when Jake and I go for rides. Those loud pipes seem to help drown out the other thoughts and I can pray with my heart then.
So prayers please. For me.
Prayers for us and a safe journey, and prayers that God places a child with us that is an "easy" fit for them and us. We know whatever child we get is one that God knows should be with us.
Thanks for everything!

So, we finally have our dates for our classes to teach us how to be parents. Hahahahaha. Actually, its what they are, but it is how to teach us to be parents to children that have been removed from their home or how to adjust from foster care to a "forever family". So now that this is moving super fast, we have to rearrange some of our remodeling plans. We were going to take a fireplace out of our living room that is for decoration only and then redo what will be the girls' room this fall. So now, we are redoing the girls' room first and then removing the fireplace. I ordered the bunkbeds today and hopefully will paint the bedroom in a couple of weeks. We are going to paint the bottom part of the bedroom mint green and the top part will be pink and white striped. I didn't think we would have to move this fast but since we have our classes scheduled that means we will have the "big" 2 hour homestudy soon. In the mean time, I have to start getting our family book ready. This is a book that tells a young girl or our case worker about our family, who the grandparents and great grandparents are, who are friends are and what we like to do. So I am asking everyone to pray that God will place a child with us that is the one that He sees needs to be here.
Our Memorial Day weekend has been very busy, with Jason's 20 year class reunion and a lot of family time. Now, today, we are catching up on all the cleaning we haven't been able to get done over the weekend. I NEED MY HOUSE TO BE IN ORDER!!! I still feel the affects of the surgery I had, so I am frustrated that I can't just clean my house without taking a break about every 15 minutes. But this is just minor. I hope you all had a great weekend!