well....

I felt a little dragged down, but not too bad. So no horrible repercussions from yesterday, thank goodness.

However, I may still pay tomorrow.....you'd think I'd learn the first time, but I must have a harder head than I thought! Today all I did at home was tell the kids to get their chores done and make sack lunches. Then I laid down until they were ready to leave at 10am. We left and went to swim again today. It keeps them busy and wears them out, which makes things at home more peaceful. I usually wear them out working, but I don't have the stamina to direct them and most of what we have left to do, needs an adult working alongside of the them.....

So I took them to the pool and I sat and played on my computer, the same thing I'd have done at home.

Then I came home and laid down with Max for his nap. I did get up to help get dinner started and then I laid down again, because I really wanted to go shopping tonight. Brent was going into town already, so I knew he could drive and all I would have to do was shop. Well that took a little more than I thought it would. About five mins into it I almost called Brent to have him come get me. He had a meeting with someone else for about 30 mins, while I shopped.

I managed to work through it and got what we needed. Which included ANOTHER pair of shoes for Than, the kid is growing like a weed again! We heaed over to the library where, Brent took the kids into the library so that they could get more books to read, cause the TV is staying off mostly, after we stopped and got a cone on the way home.

So now, yes I'm tired, but I feel OK. I'm just hoping it's not adrenalin that I'm running on. We'll find out tomorrow I guess. Tomorrow I'm staying home and in bed all morning, unless I feel really, really good, as in yes I'm finally healed, good. Then I'm getting up in the afternoon to go to a friend's house for her daughter's b-day party. It's the same friends we went to for the fourth of July, so the kids will be able to swim there.

I feel good right now and I'm crossing my fingers that it means on I'm really close to being done with this junk, only time will tell. I have an appt. next week for more x-rays, so those will tell a more clear story.

On a different note, one of the things I tackled at the pool today was paying bills. It's been a long journey, but I'm getting closer to feeling like I might have a workable plan to be a better steward over the money we have. We're very blessed, thus the blog name, and I've been working for several years to really get a handle on our money. Right before Dad died, I got introduced to Dave Ramsey's course, Financial Peace University. I did some looking around and found a lot of positive things written about him and what he teaches. Heard some personal stories from people I knew, which were amazing and awesome.

So since then we've been trying to implement what he teaches and today I spent some time surfing different blogs of people that are working on the same thing.(I'm gonna really miss all this time to just surf from blog to blog!!) It was very inspiring and gave me a real lift. We've seen a positive change in our money handling since we've been working Dave's plan and it's nice to see it working in other people's lives too.

Here's a few links I've enjoyed....

http://www.thriftyfloridamama.net/ I love this family's determination, the husband has been working two jobs to help get rid of their consumer debt. Plus she has a really long list of other blogs of people who are "snowflaking" their way out of debt. Which is a term for adding any little amount of extra money to your large snowball, that Dave teaches you about.

http://www.calcxml.com/do/det07?skn=38 I was very pleased to find this debt calculator last night on http://www.providentliving.org/, which is one of the websites that the LDS church has up. You enter all your debts and payments and it tells you when you'll have it all paid off, if you follow that plan. I have not entered ours yet, but I hope to soon.

http://www.paidtwice.com/ I love this site's title, the full title is "I've Paid For This Twice Already". Which of course is referring to having bought an item with a credit card and then carrying a balance for long enough that you've paid for the item twice over between orginal purchase price and interest! She also has some great tips and finds.

whew!!

Well I might have over done it a tad today! I got up and helped get the kids through their chores and made pancakes, from scratch, with a new recipe I found. Then I laid done for a bit. It was 83 degrees with 94% humidity....do you know what 94% humidity feels like? It's just this side of raining!!! The floor in our kitchen was damp, as our AC is not working and we have all the windows open to catch any breeze possible.

So we went swimming. It was the first time in 2 1/2 weeks that I sat behind the wheel of a vehicle. Very strange. But I did fine, we went to our local resort and the kids swam for 3 hrs, why I played on my laptop (free wifi) and watched them swim.

Then we came home and the older kids got lunch while I laid down. Max came and joined me after he was done eating and he napped for 2 1/2 hrs. I should have napped but I came across this post (http://www.moneysavingmom.com/money_saving_mom/2008/03/cvs-101.html) and got sucked in. I was supposed to wake Max up after an hour and a half because he's been sleeping 3-4 hrs at nap time, but then is awake off and on ALL night and that is very wearing on his parents. I was not successful, he stirred an hour and a half into it, but then he went back to sleep. So I woke him up two and half hours into his nap and I had to pick him up and carry him downstairs to get him awake. As long as I was on the bed, even sitting up holding him, he'd go back to sleep!! So he better be ready for bed tonight!!

When I brought Max down I got started on dinner and pulling together the different things Brent needed for running his errands tonight and writing some thank you notes. In all I was upright for over 2 hrs. Then I laid down again until we went to the cabin to pick stuff from the garden with some friends. We just can't keep up with all of it and we didn't want to waste any of it. Now I'm home in bed, with three boys snuggling with me, can I say how much I love my king size bed and my wireless laptop!!

I'm feeling like I might have over done it. Hopefully there won't be to huge of repercussions. This is the first day I got back up after being up all morning....I forgot that though, so I didn't exactly take it easy.......

still doing good

I'm so happy...I know, I've said it before, but really, I'm so very happy at how well I'm doing. I was up again this morning and able to direct and help the kids with chores and such. Then I laid down for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening and got back up to help with Family Home Evening and then get the younger two kids in bed.

For FHE we talked to the kids about fire safety and what they should do and where they should go. We also found out that none of the three alarms in the house worked. Two had no batteries and one is malfunctioning. Probably a good thing we checked them, huh..... I have been having panic attacks at night about the kids knowing what to do if there is a fire at night, so I'm pleased to have done this much and we'll continue by doing fire drills randomly and to get new and more alarms in the house. We're also planning on getting some carbon monoxide monitors and fire ladders for the kids rooms.

I felt like I could have gotten up this afternoon, but I'm wary of overdoing it and having a relapse. I really don't won't to go back to where I was, thank you.

I found a cool site today. I've been hearing about digital scrap booking here and there and I've started looking into. I've been mostly looking at photo sites, like Kodak gallery, shutter fly, etc... I like what I see and I may still use them, but today I found a site that is specifically designed to print books and they have free software that "sucks" your blog up and spits it back out in book form!! How cool is that!

I wanted to do some memory books for the various kids/seasons and such, but I also wanted to do a book of my blog and I think this site is perfect for that. I had heard that there was a site/place that did it, but I don't know if this is that one, but I'm so excited about it. I've sucked my 10 in the Cabin blog up and have spent the last several hours editing it!! So much fun and I'm so excited about it, in case I didn't mention that.

So here's the site: http://www.blurb.com

being happy in small things.....

I'm sooooo HAPPY!!!! I was up for about three hours yesterday morning. Just puttering and directing kids in chores, then I cut 4 of the boy's hair and Brent's. Then I went to bed for the rest of the day. BUT, it doesn't seem to have heavily affected me. I was a tad bit more tired today, but was still able to be up for about 2-3 hrs total, not all at once. My longest stretch was about 1 1/2. That is sooooo much better than before!!!!

I do have a bit more coughing, but I think in general it's OK, as it's getting the nasty stuff out of my lungs. I think it's a balance, don't do enough to tire myself out, but do, do some so that I slowly work back in the norm. We'll see.

I'm just so happy to be able to get out of bed and STAY out of bed for more than 30 mins, which was my record before yesterday.

We're all back home now, three of the boys came home Friday night and Than came home last night. He got two very beautiful sunrise pictures and really enjoyed his sailing trip. It's amazing to watch him mature.

I was on another board with some internet friends and they were talking about how many teens they had, and we'll have two in Sept., when Than has his birthday. Then it made me want to figure out how many I would ever have at one time. If I figured it out right for about 9 mths, all the boys will be teenagers!! Than will be 19 and Max will be 13, so it will be the extreme ends, but they'll squeak in there. I think our garden will have to really grow in square footage to keep up with them by then!!!

Hey check out this link, it's super cute! http://www.maniacworld.com/twin-baby-moose-in-sprinkler.html

the pressure, the pressure

Acckkk!!! I want the first post of this new blog to be perfect!!! Of course I'm not going to get a post that "I" consider perfect, so I just need to write it and get on with it!!

I thought I'd share with you a few some sites that have really touched me this last two weeks, well one week, as I was out of it the first week.....

First, I'm sure you heard about Randy Pausch and his passing on July 24th. I've seen some of the clips of his lecture off and on since he did it last fall, but I've never taken the time to actually watch it and today I did. I also watched his time management lecture and both were so incredibly moving. They are both 1 hr and 16 mins. So I'm just going to link to them, instead of awing you with my computer geek knowledge of putting a video on my blog. Well OK, I don't know how to do that yet, but I'm going to learn and soon!! So here's the link to the Last Lecture and from there you can do a search for the time management one if you want to see it, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

He also has a book and I'm hoping to get my hands on it soon. Here is the website for it.
http://www.thelastlecture.com/index.htm


Because of the last year and a half life events that we've experienced, first Mom's heart attack, then Dad's death, and Collin's tumor, and now my pneumonia, I've been thinking a lot about my life. How I live it, how I conduct myself, what I'm teaching my children, what I would leave behind if I died now. I've been on autopilot for several years now, mostly trying to survive the whirlwind that is Max. But now he's coming down a few notches, other parts are settling in my life and I can look up and breath again. I have to admit that I'm looking at my pneumonia as a huge chance to do this reflecting and possible redirecting of my life.

So here is another site that has given me considerable pause for thought. She to has a book and it's actually on it's way to me. So I look forward to that. http://37days.typepad.com/37days/


That's probably enough for my first post. It at least gets it done for me and hopefully gives you food for thought.