My Crazy, Beautiful Life

Since Matt's been out of town this week, I've had time for reflection. Each morning Anabeth has asked where her daddy is and everyday when I pick her up she says, "I go home see daddy". I have to remind her that he's not home and is out of town for work. She thinks "daddy go bye bye on airplane?" To say I love this girl is a vast understatement, but that's not the point of this blog. With matt being gone, I've been reminded how much Anabeth loves her daddy. He always says that he's chop liver and she never wants him, but I have been reminded of the past couple of years. From the time she was born, she's been watching football with her daddy. He would hold her in his lap and eventually she's become able to sit beside him and watch. Some of her first words were touchdown and tackle. Before she was 2 she knew the difference. We even DVRd a game because she LOVES football. I believe this is in part because it's a special time with her...

I started to just call this human garbage disposal, but didn't think that was nice to compare my child to. After a little research, I found that there are 3 animals that have to eat pretty much constantly. These are the hummingbird, koala, and blue whale. I'm going to call Anabeth a koala. She's too big to be a hummingbird and hopefully she's not going to make it to blue whale size anytime soon! Let me explain why this even came about. My child literally will eat constantly if you let her. Yesterday, she ate breakfast, morning snack, lunch, and afternoon snack at school. I picked her up and we went to Mimi's to take her grocery shopping and get dinner. In the car, she had 2 crackers my mom brought and some water. We went to Publix and there, they offer a free cookie to any child under 12 years old. She got her chocolate chip cookie and ate that. As we're going through the store, she's pointing at multiple things she'd like and we finally pick up some ra...

Hello all. For those of you that know me, you know that height isn't my better quality. Instead of thinking of myself as short though, I heard someone once say "vertically challenged". If you are like me, you can sympathize with my hatred for buying clothes other than shirts. Recently, I was ordering pants online thinking that I would finally be able to find a pair that I wouldn't need altered. I was wrong. I was at a certain online store...had to stay within a certain budget while getting the type of pants I wanted...and they sell extra short, regular, and extra long. Sweet, I'm thinking I've finally found a place to buy pants. I order my size and didn't exactly pay attention to the inseam other than it said extra short. I got this pair of pants in the mail earlier this week and can I say that I'm not a midget?!? These "extra short" pants are still crazy long! I even double checked the tag to make sure they hadn't sent the wrong size/len...

I have to start by saying that my life has honestly been a good life and I've been happy most of it. I have struggled, however, with anger off and on. Yes, I have a temper, but this is not what I'm talking about. I mean being angry at a person for doing something to me or someone I love. As I said in my first post, I was born and raised in a Christian home. Even with my upbringing, I haven't always dealt with things in a healthy manner and I went through a phase of not going to church unless I was at home and didn't want to go to church. I have been "back on track" for a few years now and it's been great! I'm still struggling though and so I've been praying about how to handle my feelings. I'm starting to think that God has been sending me a message because almost daily I hear this song "7 x 70" by Chris August. It's a great song that anyone with problems could probably get comfort in. The chorus says this, "Seven times seven...

 If any of you watch The Mentalist, then you'll get where the title came from. In last week's episode, he told the nurses to scream and it would make them feel better! I think if I could have found a place where no one would have been disturbed, I would have tried it quite a few times lately! I have to say that the past few months have truly been hard for me. Starting in December, my mom ended up in a North Carolina hospital and almost died. In January, we found that her bladder cancer had returned and she had a basically nonfunctioning bladder and it had to be removed. This is scary enough in itself, but as I've mentioned, my mom has a wealth of health problems that added even more concern. With her lung problems, the concern for not being able to get off the ventilator after surgery, etc. Not long after this appointment, she ended up in the hospital here in Jacksonville very sick again, but not as close to death's door as before. Finally the day for her surgery arri...

My pastor was talking to my brother and I a couple of weeks ago. He was going to be speaking to the youth group at our church about parents. He said children go through three phases with their parents...they idolize them, demonize them, and finally humanize them. I had honestly never thought of this, but it did make me think. Though I've sometimes disagreed with my mom, I don't believe I've ever demonized her or humanized her. I sincerely have never known anyone like her, so I can't compare her to anyone else. She has definitely been my inspiration for a lot and a huge encouragement through my life, but she also has taught me the most important things you can't learn in school or anywhere else...how to love, sacrifice, give, and keep faith! As I mentioned in my background post, I was born into a house with 4 kids. My mom worked 2 jobs often and made sure that most of all, my 3 cousins were never separated. That's sacrifice! She continued with her sacrificing wh...

I hope I don't offend any of my family members who may read this, but aside from God, I have three main people that are my world. Mainly, this comes from being physically close and therefore being able to spend more time together. These three people are Matt, Anabeth, and my mom. I will admit that I am working daily on making sure I put Matt first because I think as any parent knows, it can be hard sometimes to not put your child(ren) first. I mean, especially when they're these sweet, precious little people...not when they're teenagers : ) All that said, I absolutely treasure the time I get to spend with these three wonderful people! Anabeth absolutely loves her Mimi and loves going to her house. She has a slide in the back yard for her and my brother and sister-in-law got her a cleaning cart for Christmas. No, not being mean or as a joke...my kid is a clean freak and does not like anything dirty or messy!!! It was sincerely one of her favorite gifts! She loves to take her...

As the title suggests, Anabeth has picked up her version of "Oh Crap" from me. I decided since the past few months have been pretty rough, I wanted to focus on the good things that have happened and in turn, hopefully start to move on from the bad. In December, mom ended up in the hospital in Charlotte, NC and that was crazy hard for me to be so far away. She didn't think she was that sick, but in fact had almost died and had sepsis. The awesome thing that came from that was her sisters coming together and having some much needed time to catch up and get to see each other. Later, we discover her bladder cancer returned and a lot of other things were going on, so she ended up back in the hospital with another infection and finally a couple of weeks ago, surgery to fix all of this. Through this time though, my girl Anabeth has been keeping me in check. She's learning so much so fast, it's hard to keep up! She only turned 2 in December and she speaks in complete sent...

Hey all. For those that don't know me...and some that do...I thought I'd give you a little background of me. I was born and raised in New Bern, NC and came into the world 5 years after my brother David. For some reason, I've never been able to call him David, so he's "Brother". My parents had custody of 3 of my cousins when I was born and so my mom had a lot of help. I was fortunate to grow up in a Christian home and went to church from birth. I have a very large family. My mom had 6 siblings and now has 5. My dad had 4 and now has 3. I have over 20 cousins and my family has always been close. When I was in middle school, my mom was diagnosed with Scleroderma. I can't remember how long after, she was diagnosed with Pulmonary Hypertension and Pulmonary Fibrosis. She wasn't suppose to live to see me graduate from high school. My parents divorced the year I graduated from college and life has been different. My mom moved to Florida to be on Mayo Clinic...