Sunday, July 25, 2010

July 4th Foto Fun



July 4th was a blast!
We spent the day with our family and best friends.
One of the best ways to spend the day in Texas...in July...
IN THE POOL!

I love my friend, Tricia, and her little guy!




Fred and his best friend.

Me and my best friends!

We were having too much fun!

The food was delicious!

Waiting for the fireworks display!

Me and my beautiful daughter!

My oldest and dearest friend.
Look at the silly kids behind us! LOL!

I love, love, love these ladies!

I love this young lady more than anything!
What a fantastic Fourth!

Foto Fun - The Sunshine Project

My son's girlfriend has been living with us since April. It has been fantastic to have her here, for many reasons.
This reason, though, I could capture in photograph.
She loves to paint. She paints pictures - as in real pictures. She also paints the most fabulous flowers on my fingernail and toenails. She even likes to paint walls. Yes! She likes to paint walls...can you believe that?!?
We have a game room upstairs. It is sort of the "hub" of the upstairs.
It also is one room that I have done nothing with since we moved here 5 years ago.
In fact, when we forgot to take "before" pictures, I looked to see if I had a photo of this room from when I took pictures of the house when we moved here - nope.
I guess I didn't like the room much. Not that it's a bad room; in fact, it is a great place.
It just wasn't very pretty.
Thien (my son's girlfriend) didn't like the room much either but since we spend quite a bit of time in there, it became her desire to paint it.
She named it "The Sunshine Project"
The reason for that title?
The room was paper sack brown but has wonderful windows and light.
So, a color was selected and off we went.
Due to the fact that I had surgery 6 days prior, I only painted what I could reach; which was quite a bit. However, I did rest when necessary and took a few photos along the way.

This is the color contrast. Since we forgot to take "before" pictures, we decided we would
at least capture a memory of the color of the room before the re-do.

Thien had to pour all the paint since I could not lift the paint can.

Rebecca even joined in the fun. Thankfully!

I never got on the tall ladder, but I did use this one to paint as high as possible.
Thien did the entire ceiling while I painted from the floorboard to around 7 feet high.
The room has a cathedral ceiling, so it was quite a bit of reaching.

And here is what it looks like - finished.

We still have blank walls...waiting for the perfect accessories to be located.
The room housed most of our beach artifacts (from our years living on the East Coast).
Although I don't think I will use much of what we accumulated there, the room still carries a beachy feel. So....
A new, big screen television has been purchased and is on the way.
We are very excited about that!
After all, it is a game room!
Since many games in our home are electronic, it only makes sense! The first Wii game we played on the small T.V. that is in there now was enough for us to move the Wii downstairs.
We are looking forward to spending more time upstairs, in the Sunshine Room!
This was a very fun project!
Thanks, Thien and Rebecca!
I love it!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

My Music, My Prayer

Amy Grant came to a Flower Mound restaurant prior to the release of her most recent CD titled Somewhere Down the Road. Our local (Christian) radio station featured her live one morning and she played this song on the air, live. It touched my heart.

I have looked forward to hearing it and singing along every time it comes on the radio or my iPod. Various situations and people enter my mind as I sing along. But this last week, it has become my prayer. The song has ministered to me and given me hope, joy, and reminded me - strongly - of God's presence. He was with my hubby when his airplane crashed. He was with me when I received that unnerving phone call and He is very here while we recover...physically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.

Listen and praise the God who is always present, even when we are crying out in fear or pain.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Seriously! I can't believe I said that...but it worked!

LOL!

Really? I did not know when I added the little snippet below on my blog last week that I would have to give serious thought to what it meant the very next day.

And laughing out loud still helps, even when it is not the answer.

Tuesday night, around 11:30 p.m., I received one of those dreaded, middle of the night phone calls. A stranger called to tell me that a man who claimed to be my husband had knocked on his door asking for help. My heart froze in my throat. Making a long story very short, my husband and his best friend of 20 years had made a crash landing in our small airplane. Sadly, the airplane was in a pond and my husband, disoriented, had been walking in a field for several hours. All the while, I was sleeping. A flurry of activity occurred as his friend had been looking for my hubby for hours, the police had been called and it was decided that my husband needed to go to the hospital for some stitches. We all met at a local Emergency Department around 1:00 a.m., and after a CAT Scan, it was determined that he had not only sustained some serious head lacerations, but also a broken neck! He was put in an ambulance and transported to a trauma hospital in Ft. Worth.

He has been released with no surgery, no paralysis, and the sutures have already been removed from his scalp (all 32 of them!). Grateful is not a word that is strong enough to describe how happy I am that he (and his friend) are alive. (His friend was treated and released from the hospital the night it occurred.)

Sorrow and disappointment threaten to overwhelm me at times. But, I also have been laughing...yes, even sometimes out loud. I ponder my ability to laugh at some of the things that have happened in the last week, and they really are not funny. But humor is still there, even in the midst of the fear, the concern, and the tragedy of what happened. And I am grateful that I have the ability to laugh, and to cry, and that I know that no matter what, God will take care of my dear husband, me, our children, and all the consequences that we will work through in the days and weeks to come.

So...some of the things that I have laughed at this week...

I brought a t-shirt to the hospital for him to wear home...and he can't pull it over his head. oops!
(He came home in his hospital gown)

I spilled green jello in between his collar / neck brace and his chin. It was almost impossible to remove!

Sleeping with him is like sleeping with Frankenstein! He has to sleep flat on his back and had stitches all over his head. Eery!

And I think after we get all the doctor bills paid off, I am going to have to have botox to get rid of all the worry wrinkles...

...or maybe they are laugh lines!

Either way....

he owes me.



Monday, July 12, 2010

LOL

is not the answer to everything.
But most things.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Amazing Attention

Recently, I had surgery. Not a huge deal...just a little gallbladder problem. I am feeling much, much better, but still recovering. During the time I was required to stay home and recuperate, I received a basket of flowers from my co-workers. I don't think they had any idea how this lovely gift would entertain me, but I spent hours gazing at the beauty of the blooms that brightened the coffee table in my family room. No television show or book held my attention as long as these beauties.


I was too tired to speak to anyone for any length of time. Reading tired me; plus the drugs I was taking didn't really allow for that amount of concentration and I just have to say it, I despise television - even when I am ill.

So, I would sit and stare. Then I would see something and move just a little closer.

And even closer, realizing how different things looked when I examined closely.

The detail, the texture. Never mind the fragrance - that was there too, but what really captivated me was the intense detail of each flower, each petal.

And I wondered, does God look at me this closely? Certainly He does. He knows everything about me and He still loves me.

There have been times I have thought of myself or others as "speck inspectors"...
looking at all the little things in others and pointing out any tiny fault or character flaw. (even if only in my head)

Do we look that closely when we are examining the positive qualities of others? Do I know my husband's and childrens' loveliness as well as I know their quirks?

If I don't, I plan to now. Because I realized while I was investigating every inch of these flowers that the beauty far outweighed the pollen that threatened my nose or the petals that dropped onto the table.
Just like my family and friends. The beauty far outweighs the warts.

Here's to taking time to ponder the loveliness of life!