Hair drama & other things

This week has been something else.  I had a hair appointment on Monday for my normal color and cut.  On Monday evening, as I was looking in the mirror in the bathroom, I noticed that my hair was not looking normal.  

My roots(new growth) were way darker than the rest of my hair.

I got a hold of my stylist and she had me come in Tuesday to "fix" it.

I had my book club on Tuesday evening, so I didn't really examine my hair a whole lot. It had looked better in the salon so I thought all was well.

Wednesday evening, I was once again in the bathroom looking in the mirror.  

My hair was NOT better.

BIG sigh.

I had another friend who used to do my hair stop by. She agreed that it needed to be fixed.

SO, yesterday I went back to the stylist for the 3rd time this week.

It does look MUCH better, but I can still tell that it does not look as good as it normally does.

So, 5 hours at the salon later, I'm still frustrated. I really love my stylist, but I want my hair to be normal every time.  Should I try to find another lady?  

If any of my local friends have recommendations, please let me know!  

Wednesday night, Tim and I discussed health insurance options while the kids were at AWANA. Hot date, right?!

Insurance is definitely not the easiest thing to understand and decide on :(

Yesterday, I had my appointment for the Cancer Prevention Study-3.  What an honor it is to be able to participate in that. The appointment only took 25 minutes.

Afterwards, I met up with my friend Jessica from Sunday school.  Do you remember my friend Jenn who I told you about not long ago?  She is also in my Sunday school class and was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

Yesterday was her birthday AND her 2nd round of chemo.

What a suck that is!

Jessica and I went and got Sonic drinks and cupcakes for everyone who was sitting with her.

I got her a card and a tiara.  I'm so glad she liked it and I hope she did feel like a queen yesterday.

She decided to shave her hair last night because her hair has began falling out.

I know inside she is having a really hard time. Who wouldn't be?

BUT, you would never be able to tell from the outside.

We laughed and told stories and had a great time visiting with her yesterday.

It's so hard watching a friend go through this.  She inspires me so much. 

I'm not naive to think she has it all together, but she her sense of humor and trust in God are so obvious through it all.

I'd love for you to pray for her.  Pray that the chemo kicks this cancer's butt so bad that it never comes back! And pray for strength for her during all of this. 

When I left the cancer center, I had to run home to do some things, go to my 3rd hair appointment, hurry over to pick up the kids and take C to gymnastics, run home after to make dinner, have the kids get baths and do homework, go to a 1st grade parent night and then home to put the kids to bed.

Do you ever have days like that?  I felt like I barely had time to pee yesterday!

Today, I'm going to catch up on cleaning the house, make a meal to take to a family and hopefully have a fun date night with my little family!

Tomorrow, we are helping my brother, Kevin move to his new house!  They recently sold their 1st house and just bought a bigger house with a bigger yard.  They live right across the border in Oklahoma now.  So now my brother lives in another state! funny! They still will work where they do now because they literally live very near the AR/OK border.  My brothers have always helped move us, so I was glad to be able to return the favor.

It's raining here this morning. I'm so thankful for the water for my plants & grass and for the lower temperatures that it brought!  I'm enjoying the rain and a big ol' cup of coffee!

I hope everyone has a very enjoyable weekend!

A week of stuff

I haven't blogged much in the past week.  Every time that I would have some downtime, I would just not be in the mood.  

Last week, I felt really, really good!  I'm not sure what the deal is, but I'll take it!

Monday, last week, Tim and I went to the Rise and Shine at the kids' school.  B Boy was recognized for being an ambassador this semester and C Girlie was student of the week! Both kids have been student of the week already and I'm SO proud of them!

Tuesday, I had my weekly Bible study, I filled Tuesday folders in each of the kid's classrooms and voted (we have a school millage vote and school board vote right now).

Wednesday the kids have church and Tim & I get some much needed alone time to just talk and hang out for and hour and a half.

Thursday, we had our first district PTO meeting.  This is actually the first time I've ever been a secretary and had to take minutes, but it's pretty easy!  I had lunch with both kiddos after my meeting. I love that their lunches overlap and I get to see them both at the same time! It was also school picture day that day!

C Girlie has gymnastics after school on Thursdays.  She has been going about 7 weeks now and she really seems to love it.  She has some trouble learning a few of the things, but I'm so proud of how hard she is trying!

Tim had football duty that night, so he took both kids with him and I had 3 hours to myself! It was really nice!  I just hung out and made the menu for the next two weeks- I'm trying some new recipes and I'm excited about that. I also sat on the couch and read some of my book!

Friday, I went and helped read with some 1st graders. I'm excited about getting to go do this weekly.  Afterwards, I went to get groceries. I'm one of those people who loves getting groceries- weird, I know!  I also organized my pantry when I got home and unloaded.

Tim and I watched a movie Friday night, and then Saturday, we did a few things around the house and then just watched football all day!  Our Hogs are 3-0 now! I am nervous about the rest of our schedule though.  We play Rutgers this week and after that, it is big-time SEC opponents every week. Eeek!

Yesterday was church, home to have lunch, relax, make soup for dinner tonight, and then back to church for the evening. 

Last night was also the Miss America pageant.  I really prefer it over Miss USA.  My favorite part of this night is the Twitter commentary.  It is the absolute BEST.  I was laughing the entire time! 
C and B were so sad that they had to go to bed and miss the football game last night and the pageant.  It's hard to be 7 and 8.

Geez, it's hard for me to write that they are 7 and 8.  It just seems so old!

Today, I woke up to an unexpected dreary morning. It's not raining now, but it must have sometime during the night/morning.  We really need some rain around here.  I wish we could take some from Colorado.  Please be praying for them. My blogger friend, Jenn, lives in Colorado and wrote this post yesterday.  Just keep the whole state in your prayers.

I have a hair appointment today and I'm very much looking forward to it.  A cut and color always make me feel great!

I also have my appointment for the Cancer Prevention Study 3 this week.  If you want more info or still want to sign up, here is the blog post from a few weeks ago that Keisha wrote.  

I hope you have a wonderful week!!!

Friday! {plus a little talk about Google Reader & Bloglovin}

It is Friday friends!

I started getting sick Tuesday evening and felt awful Wednesday and Thursday. I had to power through yesterday because I had a meeting, PTO fed our teachers for parent teacher conferences, and I went to a baby shower for a lovely lady in our Sunday School class. But, I woke up today and feel great!

It is going to be GORGEOUS weather today and Spring Break starts after school!

We are heading out tomorrow morning to go visit family and to attend the wedding of a family friend!

Next week, we are taking a little excursion to Kansas City and then who knows what we will get into!

***************************************************************************************************************

I'm sure most of you have read that Google Reader is going away effective July 1, 2013.  I hate change and I really love Google Reader.  It is the ONLY way I can keep up with reading blogs.

I've been watching what alternatives that other people are discussing and I've seen many talking about Bloglovin.  I went and checked it out this morning.

It was SUPER easy to import my Google Reader feeds over.  It is also much simpler to manage what you follow.
  
I do 95% of my reading on the iPad and I just go to the page in Safari.  I do like it.  It is different from Reader though.  I was used to my feeds in a list form where I would open if I wanted to read and then you have to click on the link if you want to go to the page and comment.  

With Bloglovin, everything is shown bigger (a picture and part of the post are shown) and when you click to read, it automatically takes you to the page. 

So, I guess that is good in a way, because you can see the actual blog and maybe it will encourage me to comment more.

I know change is inevitable (especially with technology!), so I try not to let it get to me much anymore.

I can tell that Google is wanting everything to move over to Google+.  I have been avoiding it for awhile, but today I connected my blog to my Google+ account.  

Now, my profile on my blog page will take you to my Google+ account and each blog post will be posted on there as well.

So, come on over and find me at these places:

Follow me on Google+

Hi, I'm still here

I've had a sick baby boy this weekend.  It started Friday night and lasted all night long.  We were pretty tired Saturday, but the boy seemed some better, so we set out to do some and antiquing and furniture shopping that we needed to do.

Saturday night, he was sick again :-(  But, it did not last all night long like the previous night.

Sunday morning, we stayed home from church as to not infect anyone else.  Tim emptied our storage building out in preparation for our moving sale.  We also did some work around here, and I filed our taxes.

And we are missing our Sunday school class Super Bowl party :-(  But we have Frito chili pie and chips & dip, so that makes me feel a little better :-)

B Boy still has fever, so he is gonna stay home with momma tomorrow.

Besides all of that, we've had birthday parties, doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, church directory pictures, church activities, signing up for spring baseball, cleaning, cooking, Bible study, meetings, a HUGE PTO fundraiser starting soon, lists, school stuff, oh and a little thing called PACKING!!!

T minus 12 days to closing!

the "stuff" of life

I was going to write about how I haven't been posting as much lately.  However, as I was looking through my posts, I see that I have been blogging pretty consistently.  I realized that it was social media that was being pushed to the back burner lately.  I love me some Twitter, but life has been so busy for our little family the past couple of months.

Currently, the adults in this family are exhausted, burnt out, overwhelmed, etc.  We have that feeling of "there is more work to do than will ever get done."  My feeling is from home things, PTO, and just things I do in general. Tim's is from his job.

That's not to say that things still aren't good and happy times aren't being had.  They are.  But, there's always the "stuff" in the background.

Lately, I've let some things slide to the side that I normally never would.  I slacked off on my Bible studies towards the end, I haven't went to everything I normally go to, and I've just tried to focus on my little family much, much more.

I've learned to recognize stress and overwhelming-ness and I try to nip it in the bud if I can.

I'm drinking hot tea in the morning instead of coffee.  I was reluctant to give it up, but it had started killing my stomach. I'm making changes trying to feel better again.  It's always a constant struggle.

Tim has been so sick for almost a week.  I know that stress and overwork caused his body to get wore down.  I hate that so much.  I try so hard to make our life in our house a place of rest from the "stresses."  But you know what?  I don't always do a good job at that.  That's my goal for now.  That's my job.  It may not sound important, but my job is to take care of my people and that's what I'm going to do.

Thursday Things

I would like to introduce you to the 8th Wonder of the World that has happened to create itself right in my very own bedroom-

Yes, this is Mt. Laundry.

 And sadly, this is not all of it. Somehow, in the midst of doing laundry, I failed to gather up C Girlie's basket. AND this is what has accumulated in less than a week that we have been home! How?!

 The kids decided that they wanted to help me clean yesterday.  C Girlie was wearing a dress over her PJ's!  They are so funny! They helped dust and clean the windows!

I went to Walmart to pick up a few groceries yesterday. I LOVE that they ad match! It only works with exact matches though.  I love getting the Aldi ad in the paper and using it to ad match with.  We eat TONS more produce now with the cheaper prices!  Aren't these prices great?!
I would go to our local Aldi more if it wasn't 20 minutes away!


**Also- I really need to write about how we are trying to eat more healthy and frugally.  Hopefully that soon and more Disney posts. (I do have to scale Mt. Laundry, you know!)
***Plus also- Day 4 of no soda and I have had CONSIDERABLY less bloating.  For reals, the sodas were killing me.