A Heavy Heart

Today I hurt.
Both physically and emotionally.
Sunday I hurt by back somehow. I have spent the last 2 days trying to take it easy.

Then this morning I received a text from a dear friend. They are on vacation, and their youngest daughter hasn't been feeling well. They thought it wasn't anything serious, but she continued to get worse. So this morning they took her to the ER.
The text that followed were the kind that you never want to get.
Doesn't look good the Doctor is worried.
Doctors are doing blood work.
Testing for leukemia.
It may be something else. Not sure what it is though.
"I'm trying not to freak out."
"Don't worry girl, I will freak out enough for both of us. You stay strong."
Good news. Initial blood work looks good for it not being leukemia.
But it can't be ruled out.
They are moving her to a children's hospital for more testing.

And so throughout the morning I paced my house. It hurts to walk, but it hurts to sit too. Sitting is not keeping busy, and my mind would wander and worry. So I paced and cleaned waiting for the next text to come in. Constantly praying that the doctors were able to rule the worst case scenarios out.

A tearful phone call from my friends Mother. The hope that it is something not as serious as originally thought, but will still need lots of treatment.

Moments of falling to my knees and praying for this family and their little girl.

Prayer is not my spiritual gift. It took Matthew months, maybe even years, to get me to even say a blessing at dinner. I don't feel like it do it well or the right way, as if you can pray the wrong way.

Finley is slightly unaware of what it going on. She keeps asking why I am sad. I try telling her. She says OK and moves on. I guess that is the beauty of childhood, they don't dwell or worry like we do as adults. They are unaware of the pains of this world. As I tell her, her friend is sick she tells me she will be OK.

Then as I pace the hallway looking for something else to do to keep myself busy, Finley fell and hurt herself. I sat down on the floor and pulled her into my lap and held her. She started to cry for her friend, as she does when she is hurt or in trouble. Because friends are able to make things better in a way that even Mommy can't. Hearing her tiny voice cry out for her friend made my cry. Heavy and hard, ugly tears. I ugly cried, because in those moments I don't think you can cry any other way. I sat there and thanked God for my daughter and her health. I thanked him for this family, what a blessing and encouragement they have been for us. I prayed that we could be those things for them now. I prayed the way only a mother can pray for a child. I let out a cry from my heart. The kind that has no words, but you know God hears it and understands it.

I am praying for our friends as they are out of town on vacation, not near their family or support system. Trusting doctors they don't know, but also trusting a God they do know.

4th of July

We had a great 4th of July. We stayed in town this year and had a BBQ with some friends.
There was a lot of yummy food and fun games.
There was also a lot of baby holding :)
The kids, and a few adults (I may have been one of them...) jumped on the trampoline.
We were able to see fireworks from a few different places around the city in our friends backyard. Which was the best. No crowds and no freak outs from Finley. She is not a fan of loud noises, so I have always been a bit hesitant on taking her to see fireworks. She loves watching them, just not hearing them. So this was a awesome option for her.
We played with sparklers. Finley wasn't too sure about them at first. Then she really started to enjoy playing with them. That was until she dropped hers and then tried to pick it up before I could stop her. Bad idea little one. She wasn't hurt bad, I think it just scared her that it was hot. But after that she was over the sparklers. She wanted to glow sticks and flashlights.
We were up late, obviously... who isn't up late on the 4th of July!?
I was hoping for a morning of sleeping in on Saturday. Matthew got up early the next morning to go boating, and Finley woke up promptly at 6:15 am. So much for my morning of sleeping in!

All in all it was a great weekend with friends!
I hope everyone had a great 4th of July and was safe!

If every day could be like this past weekend

If you know me, you know I do not like summer. I hate being hot and sweaty. I can only handle summer if I am near water. Preferably a pool. Or a pool next to a beach. I love the beach, but not the sand. Strange I know. I want to be in a pool looking at the ocean from May through September.

But if every day could be like this past weekend, I might be able to make it until August when we head to Hilton Head.

It started on Friday. We spent the early part of the afternoon at the public pool. As I was putting our stuff down and talking to a friend, Finley B-lined it for the pool. Clothes and shoes on, no adult with her. I dropped everything, and chased her down. Told her she needed to wait and take off her shoes and dress before she could get in. So in the middle of the walk way, she stripped down and headed back to the pool. She is one determined little thing. It started to rain, so it cut our time a little short. But it was good while it lasted.

Friday night we went out to Nightfall. It is a local festival they do on Friday nights (duh). They have food trucks, live music, and all the motorcycles come out. It was a nice night to be outside, the rain cooled everything down.

 We had Italian ice's. I went looking for the frozen lemonade guy, but he wasn't there.

 Selfies

Finley loves to ride around on Daddy's bike.

Finley is currently obsessed with rocks and stones. She picks rocks up every where we go and says "I need this one for my collection!" While we were in Texas, my mom spent $6 on one of those little bags of rocks. She loves them, she has them lined up on her windowsill in her room.

Matthew has wanted to take Finley gem panning since we moved to Chattanooga. When he realized she had a interest in rocks, he started to plan on taking her panning.

So Saturday morning we got up and ate breakfast and headed to Racoon Mountain, which is litterally right around the corner from us. We did it as a surprise, and she LOVED it!

Look at the face. She was thrilled.

After the gem panning, we went home and had lunch. We grabbed our swimming stuff and headed out to a swimming hole Matthew has been wanting to visit.

Finley wasn't so sure about the river at first, but by the end of the day she didn't want to leave.

We found tadpoles, and I think Finley could have chased them all afternoon.

Sunday after church we all went to Coolidge Park for a picnic and fun.

The kids played in the fountain and rode the carousel.

This is most of our ladies, but not all. We took this picture towards the end of the day, so some people had already headed home.

We finished our day with a shaved ice. 

 It was the perfect ending to a wonderful day.

If every day could be like those 3, I think I could handle summer a bit better.

We were suppose to head out to Riverbend tonight to see Toby Mac, but we currently have a bad storm rolling through. So I am not sure if we are going to make it. Sad. Tomorrow Boston is playing and if the weather stays nice, we will definitely be at that one!

Here is a great start to summer!

Facebook

I have finally created a Facebook Page for my blog!
Hop on over and like it!

https://www.facebook.com/themrsthestache?ref=hl

I am hoping to have a FB icon up soon for easier following.

We just can't stay away...

Matthew and I have some exciting news!

We will be heading back to Nepal this October!

So lets take this conversation back to January.

Back in January, Matthew and I sat down and started to discuss our trips for the year. We needed to make a decision on if we would be going back to Nepal on another mission trip or not. If so, we needed to start the support raising process. After several conversations we decided this year we would take a break. We have not had a family vacation since Finley was 1. And since mission trips take a huge chunk of Matthew's vacation time, we decided not to go back this year. We also felt like this was the year to give our supporters a break.

A few days later during one of the snow storms, Matthew and I sat at home watching the snow fall and booked our condo in Hilton Head for a week. We were both very happy and excited about our decision to take time this year for our family. Even with taking a family vacation, this left Matthew with 8 days of vacation and no idea what to do with them.

Then at the end of April, Matthew came to me and asked what I thought about one of us going to Nepal to visit our friends that had moved there back in January. My first question was who would go? My second question was is this a mission trip and do we need to raise funds? Then I asked, if not how are we going to pay for it?

The answers were just one of us would go and to pray about which one. No it would not be a mission trip. And we have enough saved that we could swing it.

So we began to pray about it.
Yesterday Matthew asked me again how I felt about 1 of us going. I responded with "How can we pick just 1 of us?" We both want to go, and we both have good reasons to go. So after working somethings out financially, last night we booked 2 tickets to Nepal in October!!

We are UBER excited to go back and visit our friends. Since this is not a mission trip, there is no schedule we have to stick to. This trip will be much more relaxed. We will get to see what day to day life is like for our friends overseas. I cannot tell you how excited I am. I want to cry because I just can't wait! October cannot get here soon enough!!

White Chocolate Blondies

Oh my goodness these are so yummy! I will give you a heads up... They are not a healthy treat.
They are bad for you, but in the best way possible.

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix
1/2 of a small can of sweetened condensed milk
1 stick of butter
1 egg
1 cup white chocolate chips
Sprinkles

1.) Preheat your oven to 350. Mix the cake mix, butter and egg together. This will make a thick dough.
2.) Mix in the sprinkles.
3.) Grease a 2.2 quart pyrex dish and press 2/3 of the cake mixture into the bottom of the pan.
4.) Sprinkle the white chocolate chips on top of the cake mixture, then drizzle the sweetened condensed milk over the chocolate chips. I usually use about 1/2 of a small can. Too much can make the blondies too sweet and too mushy.
5.) Take the rest of the cake mixture and put it on top of the rest of the blondies. I typically make small ball shapes, and then mush them flat. It is OK if they don't touch. As the cake bakes the dough will expand.
6.) Bake for about 20 - 25 minutes, depending on your oven. You want the top to be a nice light golden brown color.
7.) Cut and serve!

Enjoy!

DIY Book Page Wreath

Back in January I mentioned that I was wanting to make our rental house feel more homey and cozy. So for the last few months I have been working on it. Our living room seemed the most neglected. It seemed to be the coldest room in the house. But this is the room we spend the most time in, so it has been the main area of focus.

The problem:
It was just our furniture in the room, nothing else really. It is kind of hard to have a lot of the pretty nick-knacky items around on surfaces when you have a small child that likes to play with everything. Also, when you host a play date every few weeks, it kind of becomes a pain to pick up the breakables and put them away on a regular basis. So the things that make a room interesting just aren't possible right now. Also, this room is bigger then our last few living rooms and is open to the kitchen. This makes the room feel very open, which we love, but also allows for a lot of dead space.

The problem area:
* Our TV area. In our first house we had a larger TV stand. Then we moved to the Summergrove house and no longer had a need for it. So we gave it to my sister. In the Summergrove house, the living room was small and the TV was wall mounted above to fireplace. When we moved into our current home, the wall the TV is on is huge and empty! Our original plan was to wall mount the TV here too. Then we saw the damage the mount did to the wall at the other house, and did not want to do that to this house. So the search for a new TV stand was on. I wanted a large furniture piece that looked nice and had storage. I wanted it to make a statement. Matthew wanted something cheap. So we measured and headed to Target. We found a piece that I thought worked for both of us. When we got home and got the stand put together, it was smaller then I expected and I was underwhelmed... to say the least. But we had bought it and put it together, and so that is how it sat for months. Our large TV on a smaller then expected stand against a huge empty wall. It bothered me every day. I would watch TV and couldn't help but cringe. I began thinking about how to fix it. What could I do to make it look better? Matthew didn't want me to spend any money, so I needed to use what we had.

As it does sometimes I had an idea as I was falling asleep one night. We had a book shelf with 2 DVD racks that we attached to it from Ikea in Finley's play room. They were not serving a purpose in her playroom, so I decided to un-attach them from the bookshelf and carry them into the living room and flank the TV. Instantly I loved it! It made it feel a bit more complete. I noticed there was an empty spot above the TV that was begging for something to be put it in. So I began thinking and looking on Pinterest for ideas. Again, I knew it was going to need to be something I could make and not need to spend a ton a money on. (Are you getting a theme here? My husband hates spending money on home decor stuff.)

That is when I came across the book page wreath. It was so pretty and I figured it would work nicely above the TV. Recently we had a large item delivered to our house for our church and the bottom of the box was perfect to use for the base of the wreath. Next I needed a book. I had planned to use a different one, but when I went to get it I found a book that was already falling apart. So I used that one instead.

Here is how I made it:

What you need:
*Solid piece of cardboard
* A medium sized book, usually hardbacks have the right sized pages.
* A stapler and staples
* Hotglue gun and glue sticks
* Exacto knife (if your book is not already falling apart like mine was, you will need to pull the binding away from the pages and exacto knife will help.)

Step 1: I found a large plastic bowl and used it as my templet and cut out a round piece to use as my base. I also used a smaller bowl to make a center circle to cut out.

Step 2: Pull the book apart. As you cans see, my book was already coming apart so I didn't have to work to hard. If your's is not coming apart, you will need to cut the pages away from the binding part. You can see in my picture where mine was coming apart, that is where you want to cut yours.

Your pages will still be together, but it will be easy to pull them apart. Just gently pull the pages away from where they are glued.

Step 3: Roll the pages into a cone shape and staple. You will want to staple close to the tip to help hold the cone shape. I started the cone shape in a corner and started to roll to the other side. It took a few times to figure how to get the perfect cone shape. But once I got going with it, it started to go quickly. You will want to make a lot of cones. I would make several (maybe 50) and then still need to go make more.

Step 4 : Start gluing the cones to the cardboard base. Notice how I did not place the cones all the way to the center. I wanted the final product to be bigger then the base. I also placed the cones where they touched close to the top and didn't worry to much about what the points looked like. Repeat this step for as many layers as you would like. 

Ignore my awesome green socks...

I did 5 layers on mine. I made a second one for a friend and only did 4 layers. I personally liked how it looked with just the 4 layers. I felt like the 5th layer made the center look a little messy. I have enough materials that I could make another one if the center on mine starts to really bother me.

This is what the back looks like. As I made each layer, I folded the points around to the back and glued them down.

This is the final product! I really love it!

And this is what the space looks like now! 

Overall the project was really easy! It took maybe 2 hours from start to finish. So if you have an old book laying around, you should give this a shot!

Up next, my work area! I have needed one for a while, especially since I have started to do some work for our church from home.

Happy Saturday!