The Pity Party Saga (continued…)

Do you remember this post? The one where I whined and complained about…um, everything. The one where I implied that our world was imploding right before our very eyes. The one where I felt sorry for myself and unpleasantly begged for ya'll to feed me handfuls of WORMS! {Big fat juicy ones. Eensie weensy squeensy one.} The one where my clever sista' joked:

"Aren't you so excited to do dishes by hand in cold water watching a black screen on your man TV, soothing Jace with a little whiskey cause you're out of the "good stuff" using masking tape to clean your floors and hide out while your bangs grow in your glowing orange house!!!"

Well,
I. WANT. THOSE. DAYS. BACK!!
Because since then… Our car suffered a Star Spangled death on the Fourth of July. In return… Spence’s truck felt ignored and started dripping massive amounts of radiator fluid. And… Brynlee accidentally left a stack of library books in the clubhouse on her Swingset. We watered the lawn and therefore, the books. Then… We were informed that Spence’s company was requiring all employees to take two more weeks FORCED TIME-OFF WITHOUT PAY!
And... Remember how I gave a "thumbs up" to Behr paint for offering us free paint to repaint the gallons and gallons of Orange paint we had liberally applied to our house. Yeah... So far we've received a combined total of ZERO dollars and ZERO cents! Oh, but it gets better… We found a dripping pipe in our crawl space. Turns out… The broken pipe was located SOMEWHERE in the wall BEHIND the kitchen cabinets. Guess what… To access the pipe the cabinets had to be removed. And there’s more… There was mold. So… We are sitting in a hotel room while a restoration company…well, restores! But as a plus… I’ve stopped drinking Diet Coke! But as a negative… I’ve taken a liken to Vodka. Oh, I kid... I can’t give up Diet Coke. So, I mix Vodka & Diet Coke. They say that bad things come in groups of three. What a crock of I disagree!

Dear Spence,

picture by SFoto

To me you mean a medium rare steak topped aplenty with A1 and accompanied by nothing.
You mean watching fireworks on top of the Perkins roof.
You mean our first camping trip up Scout Mountain. In which we didn’t bring a tent and instead slept in the bed of the “Tool” pick-up truck.
You mean the perfect surprise proposal with fabric that you picked up from the fabric store, roses galore and dozens of rings and ring boxes to choose from.
You mean patience and forgiveness, even when I don’t return it. Or deserve it!
You mean love notes, treasure hunts, gift boxes, flowers, love songs and lingerie.
You mean giant bags of peanut M&M’s for you and a box of hot tamales for me.
You mean all night talks, card games on cookie sheets and midnight “Wal-Mart” dates.
You mean laughing until I lose control; Rollerblades with a white ninja outfit and a perfectly worn blackbelt and red washcloth.
You mean a handcrafted summer luau in February and a washer and dryer “promise ring”.
You mean freshly mowed lawn & the sound of a power tool.
You mean excited, laughing children.

.

To me you mean

:bliss: :laughter: :joy:

:friendship: :eternity: :happiness:

:LOVE:

.

Happy 6th Anniversary babe!

I love you.

The house is done! {woot, woot}

At {first} we had this...

and {then}, for a brief bit, we had this...

and {now} we have this...

C is for Chlorine and Coward

I dislike swimming. Loathe it actually. Really, I do! It’s not fun. In fact, it’s barely tolerable. (GASP!) I know…how could I? Hating swimming is like hating puppies, right. (Oh, and while we’re at it, I don’t really like puppies either.) Honestly though, my disdain toward swimming is justified. When I was a little girl I almost drowned. My cousins, siblings and I were swimming in my Great Uncle George and Aunt Gwen’s backyard pool. I was just tall enough that I could touch in the shallow end if I allowed myself to jump up and down. The shallow end was three feet deep, and then at the pools midpoint there was an abrupt drop to ten feet. I didn’t know that. Feeling comfortable with my jumping and touching technique, I made my way down the pool. When I hit that midpoint and suddenly couldn’t touch anymore I panicked. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t swim, call for help, and no matter how hard I tried I could NOT get my head above water. In my little heart I just knew that I was going to die. I don’t know how long I was under water or how close I was to drowning. But it really doesn’t matter. The experience immediately changed how I felt about swimming. My mom signed me up for swimming lessons every summer in hopes that I would learn to swim and get over my fear. I dreaded them. They made me nauseas. I would especially panic when the teacher would make us put our head under water and blow bubbles. Still, to this day, I WILL NOT go under water without plugging my nose. Although I’m terrified of water I still go boating, water skiing, white water rafting and I’ve even gone cliff jumping(ish). But that’s different; you get to wear a lifejacket. But for some reason people tend to look at you strange when you’re in your upper twenties and where a lifejacket to the local swimming pool…in the shallow end! But, I married into a family of fish. Most of my sibling-in-laws were lifeguards or taught swimming lessons. And I think all of them were on the swim team at one time or another. They grew up in the water and love to swim. And in hopes that my kids will also share that love for water, I go swimming. It actually works out quite nicely. Spencer treads water in the deep end, jumps off the 30 meter platform and does double back flips off the diving boards with the older kids right behind him.
All the while, I stay where I can touch, where a hat to shade the sun (because heaven knows I won’t be going under water) and splash with the babies. Earlier this week we spent the day at Lava Hot Springs (or Hot Lava as Brynlee calls it) with the Francis Family. It was a near perfect day and a day of firsts:

Jace went swimming for the first timeBrynlee floated around completely unassisted and jumped off the steps into the water all by herself Alec proudly went down the children’s slide without help. Bryn jumped off the high dive for the first time.And Gav did a flip (a flip!) off the diving board.

And I, for the first time in a long time, enjoyed myself at the pool.

Thanks Francis’ for sharing the day with us. It was fun.

**All pictures by SFoto! Thanks Sarah**