Monday, Monday

This past weekend was my son Mattehew's 20th Birthday, wich in past years was a very joyus time for us all. Since he is in Texas this was the first birthday when we weren't together and that sure made me sad. I would love to tell you all that I have a wonderful relationship with Matthew but that would not be true. I love my son with all my heart but he is still in the growing up mode and it seems to be taking him a long time to go from the little boyhe is to the man I know he can be. It is very hard having a child so far away, I don't know what I will do when he is deployed in August.
Roger says it is taking a toll on my life as I worry so much about him, not so much really about him but for him. He is not one to do well with finances and he seems to always be in a ME mode. He will be coming to CA the 14th of may for some training and it just breaks my heart that he will be within driving distance (So. CA) and yet I won't even get a chance to see him in person, no hugs, no personal time. It tears at my heart so much just to think about it. I will see him before he deploys and I look forward to that time a time I will treasure forever.

I have also been dealing with a situation with some family members wich is another sad part of our lives. Roger has a daughter, well actually they are not really related to each other except for the fact that Roger lived with her mom when she was little and then basically raised her for a while. I don't know all the details but do know that he calls her his daughter and she calls him dad which is fine with me. Her and her husband have 3 children but we don't see them very often. Actually when they came over for Easter that was only the second time I had seen their daughter and she is now 2 years old. Basically when I talk with people I tell them we have 2 grandchildren Dylan and Katie. We see them all the time. We also see my daughter all the time even though she lives about an hour away.Roger is saddend by the situation of his daughter but we feel like we have done all we can and after talking aobut it have decided to give up trying to force the relationship. I know when I or Roger walk into any room with Dylan and Katie in it they will automatically run to us with gigantic smiling faces happy to see us.

Mandy is old enough now to get spayed so I will be making her an appointment probably for next week or the week after.She is getting cuter everyday.

One of my many treasured blog friends Winona has gotten me back into a crafting mood. I worked quite a few hours on the purse I am making for Jennifer's birthday, doing the embroidery. Hope to have it ready to put together this next weekend.

I hope and pray that everyone has a wonderful week ahead.
Blessings,Joann

Mandy is 5 months old now!!

She is getting bigger and when we took her to get her rabies shot yesterday she weighed in at 4.5 pounds. I still need to call the vet to schedule her appointment for spaying next month.


This is a picture of what the little girls do most of the day :)




Katie and Jennifer came over Sunday afternoon, we had a nice visit and then had dinner. Roger BBQ'd steak and chicken it was very good

Katie in our backyard~









Roger worked very hard this past weekend and finished up replacing the doors in the hallway. They were a very ugly wood color and now they are all white and it makes the whole hallway look so much cleaner and bright looking.

The hallway~



I have still done NO crafting yet, have you ever heard of writers block? Well I think I have crafters block. The project I want to work on is the shower curtain for the hallway bathroom So far all I have done is sewn 2 twin sized flat sheets together and put a valance on top. I am wanting to applique some prim looking things onto it. The shower curtain is dark blue and then the things I want to put on it will be in either a light tan or dark tan. The main colors in that bathroom are black and dark blue. I know exactly how I want the curtain to look when it's done in my head I am just having a hard time getting it out of my head and on to the curtain. Does this make sense to anyone??

I am going to try and work on something to finish that curtain this week but so far all I have done is look at it a lot. I did use my new extension table the other day for a light box and transfered some embroidery patterns.

Can't remember if I posted pictures of the extension table so here it is~

Of course right now I can't even hardly find it, as it's under a bunch of junk!! Sadly it's a flat surface and I am a piler, any flat surface just beckons to me to be piled on :)
to

Our new table and chairs

I just realized today that on my post about Easter I mentioned our new table and chairs but didn't post a picture of it, well here it is in all it's glory :)

Here it is with not only the Easter baskets on it but our lovely cat Oreo too!



I really like the fact that it is a square table, as it fits in the area much better than the old rectangle one. The chairs are very nice straight backed and feel very nice on my back.

The placemats we just bought don't fit right on it so I will be taking some measurments and just making some, sometime.

I have not been doing any crafting at all which is very not like me, need to get my creative juices flowing again.

Hope everyone out there has a wonderful weekend! Jennifer and Katie are coming to visit on Sunday so we are excited.

Blessings,Joann

Easter here at our house

I am finally getting pictures and my thoughts up about our Easter. We had our entire family over for Easter. We had and Easter Egg hunt and then a nice lunch of ham, baked potatoes and salad.

Prior to Easter Sunday Roger had been doing lots of work to our backyard, I do most of the supervising and he does most of the physical work. He is a very hard worker and whatever he does it's always done as perfect as he can.

We bought reed fencing to put along the back fence and I think it looks real nice. Roger also bought some stain for the wooden fences and the planters in the back yard. I picked out the color of barn red.

Here is what the back fence and yard look like now~





He also managed to get the entire back patio pressure washed and cleaned up real nice.

Here are pictures of the back patio~








Here are some pictures of the day, it turned out to be not a sunny day but cold and cloudy so we had a fast egg hunt and then we ended up eating inside because it was only in the 50's. It is very hard to find seating for 18 people in our house even when we set up a table in the living room.

Easter baskets for Katie and Dylan~



Katie in her pretty Easter dress~


Dylan and Katie with their Easter baskets~



Jennifer just had to take Mandy out for the Easter egg hunt~





Living room with people at Easter~




Saturday night before Easter Sunday we went looking to buy some chairs for our table, we only had the benches and I was missing a nice chair to sit in. We found a nice set in black that ended up costing not that much more for a new table and chairs than just buying the chairs by themselves. I like both the color (black), the shape of the table (square) and the nice back on the chairs.


Our weather here has been undecided I guess it can't decide wether to be cold or warm, cloudy or sunny, rain or sun. This coming week it is supposed to be back cold and raining again. I wasn't totally ready for the hot weather so this is perfectly fine with me.

I was reading an article that I had printed out form the Revive our hearts website and it was talking about "joy" I really liked what it had to say and I have really been praying about being blessed with joy again and being able to do things with joy in my heart. Too many people and things had taken over my heart with bad thoughts but I am now taking my heart back and filling it with joy. JOy that comes from my wonderful relationship with the Lord. I want to be able to once again find joy in doing things around the home as a home keeper would do. Joy in serving my husband and making him happy and most of all doing all I do for the Glory of God.

Blessings,Joann