Sunday, October 26, 2008

just a few things...

Well I've been sitting here (on my exercise ball because my back hurts) adding pictures to Facebook and figured I better add them here as well....

My growing 'little' bump....


The two layouts I did for my class last week....



and way out of chronological order....a few from Austyn's Tea Party Birthday...







And a few more from Mom & Jim's Visit...






Beautiful Autumn colours from top of Blarney!
All the fam infront of Bunratty Castle
Ok, thats it for now.....I think I'm caught up on the pictures to add, at least for a little while...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Don't worry about anything; instead, PRAY about EVERYTHING!

Philippians 4:4-9

Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.



How very true this scripture is.....its funny I am very strong in my faith in God or in my religion or in my relationship with Christ...however you want to say it! I pray regularly, I spend time in His word (admittedly not as much as I should), go to church..and actually listen...etc....so why is it that I still have such hard time when the 'bottom falls out' so to speak? Tough situations make you do two things, get closer or further from God, I think. My own opinion here. Ok sorry not trying to make this a religious debate.



Well we had the proverbial bottom fall out in our life a couple weeks ago...ok so it wasn't quite that bad but seemed like it at the time. We are lucky no matter what happens we have a wonderful family, fantastic children, a new little one growing stronger and stronger inside me and Ty and I have a very strong relationship with each other as well as strong faith. So really, we were just fine, but when your husband's boss tells him that his job was made redundant...nice way of saying the job is gone...and he is the provider for the family, it can be a bit scary! Especially if you add in the fact that you have 3 kids, a dog, a cat, and only 10 weeks left in a pregnancy...then add in along with all that our normal stuff like rent, power bill, phone bill, food, etc.....it can be very scary!!! Well Ty has made some good contacts since being here, almost 3 years now, and thankfully within a very short time (a couple days) we had 4 job offers! So that is truly amazing...especially in this economy. Well we decided against opening something in town here.....various reasons.....and accepted a position in a nice small community in Carrick -on-Shannon. Its about 1hour & 15mins or so away. I think it will be a great opportunity for us. We had to take a bit of a leap of faith with it, as it is currently only open 2 1/2days per week and obviously that wouldn't be enough to support us, so he will have to work at getting it built up into a full-time practice. The owners seem to be great. He went to Chiro school with Ty in Dallas and is from the Dallas area...so a good Texas boy can't be bad! ;) Seriously though, I think its a good deal. It does mean we will be moving, yes again, but we are going to try to hang on til the summer, stay out our lease at this house and then the kids could stay through the end of their school year, would also mean I would stay at my current doctor and hospital. I think being here through to the summer would make the transition for everyone a little easier. We'll see....time will tell.

Ty has been at the new place for a full week now and has a positive view about it so that makes us all happy. Bad timing....he helped to plan/coordinate the Chiro Assoc of Ireland's annual seminar or whatever they call it, so he has a lot going on this week and weekend. The schedule was different this week and then on top of that he will be gone for most of the weekend. The good news is that the kids are out of school next week for Mid-Term break so maybe that will help a bit, just to have some time to relax and not run all over creation. It should help me anyway!

Ok, that's enough rambling for now......more soon!

Revved up Birthday!

For Dagan's birthday this year, we had a great idea (thanks to my very good friend Stacey whose son, almost, shares a birthday with Dagan) of having a Pinewood Derby Race. Well most people here had never heard of such a thing but when we explained it the dads..errr kids, were VERY excited! We asked Ty's mom to please get some 'kits' for us from the hobby store, finding them stateside is easy as every Boy Scout troop across the country does these races every year! Actually they do them so much that it is crazy the things you can get/upgrade your cars with, its amazing!

So Ty set out to making a track for the big race...he along with his three fabulous helpers made this:



And the kids started getting their cars ready, they sanded them, painted them and then we helped them decorate them...



Finally its race day...we (Ty) made the track so that it would fit in the kitchen/dining room since we can't count on the weather here...good thing too because although it wasn't raining it was windy and cold out! He set up the track and of course had to test it out...make sure it worked right!


Mom was visiting during this fabulous day and so she helped me (A LOT) in getting ready. We made the cake and the fairy cakes (small cupcakes) for the party. Instead of just inviting Dagan's friends, we invited the whole family, brothers/sisters/moms & dads too. So we made hamburgers and hotdogs and plenty of snacks for all the racers and spectators! We all had a really good time. I think there was around 30 people in the house, mainly the kitchen and sun room.

Chocolate cake....very yummy!

....just have to test this track for myself!

Race cars awaiting their big moment!
Even the girls got into it!

Honestly I think the dads were WAY more excited about making the cars at first...don't think the kids really knew what it was all about. BUT they must have figured it out quickly because when they all showed up on party day the kids AND the dads were VERY excited!!!
We all had a great day.....and we might just have a part time business started here....renting out that track!

Happy Birthday sweet boy! We love you lots and hope you had a fantastic wonderful day!!!