Don't you just wish life was easier?

The last few days have been rather rough around our household. Life keeps on going no matter what but when things like bipolar takes over our lives, one wants to give up on life. I'm not talking suicide or taking ones life, I'm just saying that those days makes you wonder where God is. Those days you want to ask Adam and Eve where their heads were for bringing this upon everyone. Oh well, life does go on and so will we.

I recently recieved some new pictures from my daughter Bridgette, and then some of her dog, my"gran'dog" Jake.





















We fell in love with Jakes Picture and have an 8x10 of it on our "Grandkids" wall. Of course this picture of Brie and another is also up on the "family" wall in the livingroom also.

Family is very important to us and we try to support the kids as much as we can. Currently Rusty my son and his friend Brenda are staying with us and have both gotten jobs here in Boonville and are just waiting for their first pay checks to get their own place to live. Here is a recent Picture of Rusty and Brenda.

Hello to all

Been awhile since I perched here......been out flying kites when the weather was right for one thing.



We have really enjoyed flying the kites this year so far. I wish I could stay at it longer but the arthur and fibro just keep interfering with my having fun.......but I just have to keep trying and not allowing it all to get me down. Unfortunetly, the days we haven't been able to get out has usually been because of the weather or no wind that day is another big problem with trying to accomplish the art of kite flying.


Flying a kite is an art you may laughingly say? Well it can be, you see kites are not all in the diamond shape we all had when we were children and the "tails" you put on your kites these days are not old rags that mom just had laying around.


We have kites that are made of ripstop nylon and out "tails" are made out of polyethelyne plastic ribbon; we have also picked up some ribbon at good ole Wally's World and put that on a couple of the smaller kites. We also have several different sizes and shapes to the things that hold the different strings in which we send our kites up on. We now have a couple places where we go to fly the kites, one is on the property of the old Kemper Military School.....which now is a city park and then last Sunday afternoon we went out to the football field at the high school and flew some of our kites there for a couple hours.

Here's 2 kite companies to look at to see different types and sizes kites can be.
http://www.gombergkites.com/index.html
and
http://www.intothewind.com/
There's a lot of kite places on the internet, in quite a few countries.

I have to watch how long I stay with the action of flying the kites due to the pain in my body. If I'm not careful I will have spasms all night in my legs and arms. I also am back to having a lot of pain in my heel again where the achilles tendon and the calcium deposits that accumilate in my heel seem to keep rubbing so bad. Having already had 3 surgeries on that foot/heel to have the deposits removed, I'm doubting it will do much good to have it done again. I am suppose to see a foot dr next month and I will talk to them about all of it again and see what this one might suggest. ONE DAY AT A TIME ......my life motto!!

Well, I an just 7lbs shy of having lost 100 lbs since surgery July25th,'07........had a couple weeks of a stand still as my body shifted the weight around some. This month when I got paid I went and bought myself womens size 24 capri pants and boy was I PLEASED!! I was still in 26 just a week before that when I had bought a pair of capri pants and they are so big I will need to put a couple tucks in them so I can continue to wear them.

Well, need to close tonight and go on to bed, listened to a talk show last night that was interesting and had helpful information on it, so only got about 4 hours of sleep last night and the slept for about an hour this afternoon. Anyway meds are kicking in and need some sleep.......NIGHT ALL!

More pics to share

Well, here is a more recent pic of me.....actually taken this last Friday, Feb. 29,2008. The shirt is an early birthday present from my hubby with Tinkerbelle on the front and the jeans are my first ones i have bought myself since loosing weight. It is really nice to be able to go to Walmart and buy them off the rack and get them to fit. Not sure if I have said this recently but i am almost to having lost 100 lbs since July25th.

GO ME!!!!!

The thing on my arm and hand is because of Arthur, fibromyalgia and carpel tunnel all hitting at the same time.....which is also why I am up at this time of night/morning. We have a storm front just south of us and it is hurting me so bad tonight. I just took more pain meds so hopefully it will kick in here soon or I will need to go find both of my wrist/thumb things to put on. Can't do much for the lower half of the body that hurts but wait for the meds to kick in....amazing what you can do with one hand and using the hunt and peck system!!
These pics are of some of the thousands of geese we have seen this year flying overhead. It is very cool listening to them of a morning as they seem to head South for the day and then of an evening when the head back North for the night. There have been some flocks that you couldn't see in the sky until the sun hit them just right as they were all snow geese. This group were all trying to land in a small area just in front of a house here in the outskirts of town, there was a small pond in front of the house.




We are pretty sure that back in January we saw
eagle overhead soaring. One of our friends here in the building said he'd seen it too and was really sure that was what it was. It stayed around for about a week but it has been too cold to watch for it most of last month. It could still be around but we wouldn't know it.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday while the weather was so nice, we listened to several songbirds while we had the windows open. However, today we froze and wore extra clothes and heavy coats. I prefer the warmer weather!!


Okay, meds are kicking in.....back to trying to sleep again. Night!

Can't believe it has been so long......

Hello to all, hope this finds you all doing good and either having not had the flu or over it!! So far we have been blessed and haven't had the flu but the Fibromyalgia has been almost as bad as having it. Scott and i both have this but we are at different points in how we are affected by it. Of course it has my left side just throbbing most of the time.....my left side is the side to have something happen to it before any other part of my body.

Right now Scott is telling me what the weather is saying it will be doing tonight and tomorrow.....I liked it better today when we could sit out in the patio area and enjoy the out doors. Rain and possible snow........way to go March.....true to form! At least we were able to open the windows the last couple days and air out the house.......of course tomorrow I need to go thru and water all of the plants now since the wind dried everything out. After i finish this I will be making another entry to add some pics that we have taken of my Christmas Cactus still blooming their heads off. Ahhh let me just add them now.......

If ya look good at at least one of them you will see my ceramic toad peeking out from under the plant......he just looks so normal in there. I do have a smaller cactus plant that is blooming it's head off too but it is the same color as this one. I do have some other pics I will add over the next few days that we have taken but right now I am so hot I have to go find a cooler room. This happens after i have had some protein drink.

Jerrica's Birthday pics

Well, I discovered I for got to put up the 2 pics I have of Jerrica's birthday in October so better late than not at all.

These are ones Aunt Brie took when she took Jerrica out for her birthday, I think they went to the Zoo. It is hard to believe Jerrica will be going to school next year.

Roosting Robin

On this group, http://www.fatcatpatterns.com/ we are working on "Roosting Robins" like a round Robin but we keep our own and add things to them as they come up....if i understand it all correctly. Well, here are some pics of mine.....it helps that we got a new camera for Christmas.


















I love how it all came out, may cut down the center piece a bit so it doesn't get so big......but otherwise I'm lovin it!!

Pictures of Buildings

The bottom 2 are the original pictures of the cannery and packing House that are HO, my trains size. Then above that are some pics of Scott's buildings of the same thing, with my buildings beside them to show how much bigger His are.

Happy New Year

Can't believe it has been so long since i last wrote on here. I've thought about it several times but just can't bring myself to sit that long seems like on some days. Tried to work on Christmas things over the last month or so, got some things done but not really what I'd like to have accomplished. Have to blame some of it on the weird sleeping habits I seem to have. Since I can't sleep laying down due to the hip hurting have been sleeping in the recliner, and due to fibro I fall asleep a lot when I have the pain and problems from there. So far dear sweet hubby hasn't had to do as much sleeping so hopefully he is not having as much fibro as i am right now. Carpal tunnel in left hand is really screaming at me today so hopefully haven't made to many mistakes on this blog entry.

I am trying to work on a quilt thing we are doing thru http://groups.yahoo.com/group/scratchingpost/?yguid=198049275
or this is her public site.......
http://www.fatcatpatterns.com/

Sindy has so many good patterns and thru her group we do a few other things together. She even fixed me a Lady Bug I requested http://www.fatcatpatterns.com/2008_special_requests.htm
I have a granddaughter we call Julie Bug and she loves Lady Bugs also.
Check out her site!

My husband has been working on LARGE buildings lately. He took one of my HO buildings and created ones in the sizes he needs for His size Rail Road. They are coming along very good, just have no clue where we are suppose to put them once he get them done.....well, anyone who does RR knows that things never get completely done, you are always changing things. I have a few buildings i want to work on also so will have to find a balance between the many projects i have to do.

Sooooo.....that said guess i will go find the card table and try to get my chickens together for the Roosting Robin thru Sindy's group.
L8r

Here are the difference HO, Gn -15 and On30

Okay one thing to remember here, all of these trains are HO gauge, which means they can use the same size track, however, they are each their own Scale, with Ho being the smallest of the 3 and then comes On30, then the Gn-15 so on the pictures they are set up in that order. So here goes the pic then I have to hit the bed as this has taken me toooo long to write.

WOW the fronts that have passed thru.....

Okay, back on line .....again after another storm passing thru. The one this early AM now had left us with very weird power, only a couple rooms would be on full and the others had just enough power to put a small glow in the lamps. Of course it all caught us off guard and knocked out the computers. I had just started a program to try to save things off my computer when Scott came in and said we would have a storm passing thru before long and before i could put back all the files I was loading to cd everything turned black.

I feel like we have a very good protection on our machines, however, you wonder sometimes if it really is that good......it was this time. Doesn't seem to be any loses of material or componets on the computer. The there is the factor i face where we wonder if the on/off button on my computer is going out, so it is very scary when I do have to pull the plug on my computer.......will it come back on and as you can see.....it did this time anyway.

I had planned on writing in here before the storm hit and post some pics showing the difference in the 3 sizes of our trains that Scott and i have together. I think I will go ahead and put the pics up in a posting all their own before i quit it all today. I see by the time it is almost 3AM, I am not too worried about the time as i have slept off and on all day now.

My pain levels have shot through the roof the last couple days now. I finally went to the Dr this morning to see what to do about all the pain. Dr Handley decided to give me more generic Vicodin , He just cut the amount in mil. and that way I can take it more often, like every 3 to 4 hours as needed. Not sure how it is going but something must be okay as i have slept a good lot of the day and keep losing my thoughts here today trying to write.
Soooooo if nothing makes sense, remember I have a good excuse!!

Ever wish you could claim "Redo" like the games you played as a child?

Sunday is usually pretty good days for me but this is one day that I wish I could "redo" this time. Seems like it has just been a bad day for me. I didn't have much sleep the night before and then I woke up and realised I'd over spent the day before.....and it wasn't even the first day of the month!! I just don't do that, I always have taken my obligations seriously.......but Saturday was just one of those days for me and then Sunday turned out bad because of what I did Saturday. Not good!!

Of course the fact that I had gotten a call from my Brother Paul with the news that Dad has cancer again. Paul believes that from things he heard while around our folks that they expect this to be a fast moving cancer, again not good for the making of a good day. It is like all sense just left me.....Dad will be 80 this year and we are planning to go up there on the 20th and all of us meet and take mom and dad out to dinner for their birthdays. Hopefully we can come up with the money to do that now.

I managed to make the best of the rest of Sunday......first we joined the Santa Fe Baptist Church where we have been going. Scott and I both pretty well knew last week that we were going to join, we just needed to take the step and so we did this morning. We both feel wanted and needed there at the church, a couple from here at the apartment and another lady from here go there too. Stanley and Donna both teach an adult class, Stanley the mens and Donna the women, we have decided to join the Pastors new class that He and his Wife are starting.

Polly, the other lady from the apartments, has a time just before the message, during the service where all the small children come to the front and Polly talks with the kids and presents a small lesson for them. Today they talked about pets and she was asking them about their pets, at the time we couldn't see who said they had crickets for a pet but afterwards, Pastor Tom had the man in the booth turn on the video in the daycare center where his wife was and informed her they needed to see about a dog as their son David told everyone his pet was cricket. It really was funny and i agree with Pastor Tom, you never know what kids are going to say. Pastor Tom did tell us they had crickets real bad in their basement and they were trying to get rid of them, but in the meantime his sons did catch them and put them in jars from time to time.

I have not felt good at all today and the other stress just added to it. I have hurt pretty bad for the last few days and have not been able to get much sleep because of it. I did sleep for a couple hours after church, then got up and went down to commons room to watch Chiefs Football. We were behind when I got downstairs and it was about time for the half time, but we made up for it in the last half and went on to win 30 to 17 over San Diego Chargers....way to go Chiefs!! I got to hurting more so went back upstairs and spent the evening watching TV and working on the chimneys and windows of one of the Train buildings I have, will take a picture and post it tomorrow. I really like the way it is coming together now and I think that Scott does too. He made a comment tonight that he wondered if it would ever get made and now he is seeing it and likes what he sees. He has helped me a time or two when something was just not going for me or when My hand was just too shaky to place something straight.

Okay feels like pain meds has started to work so off to bed for me.....Night

Where has time gone?

Wow....in approximately 2 more months this coming Monday and it will be Christmas 2007......Where has time gone? Things here are moving along pretty good. I had a spell of not being to keep the chicken from the home made soup down tonight. Wasn't able to eat desert either....GGGRRRRRR Not sure what causes it but with such a small stomach it doesn't feel real good to lose what is in it. I have an appointment on the 23rd of October to have another scan....maybe they can find the answer. As I write this I am downing a protein shake, at least this way I am sure to get the protein down. It might very well be the fact that I don't really have enough teeth to properly chew up the chicken meat that caused tonight's episode. I guess I can run the meat through the processor, would rather not have all the other stuff mush, but maybe the meat could go through.

I did go today and get the blood tests I was needing to get for the 3rd month checkup. They will fax the results over to the Bariatrics Office for me. I don't know what they will find but hopefully I am okay with everything and we won't have to add any more vitamins of anything like that. If not before I will get the results of those when I go for the checkup on the 23rd too, after the scan.

Haven't heard from my son lately but know he wasn't going to reactivate his phone for awhile and try to catch up on bills. My dd Brie had his girls with her over night a couple weekends ago and took the to the renaissance festival. Jerrica loved it and Julie did okay but she was fighting a summer cold and that makes anyone miserable. Scott and I got to talk to them on the phone while they were there because Brie has the free calling on her phone. That was such a joy to talk to them, we miss the little buggers!! Jerrica let us know that she wanted to talk to Papa Scott, they get along pretty good now since she used some of his stuff to build with....that surprised us all how she was drawn to art and making things.

Well I am trying to get a group up here in the apartments to doing crafts and Hobbies. I know there are several who do quilts and some who embroidery, some who do cross stitch.....I am anxious to see how this comes about. One of the things I think I will do is to make up small circles with Pins on the back of them and have the group make their own pins, like a woman head......and maybe I can come up with a pattern i can sew up some small dolls and have them decorate them. I hope we can make this something everyone will want to participate in.

I have rejoined the FairieGoddessMothers again. I missed this group a lot and am glad to be back in it. Now I do need to get busy and do a quilts with the fairie pattern sent to me. They also have a lot of different things that I can get involved in.

Well, protein drink is gone so guess I'd better get started to bed soon. Night!

Newest building I have been working on

This is a combination of 2 kits that are the same. Reminds me some of a Boys boarding School. The small green buildings in the background are some Scott had started and almost desroyed when he was having some problems. i saved them and now with his help we are trying to restore them to go back on my RR.

More pics

These first 2 of course of Julie














































This picture is of all 3 kids once Brie took Julie back home.
Jerrica, Mikey, Julie

Julie is 4 today

My youngest grand daughter Julie's birthday is today. Her Aunty Brie went last night and picked her up and they had a girls nite together. Brie had planned on taking her to the zoo when i last talked to Brie, however she took her out to a homestead park where it is free and Julie could see the farm animals. Brie took her on a hayride and then paid for her to have a pony ride also. She seemed to have a lot of fun, she really liked the pony ride. Brie also took her to one of those stores where you pick out the animal and then you stuff it yourself, Julie picked out a dog instead of a bear . It is a husky dog I believe they said.

Brie took some pics, she has sent me a few and said she would send me the bigger files so I can get some copied off. I really do like the picture of the kids together...just wish they had left Julies hair longer, it has so much curl in it. Oh well it is summer and they need to be comfortable in it too. Jerrica's hair is so straight I do like hers cut short.....but she looks too grown up, not ready for her to 5 in October.

Well, I'm glad Brie and Julie had a day out and then she got her back in time for Mandy's family to come and have birthday with her at her house. Wish I could have been there and wish i had extra $ but right now that is not in our small budget, hopefully once Scott starts getting his disability i will have some money to spend on the kids. Right now however, with my income the only income.....I have to start trying to get stuff made up for them. Just not happening this year what with surgery and all.

Happy Birthday Julie!!

Another sleepless night

I just get to sleep good and the hip pain kicks in and wakes me up.....laying on it hurts, and not laying on it hurts even more. I can't sleep on my back or stomach anymore so that's out too. I think not having the ibuprofen is part of it, I know in the past when I was able to have a couple of doses of it down me over a days time made a difference. I will ask the bariatrics doctor if there is anyway I can have some yet. I have an appointment with them on Monday morning.

Scott called them this morning when I was having trouble getting my breakfast shake down. For some reason was having trouble not with swallowing but with it feeling like it wouldn't go through the opening in to my stomach. It really hurts when that happens, I had one other occasion of this happening this week and the reflex is automatic for what ever it is to come straight back up......and that is what the nurse practitioner thought was happening this morning when i had to throw up. Natalie believes that I am probably swollen down there a little due to the first time earlier in the week. So they had me go on a liquid diet for a day or so to give it a rest.

I am still losing weight but did discover that I wasn't getting all of my protein I was suppose to when I first started in to stage 4 of eating and adding soft food. So when I go back to eating soft foods again will need to watch that closer. Some how will need to start making a diary of what i eat and keep that up, I have had a terrible time in the past doing that, but will give it a chance once again.

Worked on my new building some this last week. I am to a place where I am adding something to the middle of the building that wasn't there. It is something like having a small place in the middle of the building where it is outside so that you can have "hidden garden". It will be like going out for some fresh air on your break or lunchtime. Scott had the idea and little by little I am getting it done.

I am also working on getting patterns made for a wall hanging to go over our bed. It is called Tranquility and can be found at http://www.woodsandquilts.com/Patterns.htm We are kind of partial to cats around here and this just looked like the best thing to put above our heads at night. I have both sets taped together with one being the guide line for the wall hanging and the other set can now be cut out into patterns. I don't think that the over all construction will be hard at all....it is the adding the middle section and quilting it that will get to me. But I have the confidence I can do it this time.

Well, the chimes just brought in 6AM....where has time gone? I wanted to mention that the Lord blessed us the other day. We thought that the phone and Internet were going to be shut off but the Lord intervened and someone sent us 1/2 of the phone bill due and the other 1/2 we will be able to pick up and pay first of the month. When God uses someone and they give "seed money" I'm not sure who gets more of a blessing the giver or the receiver....I do know that God has worked in our lives and blessed us with some wonderful friends and some of the best ones we have met on the Internet. I pray God will bless this family and they get a special blessing for what they have done.

I just had a major spasm in the left hip and leg just now. I sure wish I knew what to do about it. These things are getting worse and more painful as we go along. As the weight comes off, I sure hope that the pain will lessen and that I will be able to sleep at night instead of off and on.

Well, the chimes went off again, it is 7AM and I'd better go get my meds taken and breakfast figured out.

Buildings I have made.....

Well, finally figured how to get the building pictures posted. The first group of buildings are actually paper and were sent to me by a friend of Scott's, Joe Rainmaker. Scott met Joe on a group list that he is on. I appreciate the gift and actually had fun making it.

The second picture is of the building I made from scrapes of another building Scott had started before giving me the Ho trains and buildings. I am very pleased how the rock building turned out. I was able to color differently a few of the rocks which accents the building a lot. As can be seen in the picture i have several buildings that Scott started and now i get to finish....and that is said with a positive attitude. I am looking forward to working on them in the future. Right now I am working on another stone factory that will be a garment factory. When I get a chance I will take a picture and post it also.

I am up right now as my stomach was telling me it needed food. Haven't gotten a good handle yet on making it through till morning.....well a little later in the morning. I'm having some vanilla yogurt with some protein in it. Don't have much chewing involved in eating this but am making sure I take my time about swallowing it. Had to throw up earlier some egg that I;d tried to chop up on food processor, there was a small hunk that didn't get down in the rest to be chopped up and didn't watch to make sure i chewed it into nothing before swallowing......apparently it was too big to go through the small opening to my new stomach. I learned yesterday that when this happens you have pain and then no choice....it comes up whether your ready or not. But I felt 100% better after it happened.

well yogurt is about finished and my bed is calling me again.

furniture factory I made

Kathys Hobbies

Photobucket Album

Well couldn't sleep tonight, got started on another building and it was hard to stop the mind as well as the project. Had to put wood sticks in for reenforcement as usual so worked and got most of those in. Pain pills take hold and so is the drowseness but just had to take a minute and post a picture of my youngest grandson. My daughter took the pic when Aunty Brie went by and took the kids for Ice Cream.

Mikey is 2 years old.....where has time gone?? He got a bit upset with Aunty Brie as every once in awhile she would have to lick some off that was melting before it got all over him. Of course now when Aunty Brie shows up at their house all 3 kids are out to find their shoes and hope Aunty Brie has come to take them for ice cream again.

Aunty Brie will have to go over around the 18th of this month for Julie's Birthday.....She will be 4yrs old. In October the oldest of the girls Jerrica will be 5yrs old. Really hard to believe they should be that old.

Okay bedtime....oh, I was down to 303# this morning before I ate breakfast......I figured the weight would go up and down but so far it is going down and that is a good thing.