Great Weekend!!

I had an awesome weekend!! My best friend and I left Thursday to go set up (grocery shop, unload) at the beach house and we spent the night out there by ourselves. We stayed up until about 2 a.m. just reading books and talking....very relaxing! We had the first group of friends come over around noontime the next day. One of the ladies brought her boat. Three of them spent a couple of hours skiing while I finished up some last minute preparations and got dinner prepared...I was waiting on the other two to get there. Once they got there then the six of us went boat-riding! Something very empowering about a boatful of ladies cruising up and down the Intercoastal waterway!! LOL We pulled up to one of the Marinas for a late lunch and then we were back on the water again. The rest of our friends started arriving later after they got off work and we had dinner together and played games late into the evening.

I woke up around 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning along with a couple of the other ladies and we sat on the back porch watching the sunrise over the water. We all had our quiet times...separately, but together - what a way to start the day! :-)

We had 3 boats scheduled to be come out for the day for us to "play" in - ski, tube and boat ride and we had a massage therapist come out around 11:00 for anyone who wanted to pay $30.00 for a 30 minute massage...there were several of us who did that. Awwwww, it was WONDERFUL! What an awesome day of fun in the sun! My husband came out about 5:00 to grill our food for us - every woman brought their own choice of meat they wanted grilled - we had steak and chicken galore!! LOL

After getting cleaned up, eating our delicious dinner of grilled steak & chicken, baked potatoes & salad...we had a short Bible study on "The Virtuous Woman" which led into some great discussion time. Unfortunately I had developed a migraine from too much time in the sun so I retired to my bed around 10:00 pm but the rest of the ladies stayed up playing games and talking til midnight or so.

Sunday was another early morning - we all had to get up and get ready for church. We were all moving a little slower that morning...sore from the previous day's activities...but it was oh so worth it! LOL

Ladies Weekend Getaway

Headed out this afternoon to stay at dad's beach house with 14 of my friends. I am so excited! I still haven't heard back about my lab work yet...that's been on my mind all week. Hopefully I'll hear back today before I head out to the beach. I have a lot to do today to prepare for the weekend. The ladies are going to start coming out tomorrow! I am looking forward to just relaxing before I leave for Brazil next Friday!

Can't sleep - too much on my mind...

I went to the doctor today - the dermatologist actually for what I thought was going to be a "routine" visit. You see, last July (2006) I went camping on the beach with friends; and after spending the whole weekend in the sun AND applying plenty of sunscreen all weekend I ended up with a pretty bad pimply rash on my face. At the time I thought that my sunscreen was out-of-date and I had just gotten too much sun. Since that time I have had a couple more outbreaks on my face anytime I am out in the sun whether I use sunscreen or not...so I started thinking I was developing an allergy to the sun?! A month ago I had an extremely severe rash that lasted about 4 days and my face was very swollen and I ran a fever at the same time...but I was not sunburned! I told myself if it happens again I'm going to the dermatologist.

After spending this past weekend in the sun (I wore a hat all weekend and sat in the shade as much as possible) I woke up this morning with this rash on my face. Upon examination by the dermatologist she told me first that I have rosacea (which I already knew...I haven't taken medicine for that in a couple of years though so she gave me some more medicine to take for that) and then secondly that she wants to test me for Lupus!! After we talked some more, we discovered that I have some other common symptoms of Lupus that I had seen my primary care doctor for but all the symptoms had not been linked together. So I went and had about 6 tubes of blood drawn today and now I wait...for 48 long hours.

Happy Birthday Dakota!!

My dear son is 11 today! Where does the time go?!

We've been asking him for a couple of months what he would like for his birthday and the answer is always the same "ummm, nothing, except maybe a Wii..."

Yeah, right, like THAT'S gonna happen! This kid already has a Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation and a laptop...a Wii is NOT in the forseeable future. Since he couldn't come up with anything else he wanted we chose to take him and his best friend to a waterpark this weekend. We spent the night in a hotel close to the waterpark so the two of them could swim in the pool all evening and then we spent all day at the waterpark. It was so much fun!! Although I must admit I think we would have had much more fun if we had left his friend at home. His friend was not into riding rides (so Dakota and his daddy or the three of us rode everything together) and he's not very sociable and we had to keep spending time looking for him because he wandered off several times....after the 3rd time of doing this I had had enough and said "That's it! We are leaving!!" Note to self: next time we go we are not taking anybody else!

Struggling...

Psalm 38: 21 "O Lord, do not forsake me; be not far from me, O my God.

Come quickly to help me, O Lord my Savior."

Friends I am struggling...I've been struggling the last four days; ever since I found out some news that is just too personal I can't go into right now. I spent the weekend pretty much in a state of numbness - shock - despair which turned into sorrow yesterday where I couldn't stop crying all day. After crying all the tears I think my body will produce AND talking to my dear husband last night I am finally starting to feel better today. I just ask that if you read this say a prayer for me will ya? I know that with my upcoming mission trip I am being tested...I guess I just didn't realize the level at which my faith would be put to the test.

Praying for sunny days!

Minneapolis Bridge Collapse - Too close for comfort!

Wow! I woke up this morning and opened the newspaper and this was what I saw....
I was in shock! My mom flew from Pensacola to Minneapolis yesterday for her annual Creative Memories Convention she goes to every year....I used to go to this a couple of years ago when I was a CM Consultant. We knew she was going to be in this area where this bridge collapsed! I asked my dad when was the last time he had talked to her and he said about 4:30 yesterday afternoon when she was on her way to the hotel from the airport....this collapse happened around 6:00! She called us at 6:30 a.m. this morning to let us know she was safe and said she had just gone across this bridge 30 minutes before the collapse! Praise God!! She was safe and sitting in her hotel room. How sad for those that perished in this tragic accident!

Homeschool - The Search Begins....

Since I have chosen to homeschool our youngest child, Dakota, I have to decide every year about this time exactly "how" I am going to homeschool him for the year. This will be our 6th year together in this schooling journey and we have done it all from totally unschooling to an online private school. Last year we tried Blended School which is an awesome program that Okaloosa County has here in FL to help homeschool parents teach science to their kids. They have teachers set up in different cities on different days of the week throughout the entire school year and the day is set up like a typical school day in regular public school (although much more relaxed!) and the focus of the whole day is on science related topics. Dakota went to a church last year on Thursdays from 9-3:15. He changed classes throughout each day - had 4 different teachers - and different subjects but all the subjects for the day revolved around the particular science topic they just happened to be studying that day. He loved Blended School!

He'll be doing that again this year on Mondays. The first part of the year (at least until Christmas) we were still doing his online private Christian school. He got bored with that though. I think the work was too boring for him....too babyish or something. I pulled out the textbooks after Christmas and we just worked together on his reading, writing, spelling and math in regular textbooks.

I started looking this week at different options because I think he is wanting to become more involved again with a homeschool club to do field trips and outings like we have done in the past. We quit doing that the last year or so because we had so much going on between family and church activities - there was never time! Now though with all the kids moving away, I think Dakota is needing some friends around. I found two places that sound real promising yesterday...one of them is Freedom Academy of Learning and the other one is CAPERS - going to check these out more and I think sign up for them. There is a local homeschool convention this weekend I think I will attend....Greg will be going out of town to visit his son at FSU so I'll have the morning free to roam through the convention at my leisure! :-)

I always throw all Dakota's stuff in a file folder or in a bag at the end of each year. I don't have any kind of order to his school stuff at all! I found this organization system that looked pretty neat! It's called The Full-Year Notebook System and it has all kinds of extras included to help with finding FREE curriculum at the library!

Okay, well I guess I'd better get on with my searching....TTFN