Help me!

Sorry I have been MIA for a while. I have been struggling through issues. I haven't wanted to blog I have just wanted to BE, ya know. Here it goes I am going to bare some of my issues.

My relationship with my parents suck! Big time!!! I haven't talked to my mother in I don't know how long. My Dad is always pulled in between us so he only calls sporadically mainly when he is at work. We have a long history of issues that I don't even want to talk about. Lets just say it started about 14 years ago and it has slowly progressed into this mess. God has been working on my heart lately. Between my Bible study, Sunday School and the preachers sermon I have been bombarded with the need to let bygones be bygones and either move forward or let go. This is hard for me because for years I tried to be the bigger person and make nice just to get smacked down. You know the saying "once bitten, twice shy" well, I am beyond that. I am afraid of the result if I try to move forward. I miss having parents. I miss talking about my childhood. I miss not being able to share my daughter with them. I often wonder what it must feel like to have a great relationship with your parents. Where you can laugh about silly things and cry on their shoulder when you are hurting. I am not sure how to start mending the fence with my parents. How to move forward so that Anna can have 2 sets of grandparents. I don't want to rehash the past, I just want to move forward. I just want to pretend that the past 14 years weren't so miserable for us lol. So do you guys have any words of wisdom? I am thinking I will start with an email just to test the waters. Tell me what you think?

Just so you don't leave my blog all bummed and depressed look at my beautiful girl swimming. She is doing great. I was worried about how she would do this morning with a long weekend between seeing Megan but she did great. She wanted to participate and made sure she wasn't skipped over. Thank you for the words of encouragement offered up last week!!!

A Major Break Through

Today has been a beautiful day!!! Anna had a major break through with her swimming lessons. As funny as it sounds because of that I felt for a moment like a wonderful mom lol. I mean obviously I am doing something right if she warmed up to it lol. Ugh I know I can't claim any part of her getting through this at least for a day but boy was it a wonderful morning. We got there early and we took her baby doll. She wanted to get in the water almost right away so I told her that she and the baby could swim on the steps. I sat right there prepared to get totally wet if I had too. She stayed on the steps. She only went off once and that was to grab the side wall. When the teacher got there I decided that I wasn't going to go on the stairs unless I had too because quite frankly it was hot up there lol. We started with it not going in the right direction so I told her that I was going to sit on the stairs she told me no. She got back in the water. She got out again when they wanted her to swim. I told her if she didn't get in and participate we weren't going to play on the playground. She got in the water faster than I have ever seen her. After that she did great. She even went off on her knee board a few times without Megan. I just can't even tell you all how proud I am of my baby girl!!! Hopefully tomorrow will be just as successful! Of course the weather man is calling for rain so the class might be rescheduled for Friday.

Wordless Tuesday and Wednesday

Vacation Bible School and Swimming Lessons!

What a morning!

Swimming lessons, ugh, what can I say. They were better than I thought they would be but worse than I hoped lol. That is about it. Anna cried and wouldn't get in the water without me. The only thing I could do was leave her there to do it without me to distract her. After I walked off she wasn't happy but she started to cooperate. She did what she was asked to do and she almost had fun lol. She hopefully bonded with her teacher Megan and tomorrow will be a better day. Tomorrow I am going to pretend to forget something in the car and leave her with Allie's Mommy before the teacher gets there. Maybe if I am not around when it starts it will be easier for her. I am her crutch and there are so many reasons that I like that but then so many reasons that I hate that.

After we left swimming lessons we went to Flying Frogs. My poor baby got stuck, well in her mind she was stuck. She was in one section of it where the piece of maze moves every time you step and I think she thought she was going to fall. I talked her through it and Allie was so sweet to come through and hug her and show her the way out. After that she stayed in the ball pit or the bouncy thing. Poor girl has been traumatized today. She is napping now and we will head off to church around 5 for VBS. Hopefully that will be relatively uneventful for her lol.

Chatter!

I have a jumble of thoughts tonight so I thought I would just put them out here for you all to share in my jumbliness lol!

I finally got a few tomatoes out of my garden this past week. They were so yummy. I have several green ones now so it is only a matter of time before we have lots of tomatoes! You see my picture? Aren't they pretty? They are cherry tomatoes. I planted those for Anna because she likes to be able to bite into them and have the juice shoot out!

We started VBS tonight. We didn't have a lot of children but I am holding out hope for tomorrow. I am on snack duty and I picked out an easy one for the first night. It was an eruptive volcano! Which consists of 1/3 cup of milk, a shot of canned cool whip and coke on top of that. It was in a 9 oz cup. Chris and the kids enjoyed it. Me, well I thought it was kinda yucky lol. Oh well I like to please the little ones so I go with the flow. Tomorrow we are making a spider out of moon pies! That is more up my alley lol.

Tomorrow Anna starts swimming lessons! She is going with a friend so I am hoping it isn't to stressful for her. We have to be there at 8:30 am. It will be exciting!!! She is doing well already so I can't wait to see how much she will learn with real lessons!

Reality

I have had a crazy week! We have been busy swimming and playing and cleaning. Obviously you can tell where my priorities are lol. It has been sort of a rough week on me. Doing my First Place Bible Study is slapping my face making me wake up to a few truths. These truths are hard to face but I hope will help me overcome my self.

Things I am facing:

• You can't move forward until you let go of the past.
• Forgiveness is key!
• Hope without action is fairly pointless. That includes prayer! God will help those that help themselves! So all of these years hoping and praying for a bikini body has been a waste of energy since I haven't done anything to achieve it!

It is tough remembering that I have control over my destiny. If I want something I have to go for it. I can't sit and wait for it to come to me. That goes for everything in my life not just my weight. I also don't think about the fact that God can be pleased or displeased by all of our actions or lack thereof. He says in one verse we studied I think in Mathew "Well done, my good and faithful servant...!" I want him to praise me and yet a lot of time I don't really go that extra mile so that he will. That is evident in most things I do, I am afraid. I tend to just do enough or sometimes even fail at doing that much. Or so it seems to me.

I know that the only way to change my life is to just DO IT! I am committing to do just that. It may not be an easy task to take on but "I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me!"

I think that I need to purge myself so to speak to get on with it. I will have more on this later!

Works for me Wednesday

I had a hard time trying to decide what to do this week.

1. How I marinade my meat before cooking.
2. How I grilled my potatoes that were so yummy last night.
3. How I got Anna to drink a LOT of water by using gum lol.

I decided instead I would tell you about how I manage to get to the pool without going nuts every morning. I keep our bag packed with the essentials. You know sunscreen, water wings, bug bite medicine and neosporine. I add every morning a juice, a pack of crackers (which I just ran out of so I will start putting a zip lock with crackers in it), a fruit roll up or two and towels. Now mind you the amount I pack will change depending on if we have friends coming. I always take extra if we have friends coming because you can't have one for Anna and not the others. I usually only take one towel. I am all about less laundry! Oh, I also take my phone and my camera in a zip lock (that way if water gets in the bag they won't get messed up).

When we get there we put our dry clothes across the back of the lounge chair. I put our towel on the little table they have there or either in the chair. I put some crackers in the towel and cover them up. I open Anna's juice and have it right there. She wants a snack almost as soon as she gets in the water. We spend the first 10 minutes or so practicing her swimming and then we put on her wings and swim all around. She gets out and gets her snack when she is ready and I don't have to get in and out. When we leave we take her top off and pull on her cover up and slip her bottoms off. She doesn't want to ride in the car wet! Me on the other hand I slip on a shirt and sit on the towel lol.

Totally off topic my daughter just saw a picture of me in my wedding dress and she said it was an angel! Awwwww!!!

Anyway, that is how I stay sane going to the pool almost every day. If you need more great ideas go to Rocks in my Dryer!