Coupon match-ups

Hy-Vee's ad now has coupon match-ups with their sale items. New every week - check it out. :)
http://www.hy-vee.com/helpful-ideas/coupon-match-ups-09-16-09.aspx

Clean?

As I clean out the laundry room that is a good year and a half overdue:

Me: Tiff, we're gonna have this cleaned out today! Yay!
Tiff: Who's coming over?

Point taken. Point taken.

Vacation and SIDS walk.

We went on two vacations all in one week. First was Navoo, IL with Harry's family.

Here we go. Now THIS is vacation:

Goofing off.

This is Tiffany holding her 3rd (?) cousin, Micah. He is 7 weeks and perfect. :)

A fudge shop downtown offered chocolate covered marshmallows with sprinkles (Tiffany calls them sparkles.

Hanging out at the campfire with my awesome neice, Tessa. She cracks me up.

Kids on the beach, making sand art.

Darin tubing - my brother drove the boat. I told Darin if he could stay on without wiping out I would give him 10 bucks, and told my brother that if he could make him tip over, I'd give him 10 bucks. My brother won - we had a good time with it. :)

Ahh, and then the donuts. They make these on ever Wednesday night there, and they are heavenly. Fresh donuts over a fire, dipped in sugar. Yum-o.

Classic Family photo.
Then came home to meet Darin's new teacher in a new school. Exciting! This is his first day of school. He is signed up for football, which he's pumped about. Practice starts next week. He says all the kids are nice there.
We went on the SIDS walk this weekend. Here is my family by Andy's sign along the trail. Picture taken by my faithful friend, Christi. Everyone was so great! It was a bittersweet day. The balloon release was again, so powerful. I just kept thinking about all those people that found their baby no longer breathing......

We will find out this week how much was raised for SIDS research and awareness.

And I leave you with this: Guess which was NOT supposed to be part of the art project?

Baby

Can't sleep. I am missing Andy. I designed a photo sheet to put in my mug today and picked out a picture of Andy and thought "wow, is that really what he looked like?" The SIDS walk is coming up and has stirred up emotions I thought were not coming back. I know grieving is different for everyone, and this is "normal". But sitting on my couch tonight at 11 crying uncontrollably doesn't feel very normal. I can't even remember what he looks like. Or smells like. or sounds like. or feels like. or squirms like. or squeaks like. I feel like my own memory of my own baby is slipping away without a fight from me. To keep on living without him requires that I push on, but taking his memory with me has been a confusing thing.

Which am I to remember?

I can tell you what the funeral home smelled like, but not my living baby. I can tell you which funeral cards touched me the most, but not his birth cards. I can tell you who was there for the visitation, and not the days of his life. I have learned what it is to "cling" to God, searching for comfort. And I found it. And I won't let it go. Ever. Now I'm left with do I cling to his memory? Any mother would say "of course!" Except the ones who know it hurts. Bad. That's me on a certain level. Not that I want the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality because he was MY BABY. He is home with the Lord now, not mine anymore. Maybe I'm secretly afraid of making Andy a false idol. Bow down at the Andy shrine or leave it and run to God? But, I don't want to forget either, and I am allowing it. Finding a happy medium seems impossible sometimes. Especially tonight.

Blueberry Pies and Puppies

Dude. 2 months with no posts....I think that's a record for me. I am happy to announce, though, that my husband has fixed my computer, and I am back up and running. Here's a bit of what you missed. Our son, Darin, has always had this big dream of having a blueberry pie eating contest. So here's some pictures of his dream come true! :)


All the contestents lined up......9 of them. I won't give you pictues of all of them with pie all over their faces, because they know where I sleep. But here's a couple.

Juliana smiling at Daddy...this melts my heart.

Christopher laughing at Harry and Darin,...LOVE it.

And Darin. Stuffing his face. LOL

And I almost wonder..........

was it worth it, buddy? :)

Moving on......

Our lovely yellow lab, Sadie, had 9 puppies! The runt didn't make it, but the other 8 did great.

Here's what you missed there.

8 nursing puppies.

Weaning 8 hungry puppies.

Keeping one cuddly puppy. Although, she does not have a name yet.

2nd Honeymoon

First of all, I will say that plane tickets are pricey - wasn't sure how we were going to fit this trip into the budget, but we were going to do it anyway! Harry's company payed for the vehicle, the gasoline, and the food, so that left shopping, sightseeing, and plane tickets. Some friends of ours have frequent flier miles and they graciously told us they would like us to use them for my trip to see Harry. This trip was a tremendous blessing - thank you God for amazing friends and family and incredible blessings!

I brought my girls to my brother's house on Wednesday night, and headed out on a plane on Thursday morning. I hopped on 3 planes to arrive in Erie, Pennsylvania. Got there with more than an hour to spare, so I waited for Harry to get done with work and meet me back at the room. ..... it had been 5 weeks ..... That night we went to the Peninsula on Lake Erie - it was beautiful. Watched the sunset on the beach, and went to an Italian restaurant that night.
















Woke up, had breakfast with Harry and then said goodbye for the day. Listened to him get teased a little by co-trainers ;) and then went shopping by myself without children all day. I kept it at 100 bucks, putting a lot of items BACK on the shelf. Is it just me, or are there more things to look at when children aren't present? When Harry got back, we went to a music store, and he looked at bass guitars, and I played the Bach trumpets there - heaven, I tell you.

Saturday morning we headed off to Niagara Falls. We headed to Canada to see the Falls from there.



















It was beautiful. :) And perfect. The flowers below were carefully placed all around Niagara Falls park and walkways.

Then we went back to the hotel and had pizza with Rodger, Harry's friend. Then woke up Sunday morning and went to Grace Church - it was such a friendly church. I felt right at home! After that, we went to the bookstore and then to some of the vineyards between Pennsylvania and New York.














Harry and I like wine, but don't buy it very often because we don't really know what we both like. So we went to Heritage Wine Cellars and did some wine tasting - and it was tasty! We liked a couple of the same kinds, so we bought them and went on our way. I'm looking forward to a few quiet evenings and a glass of wine when he gets home. :)
















Then it was Sunday night already! So we went down to Lake Erie again and spent some time relaxing. Harry skipped some stones at my request. :)

Then Monday morning it was off to the airports again! This tunnel is in Detroit airport and it was just great - they have calming music while the lights are going - just fun.

When I got home my sister and her son, and my girls were waiting for me at the airport. I cried. I missed them tons, and it was such a relief to know they would be cared for and loved while we were gone - even when they are a lot of work! :) I don't know how Harry's been gone for 6 weeks without seeing them....that's endurance, friends. Skype just isn't the same as a big daddy bear hug. He will hopefully be home tomorrow for good!!! We can hardly wait!

Ouch!

Heth taught me about podcasts today. I am on my third sermon tonight as I clean my pig sty of a room. This one talks about Trials: Suffering to Worship. Idol Worship, and I was thinking maybe I didn't have as much work to do on this topic. BOY, was I wrong! Listen to this:

And to seek out not only our sins, but the underlying cause of them namely the idols that we run to, cling to, in place of Jesus. That which we get our identity, our comfort, our security, our salvation, our passion, our pleasure, our hope. Do any of these sound like you: I am a nice person. People like me. And they say nice things about me. If your idol is people-pleasing and fear of man and being liked and being popular - then when people hurl insults at you, when they criticize you for living for Christ, you will have a crisis - because your idol will be threatened. .... ..... ..... but if your idol is "I'm a nice, likable, loved, decent person, and what they're saying is mean and they don't seem to appreciate me, and they're criticizing me, and they're disagreeing with me," you will find yourself, if that is your idol, in this wonderfully joyous moment that you get to decide whether Jesus Christ is Lord or the opinion of others.

Gets me right where it hurts!!! I'm completely hooked.