Cinderella goes to the ball

I am taking my husband away for his birthday soon.  We have grandparents coming to stay with the children (thank you!!) for 3 glorious days!  

 

I chose a wonderful place with a 5 star Inn.  It should be really fun, very romantic, and relaxing.  We are both looking forward to it.  We’re going to be touring some  historical museums (we’re history buffs), horseback trail riding, walking gardens, and eating in wonderful restaurants. 

 

One of those restaurants is really elegent. A “men wear sportcoats only” type of place.  I made reservations for us to have dinner there for his birthday. 

 

So naturally, I had to go find a dress!  After trying on literally about 30 dresses, I found a winner.  My neighbor, Patti, went with me and Mr 5 to shop.  She gives great, honest advice.  We both loved this dress.  It’s black with a v-shaped neckline (front and back).  It comes in tight under the bust and then has a slight empire waist fall.  It is tea length.  The length was the only problem.  I’m 5′2″.  So, I am having it altered as we speak to above the knee.

 

Now, I needed jewelry and shoes.  But I’m on a tight budget so I have to get fairly creative.  Last night, at Dancing with the Stars with the neighorhood women (yes, we get together every week to watch it and talk…mainly talk! LOL), I was talking about my dress.  I mentioned that today I was going to be heading out to get shoes and jewelry.  Two of my friends jumped up and headed quickly home (we all live on the same street!).  They brought back 4 pairs of black strappy high heels.  We have the same size feet.   Another neighbor has the perfect necklace and another the perfect bracelet. 
All I need to buy are earrings  

Cinderella’s going to the ball!

Happy Birthday to me!

 

My birthday is today…:)  I am 29 and holding! LOL  Nope..not going to share how much extra I’m “holding”.   It’s enough.
It’s been a very special birthday already.  My children and husband gave me a bike and a very girlie helmet.  Girlieness is very important when you are the only girl in a 6 member family!  Plus, I’m a girly-girl at heart.   I have wanted a bike forever and it’s wonderful!  It’s a beautiful blue and the helmet is lighter blue with flowers.  I can’t wait to try it out! 

My parents gave me some spending money (hello little black dress…here I come!), some goatmilk soap (very cool!), a brown sugar keeper (I covet my mom’s!), and a terrific chocolate brown shirt with pink letters that says “Fight Like a Girl”.  It’s for Breast Cancer Awareness which I love the cause and if you know me, the shirt’s saying is perfect.  Quite a few inside family jokes revolve around that phrase!

 

Amblin Man is coming home early today so that we can have cake and sing.   Then we have church and handbell practice.  And at some point today, I’m getting on that bike!  Wish me luck…I haven’t been on a bike in 20 years but I am so excited to get back on!!!!

Prayer angels, Mother’s Day and oh yes…a trip to the ER

The visit with our Little Prayer Angel’s future family went so very well!  They are a wonderful family and this new little Miss will fit right in!  I am so very excited for her and for them.  What a wonderful blessing and answer to many prayers!

Mother’s Day yesterday was really nice.  We had church in the morning, then home for lunch.  The boys and Amblin Man gave me a beautiful collage of photos of me with the boys.  They had it printed at a photo shop and then framed beautifully!  I am trying to pick out which wall to hang it on.  I think I’d like to have it in our family room where I can see it every day.  It’s very special and they did a beautiful job on it. 

 

After lunch, we went to Mr 11’s soccer game.  It was a great day for soccer…not too hot and still sunny.  Our team won and both teams played very well. 

 

Our plan was to have grilled steaks for dinner, along with baked potatoes, french bread, and watermelon.  Yummy! 

 

Just as Amblin Man was getting ready to put the steaks on the grill, Mr 5 came running inside to say that Mr 14 had fallen off his bike.  Amblin Man rushed out and brought him in.  He took one look at his stomach and said “It’s bad” under his breath to me.  Not wanting to panic Mr 14, I took a casual look and saw a HUGE 5×3 inch bruse forming across his abdomen.  He had hit the handlebars while falling due to the wheel twisting.

 

I got ice into a bag to put on the bruise and loaded Mr 14 into the van for a quick (hospital is 3 mins from us) ride to the ER.  Long story short, he is fine and very lucky.  The doctor said he missed his spleen by 1 inch!  Yikes!  Makes me teary just to type that!  He has a major bruise and probably a cracked rib.  But he is young and will heal quickly according to the doctor.  We are very thankful it wasn’t worse and are grateful for ribs that protect hearts, lungs, and yes… spleens!

 

Finally got to eat the steak dinner at 7:30pm.  It was yummy and worth the wait! 

Coaches Award

I had the wonderful privelege of attending the Athletic Awards Banquet at Mr 14’s private school.  This banquet honors all the student athletes and their coaches.  Mr 14 received the 2009 Coaches Award for the Cross Country/Track team!  We are so proud of him!!

 

Way to Go, Mr 14!!!

Goodness

It’s been a while…

 

I need to get this blog  jump-started.  I’ve been trying to think of a new schedule for our family life and I need to include blog-time.  If left to my own devices, I read so many wonderful blogs out there and then promptly neglect my own.  No more, I say…no more! LOL  I will solemnly promise to write often (at least 3x weekly) so that I can get my thoughts out and our daily life on paper.  Or rather on screen.

 

This week, I picked tile and paint for our bathroom.  That was fun!  I chose a beautiful color of green for the walls.  Here’s a link to it.  It’s not quite right on the screen.  A bit deeper and less yellowish in real life.  I love it!  With our warm toned maple cabinets and a warm beige stone tile and white fixtures…:)  I’ll try to post a picture when it’s finished.

 

Mr 5 and I have a wonderful opportunity this week on Thursday!  We are getting to meet the family of a little girl we’ve been praying for for a year!   There’s a wonderful story of God working there that I just have to share.  This little one is an orphan overseas and our family requested to pray for her as her Prayer Warriors.  Our prayers have been for her health, for her to find a forever family, for her safety, and other specific things that the Lord led us to pray.  We don’t have much information on her but do have a picture and a basic idea of her special needs.  My personal prayer for her as well has been that a family would be found for her to be adopted, that family would be amazing and that I would somehow know she is okay.  She has grown in my heart as a very special little one.    Praise God, a family has found her and is working hard to adopt her!  And imagine my shock and utter amazement when after connecting to this family via the organization, we discovered that they live only 30 minutes from us!  What a wonderful God we serve!  Please be in prayer for this sweet family as they are trying to get over to this little precious girl quickly.  Time is of the essence due to her needs and her situation in the orphanage.  
God is good indeed!

My nominations for The Honest Scrap Award

As promised in a post two days ago, here are my nominations for the Honest Scrap award.  Please feel free to play along or not.  I won’t be offended either way! LOL

Now for the kicker,  I couldn’t pick just 7!  Honestly, I read so many wonderful blogs that give honest, faithful potrayals of life and thought.  I truly cherish so many of you!  So, if you want to, consider yourself nominated!

This and That

It’s been a fun week (and busy) here at the Amblin household.  On Monday, we had soccer practice after school for Mr 11 and Amblin Man (he’s the coach).  I thought it kind of amusing when I received several calls/emails from parents because there was a tornado watch in our county.  Keep in mind, our county is HUGE, the weather was perfectly fine in our section of the county, and before moving here, we lived in Tornado Alley.  My response to the calls…walk outside, look up “hmm nothing’s rotating, the air isn’t green…good to go!”  I think that might have been a bit, umm…flip for some of our moms on the team.  But I’m sorry, I just can’t get excited about a Tornado Watch WHEN there is no bad or even mildly concerning weather present.    And yep, practice went fine. 

 

Tuesday was Mr 14’s soccer practice.  No Tornado watch but lots of wind and clouds.  Goodness…let’s get it together people.  I stayed until Amblin Man arrived at the field before taking the other Mr’s home for dinner.  Once again, practice went fine.  This time I was one of the overconcerned mamas! LOL  It only lasted for 15 mins though!  LOL  I suppose that must be a bit redeeming?

 

Last night, we had Mr 14’s school science fair.  There were some wonderful projects!  He attends a small private school for children with learning challenges (such as severe ADHD, dyslexia, etc) and/or Asperger’s Syndrome.  These kids should not be counted out though~ not by any means!  I wish the general public had been there to see some of these projects!  There was a homemade hovercraft (that worked and could carry a person!!), a computer rebuilt to work in liquid (!), magnetic roadway system (Mr 14’s!), tesseracts, the bernouli principle demonstrated (this one was above my head), and so many other amazing projects.  We had a great time looking at each one and talking to the children who worked so hard.  Each of them really knew their project and it was a joy to see such excitement about science!

The rest of the week is relaxed until the weekend.  We have 3 soccer games, one church event for Mr 9 (roller skating…yikes!  This for the child who tends to break bones!), a women’s dinner at church for me, and church itself on Sunday.  Lots of super funness all rolled into one weekend!

An award!

My courageous bloggy-friend, Spring, has given me an award!  Wow!  I’m very touched and a bit newbie to the award thing.   I won the Honest Scrap award.  Here are the guidelines: 

A) List 10 honest things about yourself—and make them interesting, even if you have to dig deep!
B) Pass the award on to 7 bloggers who you feel embody the spirit of the Honest Scrap and whose blogs you find brilliant in design or content

(I will nominate 7 bloggers.  No pressure if I nominate you.  You can participate if you’d like or ignore if you’d like!  No feelings hurt on my part at all!)

Ten Honest Things about Amblin:

1)  I am a professional musician who no longer plays professionally.  Does that make me an amateur now?

            *edited to answer Spring’s question in comments:  I am an oboist

 

2)  I have 4 children and would love 4 more.  If life circumstances would allow it that is.  Since currently it doesn’t, I’m enjoying the 4 that I have.

 

3) I am terrified of bees and small dark spaces.  Being in a small dark space *with* a bee would completely unhinge me!  Really.

 

4) I have a love for chocolate.  So much so that I will eat chocolate chips right out of the bag by the hand-ful.  Somehow this feels less-calorie laden than eating the equivalent in chocolate bar. (?!)

 

5)  I love the Lord.  ‘Nuff said.

 

6) I would love to learn to speak Russian.  I speak English and Spanish fluently.  Russian…never learned but maybe that will be my new hobby.  I have no reason to learn it other than I’m fascinated with it.

 

7) My biggest dream:  To serve children in crisis.  To somehow make a difference in that suffering and pain.

 

My biggest embarassement:  watching ”Rock of Love”.  Ugh..I know.  But it’s one of those terribly addicting shows.  It’s like a train wreck.  You know it’s wrecking and you just can’t pull your eyes away. 

 

9) My earliest memory:  Having chicken pox as a child.  I was three and I can still remember sitting in the bathtub surrounded by Aveeno oatmeal bath.

 

10) My wish for my children:  That they grow up to love themselves and the Lord.  That they will make a positive difference in this world and in the end will hear “Well done good and faithful servant”.  Matter of fact, that’s my wish for myself as well.

 

Nominations coming tomorrow.  I have to go get lunch for Mr 5~

As promised…the second part entitled “Water Damage”

So, in my last post I left off where we had just returned from a great super fun visit to my parents, only to pull into the garage to see water steadily dripping out of our garage ceiling. 
Yep…water coming out of the ceiling, huge water stains…not good.  Amblin Man and I raced inside to the upstairs of the house where one of our 4 bathrooms is located over the garage.  Sure enough, the tile grout is soaked and dark.  No standing water.  That’s all trapped under the tile!  Yikes!  Amblin Man turned off the water to the bathroom and we put a bucket in the garage to catch the water.

The next morning, I called a plumber and our insurance.  When the plumber arrived, his first words were “oh this isn’t good”.  Great…just what you want to hear from a plumber.  He cut into the garage ceiling drywall and a heap of water poured out.  “This is really not good”.  Thanks, Mr. Plumber, I kinda figured that out already. 

Long story short, the garage ceiling, insulation, subfloor, tile, backer board, baseboards, and cabinets are saturated.  As best we can determine, while we were away, our 5 year old toilet just decided to give way.  Something inside broke and the water, instead of coming out onto the tile, seaped downwards with gravity.

Thankfully our insurance will cover it as the water remediation people say it was an acute leak.  So, now my bathroom is gutted, our garage ceiling is missing about 4 feet x 4 feet of ceiling and insulation.  And we have HUGE LOUD air scrubbers (3 of them) and dehumidifiers (3 of them) …. (for a total of 6 HUGE LOUD machines) all going strong 24 hours a day!  We’re on day 3 of that.  Eek…someone send in the calvary…we’re going slightly batty!

Happy Easter

We just got back from our Easter vacation so I will wish you a happy belated Easter.  What a wonderful 2 weeks we’ve had!! 

 

First, Mr 14’s best friend from where we used to live came to visit with his mom.  She is a great friend of mine so we had a wonderful visit as well.  Mr 14’s friend is such a terrific boy…and they are like 2 peas in a pod.  We visited the park, went on a hike/picnic, went to a wonderful arcade/laser tag/gokart place, went to the Museum of Life & Science, and just really had a great 4 days.  The boys played TONS of Legos…almost 7 kits were assembled carefully and methodically! LOL

 

Then, after our company left, we packed up and left later in the evening to go visit my parents for the rest of Spring Break and Easter.  It was super fun!  We went to the park, played outside, fished, had ice cream, ate out, ate in, and ate some more! LOL  For Easter, the bunny brought some neat surprises (chocolate bunnies, Giant Life Saver Eggs, parachuting bunnies (very cool!), and Spring Nerds.  Then we went on a massive easter egg hunt (using plastic eggs filled with safe candy …no chocolate due to allergies).  The boys had a great time.  This year, I got smart and numbered the eggs 1-4.  Each boy was assigned a number and could only pick up eggs with their number on it.  If they saw an egg that wasn’t their number, they were to completely ignore it.  It worked great!  Each boy had 14 eggs to find and it took about 20 mins or so.  Lots of mad-dashing in front of Grandpa & Grandma’s house.  And lots of videotaping, picture snapping by the grownups.
After a wonderful Easter dinner and time spent talking about why we celebrate Easter and how much we love our Jesus, we left for home.  We returned home to find water pouring out through our garage ceiling (!) from the second floor of our home…

 

but that is for tomorrow’s post!

 

Happy Easter everyone!