life lately...

i almost don't know where to begin. this has been my longest blog absence since 2007...but i have a few good excuses. for starters, we moved into a new house at the end of march and it has taken us until now to fully retrieve all our belongings from the old place. the new house...what can i say about it? i am so happy here! i love the neighborhood, i love that the kiddos ride bikes to school, i love living on one level with no stairs, i loved painting (and almost finishing) the walls, i love the layout and the size and the neighbors...i really could go on and on. this house is a much better fit for us and seems to work well with our theme of simplifying and living without excess. the kids love it too. let's see...what are my other excuses? i've been taking seven semester hours on-line in  order to re-certify for teaching, which i hope to do online in the fall. any spare moment was spent stressing over espanol and world literature. tonight i got my grades--As for both, y'all!! in other news, todd's brother tim got married at the end of april (those pix to come later), and we were all in the wedding. what a busy, crazy, and beautiful time! i've also still been working for gem, at least two days a week, and sometimes more depending on what's going on. i was also the chair for hospitality for hand camp this year, so the month of march had me hopping around preparing. those pix to come in another post as well. i've also taken up photography as a little paid hobby. i've had a few folks have me do family portraits or maternity sessions and i am loving it. it has fueled my desire to a)get a better camera than my canon rebel (although it's a pretty nice one), b)learn how to use photoshop (i've gotten by with iphoto's editing program, but could do SO much more), and c)take a photography class to officially learn things i have taught myself. we'll see if any of those come to fruition, as they each require time, money, or both...and finally, in addition to soccer four nights a week and the general daily life of managing four children, i have been doing freelance writing for giggle magazine. this is truly a dream-come-true and every time i get another story assignment, i'm doing cartwheels in my mind! all these things have left zero time for sleep, but i can feel a little margin creeping back in as may picks up and the only major item on my agenda is the wedding of my brother and leslee on the 26th. so, with all that said, tonight...i blog.

 we visited my folks recently--mostly for leslee's bridal shower, but we also took advantage of mimi and poppy's pool and the beach. it was a fun and whirlwind weekend, but the kids reveled in their first pool foray in 2013...

 at the shower, my sweet daughters (who rarely sit still) bunched up all the tissue paper from leslee's gifts and created pompoms, made a nest, and turned themselves into babushkas. they kept busy during the entire shower. thankfully the room was full of grandmas egging them on because they were being so cute...

 have i mentioned how much i love my sisters-in-law? seriously, leslee and dianne are some of my favorite people and i get teary just thinking how blessed i feel to be gaining friends and not just family. dianne and tim stop by as frequently as their schedules will allow, and leslee and i talk every tuesday morning.

 me, my mama, leslee, my grandmother ada, and leslee's mother janet

 these two could only stay still for one picture...then they were off and running...

 when i was growing up, we could stroll down caspersen beach and find shark's teeth littering the sand. venice is called the shark's tooth capital of the world for a reason. so i decided to recreate the experience for my kids and go hunting for fossils at the beach. long story short, they no longer litter the beach. one must hunt. with proper equipment (which we didn't have) and one must be patient (again, lacking)...my little eagle eyes, lily, found a few, and that was enough for me to pronounce the expedition a success.

 later on, after dinner at pop's sunset grill with the whole fam, we went to the north jetty and stayed until the sun went down. my kids seriously don't feel the cold and got in the car wet and blue.

wish the colors from this sunset showed up on my camera...we all stood and watched it, in awe.
so i plan to blog more...and here's a shout out to steph in iowa--because when you move far away from your friend and then you remind her that she hasn't blogged in forever, you get a special shout out when she finally blogs :) cheers

lily

trying out something fun from picmonkey which let me make my own collage. i will be a bonafide mommy blogger yet!! i realized i had not posted anything after zuzu died...i think i need to crank it up on here. time to open the proverbial curtains and air out this little room. so, that being said, here is a small shoot i did of lily in her costume for musical me theater's "how to eat like a child." my little girl is not looking quite so little anymore! so here's to more blogging--i hope i can deliver on that promise! cheers

sweet zuzu

 so it has been a heck of a day. i really don't want to ever have another day like today, although i know that if we ever get another dog then it's highly likely that it could happen. i've exhausted myself with thinking of all the last moments...last night, we took her on her "last" walk, which was only to the end of the driveway and then she was spent. she had heard me drop her leash and perked up, but it was short-lived. i enjoyed her warmth on my feet for the last time as i slept--something that has been a constant since she was about six months old. her last time sitting at my feet in the bathroom was about a week ago...all she had done since sunday was sleep, with an occasional water, food, or pee break. she had her last car ride this morning, dropping off lily and ty at school. this has been our ritual for a few months now. she starts barking at me about 15 minutes before we are set to leave and she wouldn't protest if she had to sit in the car that long while we finished getting ready. she was just glad for the assurance of a car ride. so many last moments these past few days that i am grateful now to be done with the anticipation of it all...it was a peaceful passing for her...and much quicker than i expected. her sweet little tongue (was not little) was licking her nose until it was too tired to move. she seemed so calm there...when usually she was a shivering mess at the vet's. some people say dogs know when they are headed "home," but i don't know. if her calmness was any indication, then she must have known...

 i walked in the door this afternoon with the kids and still expected to hear the click click of her feet on the floor. every afternoon the routine was the same. she got to come out to the front yard when we got home from school and spend some time sniffing around where our neighbor dogs had visited. the front yard was a treat and she knew it. the back yard was prison and she would look at me each time i sent her out, indignant,  daring me to nudge her with her foot. lately her trips outside were longer and longer as her kidneys couldn't adjust to all the pain and problems they had...

 i cleaned up her leftover food from her dish and washed out her water bowl. i have no intention of moving those things any time soon, but i think the leftover food would push me over the edge. i have to remind myself that she no longer needs food, just like she no longer is in pain...just a hard thing to wrap my mind around...

we took the kids to build-a-bear this afternoon and they all made dogs names zuzu. i made one too. the kids are all processing at their own paces...it's messy and unpredictable. one minute they are cracking jokes and the next they are literally sobbing. i barely have enough in me to manage my own grief, so it is hard to take on theirs as well. may GOD give me the strength. and now it is quiet around here...too quiet. 

so i hope there's a warm breeze blowing in heaven tonight as zuzu and all the other dogs we've loved are barking up a storm. i know we made the right call and i'm grateful she is not suffering..but i just already miss her something awful. one of my favorite quotes by edna st. vincent millay says this: "where you used to be there is a hole in the world, which i find myself constantly walking around in the daytime and falling in at night..." i pray the hole will shrink over time so that i don't feel so raw and sad.

zuzu anne

today is an incredibly bittersweet day...we are taking our time saying our goodbyes to miss zuzu anne, our sweet almost ten-year-old shih tzu. i bet none of you knew her middle name was anne. tomorrow morning she will cross the rainbow bridge and hopefully find uncle bleu, and her old time friends oliver and thor...and maybe my dog tiger from my childhood...and snoopy, my grandparents' dog (who could catch a football in his mouth).

between now and tomorrow morning, we will mourn. we will remember, we will laugh and cry and kiss and hug...and after tomorrow morning, we will continue to do the same, only with a zuzu-sized hole in our hearts

 i just wish i could freeze time...bottle this moment and pull it out on the sad days that i know are going to come...

so i know i will see all my sweet animals again someday, for GOD tells us in the BIBLE that:

"The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD."(Isaiah 65: 25)

noche de gala

just a quick post tonight...too much going on to fully update, but bad things with zuzu (our 10 year old shih-tzu), a bazillion kids' activities, a bazillion adult activities, and not enough sleep. but, one fun thing was noche de gala, which produced the finest photo of the two of us in the last ten years...totally worth all the time and effort

Warby-Parker

 oh man i have been SOOO excited! after my recent visit to my eye doc i confirmed that my glasses prescription had changed and i needed new glasses. oh bummer. since i can't wear contacts i get extremely jazzed about choosing glasses...and this time i wasn't going to the mall. i had bigger plans--grander more altruistic plans...enter warby-parker

 i visited their website and picked out five frames and they shipped them to me free of charge. FREE!! so already i've saved on gas $ from not having to drive to the mall. and then when i opened the box i was giddy...because awesome frames (see above) were inside!

 and then i had five days to try them on...and not to give it away, but the ones above are the winners (but don't tell anybody)--officially they are the langston in whiskey tortoise matte

 i was switching them fast and furious...i wanted lightweight, tortoise shell, square, and sassy...

 these below were almost the winners...i decided against the thicker sides (too similar to an older pair i've worn...)

 and the ones below were almost identical to my glasses from ten years ago--which i LOVED! but i wanted something different this time...

 here they are, sitting in the box, begging to be tried on...

 oh i'm excited all right!!

 so now i've lovingly repacked all the frames and i wll be shipping them back (again, FREE) to warby-parker tomorrow and then i'll be ordering my new glasses!

thanks warby-parker! and the best part is (besides the $95 price-tag, which includes everything): they donate a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair they sell!! what's not to love?? coming soon: lots of pix of me in my new glasses :)

a new arm...

i have been mulling over this post--half wanting to write it and half wishing i didn't need to...so here it goes. ty started bugging us about 8 months ago to get a new helper hand. we've gone two years since our last visit to shriner's hospital to get his gator one and he never wore it. i was trying to spare everyone the process of creating a new one because the process is lengthy, requires travel, and the arm (although free to us) costs thousands of dollars and i wasn't taking that lightly. after repeated inquiries, todd and i finally made an appointment to begin the process for a new arm. now let's be clear--ty does not need a helper hand. at. all. he does everything a typical kid does using his hand and his nubby. what's not typical is the fact that he is processing his lot in life and i think he has concluded that he got a bum deal. we have talked with him since he was a baby about GOD's plans for him and how awesome we think he is...but the reality is everywhere he goes people stare, make stupid comments, and ask him incessantly about it. daily. there is no hiding for him. no blending. no fitting in. so when he asked for an arm that we all know he doesn't need, i concluded that he was looking for a way to improve his view of the situation. plus, the arm process would involve three trips to tampa with mommy and daddy and other perks along the way. how could we say no?

 i have a deep love and respect for the work that goes on at shriner's. my usual "takeaway" from our visits there is that missing an arm is no big deal. the children that i've seen there (who are treated free-of-charge) have birth defects and differences way more catastrophic than ty's. i'm always very grateful when we are there...

 another "takeaway" is that i'm super proud of ty--he never ceases to amaze me and make me laugh. and he's so intelligent and savvy, too. i also really savor the one-on-one time with him...he thinks he's king of the world when we go to shriner's...

 so several weeks back we made our first visit--the nurse practitioner checked him over, pronounced him healthy and sent us down to prosthetics. we met with brian (who was the prosthetist who made ty's first arm) who casted ty's nubby, took measurements, and took ty back to the lab to see where the magic happens. then we went home and returned to shriner's a week later to try on the "check-socket" and select the fabric for his arm. he chose sharks and specifically he wanted the blue shark to be face up. we returned a week later for arm delivery...

 so this is seconds after ty got his first look at it. he was quite pleased...

 brian worked with him to get it on, although he didn't need much help

 he adjusted the back strap and let ty hang out with it on for a few minutes to see if the fit was good...

 and then he let him enjoy it. and get annoyed with it (because he couldn't pick up small things with it at first)

 but the general feeling he had towards it was positive. plus it looks really cool...like we got him tattooed with sharks...

 after he took off the arm the popped back on the "check-socket," which brian let him keep

 then we went down to occupational therapy. and this is where reality really set in. here was this new cool-looking shark arm that was really just a clumsy substitute for his God-given arm...and ty couldn't make it do what he wanted it to do. now don't get me wrong, he did amazing in his OT session. he accomplished everything the OT wanted him to...but to watch him was almost more than i could bear. i've never seen his face look so determined and i watched as his right hand was obeying all the instructions that his helper hand was ignoring. see ty's brain thinks he has a hand and a nubby--nubbies don't open, close, or do any fine motor things. hands do. and you could just see ty's right hand making the motions he was so desperately trying to make the shark arm do. i kept turning to todd to keep from crying...because usually i don't give a lot of thought to ty's missing hand. but this OT session just drove home that reality like someone hammering a nail into my soul.

 the absolute highlight of the visit was riding this bike through the hospital--all in the name of learnign to use his arm, of course :)

so ty wore his arm to school the day after he got it...and got in the car after school...and took it off...and hasn't worn it since. i have theorized that since he can easily transfer his anger about his lot in life to this new "helper hand" that wasn't so helpful, he can take it off and be angry at it, channeling a lifetime of feelings into a shark-covered device. and if that makes him feel better about himself, or somehow eases the pain of being a six-year-old with only one hand, then it was worth the gas and miles and time and thousands of dollars... i think in the end we will all be better for having gone through these experiences with ty. i just wish that it wasn't so painful during the process.