Prayer Request...

Okay, so my dad would probably kill me for doing this. But I'm going to anyways. It's not that he doesn't believe in prayer, or that he doesn't want anyone praying for him, but I think he would kill me because he doesn't want to admit it is this bad.

You see, my dad has had a degenerative eye disease since he was a boy (I think he was in the 1st grade). And it has progressively gotten worse. So last summer he decided to bite the bullet and have cornea transplant surgery.

Little did he know that the eye drops he had to use after the surgery can cause cataracts to increase. So, his eye sight went from about 20/60 to 20/800 in 2 months. Needless to say it stinks to not be able to see!

The thing that breaks my heart is Emily used to go stay with him on Thursdays (his day off) and they would spend the whole day just the two of them. She has done this from the time she was 3 weeks old. And they have such a special bond because of it. The other day she asked him when was it going to be just the two of them on their day because she was ready to spend the day with just him. You see, he can't keep her by himself right now because he can't see to do a lot of the stuff you have to do when you have a 4 year old around.

And to continue the breaking of my heart, while we were at mom's birthday celebration I tried to let him feed Elaina. But he couldn't see to keep the bottle in her mouth. He got frustrated and just gave her back to me. It kills me to think that he hasn't been able to really see his grand daughter yet.

Okay, so the reason for the prayer request is to pray for another upcoming surgery. His original eye surgeon was Dr. Wang. If you live in Middle TN, I know you have heard of him. He's the one with the ball room dancing on his commercial. Okay, so Dr. Wang has said dad should wait until his transplant is healed, which would be sometime around August '09. And the cataract specialist in Dr. Wang's office agreed. Apparently, the cataract surgery can put pressure on the transplant and possibly cause the new cornea to come apart from the eye. Well, dad is desperate to see again and found a doctor that will do the surgery and has decided to take the chance.

So, my prayer request is for the surgery to go well and the transplant to stay intact. And if not, that Dad will be okay.

Birthday Celebration...

A couple of weeks back was my mom's birthday, so we went and stayed the weekend with her. My aunt and cousin came into town, and my sister was at mom's too. So, it was a fun weekend filled with shopping, eating, laughing, and walking down memory lane. We ate dinner at Sperry's in Franklin. That's one of mom and dad's favorite places to eat. Which I can understand why, the steak was so tender you didn't even need a knife to cut it. After dinner, we all changed into our stretchy pants and had GiGi cupcakes and opened presents. This is what my sweet friend LeAnn has to say about GiGi's cupcakes: http://morethanwecouldaskorimagine.blogspot.com/2009/02/heavento-me.html

And she is absolutely correct! I so should have taken a picture of the cupcakes, but I forgot. You all know that I love me some sweet stuff - especially cake - but I couldn't eat a whole one by myself! They were huge!

My mom got lots of great things for her birthday. Probably my favorite was her 1 1/2 hour pedicure gift card my dad got her! My dad is so cute. He gave my aunt and my sister a certain amount of money and asked them to pick it all out, because he says they know what to get her better and probably the fact that he can't see right now because of all the issues with his eyes right now. The cute thing about is that he has been stashing money away here and there so that my mom wouldn't know how much he spent.

This was the first time my aunt, Bonnie Jo, and her daughter, Tara, had met Elaina. So, needless to say Elaina was spoiled by the time the weekend was over. Not only did she not want to be put down, but she came home with a whole new wardrobe! Bonnie Jo has always been so great to Candy and I. And she has continued with our children! She brought Elaina a hand sewn quilt from the rodeo in San Antonio. It is GORGEOUS!!! It is the one Elaina is laying on in the picture in my last post. I'll have more pictures shortly.

The next day, we did lots of shopping and hanging out. That's really all we do when Bonnie Jo comes to town - shop & eat. But, man, we found some deals! Bonnie Jo brings out the bargain shopper in me. Then we had a fun dinner. We all made our own personal pizzas and for dessert we had chocolate fondue. It was so much fun and Emily had a blast! I don't think she stopped talking until about midnight that night thanks to all the sugar and caffine!

At one point she even had it in her eye brows! And isn't it appropriate that she has her shirt on that reads "i want candy"!!!

I think Elaina was a little jealous that Emily was able to eat all that chocolate - this is the face she was making all night.

Wordless Wednesday...

I saw this idea on some other blogs I was looking at yesterday, and I love the idea of being able to post one picture and not have to write anything. So, I'm going to start doing it weekly. (Of course from now on I won't type any words at all.)

We're back in...

Because we have an awesome contract, we are back in the house! Jason & Martin really worked their rear end's off so that we could get back in without too much of a hassle! We were actually only out of our house 3 weeks total. God has definitely blessed us with wonderful friends who work hard to take care of us and a wonderful family that takes us in when we have no where else to go. Thank you so much for all you did for us! I haven't had a chance to takes any pictures yet. I've been busy cleaning out and organizing. I figure since I have to put it all away, I might as well get rid of some of it that we haven't used in a while. I basically went through every closet, every drawer, every spot that I could find anything and either threw it away, put it back up neatly or put it in the newly organized closet for the garage sale. The only room I haven't done is our bedroom and closets. Since I don't have much hanging in my closet still, I figure I can wait on it. And I was wanting to get the Bonus Room closet cleaned out so I could organize all my scrapbook stuff and start storing it so I can actually get to it and use it. Hope everyone is having a great Monday! We've had some fun times in the midst of all of the chaos of the "flood of 2009", so I will posting those pictures soon! I just wanted to stop by and let you know we are back in the house! YAY!

Why I've been lacking in the blog area...

So, at first I was lacking because I was getting adjusted to a 2nd baby. But now there's so many more reasons it might get sporadic on the blogging front.

On the 20th, Emily, Elaina, and I left the house around 10 am for a full day of running around. We had Elaina's 2 week check up, I had to stop by work, we went to lunch with friends, and then that evening I had a pre-sale for a consignment sale. It was a fantastic day, that is until about 10 pm. I'm still in line at the consignment sale and Steve calls. He has just gotten home and says our house is flooded. I thought he was crying wolf, but then I heard the smoke detectors in the background and then I noticed the sheer panic in his voice.

I rush to my parent's house to get the girls and head home. Can I just say for once in Steve's live he was not exaggerating! Apparently, Emily had clogged the toilet before we left and the toilet was running for 12 hours straight. The entire house was flooded, except the kitchen. I was in shock at the amount of water in our house!

We called the insurance company - by the way, don't ever let your homeowners insurance lapse!!! They sent out ServPro to dry everything out. They came in and pretty much demo'd my house in 30 minutes! Dry wall, carpet, vinyl, toilets, and the list continues. I think I cried pretty much the entire weekend!

We have now met with the adjuster and feel much better. Our dear friend Jason is going to be the contractor and has already started getting the ball rolling. It looks like we are going to be living with Steve's parents for about a month or a little more.

Here's what it looked like when ServPro was finished with the drying out, just to give you an idea:

This is my laundry room. The washer and dryer are now in my garage. And there's actually a little section in the dry wall that is open to the garage and there's a section open to the section underneath my stairs, which is open to the crawl space.

This is our Master Bath Floor, you can see where the water stopped.

These pictures are of my closet. Yes, all my clothes and shoes were damaged. They are trying to salvage the clothes, but they don't know if they are going to be able to do anything for my shoes!

This is from our bedroom looking into the living room.

This is the ceiling in the downstairs hallway.

This is the top of our stairs. And the hallway upstairs.

This is the bathroom where it all started.

And this is the Bonus Room. There was even more damage in the garage, but I didn't get pictures of it for some reason.

Fortunately, none of our furniture was hit! And I keep all of our important papers and all of my scrapbooking and pictures in my closet! God was really looking out for us by not letting any of it get wet!