Lake Millwood

Today we went for another road trip and took Mom to Lake Millwood in Ashdown, AR. This was about 30 minutes from home and was another beautiful drive on country roads. After the lake we went to the downtown area and took Mom to some antique shops for browsing. It was fun. I found a jacket for Marcus for $7! Enjoy the pics...

We were way out in the sticks when we saw this sign for the property. It reads "Poor Trash Ranch!"

Fireproof

Yesterday Mark, Mom, and I went to see the movie Fireproof. This movie was so powerful and had us all in tears through out. We knew it was going to moving, but we were not ready for this one. It hit home on SO many levels for us. We are so thankful to our Lord for restoring our marriage when He did. This movie reminded us how important the vows are that we took before Him on April 15, 1999. It reminded us of how our marriage is a constant challenge and that we have to keep working on it. That we have to keep each other the priority of our lives. We need to think of the other person before we think of ourselves. We are so thankful that our church encouraged us to get into counseling at all costs. Bottom line... this movie is a must see for all married couples, happy and not so happy couples. Check out the website: http://www.fireproofmymarriage.com/.

Road Trip

Sunday started with an awesome service at church. Then we loaded in the car and took off to Shreveport, LA for the day. The drive there was beautiful and was only 1 1/2 hours, not too bad for the boys. We saw this house and I had to have a pic of it! The first stop was Toys R Us so they could use their gifts cards.

According to Map Quest this building should have been toys r us. But instead it was a dead end with an out house. Not good. It was a nice scenic drive to get to this location and saw many beautiful houses and pastures.

We stopped and asked someone for directions to the toy store and we finally got there. Thank the Lord because the boys were getting ansie. Within two minutes of returning to the car they had the toys opened and on and playing. It was paradise!

Toys R Us was in Bossier City so when we were done there, we went across town to downtown Shreveport and spent the day walking the Red River Boardwalk, going to the Art and Garden Museum, and driving around looking at all the historical places and buildings. It was another good day!

Signs

WOW! They must mean business when they are playing Pokemon. This sign on the write board was sitting outside the bedroom door. And to top it all off, I have not heard them in the last 30 minutes at least.

Boy Scouts

Well the time has come for us to get our boys involved with "boy stuff" so today we went to a boy scouts open house at the local camp area run by the scouts. It was pretty cool and SO many people/kids were there. That tells me that Texarkana boys love being a boy scout. Marcus found at least 10 kids he knew there. There were stations around the grounds for the boys to participate in fun activities. Here are some pics from our afternoon.

Rock Climbing, Archery Shooting, Soda Bottle Water Bomb launching, and I even let them shoot a real bee bee gun!!

Games!!!!

Yesterday Mom and I went to have lunch the boys, went grocery shopping, napped for an hour and then did nothing for the rest of the day! Today we played games all day, after I woke up at 10:30!! It was so nice to sleep in. First we played 4 games of scrabble. I won the first one and then Mom smoked me in the last three. How can you win when she is coming up with words like these: whelch(to take back, lie or tattle) Yule(Christmas festival) Niles ( a type of river) Quip(snotty) Grue (??) and viol (type of paper)??
I knew I was in trouble when she started the board with YULE!!
My vocabulary is not good enough to play with her. I need to study more words. After I gave up on scrabble we started Yahtzee. This was much funner, quicker paced, and I won a few games. Then we got the boys and played Yahtzee JR. That was fun, but I had a headache from the noise of the dice. So then I decided that we needed to play Uno!! A game with no racket, except their mouths! After the second game lasted ah hour we called it quits. It is now 10pm and I am ready for bed. :-) It was a good day.

Mom is here

Yea!!! Mom is finally here. Plane got in safe last night and we had nice conversation the whole way home. It was a beautiful drive down to Shreveport!

Crazy Directions

Directions to the Shreveport Airport from our house. Mom's flight arrives at 7:45p.m.

30E
59S
151E
245N
549S
71S
220W
20E

Total 88 miles 1 1/2 hours- The map makes it look much easier. Straight south. (hehe before we left Cali I make a stop at AAA and picked up 10 different maps for the south east states!) Hopefully I don't get lost. I am leaving early so it will still be day light. Last time I drove long distance at night I paid for it the next day with my first accident. Plus, Momma does not like it when we are late and make her wait, especially if I tell her I will be there on time :-) Why shouldn't I be on time, I am unemployed? tick tock tick tock... is it time to leave yet?

Relaxing two days

Yesterday Mark and I enjoyed our first day together with out the boys!! We slept in. Took the dogs to the local park and let them run around on the base ball field. Took them for a nice walk around the park. We dropped them off at home and went to have some BBQ for lunch. It was so yummy. After our tummy's were full, we came home for a 3 1/2 hour nap!! When we woke up, it was time to get the boys from Minton's.

Today was day two of spending time together. Except today was full of work! Yard work to be exact, 7 hours of it. The boys and I cleaned up the front yards this weekend from the storm. The back hard had not been touched and needed some TLC. So Mark and I spent all day out there, raking, picking up dog poop, picking up pine cones, and mowing. When all was done it looked gorgeous! It made all the hard work worth it. We took two truck loads of debris to the dump! That's alot of crap all over the yard. BUT NO MORE!! Hopefully we wont ever have to do this again, cause I called a logger to come give us an estimate for taking the trees. The best part?? They will PAY US for the trees!! I will keep you posted on this.

Tomorrow my moms flies in at 7:45pm. I cant wait. I am so happy that she is coming to Shreveport so the drive is not that long. 23 hours left!!

Backpack checks

This is why I have to check the boys' backpacks in the mornings before they get on the bus. You never know what they are going to try and take to school. This is what Zachery tried taking.... They get free breakfast every morning!

Birthday shopping w/Zachery

I took Zachery shopping so he could spend the money he had on his GCs and cash he got from Dad and I. This is what he bought! In addition to these items, he also bought "Game Party" for the Wii. Three more days till my MOM gets here!!!! YYYEEEAAAAA

Happy Birthday Zachery!

Today is Zachery's 6th birthday. Last night we let him make a cake and decorate it. This morning we took it to church and celebrated with our church family.

After church, we went to the bowling alley for a couple of games. Zachery chose this over going to the state fair in town.... we were bummed, but it is his day.

After bowling, Zachery wanted to play a game of pool. It was a long game to watch but very entertaining!

After pool we went and got the boys lunch from their favorite place, McDonald's. Now we are off to Game Stop so Zachery can use the rest of his gift card for a new game.

Tomorrow Mark and I get to spend the day together while the kids are at school. Since he has Monday and Tuesdays off and I am unemployed we actually get the spend some time together without the kiddos! This will be the first time since we moved to TX!

Blessings over and over

Last night I prayed in bed that God would show me the way to honor him. I prayed that I would be steadfast in my faith and trust in Jesus and that there is a plan in place for our family. I was reminded during this quite time of the peace I had before moving to TX and knowing that God wanted me to be home with the boys and focus on family and church. Once I got here, I moved away from that plan by going to work. Maybe me loosing my job was God saying to me, "trust Me my child, for I have plans for you and I revealed them to you, and you are not following them." As He is speaking to me, I have to remind myself that His plans are better than any I have. I said to myself, I will use this time to work more on my relationship with the boys and Mark and take care of things that I have been putting off.
1st blessing was while I filed all my paperwork I came across my traffic school forms. I knew I needed to get it done but when I found it the time limit had already expired. I said a quick prayer and asked God to please allow me an extension and I promised I would do the traffic school first thing in the AM. I called the courts, explained that I have moved and the forms got to me late and I did not have enough time. They were gracious and gave me a 30 day extension. As soon as the boys were on the bus this morning, I started the online traffic school and was done with it at 1:45. I spend almost 5 hours getting it done.
2nd blessing was when I took a break at 10:45 to go have lunch with the boys! I really wanted to finish traffic school, but I know I needed to spend this precious time with them too. I was blessed to see how the teachers and staff work together at the school. There is a 1 hour break between when Zachery and Marcus eat so I sat and observed how the school runs. This school takes the time to teach the kids such manners as waiting for the rest of the students to sit at the table before they start eating! I could not believe my eyes. They were not prompted to do it, but when they did the VP saw it and announced this to the Principal and each student received an ticket for "excelling in manners!"
3rd blessing was when I finished traffic school and passed the final exam I made a phone call to the Arkansas Unemployment Office to try and file a claim. I figured what could it hurt to try? The gentleman was so friendly and patiently answered all my questions. He then told me that I had to file in California. I called CA, but the lines were busy and I had to keep calling, and calling, and calling, for about 45 minutes. Finally I got through and sure enough I did qualify for UI since I was laid off. I had no idea that I could still file even though I lived in TX. I do believe that this was God rewarding me for not being bitter toward SRT, handling the situation respectfully, and above all, trusting that He was in control and had a better plan for me. Mark and I are reminded each and every day that God is carrying us through every challenge and success since we moved here, and still feel like we are being uplifted for being obedient to His calling for us. Would you please continue to pray for us? Thank you

A new chapter

"Hello?" said Angie, as she picked up the phone. "Can you please come to my office?" said Meredith. "Sure!" said Angie. " Tony, Justin, and I just had a meeting and we are doing some restructuring and moving some responsibilities around. Effective immediately, we are laying you off," said Meredith. "OK" said Angie.
I walked out, waited for my old boss to walk me to my office. I gave her my badge and collected my few personal items and out the door I went. Just like that, with no warning, I am without a job. I am not bitter. I do feel cheated cause I came into the office and it was a task to get it up to par and now I don't get to see the benefit of cleaning it all up. The company is changing, growing, and I just hope and pray that Mark will be safe from loosing his job too.


So now my mom will be coming for a visit hopefully next week!! This is the perfect time since I am not working. I cant wait to see her and hang out. The boys miss her so much and this will be a nice time for them to have with her.

Please pray that God would reveal what I should be doing now that I am starting over. Should I be working? Should I be volunteering somewhere? Should I be going to school? What is in the next chapter for me?

After the storm

This morning we woke up, made a breakfast, and got right to work outside on the tree that fell over. We knew how big the oak tree was and we knew it was going to be an all day job. As soon as we got out there, two of our neighbors came to help us. One brought his chain saw and the other brought his knowledge of the best way to tackle the tree. At about 11 Pastor Craig and his wife, Tonya, came to help. 9 hours later we had the wood cut up, some of it even split for fire wood, and all of it in the back yard. It was a lot of work, and we are so thankful for our neighbors and church family. We got power back at about 3 this afternoon and the boys were happy about that. So now we have the boys cleaning the house and we are resting. Mark has a full day of yard work tomorrow and I have work.

Mark and Steve got right to work. We were supprised to have our neighbors helping without us having to ask!

This is when Mark drove the truck in the back yard to off load the wood. I guess it was not a good idea to drive on the soft soil with a HEAVY load! Oh well, we are still learning how to live in the south!

The Lord is amazing, and always turns negatives to positives. Look at all the good wood we have! We will be able to burn it all winter. Everyone told us we have at least $500 worth of wood.
Now we have to deal with this tree, that is uprooted and leaning on the pine next to it. We were lucky the wind did not push it on to our house!

Can you see the roots being pulled ->

<- Can you see the trees hugging? That is not good.

Storm #4

OK now it is getting bad. The wind is whipping, the rain has not stopped, the yards are now full of tree debris, and they are getting flooded. The lights have been flickering so we cooked up a big pot of spaghetti to have for tonight and tomorrow in case we loose power.I just saw on the news that the storm is right over us now. I am glad we just get the tail end of these hurricanes. They are no joke!

Mark is home from work now. Thank God he made it home safe. He said he watched the wind push a truck off the road.

Storm #3

What do you do when you are in the middle of tropical storm Ike? You play in it!!! At least that is what Marcus did. Zachery is asleep on the couch.

Marcus is having too much fun....

What else are you going to do with puddles?

Storm #2

Here is video of the storm starting. It is cool sitting outside in the garage listening to the wind howl in the trees. Then I started looking around at the tree branches that hang over our house and hope the wind doesn't blow them down(the branches). That would not be good.