My sweet friend

I have amazing friends. I’m pretty sure I’ve shared that on here in previous posts, but truly, until I reached some low valley’s in my life (during this pregnancy) I didn’t understand quite the extent of the people God has placed in my life and why.

I think I’ve shared before that I’m not the lady that LOVES being pregnant. I like to MOVE, I like to run with my kids, be active and then sleep really good (on my stomach!! haha) So being sick, achy, gaining weight – although it’s beautiful, a miracle and for the sake of a new life, it just isn’t my favorite thing. Add on all that has gone on during this pregnancy and you can see why, although I am overly excited for this new baby girl’s arrival, I never want to be pregnant again!!!

To bring this post full circle, I need to bring up my sweet friend Ashley Bugg… one of those friends that God has put in my life. I always knew I loved her, but my goodness, talk about a friend who just brought joy to my life, from her sweet smile, to her just listening and crying alongside me, to making me be excited about being pregnant… She is amazing.  She is also so creative and took some maternity pictures for me while Chip was gone. I can’t show all of them, but I’ll show one or two… trying to keep them a surprise for Christmas gifts

Thanks Ashley, you are such a gift to me.

www.buggphotographer.com

My heart is happy

My heart is happy because:

My husband is HOME and life feels like it should be.

I actually slept all night. (I haven’t done that in 6 weeks)

Chip LOVED the new kitchen wall. He was beyond excited about it!

I get to enjoy my french press coffee with my husband this morning.

We get to go to Cana’s soccer game as a family today.

LIFE IS HOW IT SHOULD BE – husband and wife together, living, loving, taking care of kids, laughing, talking. The way God intended.

The last 6 weeks brought the worst out in me – anger, loneliness, worry… emotions so deep I couldn’t comprehend them. God brought me through on my side, and grew Chip so much where he was. We are totally and completely on the road to healing, and it will take work, but at least we are doing it together. Our God is continually faithful.

Happenings

Time to talk.

I think this has been the hardest 6 weeks of my life. On Labor Day 2009 Chip resigned from his position at RPC and headed down to Sierra Tucson to get help. Help in handling his pain. Help in dealing with the emotions that came with the pain he has endured from too many surgeries, shots in his back and falls from his health problems going south. Help in getting some control back in his life. Things in our household were spiraling downward and it was time.

Chip left for a 45 day program. I cried. Cried from the depths of my soul, feelings I never knew I even had, came to the surface. But the majority of the emotions… hurt, anger, abandonment, fear and mostly loneliness were strong.

Family and friends came around me, made life feel as normal as possible for our kids. We had as much fun as we could, talking about daddy, missing daddy, crying over daddy and yet still living, trying to live with this empty pit inside. Sometimes it seems like life moves SO FAST, right? Well, not these last six weeks. It has been the slowest time frame of my life.  I would look around and see everyone else’s life moving forward, doing their daily life with their family members, enjoying the weather, enjoying the fun that our state has to offer as it slowly started to cool down… I couldn’t help but compare my life (not the best choice) look down at my belly, see it grow, move, feel the pain of early contractions, deal with all the pregnancy stuff alone and really wish life was different for us.

Chip started with calls every other day or so… but it was too hard for the kids. So we needed an “every day phone call from dad plan.” Poor Chip, I cried or yelled at him the majority of our conversations. As I would get confused about where he was in his treatment. I’d have to continually remember – this is a process, he is in the middle of this and he is learning and growing so much, it is hard for me to understand and wrap my head around. Patience. I needed that. It doesn’t run strong in my being.

The picture above was taken when we actually took the kids down to see him. Sadly, the highlight of this trip was not seeing him. It was SO HARD. Two hours, that’s all we got with him. He was dealing with things, I was struggling and at the end, it was like watching the saddest movie ever on Lifetime… the kids walking away crying so hard as Chip stood at the end of the hallway crying. We cried almost all the way home.

Well, we are on the home stretch. We pick Chip up on Friday. His 45 days will be complete. I got to be down there with him for family week – a week of therapy for families along with their family member who is in treatment. We were finally able to talk face to face, about life, about OUR LIFE. What we want, what we need, how to communicate better. We talked about the pain, the hurts, all the things that built up leading to him being there and realizing we get to move forward now. We get to start a new path. We are healing. All of us are healing and as much fear I have about him coming home, I have never been so excited in all my life. Time to start fresh, using the tools that Sierra Tucson has given us to move forward and be healthy as a family.

A new kitchen

I have amazing friends. Many know by now that I am going through probably the hardest thing in my life that I’ve ever had to face. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m probably still not going to write about it because I’ll start crying and I don’t want to cry right now.

What I want to talk about is how in a time of complete need, my family and friends have lifted me up and literally carried me. What a testament of God’s love and grace.

So, the story goes back a while… but when Promise lived here, I told her how much I wanted a teal wall somewhere and she totally agreed that I needed one. Promise, the queen of color! She totally boosted my confidence! So I started gathering things… this was last March. The life and all its unhealthy problems got in the way. Fast forward to yesterday. Promise and Ashley said “time to do your kitchen Amy.” Yes, yes it is! Haha!!! So I (not so creative) got to spend my day with the two most creative ladies I know and love! And the final product was a new, fun kitchen.

I know it may not be for some people, but it really makes me happy! It feels bright and cheery and beachy… which is what I wanted. I have amazing friends. Thank you Promise and Ashley for making my day so fun yesterday. I love you girls!

I think my friend Amanda referred to the brown that we were covering up as “cowboy brown.” yuck. Happy to get rid of it!!

Look how “safe” Ashley is on the red step stool… ON THE COUNTER!!! yikes!!!

And… the final product!!!

Early Birthday Party

Jackson doesn’t turn 3 until Oct. 1st… but we decided since my parents were here, it would be a fun time to throw him a little party.

Thanks to Uncle Bill talking about bowling, I decided to have  a little bowling party!! Oh my gosh, it was so cute. Even I had fun!!

Jackson calls it “balling.” haha!

Week 26

getting bigger! YIKES!!!

So some prego facts for me at this stage (for later on in life, you know):

• I am officially a stuffed sausage in my workout clothes. And I CANNOT find anything comfortable to work out in!
• My Dr. appt’s officially moved from monthly to every three weeks. That seemed to have happened quick.
• This baby girl moves A LOT. I didn’t feel her much until 24 weeks, and apparently once she started, she just hasn’t stopped!
• We still are not settled on a name.
• I definitely get indigestion.
• I’m definitely tired!
• I could be happy eating yogurt/cottage cheese and cantaloupe for the rest of this pregnancy!

OK, I think thats it for me! I’m having the 2pm midday lull and ready for a rest!!!

more trees

Lets blame it on nesting. Or just the fact that I may have OCD. Whatever the case, more trees!! A nursery out here is pretty much giving them away and I ALWAYS want more trees to help with the horrid summer heat out here. Look what happened when we dug the “perfect” hole in the “perfect” spot!

We found a pretty large stump from an old tree that was there before we even lived here!! It took us about two days… the above try was Chip’s first attempt to pull the stump out… and the rope broke! So the next night we attempted again… with Skip! (Chip’s dad) And of course we had an audience and kids wanting to be a part of it!

So it took a couple try’s but all the kids and I were cheering with excitement!! I don’t know why, this was so fun for me to watch! (I’m simple, remember?) Anyways, the kids were cracking us up, Jackson especially, so here are some more kid pics and then the final final outcome of two new trees in our front yard! They are called Shamel Evergreen Ash trees and they should make this really pretty ball of green, like  a lollipop looking tree! YAY! Ahhh, trees…

OK, and I promise I won’t forget my weekly prego pic this week… or I’ll try not to forget!!

week 24. 6 months!!

Hard to believe I am 6 months along now!

Well, Chip and I got to go on a date last night.  So we went to Liberty Market (the owner is Joe of Joe’s BBQ and Joe’s Farm Grill). He is awesome. We got to chat with him a bit last night… at one point he asked me, “are you heavy with child?” HAHAHAHAHA. That made me laugh SO HARD!

Anyways, we love Liberty Market because it has a feel of culture, like a quaint little San Diego restaurant/coffee shop. And they always give out free meals on birthdays!! We had a great time!

Here we are before we left:

Chip got ME a gift for HIS birthday. What a guy… seriously. I love him.

Chip made it to 30!!!

I can happily say that Chip is not in the hospital for his 30th birthday!!!!!

He is, in fact… AT WORK! And that is a good thing.

Chip, we love you. You are an amazing dad, husband, friend and you are my partner in this crazy world – for life!! And I am so happy. I love you.

We’ve been doing a lot of gardening since Chip has been home. Isn’t this hibiscus beautiful????

AND, because I am tree obsessed, I went, ALL BY MYSELF to a nursery to buy some trees. (Jackson was with me). I’m sure we were quite a site. The guy threw in so many free things for me… not sure if he was taking pity on me or what??!!! Either way, it made my day. So I got a Shamel Ash tree for our front yard and another Sissoo tree for our backyard. They both took about 3 days to plant since Chip and I (the odd couple) did it ourselves!! But it was super fun and another awesome family time.

These simple things bring joy to my life… I’ve never been a very complicated or needy person. (well… I may be complicated – remember the Italian side?? And my dad is Scotts-Irish, so that’s some complication in my head…) But I think God has done a lot of revealing to me in the last few months as we have gone through so many crazy whirlwind emotions of ups and downs. I like simplicity. I like my family close. I like normalcy… and mostly I like God showing me that HE is in all of those things. And even though we may have NO idea what is ahead, we also have no control of what is ahead. We thought we were on the other side of this “dark valley” a month ago, only to fall back into another one with Chip’s illnesses. But I do believe that God is faithful. Sometimes I’ve said that to reassure myself without really feeling it deep down inside. But I can say it with confidence… I do believe God is in control, and no matter what, we are his. So thank you God, that Chip made it to 30!! I hope we have a life FULL of fun years ahead. And I won’t mind if they are full of simplicity. Thats how I roll.

Plumerias, Hibiscus, Gardenias and my Sissuo trees…

As we all know, this month has just been crazy. Chip was in and out of the hospital, Arizona broke record heats and my baby belly continued to grow.

Potentially with all that went on (and is still going on) I had a few days that just put me in a loop… and I could’ve been caught in one of those downward sprirals. But something caught my eye about a week and a half ago. A neighbor watering a tree. The tree was big and lush and shady and gorgeous. And so GREEN!!! I WANTed that. Shade, greenery, lushness… here in the desert. I needed some shade. So I started to put my focus on my backyard at our four sissou trees that we planted less than a year ago…then I started looking at my hibiscus and noticed they were not doing good at all… and I got my hands dirty!

Chip has always done our yard work, and I’ve “watched” but last week became the week where I put my “Amy angry” attitude (from past blog) to work. I changed it and me and Cana (not really Jackson… he’s too busy fighting dragons in the backyard) started caring for our trees.

Here is what they looked like last year when we planted them:

and here it is this morning!!!

and our backyard looking out from my porch:

I don’t know why the greenery is just making me happy.

SO, the story goes on… after the trees, I moved on to my hibiscus, and started planting more! And then at Home Depot saw that they actually have PLUMERIA!!!! (I’ve been looking for them here for the last 5 years!! Which is why I brought one over from San Diego!)  We spent a family morning yesterday working on our flowers and it was SO FUN. That was Chip’s “activity” for the day. Here is the final outcome… with many more ideas and thought in my head as I want to turn my porch into a tropical paradise in the desert! hahahaha.

And the best part? It rained all night last night!!! Its gonna be a good day in the desert.