Friendship - It's a Vivas Thing!

May 18 2009

Whirlwind of a week!

It's been one of those weeks. The type that totally exhausts you, but in a good way. After a week many appointments and months of planning this weekend, my mental status took a dive on Thursday. As always, God is gracious and has given me those amazing friends through whom He likes to show just how much He cares. My house was a disaster. A group of teenage girls were about to join us for the weekend. And we were about to spend an amazing weekend with 51 teenagers, some amazing adults, fabulous speakers, and an awesome band, Seraph.

Friday, three wonderful friends showed up at my house to whip it into shape! We dusted, scrubbed, vacuumed and windexed. And when I had to leave for yet another appointment, they stayed behind, took care of my kids and finished my house! A few hours later, I came home to a sparkling clean house. What a relief!

This sooooooooooo allowed me to have a fabulous, nonrelaxing, stressfulfree time with the 46 teens that showed up for our D-Now weekend!

Highlights of the weekend include:

Losing to 3 of the 4 high school boys that bowled against me. But hey….compared to the other 40+ bowlers I think I did ok.

A diabetic teen drinking sneaking a RedBull before going to bed.

Being awoken at 3:30 am because above teen has a high blood sugar count.

Having my wonderful hubby deal with the diabetic teen at 3:30 am!

Having my wonderful hubby deal with the cockroach in the tub at 7:30 am so that another teen could take a shower. (My 4 year old nephew offered to deal with it, but because he called it a beetle, she felt bad and couldn't let him touch it since he really didn't know it was a cockroach and not a beetle…or a ladbybug.)

Scavenger hunt! That was a blast, especially when we wanted to help a lady put her groceries away at the grocery store. She thought we were crazy…so much so that she told us we were scaring her! We finally convinced her that we were just some great church-going teenagers trying to be helpful and win a scavenger hunt so she relented and even asked if there was anything else she could help us with!

Seraph was an AWESOME band, as always! They don't just lead a great worship, they also hang with us!

Oh..and the Gorilla beats the man beats the gun tie you die song was crazy fun!

Sean and Natalie…what an amazing heart for missions and ministry.

And now? Well, I'll admit that I'm pretty exhausted, but it's a good exhaustion! Now, if only I could get everybody in bed by 8:00 pm, that'd be great!

May 11 2009

Parks and Old Women

In staying focused on the blessings of what life has to offer, a recap of my weekend.

Friday seemed really bad, things weren't going great and to top if off I was rear-ended and the lady who hit me just took off and left me there! Once I surveyed the damages, I realized there wasn't much, but still…why can't people just be nice? And then, I came home to these:

You have to realize how special these are. They are from my older brother…letting me know he cares, all in His perfect timing.

(Please don't tell him that although Azaleas are one of my absolute favorite plants, I tend to kill them…I don't know why she swallowed the fly)

Saturday we had some time for this:

Spin Time

Monkey Time (including blisters)

Hang Time

Header Time

Down Time
(What ARE they talking about?!)

And then there was Mother's Day. Lunch was accidentally left out on the counter all night instead of put in the refrigerator to thaw. We figured food poisoning on Mother's Day was probably not the way to go, so instead we headed out to lunch after church. This can sometimes be pretty difficult, especially when you have children with food allergies. We have to find food that has no gluten, nuts, dairy or eggs. We also have a rather large family, so that alone can be intimidating for a waiter. We had unexpected guests join us…turning us into a party of sixteen…and it was awesome day at Chevy's!!

My oldest son showed up with flowers for me. (He's such a great son!) That'd be my laugh of the day, so you get a long short story to go with it. It began a long, long, time ago…A few years ago my son was attending a dance and needed a corsage. The corsage looked like it was made for an older woman (ah, like a Mother's Day corsage!), not a teenager going to a dance. Needless to say, definite fixing had to be done in order for my son to be able to save face with his date. (I find it funny that an older lady Grandma is the one that did the fixing!)

Yesterday, my son brought me these:

Please notice the flower below:

This is the *old lady* flower that he complained about. In other words, my son gave me flowers for an older lady….to me, not an older lady.

Which brings us right back to Saturday. A friend stopped by and shared a little story with me. (Honest, I'll try and keep it short.) She said that another friend had asked her to stop by a baby shower since she now lives out of state. She wanted her to say a blessing, give a word of wisdom…you get the picture. She wondered why the friend didn't ask someone else…and then it hit her.

She said to me,

"I realized, we are now the older, wiser, women! Hope, when did we become the older, wiser women?"

I'm not sure, friend, I'm really not sure.

By the way, today is my mother's birthday. She's not old either. Honest, my dad will probably back me up on that one. Those aches and pains are not from age, they're from over-activity, yeah, that's the ticket!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLD WOMAN MOM!
WE LOVE YOU!

May 06 2009

All in a Day!

On a day when the focus needs to be on the good instead of the bad…

First, I baked some special cupcakes for a special friend. And so there was this .

Then my doorbell rings, and I open it to find a lady handing me this:

Because my hubby thinks I'm so special!

(It didn't look like this when she handed it to me, but I forgot to take a picture before I opened it!)

Later in the day I discovered this:

And now, this:

Because pink is her favorite color!

May 05 2009

15 lbs of Potatoes, That’s What!

It's Steven's Soup Day today. That means…well, that means my kids wake me up early asking me when the soup will be ready. I started with five pounds, moved up to ten pounds, and this time moved up to 15 pounds of potatoes! It seems there is never enough Steven's Soup! I also switched to fresh chives and fresh dill..I personally can taste the difference! Yumm!

And I just love Barb! She's so funny…she brought me bowls! Lots of them! One can never have enough bowls for baking! I'm going to use one of them tomorrow when I make orange cupcakes!

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering what in the world I'm even talking about…you can read about Steven's Soup here and how we remember the sweet, sweet, boy, Joshua Stevens.

Apr 29 2009

You Know You Have Good Friends…

When you can have ask them go in late to work (or spend yet another day off with me) and drive across town early in the morning to spend the next hour…or two, filling out paperwork, getting fingerprinted and signing their lives away, all in the name of helping a friend!

Indeed, I am blessed…eight times over…with friends such as these! (And now I have legal babysitters, too!)

(And it's a good thing I'm feeling blessed, too…cause that van costs me eight hundred smackeroos!)