LOTS OF STUFF

I sit outside on my swing writing this. Don't you love wireless? Alex is running around playing and the rooster is a few feet from me crowing. I LOVE THE COUNTRY. It is so peaceful. I would describe it as quiet but in reality, I am having the rooster crow over and over, there are all kinds of different birds in the trees making all different kinds of bird calls. When I get time I'm going to learn the different ones by their "songs."

It has been a busy, busy week. The playyard is finished. LuLu opened her eyes and started standing up and trying to walk. She isn't three weeks old yet. We had a managers party for Clay's work last night and there were about 30 people here. There was one lady here who was probably older than Clay and I but other than her we were the oldest. The youngest one was 4 months old and she was beautiful. People brought a friend, a family member, babies and one even broughther puppy. It was a 4month old lab. Of course Clay cooked and everyone brought a side dish. Lots of food and water balloon fights, everyone got on the swing the slide and the trampoline at some time during the evening. It ended with a big bonfire. OH, the thing that caused the most excitement was some adults took the kids to the hen house to collect eggs for the day only to get in there and find a black snake already there and eating the eggs. Not poisonous but can't have it eating up our eggs. Drew and Clay drug it out of the hen house and took the rifle and shot it's head off. It was almost 5 feet long.

Today for the first time in decades I got on a swing set and I was able to swing side by side with my grandson. I feel so alive here.

BIG WEEKEND

Drew and Frances took their stimulus check and spent it all on Alex a play yard. Clay and I went to Springfield and picked up all the lumber and Drew, Clay and Frances worked on it all weekend. The swingset part of it is still to be built this week. Erin and Aaron came over from Colorado to pick up all of her stuff she had stored here and we had a cook out. Of course Clay did the cooking and it was really nice. They did not stay near long enough though. I miss my girls so badly. I am blessed to have Frances close by though.

Erin and Aarons Pathfinder Drew and Erin. She was getting ready to go to bed after the long drive and loading the trailer and eating.

The end of Saturday. Drew and Alex check out the view from up top.

The ladder and canopy on top are finished. There is also a pirates ship wheel inside that
Alex loves to play with. Next are the swings. Will update then.

NEW ADDITIONS

Our new addition to the family. Her name is LouLou, she is named after Frances whose middle name is Louise. She is a black Lab. Her mommy died 2 days after she was born so we have to bottle feed her every 4 hours. She is just over a week old now and her eyes should be opening in a few days.

Tabbers and Monty "our" cats will be going home with their mommy this weekend. Erin and Aaron will be making a quick turn around trip from Colorado to pick up her "babies" and all of her furniture and other things she had stored here. So wish that they were going to be here for at least a few days but maybe in a few months they can come for a long weekend or something.

I just came inside from putting the first coat of a tinted weatherproofing finish on the new wooden picnic table that we got yesterday. Yesterday Clay and I went to Springfield and Drew gave us his ATM card and had us buy all the lumber and accessories for Alex a really nice playyard. It has just one tower for now (plans are in the work to keep adding towers and also a big turbo slide) and a really big slide and swings and a tire swing and a pirate ship wheel. They are hoping to have it all done by the end of this weekend. Except for a couple of hours loading Erin's U-Haul they will be working non-stop on it Saturday. Clay works a double shift Sunday from 6am - midnight so he won't be able to help finish it up. We are all so excited about it.

The other day I drove for the first time in over a year. IT WAS WONDERFUL. I had forgotten how much I love to drive. I went by myself and went shopping and bought things for ME. I got 2 new tops, a new pair of capris, some socks, a NEON clock for my kitchen (really cool) and a purse. It has been years since I have been to a store and bought myself clothes off the rack. NICE.

Also the woman who had lived here before on our farm, she had died of an illness a few years ago but she had put flower beds all over the front yard and I have been finding them and working on them. Bought more new plants to put in them and am in the process of getting rock borders to go around them all. Yesterday I bought myself a lightweight electric weedeater so that I can trim and keep things tidy around the house and walkway and some of the trees close to the house.

The farm is a work in progress and we all just LOVE all the creativity that we can and do put into it. I haven't felt so alive in years.

ALEX

About a month ago we had 2 roosters and one of them did not like Alex, it had hurt him once before and so we were watching the situation but then one day Nana and Pappy were outside with Alex and the rooster attacked Alex and hurt him pretty bad before we could even get up from the swing and get to him. I think it scared me more than it did him but an half hour later the rooster was simmering in a pot on the stove. You can hardly see the scar now. This was taken a couple of days after the incident.
Alex rarely uses his stroller anymore but Tabbers likes to lay in the seat and sleep and Monty likes the back basket. This day Monty stayed in the basket while Alex pushed him around the house.
Alex all ready to hit the pool. We will be putting it up probably this week. Getting ready for a big cook out at our house with people from Clay's work. Clay loves his new grill, EVERY night that he is home for dinner he has to cook something on the grill.

Clay's new toy.

Alex Being "grownup"

LIKE FATHER LIKE SON
Alex LOVES mowing, actually he loves "helping" with everything he sees someone doing.
Whenever Pappy gets out the lawnmower Alex has to get his lawnmower out and "help"
Now if only they would make a toy lawnmower that actually cuts grass.

A NEW DAY

Just came back from my Dr. Appt. I have to go every 3 months now. Still adjusting and changing my prescriptions until we can find the right amount for my diabetes. Had to up my blood pressure medication. It's weird it seems the more weight I lose the worse my health gets, isn't it suppose to be the other way around? :) I have so far lost 80 pds. in the last 14 months. I am really proud for being able to do it and with it comes new aches and pains because I able to be so much more active but my muscles are just learning to work again. But anyway.

I cut my hair to just below my shoulders and love the shorter look and care and I use a reddish/brown rinse to cover my gray and I really like the color a lot. It is nice having my hair this short, I wear it down a lot now and also have started using a little make up and lipstick again.

I feel so in control of my body and self now than I have for so many years past. This is going to be a good year. Spring is everywhere, it is so beautiful to watch every day the bare brown trees, bud out and turn green. I go outside over and over all day long every day now. I LOVE MY SWING. The birds, the wonderful weather. Peace and quiet, OK, OK, except for Alex, and the guineas, and the rooster and the birds and whatever loud tool Clay has running, right now it is the lawn mower. I LOVE this kind of quiet.

Well will write again soon. It feels good to be writing the blog again.

LETTING GO

I don't know if after I write this if I will post it and I don't know if I do if it will ever be read by anyone.I am seriously thinking of starting writing on this blog again. It is springtime and there is so much going on outside and things we are trying to improve on the farm. Alex is growing so fast becoming such a person on his own.

My heart has been so heavy the past few days. For whatever reason my youngest child has been on my mind constantly. I keep thinking that I should write her about my thoughts but there are a few reasons I haven't. One is that I don't want to say something that I would regret later, or say something that would be taken differently than how it was meant, maybe it is because I don't want to actually see the end of my relationship with her. It has been over a year ago that she seemed to decide that I wasn't a good enough mom for her to care about me anymore. That I didn't deserve to be a part of her life or her family's life.

I sit here with tears streaming down my face and an ache in my heart that is so close to unbearable. I have done really well, going on with my life without her and her family but about 4 days ago I started crying and haven't been able to stop. I cannot go on like this, with this heartache any longer. A few months ago I finally stopped reading her blog, it was pain that took me a couple of days to get over each time I read it and realized how much I was missing and not wanted to be a part of. In the last 14 months it appears that she has been in touch with people she never did before and people that she didn't like, but not me, her mom.

Huge milestones have come and gone for her and her family but not enough love to want to share them with me.

I won't know if she ever reads this, I know right now I am just trying to purge all these thoughts from my mind and hope that it will soothe my heart.

I know that the entire time that my children were growing up that I did my best as a mom, it may not have been what another mom would have done but I made sure my children were loved and taken care of, even beyond their childhood, there were sacrifices made and done with love and care. I just pray that my daughter never feels the hurt in her heart that I have in mine.

I cannot keep loving her so much, I have to stop. I can't wait another year and another year anymore. I have to take care of me now. I would never have believed in a million years that she could turn away from me so completely and not want me in her life in any way but that is what has happened. I miss her and her babies so much that I have to keep stopping writing so wipe the tears away.

I CANNOT believe this has happened. I CANNOT. BUT, it has. I have to let go, not love so much, not care so much, try to rationalize in my heart and mind that this is for the best. This is not who I am. I have always been a mother first, then wife, then myself. I have to accept this decision of hers but it is not what I want or wanted.

I have stretched out my hand to her so very many times this past year and got nothing back. I just can't do it anymore. I just can't.

I have craved all my life so badly to have a mom, a mom who loves me, who wants me and to be that mom for my daughter and not be good enough for her makes me sad beyond any words imaginable. I hurt so badly, my heart is broken so badly, because of things that have happened in the past year I have had to harden my heart so I am not only crying for my lose of her but my lose of part of who is me, the part that loves beyond anything imaginable. I DID NOT want to harden my heart in any way but in order to survive some things I had to do that, and now I find that I am going to have to harden another section of my heart again. I HATE IT. It is not who I want or ever wanted to be.

For so long in my life I have lived by making sure to not take for granted love, to make sure that if anything happens to someone you love that there are no regrets. That there wasn't something left that needed to be said or done. I did that once. With my grandmother whom I loved so very much, I spoke with her on the phone long distance and we talked for a bit and then we hung up and the second I hung the phone up I realized that I didn't say, "I love you" for whatever reason it didn't happen, I immediately thought, "I need to call her right back and say those words" but then I thought, "no, I'll talk to her later and make sure I say them then" I lived in Indiana and she lived in Kentucky, she died 4 days later, I never got the chance to say I love you, to her again. I've made sure that I have lived my life so that I never have to think or regret that I didn't pick up a phone or write a letter or say the words to someone about how special they are to me, how much I care about them, how important they are.