24

Well, the birthday has come and gone and I don't feel a change at all! ...Ha ...not that you ever feel a change other then the big 16 and 21. It was a wonderful day spent with my 2 favorite boys!! I also gotta pretty awesome birthday card in the mail filled with a nice little Benjamin Franklin in there to say hello! And the prettiest card from my amazing Meme! No really, I loved the card...she did a good job picking that one out!! And of course the one from my daddy made me giggle...and it also gave Ted a little giggle. I can't even begin to say how much I love my dad and how amazing he is. I know that no matter what ever happens in my life that my dad will be right by my side to make me smile and feel better. Love him!! :)

We also had our first cookout here Saturday. It was the first time we ever invited more then just a couple people over at once. I was so happy that so many people came! I wasn't expecting everyone to come out, plus some! We had a awesome day full of volleyball, Cajun/redneck horseshoes, some AWESOME grilled food by the hubby and my first margarita since before I got pregnant with Gage. Gage looooved all the attention, he eats it up! He gave little Hannah lots of slobbery kisses and he can't wait till her baby brother makes his appearance in August! His name will be Kadyn :) and we can't wait to meet him!! I was worried it was going to rain since the forecast had been calling for it all week but it turned out to be a beautiful day! I was a bad hostess and didn't take any pictures... If I didn't have Gage in my lap or on my hip, I was busy playing volleyball or something else. I promise to do much better next time!!

We spent Friday afternoon at the hospital on base, which is where all of my doctor's appointments are. I wasn't aware that I was having a million and one x-rays done so once we got there I was a lil suprised. Not that x-rays are any big deal, it just took FOREVER! They took a good 15 of them of my neck, shoulders and spine and I had to get in weird positions and hold these heavy weights...and the whole time I could here Gage out in the hallway yelling at people. It's his newest thing...He's realized if he yells people look at him and smile, so he does it all the time. Anyways, I won't get to see my x-rays until my appointment on the 11th, which will hopefully be the last time I have to go.

Have I mentioned how much I love Gage?? Because I can't say it enough. He is the apple of my eyes, the best little precious gift God could ever have given me. He is doing awesome at his new sleeping schedule. Now when we put him in his crib he knows that it's bed time and does SOOO GOOD!! He's a wild little sleeper though....which I have no doubt he gets from me. I wish I had a dollar for every time I would go to sleep with my head on my pillow growing up and I would wake up with my head at my foot board in some of the most retarded position. And I would also talk in my sleep. And I'm pretty sure I remember slapping my cousin Whitney once when I was little and stayed the night with her. Gage is no different, every time I go in there he is in a different spot in the bed, turned all kinds of ways, and he just giggles so much in his sleep. I love it! We had to take his sleep positioner out of his crib bc he would just roll over it and sleep with his back bent and awkward. Also now anytime I let him sleep on the couch with my during the day he flips and flops like a crazy person. Ted is good at staying in certain spot while he sleeps but boy does he do some crazy funny stuff! I get a good laugh just about every night from the stuff that comes outta his mouth. He also gets up and does stuff that makes NO sense and then gets back in bed and will argue that he knows what he's doing when I laugh at him. But then owns up to it the next morning that he had no idea. I love it! :) ..Gage has also been cursed with the rapid hair and nail growth like me. I can't keep my hair short for nothing, within a week it's grown so much...and I can cut my nails completely short and then next day I have to do it again. Every time I complain to someone about my hair growing so fast they say they wish they had that problem...but no you don't! Not unless you want to get your hair cut every 2 weeks! haha...But really my son has a mullet! Ha...and it's hangs all over his ears and in his face and it bugs me so much, but theres no way I could get it cut now. He's still too young! He's growing like a weed and NEVER stops eating! lol he had gotten to where he was to worried about moving around and figuring stuff out that he could care less to eat...and now he has decided that he is hungry every minute of the day! He also likes to say dada all day, and mumbles other crazy words...I heard quite a few byebye's today. Only time I hear mama anymore is when he is crying/whining. Oh well... we will get there soon enough! :)

Gage and I are really looking forward to our trip to Texas in July!! We really wish Ted could join us but duty calls! We can't wait to see everyone!! He's really hoping his Nana Kay & pawpaw come see him in June!!

This is Gagers & Amanda...his oldest girlfriend! He adores her :)

March for Babies

Ted, Gage and I will be walking in the March for Babies this November....

Every day, thousands of babies are born too soon, too small and often very sick. Our team is walking in March for Babies because we want to do something about this....

If you can spare to donate to this cause, any amount of money no matter how big or small goes a long way!! Or if you live here in Jax and would like to join our team to do the walk with us, just click on the join the team button, we would love to have company!! :) Click on the link below to donate, join or learn more!

http://www.marchforbabies.org/s_team_page.asp?seid=1433055

Loves to all!!

Finger's Crossed....

...That Gage decides to stay asleep in his own bed tonight!! We aren't sure whats up with his sleeping habits lately but I am for sure not a fan! Hopefully it's either that he's going through a growth spurt or it's that he has become so much more active lately and his little brain is ticking 90 to nothin! He always get REALLY sleepy by 7:30 ish and we have always kinda patted him to sleep and it used to work, but now he fights it like crazy even though he is exhausted and once he is finally asleep he will sleep till maybe 11 and wakes up screaming like crazy and then he will go back down until around 2 am, but at that point he's in this restless sleep and the only thing we have been able to do is one of us sleep with him in our bed and kinda pat his little hiney through out the night... Well Ted has been working mids for a couple of weeks now so it's just me here to take care of gage through the night and I have a hard enough time sleeping as it is bc of my back...so once ted gets home in the mornings he needs to get his sleep so I've been feeling like I am functioning on about 2-3 hours a night at the most. But we are officially trying out the "ferber method" and letting him cry himself to sleep...so far so good...we don't let him go very long without going in to comfort him and it's working so....fingers crossed!

We finally feel like there is a light at the end of this retarted surgery tunnel! It feels like it has just been draggin on and we felt like we were getting no where with no real answers. But the insurance denied the surgery this first time because of the lack of evidence they had that I had back problems....which was completely my doctors(not surgeon) fault for only submitting that I had large breasts... I don't blame the insurance for denying it...so of course I was upset and we had come to realize there was no way we were going to be able to pay out of pocket for the surgery because it's $30,000+ ...WAY more then we can afford! So I was beginning to think it was going to be like 6-9 more months I would have to deal with my back...But luckily I have a new doctor who is one of my favorite new people! He's awesome!! Ted and I were both really happy when we left my appointment last Thursday... He has been working there since the 80's and has never been told no to a surgery...he called the insurance company and talked to them for awhile...we are now just waiting till May 6th to re-submit the info to get the surgery bc it has to be 90 days from the time the 1st one was filed... He is putting in every thing that could possibly be wrong with my back and he said theres no way they can say no...So now...we wait again...except we wait with confidence that it's going to finally get to happy... we figure I will get to have the surgery in June, so keep your fingers crossed on that too! :) I have to go to the doc every 2 weeks until the surgery to keep documenting everything.. Pretty sure I now have a pinched nerve in my lower back..it hurts SO bad and when I ask Ted to push on it really hard for me I can't even feel it bc it's numb on the outside...it's weird but should go away once all the muscles and everything get some rest.

I'm also trying to go back to school starting in August, but in order to do so I have to take the ACT the first week of June. I never took it back home bc I just took the college placement test...so now that I'm days away from being 24 I'm trying to study all this material that I do not remember one single bit! But I'm gonna do it! All the other times I went to school I had no motivation what-so-ever. I basically did it to please everyone else...so when I was there I wasn't trying bc I really didn't want to be there. But now I'm actually really excited and motivated. I think since I'm doing it for me and for the good of my family I will do a lot better!

I think I'm going to stop my birthday clock after this one because I don't really care to get old! 24 is my limit! :) Gage is doing great and I can't believe my baby boy is only a few days shy of 7 months! He is so so so funny and has become very attached to his mommy and daddy...but still loves everyone else, he just hates to not have all eyes on him when we are here at the house. I will post pictures of him soon, I promise. But for now I MUST try and get sleep while he is snoozing... I have a dentist appointment bright and early in the morning and this house is a WRECK so my guess is tomorrow will be a long day! :)

p.s...please ignore my spelling mistakes bc I do not feel like taking the time to use spell check...I would much rather close my eyes! Nighty night!

Homeless.

Okay so this post is just me rambling, so feel free not to feel obligated to read! :)

I don't want to sound like I was raised under a rock, in a perfect little town where no one is homeless because that obviously isn't the case. You frequently see homeless people on corners in Longview. Living here in Jacksonville it seems like everywhere you turn there are people holding signs or slowly moving down the sidewalk in their wheelchairs. I know no one likes to see these people, but all of these people pull at my fragile little heartstrings!! I always feel so obligated to help in someway although I don't ever really do anything. Of course I have always been told since I was itty bitty that I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I have to agree. I'm sensitive! :)

I always think of myself as non-judgemental but then there are so many cases that I see these people and I want to give them money and then I think wait, why so they can go buy a cheap bottle of whiskey and drink their lives away.... But really who am I to judge? If I spare some of the change that I have piled up in the console of the car and they really do buy themselves some food, AWESOME....if they decide alcohol is what they need, at least I tried and I did what felt like I needed to right?

We went to the dog park downtown for the first time this week, and we were driving through downtown around 4 pm... it seemed like every other corner there was a HUGE line of homeless people waiting to get into the shelter and hopefully get a bite to eat. The first that popped into my head was the movie 'Pursuit of Happyness'. (yes happyness isn't the correct spelling, but that's how they spell it for the movie for a particular reason). I love this movie, it's a true story about a man and his son who struggle and become homeless, all while the dad is interning at a stock broker place to try and better himself, which eventually pays off. But they would rush to get in line everyday at 4 hoping for a safe place to sleep instead of a subway bathroom. It's sad, it really is because there are so many homeless that are good people who lost their way. They are all someones child, parent, siblings... But seeing all if them in line the other day made me really sad. I just kept thinking about what could have gone wrong that made them end up where they are... While we were at Ted's pre-deployment meeting last year there was a guy speaking and he was saying how the majority of homeless are veterans who suffered traumatic experiences in wars and what not and didn't get the treatment they needed to help overcome that, and ended up on the streets talking to worms in the dirt. There is a guy that lives in the woods a few miles from here that we see all the time, he is pretty old looking and he sits on the side of the road and digs in the dirt talking to himself. It's sad.... I hate seeing it. But every time we pass by I notice I look for him. Ted has decided that once he gets his new pair of work boots he is giving his old pair to someone homeless, maybe this guy. They are very sturdy boots that while last forever...they will do someone else more good then sitting in our closet.

Then there are those people that could care less about anyone other then their own selfish wants and don't care what they put their children through in the process. We were pulling into walmart the other day (which I HATE, by the way) and on the corner was a guy prolly late 20's-early 30's... he was kinda thuggish looking and posted up against a tree and standing in front of him is a BABY...no older then 2 years old holding a cardboard sign that said "homeless, anything helps"...BUT the A-hole of a guy was SMOKING! It made me so upset! I wanted to go crazy on the guy but of course around here I don't have the guts to do anything bc you never know who will pull a gun on you or something crazy. But really I felt so bad for this little boy... I'm pretty sure the cops did something about it though because they weren't there for long at all. I had hoped they were there when we were leaving so Ted and I could have at least given the little boy some food. How could you be so selfish...my kids are starving but all is well because I have my cigarettes... It really just makes me crazy!

more rambling..sorry :)

I was watchin True Life: I'm homeless on MTV the other day. There was a mother and daughter being evicted from their apartment. The daughter wasn't old enough to work and the mother couldn't work bc of health issues. They were both way overweight and it was for sure obvious they were just lazy. They are packing to get out of the apartment and I noticed a brand new laptop on the table and a could t.v. remote like ours. If you can't afford to pay rent and eat do you really think those things are something you need? NO! the show seemed like it was geared to make you feel sorry for them and I couldn't! I know it wasn't the daughters fault but when she turned 16 she said she could work but didn't want to! It makes me crazy to see all of these people that have babies every year and live off of the government because they can't afford food and rent but they dang sure have rims on their decked out car and the newest cell phone out! I for sure support the government helping those that are willing to help themselves and deserve it but I think there should be some better screening to get assistance instead of letting all of these people that think we owe them something keep taking advantage of us!

okay, sorry for all of the non sense... I will post a updating blog tomorrow! It's bedtime for this sleepy mommy!! :)