Pack pack pack

Who wants to come help?!?! If I don't even want to participate I guess I can't expect any one else to jump in on the fun! It has been a pretty rough past week or so, I can't lie. Being a stay at home mom is not all peaches-n-cream. It is TOUGH. Sometimes you just want to go out of your mind when your teething toddler throws his lunch on the floor. Even better when he smashes it into the carpet and/or couch. (I definitely wouldn't know anything about this, it's all hypothetical). :-/ I am sure that Cliff wonders what I did all day when he comes home to me waiting at the door with no dinner on the table. I find that I lose my patience too frequently but I am imperfect- God made me that way! I strive to do better and I feel like I was more patient today than last Friday... thank God for that.

Lacy is still in the hospital in intensive care on the ventilator. It's so tough seeing my friend go through this. She is the model of a (near) perfect person. She is patient, kind, loving, nurturing, and has always dreamed of becoming a mom. I know she could have never thought up this situation she is now in. She has been a mom for 3 weeks and has only held her baby 2 times. I pray that she will remember when she held him for the first time but we definitely have pictures to prove it at least. If I think about her situation too much I just find myself in tears. She will get better and has been making vast improvements but I just wish I could give her the first 3 weeks of her baby's life to have in her memory. He is a precious little boy. I have held him and loved on him for her. He is so perfect and is doing amazingly well. He will probably get out of the hospital very soon- before his mommy. (don't worry, I offered to babysit) I have been emotionally drained. I can't imagine what Lacy and Ben's families have been going through. They are so faithful and it is so obvious every time I see them. They have held up better than I would ever expect anyone to under these circumstances. If you pray, throw one up for Lacy, Ben and baby Andrew!

TOMORROW we get the keys to our new (rental) house! We are so very very very excited to get out of this apartment complex. We cannot wait!!! Sam is going to stay with his Grandma Haynes Wed-Thursday and my parents are going to pick him up Thursday and come to LR to help us move on Friday morning! I am so thankful to have their help. I am also thankful that the weather forcast is expecting temps to be in the high 80's!!! We are so thrilled. This will help with our move so very much. A far cry from the 100's of this weekend and last week. YEAH!!

We are also ridding ourself of cable tv and our home phone. Tell me that we are crazy but we are going to try it out and see what we think. I think it could be good for us. I don't watch it that much anyway so why not save the $$?!? We will keep the tv and watch movies frequently, I am sure. Don't worry, we will still have the internet, we are not THAT crazy.

I LOVE reading all of your blogs... trust me even though I am bad at blogging I love catching up with all of you!

Been a long time...

I know you all were on pins and needles waiting for our exciting news last week. Man how I disappointed you all by not having a new post up until now! I am a blogging FAILURE. Oh well, maybe you will forgive me and we can move forward in our blogging relationship. I sure hope so cause I would hate to lose any one of you 6 subscribers! Heavens, NO! I need every eye, and ear I can get.

We have been waiting to hear if our application for our new (rental) house has been accepted! We still don't have a final answer but they are just waiting on 1 thing so surely it will go through and my telling you all this isn't totally jinxing us! We are so thrilled to (hopefully) be doubling our square footage in the next month or so. We are now at 1189sqft and the new place is almost 2400sqft. Thank the Lord! We need to be able to stretch without kicking eachother in the face. Sam needs to be able to run around in a house that takes him more than 2.5 seconds to get from one end to the other. We need a guest bedroom so we can welcome lovely people to our home (or another baby, whichever comes first- haha). This place is only 3 bedrooms but it has 2 living rooms, a sun room and a screened in porch. Wohoo! We will again be taking care of a yard but I'm kind of looking forward to mowing and planting some flowers (Jennifer- do you want to come help). We will be breaking our lease here at the 'ole townhouse but we don't care. :) The house is in a safe neighborhood in West Little Rock- this is a hard thing to find right now so we had to jump on it.

Enough about that!! We had a really nice weekend. On Saturday morning I made my husband happy and we went on a family hike! He has been wanting to do this for ages so I had to give in eventually. I'm just not that much of an outdoorsy girl. We had a good time. Cliff started out with Sam in the backpack carrier but by the halfway point I could tell that he was tired. I kindly offered to carry the load and promptly realized that I got the UPHILL portion of the hike with the extra 29lbs on my back. It

was grueling but Sam seemed to love it! He kept on pulling my hair and giggling. He would leannnnn really far to one side to try to look at my face and then just laugh. Funny kiddo. A few pictures from Cliff's phone (not that great of quality).

You can definitely see how tired I am in this picture. Hideous, I know! (We were at Pinnacle Mountain State Park.)

This is a turtle that I nearly stepped on. Poor thing was scared to death(almost)! He quickly ran off after he realized that I spared him from a certain demise.

The rest of that day was a date day for me and Cliff!! His mom came down to watch Sam while we went to lunch, a movie and to look at Craigslist furniture for our new place. It was a great (and much needed) day away. Sunday we did much relaxing before grilled chicken and church.

Yesterday was a little crazy. One of my dearest friends, Lacy decided that she had to deliver her baby nearly 10 weeks early! I got a text that she was in L&D at about 3:30pm. I was freaking out to say the least. She ended up having an emergency c-section around 6pm. Andrew Davis Stang was 4lbs 12.5oz and 16in long. He is doing well from what I've heard! I can't wait to go see him and hope to do so soon. He is here at Baptist while she is still in Mountain Home. Poor momma!

I will try to keep up with this more frequently this summer. Hope all are well!!