Don't tell mom okay?......Si Senor....

CB-  Mesa kims......Messa sims.......Meca sins......oh nevermind.....

A-  Well what about it, forget that word...what was your story about? 

CB- (aggravated with his fist balled up)  ABOOOUUUT  TACOS AND CHIM CHANGS..... THAT SKY EATS!!!

A - OOOOH  "MEX I CANS" ?!

CB- YES! (instant relief comes across his face) They have lots of chiwabas(chihuahuas) there, cause on TV they always speak Spanish......(turns and leaves the room)

------------------------------

CB is finally starting to use his phonics a little more in curiosity.  This signals to me his reading skills are about to take flight.  He will tell people he can't read. His siblings tell him he can't read yet....but he can.  CB thinks if he isn't reading from his reading book...then...he can't read.  Right before all of my other children started to read well, they became curious on their own....trying to figure out what things say before asking me.  When I see this I know it's all good.  When Cole learns to read well....it's all cake! 

This brings me to the laundry room where we all have our own hooks to hang our coats, purses, hats, etc...
Each hook has the first initial of the person it belongs too and they are arranged so as to be in the proper "pecking order."

CB on the top rung of a step stool in his underwear at 6 pm on a Saturday  - MOM!  What do these letters spell?

A- Nothing (cause I know kids...and I have had this conversation before with new readers and teens....and it's always the same...)

CB - Then why are they here?

A- So we all know what hook is our own hook and no one fights over whose is whose....

CB - well which one is Liam's? (his neighbor friend)

A - None CB... they are our family's hooks not the dang neighbors coat hooks, why would they have to hang their coats at our house?

....silence for juuuust a bit....

CB-  .............MOM?!(hollering to me in the kitchen)  Are we the DAM family?

M with me in the kitchen and D in the living room start laughing immediately.

A- No Cole bear! we are the "Williams Family," those are our first name initials... D - DDDDerrick, A - AAAAmy, M- MMMMaysie and so on

CB - Well it says DAMZSC

M & D still haven't stopped snickering

A - Cole it sounds like your are saying "damn" and that is a cuss word, we are not the "Damn Family," we are the "Williams Family." Now don't say that... even if that is the way the letters appear to read.

CB - Ok, Mom. Well can I have a cookie?

------------------------------

Cole is at a friends house down the street.  The mother calls and tells D that Cole has pee'd in his pants.  That he is wearing a pair of her sons shorts but has on the same underwear, he doesn't want to go commando (which is odd frankly).  D is all... well send him home, he can't wear wet underwear he'll get a rash. So CB comes home.

D - What happened buddy?

CB - Liam told a funny joke and it was so funny I pee'd in my pants...

D- You must have held it too long, you gotta go to the bathroom son before that happens.

....D is cleaning CB up with a warm rag.....

CB - Daddy....don't tell Mom...ok?

D - Why?

CB - I don't know just don't

D - Well it'll cost ya, how much money do you have?

CB - I don't have any money........

D - Well I guess yer up the creek then....

CB - I have the dollar the tooth fairy gave me

D - Ok... well then I will take that.

CB - GOSH DAD! The whole dollar??  Can't you just take a quarter?

D pretends to think on it as he finishes getting Cole together.....

D - Ok.... I will take the quarter.

CB-  (happy) Ok, now this is just between me and you right?

D - Yep ....me and you....

------------------------------

This blog is dedicated to Amanda Wester 

who constantly "cheered" me on

until life permitted me a single moment  :o)

Well, well, well.........well???........

Yesterday morning I awoke to CB screaming bloody murder at about 6:30 in the morning.  He still gets up at the butt crack of dawn.  He had went poops and over flowed the toilet.  So he was was in sheer panic mode standing in the bathroom naked holding his clothes in his hands.

For some reason, our toilets just don't flush well.  So I only buy the "Charmin Basic" tp.  It's soft enough, but breaks down easily.  Recently in an attempt to save a little cash and see if our toilets would flush better, I bought some seriously CHEAP tp.  Like camping tp in a double roll.  I only bought 6 rolls but the stuff has lasted like 6 months.  My people are completely frustrated with me because they're saying its like the commercial where the woman throws the roll at her husband. As the roll grazes the side of his head it mows his hair off.  They claim its mowing their skin off.  I am finally down to the last roll and it flushes no better than the "Basic" so I'll not be buying that anymore.

So at six something in the morning I am cleaning up overflowed toilet water.  While I am on my hands and knees doing this CB is continually asking for some chocolate milk.

incredulously...A-    !CB!  Give me a stinkin break ok?  I mean good Lord, you have overflowed the toilet here and I am cleaning this up out of  a dead sleep... I don't even have my glasses on and my hips are still in the "I'm getting old, locked up position."  Can you give me a dang break??? You know... one morning....JUST ONE, I would like it if you would sleep late. Would it be too much to ask you to sleep in your bed till the rest of us got up and got our wits about us before you started with your daily 10 commandments as the sun is scaring away the moon???  I mean, for real Dude, I would like, JUST ONE morning to have ONE cup of coffee before I had to start running around fulfilling all of your daily dreams....JEEEEZ!!

CB, still standing there naked holding his clothes, his tanned little body, white little fanny, messy white blond bedtime hair, and reddened face with panic tears.......
 - WELL!  How would like if your little boy was sucked down into the toilet??!!!

I start laughing cause he is serious.  Maysie, who is supposed to be sleeping in her near by bedroom, starts snickering and so does Sky...

CB get ticked cause we are all laughing and starts crying. This makes it a bit more deliriously funny.

All this to say he just woke up and it's 8:00 on the dot.  This was a gift from God to me.

We've had the discussion once at my moms about, "Why is that little boys always have to take ALLLLLL of their clothes off to go poops."  It was a lively discussion that concluded that its just something that little boys do...my brother added that he still does it.  Which led to him revealing that he was just at work the other day with all of his clothes piled in the floor taking a poops break.  He was just kidding of course but the mental images were great.

...............................................

In a nut shell I'm at 180.2 now.  I can be 179.4 on a good day but as soon as I start thinking and filling my mind with thoughts of the day I instantly weigh 180 to 182.  BUT hitting the 170's number has encouraged me to keep going.  30 pounds lost, 30 more to go...

I got a part time job as the church custodian working around 20 hours a week.  Some weeks more, like last week, because of VBS...grass galore and sloshy, spilled drinks in places people shouldn't be drinking in a church. Some weeks less because getting caught up can be awesome maintenance.  It's good pay for something I can be really good at.  Cause what mom can't clean up some crap......literally.  I feel good when the church is clean.  I mean I can stand back and see the fruit of my labor. I feel good to have done something for God's house.  To get paid for doing it is a gift.

D's question now is, "When are you going to clean our house?"  The answer from me is, "When are you gonna pay me?"  ......tis all just joking and what not but seriously, cleaning my house now doesn't seem such an impossible job.

I have the whole summer to figure out my time management.  I thought I would actually have this figured out by now, by alas I have not.  Really, I know if I just get my butt up by 5:00 and put the hours in till about 9 or 10:00 about 3 or 4 days a week & then hit an afternoon before Sunday for a final once over, it's all cake.  But I just want to sleep in....or at least till I have to start filling CB's 10 commandments.

It would be easy to say, well I will just send the kids to school.  Then I could work out and do the church job.  My working out has taken a back seat for sure.  I am still squeezing in at least once a week...I am shooting for two this week.  I count all my vacuuming and cleaning as aerobic, cause no lie some days my dang arms are sore.  I do sweat most days when I clean too.

Sending the kids to school though...would surely not be God's will.  I have not prayed about that at all.  I know God would not want me to sacrifice all we have accomplished for the sake of money and for the sake of my self satisfaction.  The job and the fitness center are surely things that please me.  While I believe God will bless both of those if done in the right spirit, I fully believe He could make those things miserable if done for my self and not to bring him glory. Neglecting the one thing I know He has called me to do would not be a good thing.

I have been out of the will of God before and it's not fun...AT ALL.  So I have to be careful when thinking and tending to my children's education.  The outside chatter filling my ears must be shut down and prayed over, not carelessly tossed about as if it were a coat I put on and take off at will.

Things to cover when CB sleeps late again:

1. How to stop thumb sucking 101...and the hairy thumb doesn't work, and some other stuff that don't work...but we're trying something knew...
2. Church stuff in general
3. Some funny stuff I have written down that hasn't made the blog
4. Maysie's sinus surgery and the book she is writing for school
5. How to make the most of 24 hours in a day effortlessly   :oP
6. Sharpie, Painting, Photography stuff
7. learning to be content 101   :o/
8. girlfriends and such...
9. wasp chasing and bruises....

...and not necessarily in this order.

medical specialists begged her to abort the pregnancy................

The Alabama Tornadoes - We had our Awana Celebration Service that night.  Our church had been wishy washy as to whether to cancel church for the evening due to the weather.  We had already canceled so many other nights that could've been in session. In the late afternoon it was determined we would go ahead with the service and cut it short.  The kids would leave with their parents early, and that's what we did.

D made it home before I did, because I had an errand in town to run and I also needed to pick up some milk. The errand I went to run showed no fruit as the business closed early this day...due to incoming weather.  God opened the flood gates of heaven as we were on our way to get milk. We opted to skip it this night and just head home.  I had never driven in rainfall like that with all four kids in the car.  The closer we got to home the worse the rain got.  All of the kids were very tense and a couple were panicky.

A- It's Ok guys as long as it doesn't start hailing we should get home fine.

Z- Why hail? What does that mean?

A- Possibly tornado...

um.......hail started pelting the car windshield

S & CB - began to cry and Sky literally has a panic attack.  Z hollers at her to stop it, cause he is tense and then May hollers at him cause he's hollering....then I holler at all of them cause I am trying to drive and determine whether to park under a tree to protect my car from big hail....or park under a tree and a tree fall on the car....or keep driving and JUST GET FREAKING HOME.  We kept driving....people started to text me to see if we were okay, my mom called, D called...then we were home.

The path of the tornado was coming directly through the area in the county in which we live.  It was a pretty terrible storm we had.  But we had no damage at all, not even D's truck that was sitting in the driveway when all the big hail fell.  Lots of folks I know had their windows blown out of their houses, or their houses flooded, or their cars were totaled.  We were all completely fine.

Got up the next morning to go to the homeschool co-op. As we were leaving I saw what looked like a white envelope in the middle of the yard near a flower bed.  We were running late but I told Z to get out go get it, it  was littering our yard.  He was mad cause we were running late....he brings me back a picture of a young couple.

Z- (in a weird voice) It's a picture.

A- Wow, that's odd...must've blew over from Dogwood Shores (the neighborhood behind ours).  I hope someone didn't get their house so damaged it blew their stuff all the way over here, that would be terrible.  Maybe they were just some random photos laying around and blew away with the strong wind.

As we drove on down just a few houses we found another picture in the road...this one of an old show car of some sort.  Z summoned me to stop no more for pictures cause we were going to be late.  I didn't stop, but I did scan as I was driving, but saw no more pics.

The next day Z kicks a soccer ball into the field, he finds another pic of two men. The one man in the background with an Alabama T-shirt on. By this time I have a collection of 3 pictures on my fridge.  I put them right where I would see them to remember to pray for these people when I passed by them.  Didn't know why I had their pictures all over our neighborhood but they blew in from someone's house.

So all my peeps and I know by now the devastating tornadoes that had hit Ringold, TN and Alabama. I saw on the morning news that Facebook had a page up where you could post the photos you had found.  Apparently all over the state of TN and as far as Chicago, people had found photos lying in their yards and so forth the morning after the tornadoes.

I didn't post mine right away cause I was busy, cause I am always busy.    :o/

I did post them though and left for a soccer game out of town. When we got home someone had already responded to me, within like 4 hours or so.  I was like...is this for real??  I Facebook messaged the person and the Lady messaged me back telling me she went to church with this couple, that he was a minister.  She gave me the couples names and told me they lost everything.  She told me they lived in Sylvania, Alabama.

I was flabbergasted.  D and I Google mapped Sylvania, Alabama to the point where we live. It was, as the crow flies, about 140 miles away.  I mean we were like....just....trying to think the unthinkable thought that their picture could be in my yard.  It had traveled by tornado and high winds all that way to our yard????!!!!.......  I started to look around the Fb website at all the other pics found from all over TN.......all turning up from Alabama the ones being claimed.  That day when I posted my pics there were 2800 pics posted. Now there are so many Fb does not show a count.

So I messaged Wendy back, the lady who has claimed the picture, and asked her where I should send the picture.  She gave me the address and then we chatted back & forth online about this young couple in the picture, her own family and her community.  Wendy is a teacher. She was on field trip 20 miles away from her own children...who turned out to be 50 yards away from one of the worst hit areas.  She lost no one in her family, but several children that her kids went to school with perished.  I learned we are both Christians. Wendy requested that I pray for her family and her community as they got ready to start back school alongside this young couple and the other people hanging on my refrigerator.  

While I was chatting with Wendy another lady hit the photo claiming it.  She used the exact names of this young couple that Wendy had used in a private message.  This lady was the aunt of the young man in the photograph, her name is Vicki.

Vicki and I have chatted back and forth a bit, both of us so glad to have the photo found.  Vicki and I have surely made a connection with one another that is insane to happen over Fb having never met one another.  I adore her.  She is beautiful and her bright personality comes through the words she writes so clearly. I feel like If I saw her face to face it would be as if we had known one another forever...it's wild and mind blowing when I think of it.  I had went from simply praying as I passed the photos to full concentration all day long when I wasn't doing something else.  I couldn't not think of them.

She has told me this about this one picture.....The young couple's names are Jonathon & Caitlin...

"Jonathon plays guitar and Caitlin bought him a beautiful blazing electric guitar to play in church a few yrs ago for his Bday. He cried like a baby when she gave it to him and he's not a crier lol the pic u found is from his Bday cookout that she gave it to him at :) his guitar is the only thing he wanted (and his Bibles) from the rubble. He found it... in 2 pieces :( it can't be fixed to play but I'm having it cleaned and put on brackets to hang on his wall. I wanna have the picture and a small plaque with the date she gave it to him attached to it. Anyway, I feel you finding this pic and praying for them has deep purpose. What I would like is you to sign your name and date found n where to the back of the pic. Then write a prayer like you've been praying for them and put in with this. I hope to put the prayer on back of the guitar :) so maybe on something sturdy. I just feel led to do this. This will be on his wall in his new room then in his new home with Caitlin :) forever :) thank you soooo much!!!! "

and this......

"There's so much I'd like you to know:) There have been 3 pics found, all 3 in diff parts of TN and all had Jonathon in them. You were the only one that talked about praying for him but it's still a lil odd. My sister had cancer when she was 17. She had just gotten married. There's a long testimony there but long story short she got pregnant while on treatments, the Dr and medical specialists begged her to abort the pregnancy. She didn't :) after his birth, her cancer was healed and her son was perfect. He's now 20, named Jonathon, still perfectly wonderful and has been preaching Gods Word since he was 16:) He's pretty special. Thanks for just being a part of his life now! ;-) we love you... :)"

All night long after Vicki told me this story, God would wake me up to pray for them.  All day long the next day, God would remind me that though I had not met this young man physically his testimony had reached the state of TN through his aunt and then through my own lips as I retold this story to others.  The story itself is a testament to God of how he takes the awful things we encounter and turns them to good for His glory.  To how He gives us joy in the midst of sorrow. How He unites his children, near and far away from each other,  perfectly...so that they may weep together and rejoice together.

My life has been so touched by this one woman, Vicki, whose own mother and sister lost their homes entirely, to the point there was no rubble even...just dirt....whose nephew has lost his home to the point of rubble....while I am doing the best I can to encourage her and pray for her, her family and her community...I am trying to bless her......BUT it is she who blesses me.  I feel so undeserving of the blessing and it's hard for me to accept it.  

Gods gifts are so sweet and good when you least expect them and from the people one least expects.  While I am unable to go to them in Alabama and throw my arms around her neck or help her get her families lives back together......I can pray.  

God must think its really important, cause he has been reminding me for two days, all day and all night. He does not leave me to my own thoughts, but fills my head with their faces so I will not neglect to pray for them and I am grateful for His diligence.

My family & I are doing this also........"Aid for Alabama - Wednesday, May 11 at 8:00am - May 28 at 8:00a - Lowe's of Harriman, TN"  If you live in this area and need information please let me know and I will be more than happy to help you get the info you need.

Isaiah 40:29-31 
²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
   and increases the power of the weak.
³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;
³¹ but those who hope in the LORD
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.

¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God….. Ephesians 3:16-19