I LOVE This Stuff!

 
Alright, so most of my fellow blogging friends have posted at least one post about a product that they like, enjoy, or have found useful in everyday life (haven't tried LemiShine yet, Brand, but I will!) And, although I have many products that I like and enjoy, I haven't as of yet joined in with any online reviews of my own.

Until today...DAH-DAH-DAH-DUM!!!

When, I thought, "Why not?"

I won a jar of this Arbonne Sea Salt Scrub about a year ago thru a drawing. I'm not a regular user of Arbonne (I know, I know....I can hear the collective gasps of Arbonne consultants everywhere....:) but I was definitely excited to get the chance to try this bath and body product for FREE! :)

I opened the jar, took out a scoop, and was instantly...HOOKED!

The sea salt scrub has oils that leave my skin feeling baby smooth soft, and the smelll is absoultely divine!

I find myself sniffing my own shoulders after a shower, and then proceeding to tell my husband, "Smell me! Feel my skin? Isn't that fabulous?"

And he reacts like most husbands would by jumping up and down and asking..."YES,OH YES, WHERE CAN I GET A JAR OF MY VERY OWN??"

Ok, so not really...he does however agree that my skin is indeed soft and I am very pleasant smelling.

I recently bought another small jar on e-bay, but am hinting to my hubby to find an Arbonne Consultant to buy a large jar for me for Christmas. The cost is about $25 per jar, but the large jar will last you a while, and I truly believe that the cost is absolutely worth it!

Happy Scrubbing Everyone!

Thankful Thursdays....

One of my other goals in life, besides laughing at myself, is to be really, truly thankful for the blesings that God has placed in my life. So, in an concious effort to write some of these blessings out, I have decided to start a Thankful Thursday blog post... So, here, in no particular order, is a list of things that I am thankful for right now.

1. The COOLER Weather!! - This one is an automatic for me. After what has been a very, loooong, hot summer of many sick tummies, the cooler weather is a balm for my very spirit. The girls and I enjoyed an early morning playdate at the park this past week with some other Mommies and kiddos.

And, get this....

We DIDN'T MELT!!

At least not until about 10:00 a.m. , at which point it did start to get a "tad" uncomfortable...however, a *tad*, as we all know, is like a smidgen, which means that the heat was still in the bearable range VS the heat-is-so-bad-I-will-melt-like-a-purple-popsicle...

2. My wondefully supportive hubby - Although I am in my second trimester, I still get very tired at the end of most days. The night before last, my sweet hubby "made" dinner by ordering a pizza for the family, and last night, he let me lay down and take a 40 minute nap on the couch while he took the girls to their room and played "Farm Set" with them. Most nights, if I ask him ever so sweetly, he will even concede to rubbing my back or my cute little feet (hey, my belly is swelling to the size of a watermelon..I reserve the right to think my feet are still cute!! :)

3. Our summer vacation - I will post some pictures and a little bit more about our summer vacation, but for now, I just want to share that the summer vacation was just a wonderful gift from God, beginning to end!! :) Pictures coming soon - I PROMISE!!

The Appointment Is Set

I had my OB appointment for my regular tummy check yesterday...

By the way, I remember VERY clearly how looong each of those monthly appointments seemed from each other when I was pregnant with K-Bug. I would sometimes check the calendar several times in a day just to see *again* when my next appointment was.

Now, I feel like, "Wasn't I just here? Where did the time go? Where did August go?"

"What day is it again?" :)

Anyway, I had my appointment yesterday, and at said appointment, I was able to make the NEXT appointment where we will find out what the new little Smithlet will be.

Tuesday, October 16th.

Votes on the blog have many of you pulling and rooting for me to have a boy this time around, and K-Bug has requested a "brudder", as she pointed out that she already has a sister. :)

We'll see what God has baking in the oven in just a few short weeks! :)

Monday Moments...

Life Is Funnier Than We Think. I have always strived to be the kind of person that LOVES life, and to laugh at myself and situations I find myself in. That being said, I have decided that each Monday I will share a "moment" from own brain or experience that makes my life just a little bit silly...

"Where Are The Pants?"

My hubby is the modest sort. He is the kind of guy who keeps all the blinds in the house tightly closed until ALL members of our family are fully clothed (I don't really mind walking around outside in my bathrobe...) My hubby on the other hand, would NEVER hear of me walking outside the house in my PJs, even if they are the comfy flannel ones with penguins on them...

I love COZY pajamas - I think that everyone is simply in a better mood when they are at their comfiest. I think it should be a rule that everyone wears their comfy PJs to shop the day after Thanksgiving - it would be like National Shopping In Your Pajamas Day. It would cut down on the line cutting and road rage....peace and harmony would rule once more and the true Christmas spirit would return to malls across America!!

And that's my shortcut down random thought lane....back to the story now

Anyway, knowing this background about my dear hubby will help you know why this story is so funny to me. About a month ago, I asked my dear hubby to please take our family by the mall after one of K-Bug's swim lessons, so that I could take advantage of the Big ONE-DAY Sale at Mervyn's. My hubby knows that I am trying to make a dent in my fall/winter clothes shopping for the girls, and so he sweetly agreed. He dropped me off at the front of the store, and said he would bring the girls inside to play at the indoor play place while I shopped. About ten mintues later, my cell phone rang.

It was my hubby.

In a frozen sounding whisper he said, "I need your help!"

"What?" I asked, thinking one of the girls must have surely fallen and hurt themselves, etc..

"It's Lore-lin. I forgot to put her pants on her, and she is walking around in just a T-shirt and a Pull-Up!" - "You have to help me!" he continued.

Please keep in mind that my husband is genuinely mortified at this prediciment.

"Ok", I said, "Give me five minutes." I walked to a clearance rack and pulled off a pair of blue shorts marked down to $2.00. Placing my large pile of accumulated clothing on the counter, I explained to the register lady that I needed to buy ONLY the shorts at the moment. She obliged with one eyebrow curiously raised

The children's deparment in Mervyn's is located on the second floor of the mall, and by walking directly out of the children's department, you can look down off a balcony at the playplace directly below. So, after making my purchase, I walked out into the mall, and calling my hubby on his cell phone, strategically dropped the shorts down to his waiting arms.

Red-faced but relieved, my hubby put the shorts on Lorelin (I guess he had changed her in the van, but in his haste to get out of the hot car and into the mall, had not taken the time to put her pants back on..:) and I went back to my shopping.

All's well that ends well - at least we were all wearing pants.. :)

Over The Weekend

Just a brief glance of what happened over the weekend for us Smith-o-roos -

On Friday, we took the girls to Chuck E Cheese pizza for lunch (my dear hubby gets off early on Fridays). It was the most un-crowded we had EVER seen it (guess it pays to go when most of the older kiddos are in school) so we had a free run of the place. We have a million-gabillion tokens that we don't ever seem to use up there - did you know that every game/ride there is only ONE token? Wow - what a bargain (and I love bargains!) Anyway, the girls rode every ride and we played games to our hearts content. After feeding our faces with pizza, and feeding our tickets into the little ticket eater, we had enough "ticket points" to get the girls both an oh-so-fancy plastic princess bracelet to take home. K-Bug said that hers was "very beautiful and very sparkly".

Saturday was one of those beautiful and rare occasions of not-much-planned. I watched some college football (I LOVE college football!!), folded some laundry, and our family ate a BBQ lunch over at my parent's house. I went out on Saturday afternoon with my Mom to help her take pictures for her photography class, but a dust storm forced us inside early (sorry Mom! :) My parent's watched the girlies on Saturday night, and my dear hubby and I went out an actual date to a restaurant where I enjoyed eating an entire Mexican food meal with little to no nausea!! Yeah!

Sunday morning brought our second Sunday for the church plant. We had a few more kids and adults this week, and I totally forgot my camera again (sorry Scott) The visit of some of my dear hubby and mine's good friends made the day really special for us! Thanks for your support!! A relaxed afternoon of napping has brought me to tonight, where I am actually fighting a big ol' headache. All in all, though, a wonderful weekend!

Watch the blog for the addition of some new weekly additions - Monday Moment's OR aka Life Is Funnier Than We Think and also Thankful Thursdays! Goodnight bloggity friends!

Random Blessings - Part 2

Here is some more of my my random blessings that happened during my When-Will-This-Ever-Be-Over-Someone-Stop-This-Ride-And-Let-Me-Off first trimester.

1. My sister came down from Oklahoma for a few weeks and stayed with my parents (who live next door). My sister is SUCH an AMAZING cook, and one of her dreams is to open her own cafe' and coffee shop someday. She volunteered to cook for our family a few nights a week (I helped with grocery costs) since my morning sickness kept me far away from the kitchen and food in general.What a blessing! My family loved ALL of the amazing dinners that she cooked for us (I think we might have even gotten a little spoiled) It was SO great to have my sister around.I really enjoyed getting to visit with her face to face, and she and I got to do lots of things together (shopping at Sprouts is NOT the same without you, Autumn!) The girls loved having their "Auntie" close-by to visit and love on too. It's kind-of a washed-out picture, but here's a picture of us at the Rainforest Cafe'.

 

2. So many of my AMAZING friends supported me in a way that absolutely defies all thankfulness during my months of sickness. Offers to watch the girls, bringing dinners, sharing medication and tips for relief, and one of my friend's even surprised me by hiring a cleaning company to come and clean my house from top-to-bottom. I was so thankful, all I could do was sit and cry....
My friend Nickle-Pickle even cleaned her toilets just for me so I would have a clean place to urp at her house. :) Really, the Lord has shown me how many true friends I have, and I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO blessed by ALL of you!!

3. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it now, but my main reason for rejoicing over my ten week OB visit is that it meant that my first trimester was almost over! I was also VERY excited to hear the little heartbeat for the first time. Dr Mystie had trouble finding it with her little heart doppler, and since her ultrasound tech was open, she sent me in for a quickie ultrasound in the room next door. All was well, and my happy little pickle was floating about with a strong heartbeat of 176. For SO many weeks all I could think of was the naseua - getting to see the baby and that little heart beating was a very special moment for me. My Mom and Lore-lin were in the waiting room, so we called them back to take a quick peek. Lore-lin looked at the screen and said, "Yook! A ba-yooga whale!!" (we had just gotten back from Sea World) Hee,hee!! I guess the baby did look a little whale-ish at ten weeks - nothing compared to what this Mommy will look like at nine months, huh?

Where Were You?

I've been tuning in to some of my friend's blogs as they have posted their stories from September 11. It's always so sobering, and healing, to share your story and hear other's stories from that day. In a nutshell, here's mine:
My dear hubby and and I were young newlyweds living in our apartment that September 2001. I rememmber that it had been a stressful, but exciting week, for me. I had just graduated from Arizona State University the month before, and taken a job with my husband's company while studying for my board exams (for music therapy). I had stayed up late the night before, however, stressing that I had not yet received my college diploma in the mail. "What if something is wrong?" "What if I didn't really graduate?" - silly worries that I promised to get remedied with a call to ASU in the morning. My hubby and I were sleeping when the phone rang - it was my husband's boss, calling to tell us to turn on our TV. We stumbled out of bed and hurried to the couch where we promptly turned on the news. The second plane had hit the towers just minutes before we tuned in. We sat, and as we realized what was happening, we began to pray out-loud.
I think what I remember most vividly is the moment that the towers fell - realizing that countless thousands had just lost their lives as I watched it unfold on television.
I didn't want to leave my husband's side, and I didn't want him to EVER leave me, but he encouraged me to go on to work. I remember feeling SUPER numb as I prepared and went to my job (working with preschool kids doing music). I only worked a half-day, and then went home to sit and stay glued to the news as the next few hours and days brought new light to what had happened to our country and to our lives.

I forced myself to stop this past Tuesday and to remember. I visited the 911 Digital Archive, a website I found last year on September 11th. www.911digitalarchive.org
It has many, many amazing pictures - some inspiring, some heartbreaking. I forced myself to look through one of the sets of pictures entitled "Victims". There is nothing graphic there, but there are many sharp and startling pictures of the people affected directly that day and in the days that followed.
I would encourage everyone to go and give at least one listen to Alan Jackson's song, "Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning?" I KNOW that you will find yourself somewhere in the song.

Random Blessings - Part 1

I just wanted to briefly tell my wonderful bloggity friends about some of the wonderful blessings and miracles of the past few weeks! :)

1. The girls have been, for the most part, such little angels during my weeks of reigning as "The Queen Of Urpiness" (a title my friends Kelli or Brandi might dispute me on...) The weather has been SO hot that it's been virtually impossible to go outside, and I definitely didn't feel up to taking the girls anywhere, so they have had to largely invent their own fun. Being the creative and amazing little girls that they are, that's just what they did. One of the "FUN" things they found to do was to raid my sock drawer and wear my brightly colored fuzzy winter socks "Cindy Lauper" style up to their kneew like leg warmers.....WHY did we ever think leg warmers were cool?..
Oh well,Lorelin made it look cute!

 

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K-bug called the socks "skis" and she and her sister proceeded to ski on the linonleum in the kitchen. They also put socks on their hands to act as "mitten", of course!
The girls also found a bag of old party stuff from their birthday parties this past year, and unbeknownst to me, decided to set up a birthday party of their own on the coffe table. I came out of the bathroom from one of my "rounds on the ground" (I think the toilet won that one :) to find this!

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A Church Plant Blooms

I haven't really had the chance to blog much about this, but as most of you know, we are helping our friends Scott and Christy to start a brand-new church plant. Brian is the worship leader, and Scott (he is finishing seminary) is the pastor. God has REALLY worked out all of the details, from church sponsorships/affiliations to a nursery for the kids. We are meeting at a Improv Theater at Peoria/Loop 101. The children's facilites are located directly next door at the Peoria Avenue Preschool(the theater and preschool are side by side in a strip mall). The theater has a stage, a sound system, a TV screen hooked into a computer, and all of the chairs, etc. set up. The preschool has five rooms that we are allowed to use, with the church having FULL access to the entire facility and the use of their toys, cribs, etc. It's such an amazing set-up that you have to stand back and know that God's hand has been all over this.
The name of the church is The Way Fellowship Church. The website is www.thewayfellowshipchurch.com, but we don't really have very much on the site yet.
We had our very first Sunday service yesterday. It was SUCH a busy and, I will admit, stressful week leading up to the service. There were countless details to nail down, and my husband was beyond busy with worship band practice, gathering a sound system, picking out a set, etc.
Still, we were able to relax a little on Saturday, and pray it up for Sunday morning. We have had SO many people say that they are interested in coming to the chruch, that we didn't have ANY idea of how many people to expect. I'm helping in children's ministry right now, and we had the fear of having swarms of children with not enough childen's workers.
As it turned out, though, we had about 40 people TOTAL for our first Sunday, and that was including the 10 kids we had over at the children's church. I think our little band of core couples were a little dissapointed at first before we remembered that this was ALL about God and not about us.
And althgouh I didn't get to be a part of the service, Brian told me that worship was AMAZING and the sermon was great!
Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for their prayers and support as we have joined God on this new adventure.
We're not sure how long God will ask us to be a part of this chruch, be we know that this is one of the reasons that God has asked us to obey and stay in Phoenix for now.....
Oh, BTW, we are all a bunch of dork because I don't think even ONE of us grabbed a camera to take pics of our first Sunday. I'll make sure to take our camera this next Sunday to take pics and then share them with you all!

Celebration & Perspective

Celebrate with me - do a little dance - you too, Heines! Those Virginia people dance too, right? Hee,Hee

Call your neighbors and share the joy!

I am feeling BETTER!!! That's right, folks. I hit the twelve-week marker this past Monday and almost instantly, like a cloud had lifted, I started to feel better. I still have flashes and times of nasuea, but it's not what it used to be.

I had already noticed a difference in my mornings and afternoons being less nasueas the past two weeks, but the evenings contined to be VERY rough for me, with lots of throwing up.

However, the past two nights have been great, with the nausea that I do feel being managed by chewing a piece of Orbit Mint Gum (bless that little piece of gooey gum!)

And suddenly, I am able to sit at my computer, and actually feel the will to type words and sentences. To want to communicate - indeed, to catch up even. I think I might even be able to go out on a date with my husband in the evening.

So, watch the blog. I may have to blog in several short snapshots to catch everyone up (inlcluding myself) and get current with everything that's going on.

So, praise Him with me. He is SO incredibly gracious! He is the God who holds our hand as we puke in the toilet and dances with us as we do happy dances of thanksgiving when its finally over.

At one point in my first trimester, I was on some WONDERFUL little meds called Zofran, a nausea reducer that is now commonly given to chemotherapy patients. As I lay near the toilet, night after night, somtimes crying from the sheer exhaustion of battling hour after hour of nausea and throwing up seven times in row, God would remind me to pray for these patients, these people, who fight and battle for their lives from this very same position.

So I am, in my computer incompetence, wanting to link a few blogger sites of places where you can go, and see the journey of some of the these amazing Christians, trusting God with their very lives, as they battle cancer in its various forms and stages. You can start with www.especiallyheather.com (I am SO sorry, I DON'T know how to hpyerlink yet - I'm sure it's something simple...Tracy, can you show me? I need your help!)

Here you can follow Heather's story as she posts about living and coping with brain cancer. Her posts regularly have me on my knees and in tears.

You can also go over to marisavanderveen.wordpress.com for her blog called Life. Marisa is dealing with an advanced breast cancer diagnosis.

There are so many others that God has put in my heart and mind lately. Most of you know that my friend Joy battled cancer and graduated to heaven this past December. She is still in my heart, and her husband, Adam, still in our familys' prayertime.

So join me in my celebration(I LOVE it when my sisterchick Brandie does her happy dance! :) and join with millions of other Christians as we storm the gates of heaven for these sisters in Christ.