An encouraging verse sent by a friend...Psalm 73:26 "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Ups and Downs

I'll start with the "downs" first. As I keep realizing, I'm not 100% yet. This is most obvious when I lose my balance. The other day, I fell over while vacuuming - tripped on my own foot. Fortunately, the carpet was relatively soft and I just tweaked my shoulder a bit...and nobody saw me. 8) Last Tues., I fell while carrying Ethan up some stairs. I have painful rug burns on both knees to remind me that I'm not as "fit" as I sometimes think I am. I was carrying Ethan and a bunch of other stuff, running late, and trying to muscle through the fatigue going up the stairs (as most Moms do). Well, I didn't lift my foot high enough and down we went. I kept Ethan from falling/getting hurt, fortunately. He just looked at me like, "OK, Mumma, what just happened?" Crazy times.
The "up" is that we made a trip to Pittsburg...just me and the kids!!!! This was HUGE! I've never gone on a long drive with 3 kids before. This doesn't bother me as long as nobody pukes, has to pee (or worse, poop), and there aren't any car problems. These snags can create quite the adventure. This is also the first road trip I've done since chemo (without another adult). It was interesting because as I headed out, I felt nervous just like the first time I drove my parents' car after getting my license. (The nervousness then was mostly because I was going to a place where I had never been...on my own and navigating at the same time.) I was surprised at the commonality. Everything went fine; we arrived 5 min. after midnight. The visit with Grammie and the rest of the family was great. I even got to see my 17-year-old cousin, Whit, twice! That's major considering he's a busy guy working these days. I also was able to visit quite a bit with Denise. This was such a treat as we haven't been able to spend much time together since I was spoiled last summer with her being with us every week. It was wonderful hanging out with the kids and Grammie - we had a picnic and "swim" at Back Lake, visited a castle climbing structure, played on the huge grassy lawn, ate YUMMY foods! The weather was really good, and we had a great time. Denise rode home with us, which was a great opportunity to gab and also helped me maintain sanity with 3 crazy kids in the back seat. And, the kids and I had dinner with Gram H. The kids were ECSTATIC about the box mac and cheese and hotdogs, with choc. milk to boot! Anderson said, "I don't think it gets any better than this!" 8) Gram and I had a nice visit, and it was wonderful to be over her place after almost 2 years away. God is good.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Not 100%...Yet

We had the flu in the Levasseur household last week. It started with Bob and Anderson at the end of our family camping adventure, and we thought we were in the clear. Wrong! Sun. AM, I woke up feeling sick. By Sun. afternoon, Lyndsey was puking. She seemed to bounce back fairly quickly, but Ethan also was sick. I was amazed at how long it took me to get over it. After I finally puked (I held out a LONG time - very unusual for me!), I felt better, but it still took DAYS for me to regain strength and not be dizzy from weakness. This made me realize that the chemo really does have long-lasting effects on me. My body isn't fully strong yet. I'm not complaining though. As I was throwing up, I was praising God for it. This was the first time in over a year. This is a major miracle as nearly all women my age who have chemo puke while they're receiving it and afterwards. (The nurses always had the pink bowl ready!) God spared me, and I am so thankful. God is good.

On kind of a funny note, by about Tues. night, the kids were praying that I would get better so it woudn't be so B-O-R-I-N-G. Bob relayed this to me. They definitely were getting sick of being in the house, even if it did mean extra PBS so I could nap on the couch!

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Wonderful inefficiencies

I read a MOPS e-mail that talked about the "curse" of learning to be an efficient mom. We mothers strive to multi-task on many levels and efficiently accomplish more than any human should. This ability to multi-task is a blessing, but the article encouraged mothers to sometimes be inefficient. The example the author gave was driving the long way home from getting groceries so she could see some beautiful gardens. This challenged me to not always be in such a hurry, to not miss the little things or not prohibit myself from slowing down to a walk, but I wasn't sure of any specific examples where it would apply in my own life. Well, I think I found one! Last Fri., I went blueberry picking. Most of my girlfriends pick cultivated blueberries (high bush). They're larger than wild ones, grow in clumps, and are easy to access. I chose to take my kids up Blue Job and pick small (SWEET), free blueberries that were scattered all over the bushes in 1's and 2's. This is not the most efficient way to pick blueberries, but I enjoyed it so much (in spite of the heat and carrying Ethan the whole way in a baby backpack!!). This, for me, was a great inefficiency and "waste" of a day with my kids. I also learned that Anderson is good at picking blueberries and finding the "jackpots". I also discovered that we need to work on training Lyndsey to pee outside. What a mess, poor girl!