Moving Emotions

Well..........I look around me and am overwhelmed with emotions. The wonderful people down the street that we gave the swingset to came and picked it up this past week. I looked at the backyard in its barreness and it really hit me that this is happening. The backyard looks huge now! Anyway, as the sun set and I saw the colors through the trees of the small piece of yard we own and all of the familiar surroundings I again realized that this will no longer be our home. How strange will it be to come here and see Mother and go to Granny's and run errands around here and pass the house and know we can't go home to it. I don't know if you could really exactly say I'll miss it but it's just change in general......and a lot of it to take in. How weird will it be to look down the street from the freeway and see someone else's car in the driveway? It just hit me how much I know of this house and how many memories we've built here. I know every idiosyncrasy it has and I've walked every square inch of it at least a million times. It's strange to think of someone else taking a shower in that shower and a really funny feeling to think of someone standing there doing dishes looking at the lighthouse mural tiles thinking it's their home. I won't miss it. What I will miss is feeling like I have a place to go in this area. Feeling like I can turn down a street and go home to something so far beyond being just familiar. I won't miss the roaches and, in fact, cannot wait to move and rid ourselves of them. I won't miss being afraid of my own kitchen at 3 am when somebody needs something...more than likely a bottle due to growth spurts. I won't miss the unpainted bathroom and the nasty needs-to-be repainted hallway....with the smiley faces made from whitening toothpaste and sharpie markers that not even Mr Eraser will take off. I won't miss the brown smudged handprints down the walls that if attemtped to remove will also remove paint. I won't miss the nasty carpet either that has every stain in the book on it. No, I won't miss any of it and am actually quite thrilled with the excitement of the move, new house, no carpet and new surroundings..........but I think I'm still stressed anyway. I don't really feel stressed and I really don't want to be stressed but I think I am regardless. I stay irritated with Brad, which I never do, and have bitten the children's heads off quite a lot lately. They are having to deal with it in their own ways too. Grayson's intensity is quite astounding and the level of his emotional state right now is so very much to deal with. He's more disrepectful then he's been in awhile and as volatile as ever. Evye has said hundreds of times now that she's the only one that still has not seen the new house. The other day she cried when she brought it up again. They want to know if they can bring their beds.....despite the fact we've been through the whole scenario mentally with them for months now. She begs to go down there to see it. Aubrey is as cantankerous as ever and shows no signs of having a clue as to what is taking place. Finally, a couple of days ago she went into her room and kept telling me to get her bed and pack it. Finally she pulled me into her room and then started trying to drag her bed to me. I had to explain that it will indeed go with us when it is time. I think they are all desperately bored too. In my irritated state I packed up all of the toys since i was so sick of picking stuff up and telling the older 3 almost every 10 minutes to pick something up so that I could pack in a certain area. So, in my ingenuity, I just packed up every toy in the house. So, now they are bored out of their minds. I've given Grayson and Evye stuff to do to help but there comes a point where everything they can do has been done. I felt so bad when Morgan, our babysitter, came Fri to stay with them from 11-6. There was nothing for them to do so she was left with 5 really restless bored kids and nowhere to go with them. The swingset is gone, the toys are packed, the dvd's are packed, the pool finally sighed it's last breath and popped a hole after 3 faithful years of service and after having served tons of rowdy kids and it's 107 so it's not really like they can go ride bikes. So, that is what I live with.......due to what I have done to myself in my effort to maintain organization while I pack. Ugh! Overall, it's getting done though. I stay a little stressed and trying to stay on top of the everyday stuff along with the packing is really overwhelming with Brad always gone or always studying. Granny and Mother have been so great. I honestly don't know what I will ever do without them. Mother has helped pack a bunch and Granny came over to help with what she could and then took the children back to her house and fed and bathed them and then brought them back here and put them all to bed so Mother and I could keep going on the packing. She's doing that again this week and again the last week of Aug. They are both such lifesavers for me and for Brad. I truly treasure what I have been given in my family.

But all of that to say, I look around and little things will hit and I'll again be faced with the reality of this. I'm a little afraid too. I'm afraid of the amount of cooking and what I will have to come up with every night. There's not really any restuarant bailing us out down there. It's kind of humorous but very much a reality to me. I'm afraid of the lack of closet space and feeling like everything will be everywhere and there won't be any place to put clothes and there won't be any money to put into it to make it liveable and organized. And, I'm really dreading just saying goodbye to what has always been familiar to me. I'm just enough adventerous that I love that we are going to something new and something so dear to my heart and so incredibly beautiful but it means saying goodbye to family. I won't miss this area at all and actually if Mother were to move with us I wouldn't ever look back. It's just hard saying goodbye sometimes, I think. I'm really praying it's an easy move both mentally and physically. I can't help but wonder if I'll feel lonely in a strange small town when Brad is gone all 24 hrs. Will we fit in quickly and feel like family? I think so.......but then I wonder.

On another note......for my birthday Mother and I went to get a manicure, pedicure and a.......... wax. My 1st waxing session ever. Now, I've attempted a few times to do my legs myself but I was left with successful patches of it. So, the pros took over. Oh my freakin gosh.........the birthday present of sheer torture!! What women will do for vanity! I'm sure a man came up with the whole waxing idea. Honestly and suprisingly the bikini wax was the least painful of them all. The freakin upper and lower lip wax will leave you stinging and is quite the shock when sprung on you. And ohhhhhh the underarms!!!!! That freakin hurt so bad! Since the hair wasn't coming out with the wax due to the short length and courseness of it she HAND PLUCKED them ALL out! They're still sore today.........and I didn't even know underarms could be sore. I'd gladly endure the 1st few days of pain after my 1st bootcamp rather than going through the underarm thing again. The bikini I will just leave with the fact that I eventually just decided to go the distance. It was a rather funny feeling laying there letting her do it but it wasn't really painful. So much for being self conscious or worrying about if I have too many cellulite dimples....not to mention trying to be modest. And then came the legs! That was almost as painful as the underarm ordeal. There are so many hairs on my legs that the wax just goes through and rips them all out. I think that's why it freakin hurt so bad. She's ripping out like 15,000 hairs at one time. But, overall, I think I feel better about myself. In all of the torture and messed up pain I feel a little more like a woman.......not that after having 6 children I ever doubted it! But, it makes you feel kind of girly and feminine. I'm still having major issues with my weight so this kind of took the edge off and made me feel like I look like a million dollars. I try not to weigh anymore until I'm good and ready to start up a plan to do something about it but I don't have to weigh. I just look in the mirror and hate what i see. I know how good I finally feel inwardly and how radiant I feel but the mirror isn't radiating too much these days. Still stuck at 165 I have 25 pds to lose. To most it seems petty and laughable but to me it's something so major that I really obsess and get depressed about. I don't want to look this way. I don't want to go back to who I was in my teen years........well, not really who I was since I'll never be that again but more just that I don't want to look like that ever again. I saw pics today when I was packing them up of me on the mission trips and I was so big. It's humiliating to think of how infatuated I was with Jason Williams and expecting that he actually might see something in me too. I was more than a little heavy. I know I have 6 children now but I don't want to look like I have 6 children. I don't think having kids is any excuse to let yourself go and look like a whale. I guess what gets me down the most is the lack of drive I have to lose it and take control. I want to fast so badly and really get cleaned out and feel completely cleaned out but everyone has forbid me to do it while I'm nursing. I know I could drop a ton that way and feel a whole lot better about myself both inwardly and outwardly but it's recommended that I wait. I also feel horrible about how sedentary I am now. I look back at what I was doing when we were cleaning and then bootcamp and look at where i am now and I feel so lazy and fat. I don't want to feel this way. I loved the bootcamp days. It was hard work but I don't think there's ever been anything so physically rewarding........well, other than giving birth. San Angelo needs a bootcamp with a nursery.

Alright, that's enough for now. I need to go pack and I really need to do the dishes before the roaches decide to do their disgusting nocturnal food scavenging. Ugh!

Oh.....and today I decided that Garrison really probably isn't allergic to peanut butter and it's probably just eggs and we were confusing them so I gave him an entire 1/2 a sandwich. Yep..........he's definitely allergic. I then had to bathe him and give him a huge dose of Benadryl. He immediately turned splotchy and his face swelled up........yet again. This time his lips and cheeks were monstrosity size. And he was soooooo cranky for the rest of the day, even after his long Benadryl induced nap. I felt so bad. He's talking so much. He now says I will, I don't know, love you too, Tigger, Au-by, Evye, Nant, ayson, baby, hun-gy, Nanny, shut the door, I unt (want) that, stop it, quit, gan (again), honey and all sorts of other things. He can pretty much carry on a converstion and he is so hystericaly funny. He knows it too and puts on that much more of a show knowing he can make you laugh. He's so loving. He constantly wraps his chubby arms around my legs and kisses or throws himself around my neck and softly pats my back while kissing me all over the face. He is truly the sunshine in the family.

And Grant, he is like the little bunny of the family. He's so so gentle, mild and quiet. He's the fluffy type that is just so much fun to love on. His words are growing more understandable but he is still a long way from any understandable conversation. He answers yes and no to wanting a bottle or banana and he definitely gets his point across even though his vocabulary still needs improving. He is so much fun and so interesting to watch. Today he unscrewed another lightbulb. He just figures everything out so quickly. Today he, Garrison and Aubrey (the notorious trio) got into the diaper bag and emptied the travel size baby stuff I had in there. Aubrey lovingly washed both of the boys hair, despite the fact they had no water, and then they all took turns body painting each other with massive amounts of pink baby lotion. Needless to say, they were more than a little sticky but they smelled really great. That was before lunch and Garrison's reaction so it was kind of funny when I put them all in the bathtub and they had instant suds. And then yesterday Garrison amused Grant as they grew bored waiting on me by blowing Fruit Loops out of his mouth. He was pretty good too. Garrison could blow them from the kitchen into the den and Grant would double over in fits of laughter. Grant attempted it but never made it farther than the tray on his highchair but it didn't seem to matter too much as Grant rolled in laughter and Garrison giggled everytime Grant would try. Garrett sat in his saucer and was quite entertained by it all as he smiled and talked through all of the commotion and fits of laughter. I love them all so much. I can't imagine life without each of their personalities and am curious to see who we still have yet to welcome. Garrett is absolutely the happiest most content enjoyable baby ever. I can't imagine life without any of them.