24 days and counting...

"Senior Sunday" at church was a couple of weeks ago....

Graduation announcements went out last week...

And it won't be long before Randy Lowry's famous words,

"And please.... come to Lipscomb"

will be ringing in our ears.  :-)   

I still can't believe that it's come so fast...

Alabama All-State Band

This past weekend, our family traveled down to Mobile to take Mackenzie to the Alabama All-State Band Festival.  A while back she had tried out for the band and placed first in our district on piccolo.  This gave her the opportunity to go down to Mobile and compete with piccolo players from all 8 districts in Alabama for 3 spots open to piccolo players in the All-State bands.  There are 3 bands -- The Red Band is the top band, White is second, and Blue is third.  Very patriotic. :-)    They take one piccolo for each band - SO, if you don't make one of the top 3 spots, then you try out on flute and play flute in one of the bands.  Well, Mackenzie is a die-hard piccolo lover...  she enjoys playing her flute, but piccolo is her passion.  So needless to say, she was very anxious to earn one of the piccolo spots in the bands.  We arrived in Mobile a little after lunch time last Thursday.  Mackenzie's try-out was later that afternoon.  She was the last piccolo of the 8 to try out.  After she was done and the judges had deliberated for a few minutes, they began calling the girls in to tell them where they had placed.  (This is where you have to insert some tense and dramatic music to set the scene! ha)  The first girl to come out had made the first spot - Red Band piccolo.  Now we realized they were being called in order...   and before we had time to register all of that, they came out and called Mackenzie's name!  yay!  So she made White Band piccolo - and she was SO happy....  :)   So that was a pretty cool moment.  She then spent all of Thursday night and most of the day on Friday in rehersals.  They had a quick warm-up and dress rehersal Saturday morning...  and then Saturday afternoon performed the most amazing concert for a group of young musicians who didn't know each other and had only been together learning their music for a day and a half.  It was hard to believe how good they sounded. :)  And yes, if you couldn't tell already, I'm one very proud momma...   ;-)

This is Mackenze, Maggie and Clay after the concert.  Clay and Maggie both play clarinet.  Maggie was 8th chair (out of 32!) in the Blue Band.  And Clay is the budding prodigy of the group - he's just a freshman and made 4th chair in the Red Band!  And I should give some credit to Bob Jones as well -- they were giving out solo awards at the beginning of the concert and I think more than half the kids they called up were from Bob Jones...  let's just say that North Alabama was well represented! :)

And while Mackenzie was off working, Jack, Anna and I got to play a little bit.  There wasn't enough time to make it to the beach, so we spent a few hours touring Bellingrath Gardens - it was beautiful!   Here's a few pictures below:

Upstairs, Downstairs

This is the state that I left my upstairs in to escape to the downstairs for just a little while and take a deep breath!   There's a BIG neighborhood garage sale going on this weekend and we're trying to clean out the attics around here...  mostly right now, we're just moving piles of stuff from one place to another and I'm trying hard not to get too overwhelmed! ha.   Oh where's my sister when I need her?!?  :)

Ahhh.... Downstairs.  :)  I had to clean up first down here before starting anything up there just to make sure I had a place to retreat to!

If you look back a few posts, you'll see this room when I was getting started on it.  It's the 'picture' room.  I'm not sure you can really call anything going on in here 'progress' except that I did manage to find enough pictures of Mackenzie over the years to send in for her Senior Band Awards Banquet... at least that's one mission accomplished - yay!!

ALL of those bags have stuffed animals in them.  I can't even begin to explain how we could have possibly accumulated all of those over the years.  And hey, does anyone need a model of the solar system for a school project?  I've got one of those too!

 And this is how I found Mandy when I came downstairs...  there is something terribly wrong with her work ethic!  sigh....

It's amazing all the STUFF you come across when you start cleaning out the attic.  Things that you forgot you had, things you thought you had surely thrown away long ago, things you SHOULD have thrown away long ago, things you didn't know you ever even owned...  wow.  Lot's of memories, too.   But I will glad when it's all done!!  Wish me luck - or better yet, pray for my sanity! :)

April Fools Update

OK...  so after I posted my little April Fools story this afternoon, I actually got pranked pretty good by my darling daughter tonight.  So I had a quick dinner out with Jack and Kenzie while Anna was at gymnastics...  we ate at Wings and when I got home from that, I wanted to wash my chicken-y fingers.  So I went straight to the kitchen sink when I walked in the door and turned on the water - and proceeded to get sprayed head-to-toe with water!  Anna had apparently taken advantage of the time I was in the shower earlier to wrap the kitchen sink sprayer with tape and point it out so that as soon as you turned on the water you'd get sprayed...  very devious and very clever!  And I was the total sucker in this joke -- it even took me a while to realize that it was a joke and that there wasn't actually something wrong with the faucet.  haha. 

So, of course the next step was to figure out how to get her back. :)   The 3 of us put our heads together and the final result was taking the shower head off in her bathroom and filling it up with Dawn dishwashing detergent.  She always takes a shower before bed, so we thought we'd surprise her with a bubble-shower. :)  It worked pretty good....  but not quite enough bubbles to have as much of a 'revenge' effect as I wanted...  oh well, at least maybe the shower will get clean now.  ;-)

April Fools

I haven't laughed like that in such a long time!

Last night the whole family was sitting around catching up on epidsodes of American Idol and looking at old family photos that I've found as I've been going thru boxes and boxes of pictures. We were also passing computers around looking at youtube videos when Anna suddenly remembered a video that we all just HAD to see. Well, it was something about hippos and dogs singing and it was very silly. In the light of day, I don't think I would have found it quite as funny, but last night it got me and the girls laughing. THEN, Anna went from that straight into a very comical impression of one of her teachers - but SHE was laughing so hard already that it was hard for her to compose herself to do it. I wish everyone could see Anna when she gets like this - she's SO funny! :) Well, I don't know what happened to me, but I laughed so hysterically that I was in tears - to the point they were streaming down my face and my stomach hurt so much from laughing that I thought I'd be sore from it today! :)

A little later on, after all the hysteria died down, we finally got everyone up and going to bed. Anna confided to me on the way to her room that she had grabbed a box of clingwrap from downstairs and was planning to wrap it over the toilet and pull the old "pee on the cling wrap" April Fool's prank on her sister. Mackenzie's morning routine lends itself perfectly to such an endeavor because she likes to get up at about 5:30 every morning, take a shower, and then crawl back in bed to sleep for another hour - thus, most of this is done in a state of very little consciousness. ;-) ...and therefore, if she did happen to use the bathroom before getting in the shower this would probably have worked!! BUT, I guess we'll never know because Anna fell asleep before Mackenzie and never got around to putting her plan into action - bummer. ;-)

Anyways, it got me thinking at some point that it felt really good to laugh like that - I need more of that in my life. And April Fools Day (and seeing the weather predictions for snow up in Boston) got me thinking back to when Anna was just a baby and we lived in Canton, MA and fell victim ourselves to 'Mother Nature's' April Fools snowstorm on us - almost a foot of snow if I remember correctly! crazy... Hmmm.... now if I could just think of someone to play a joke on that would appreciate it! ha...

Faithfully Fit

The Thursday morning Bible Study that I've been attending now for a while just started this book a couple of weeks ago. It's a daily devotional book with homework each day that is designed to help you with discipline in all areas of life, but especially in the area of weight loss and healthy lifestyle. While I know that I can ALWAYS do better in this area of life, I started into this study feeling like it wasn't my greatest need at the moment... even though I'm definitely out of sync on my exercise routine and not too excited about swimsuit season coming up! So I will say that it is helping with motivation in those areas, for sure! But mostly I'm finding that the thoughts and scriptures and lessons are helpful in the fight against anything in life that has a hold on you. So I've been trying to apply it to those areas of my life and think about it from that perspective and it's been really helpful. So I just thought I'd share a poem that one of the authors wrote that I really liked:

Spirit Eyes

Let me see you in the battle and not just in the victory,
Let me see you in the darkness and not just in the dawn,
Let me see you in the trial and not just in the triumph,
Let it be your face of love I look upon.

Give me spirit eyes To see the truth behind the lies,
To find the hope that hides within despair.
Give me spirit eyes To look behind the world's disguise
And faith to know that I will find you there.

Let me see you in the present and not just in the future,
Let me see you in the sinner and not just in the saint,
Let me see you in the questions and not just in the answers
Help me find you in the loss and in the gain.

-- Claire Cloninger

For someone like me who has a tendency to only 'see' God in the victories, this wa s a really good reminder that He is there every step of the way, at all times. :)

Access Denied

Men. Can't live with them. Can't live without them. Ever heard that one?

(Disclaimer: I promise this post really isn't about bashing men...

I just thought this cartoon was really funny.)

Well... I'm feeling that way about DOCTORS lately. Very thankful for them. Really, really annoyed with them too!

This started a couple of weeks ago. I was at my sister's house. She had just gotten out of the hospital and things were clearly not quite right with her. We knew something was going on with her medications, but we didn't know what to do about it. We needed a doctor. But she didn't have a primary care doctor - only a whole bunch of specialists. SO, I set about making phone calls to find a primary care doctor for her. I was armed with a list of recommendations from friends... how hard could this be, right?

"You have reached blah, blah, blah... if this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911."

"If you know your party's extension, please dial it now."

"Please listen carefully to the following options...."

Each time I finally reached a human being, I was then put on hold while I was transferred again.

My first call ended with "I'm sorry, he's not taking new patients."

Next, "Our first available appointment is in August." (Wow, THAT's helpful...)

Next, "You've reached the nurse's line for Dr. ______, please leave your name, your number and a brief message and we'll call you back." (I left a message - they didn't call back.)

After two days of no returned calls and no progress, we resorted to desperate measures. This time I was trying to communicate with one of my sister's specialists and was told that they couldn't talk to me because I was not 'authorized' on my sister's privacy notice. grrrrrr..... SO, I took my sister who didn't need to be out and about and loaded her up in the car and we went, uninvited, to this doctor's office! We marched into the waiting room, signed the appropriate paperwork so they could talk to me, and were told to take a seat and they would have a nurse come and talk to us. 30 minutes later, we were still sitting... no one was going to come out. We spoke with the receptionist, made it VERY clear that we needed at least a phone call some time that day, and left. They never called.... not that day, not at all....

This is how I was feeling after that little adventure:

Finally, her admitting doctor who she had a good relationship with, helped us find our way to the right doctor and we got the help that we needed - what a relief! But what a nightmare to try and get help from a doctor who doesn't already have you in their system!

Fastforward to today. While visiting my sister to check on how she is doing, my dad started to feel bad and two days ago he had a heart attack. Oh my. Really? So now HE's in a Columbia hospital. Thankfully, after having a stent put in to open a blocked artery, he's doing fine. Good timing. Good care. This time I'm not there, so there's not much that I can do on that end. But I'm trying to do some things on this end. Talk to his primary care doctor. Make an appointment. (Done.) Find a cardiologist. Find out where they do Cardiac Rehab...

SO,

My sister talked to a local cardiolgist office.
Then she talked to me - they needed insurance information.
I talked to my dad - got the insurance numbers...
Called Blue Cross Blue Shield and asked lots of questions - the cardiologist we want is in the network - yay!
Called the cardiologist. "Oh, I'm sorry, we don't take medicare patients." (We went a few rounds on this, but I lost the argument.)
Called BCBS back. Found out that I probably didn't use the right words and didn't know the right questions to ask the cardiologist. They tried to call for me - the office was closed. (of course)

Now I will start all of this again on Monday. Oh yay. But at least I know what to say now.

***sigh***

So at some point along the day today (driving Anna to gym, I think) I was thinking about all of this and had this "What is God trying to teach me?" moment... and it occurred to me that I am SOOOOOOO thankful that God, the Great Physician, is ALWAYS accessible. ALWAYS. There's no voicemail, no nurses to run interference, no "I'm sorry, we're not taking new patients," no waiting for an appointment, no lack of insurance coverage.... God is just ALWAYS there. Ready to listen. He has answers that we need. He gives reassurance and understanding. He's patient and concerned. All the things you hope for in a good doctor. :) And I'm thankful that He's been hearing me all along this process. Though there have been frustrating times, at just the right time, breakthroughs have come and I believe that has been God's hand walking me through with what I needed at just the right time. HIS time.


"Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."

-- Romans 5:1-5