Ghost of Closet Past

I held true to my promise to mom. My old closet has now been cleaned out. I started around 7:00 am this morning and finished a little after noon. I had a lot of crap! I still really didn't want to believe that it was all mine, but 97% of it was. I kept some of the stupidest stuff too! Almost fifteen years later, I finally threw away my birthday cards from my 13th birthday...completely ridiculous! It was fun reminiscing though about the things I came across. Let's venture in and take a peek! Remember, this is what it looked like to begin with...

I found many interesting items and some not so interesting items...like my braces, how gross!! I found a box full of notes/letters from high school. Ashley G must have never paid attention in class because I swear I have so many letters from her they could be bound and published! But, on the other hand...why do I still have them?!?!

At the very top of my closet I found this picture! I was 14 and at cheerleading camp at Auburn the summer before freshman year started. The summer of 1997 was also the last year of short bangs for me. The reasoning should not even have to be explained...the picture says it all! The sad part of this is that I was probably the one who cut my bangs! Farmer tanned arms, nice scar/scrap above my left knee, and shin high bleach white socks...what a hot mess I was! LOL!!

Moving on along...I only cheered my freshman year. I quickly realized that it was cutting into my sports. I never want to relive the days of playing a full basketball game, pouring down with sweat, and changing out of my ball uniform to try an pry on my cheerleading uniform to go cheer for the boys ball game. A cheerleading suit is very unforgiving when you are sweaty. Anyway, I came across my plaques from high school ball. I have no idea what I am going to do with them. For now, I have them shoved in a box.

This was the funniest part of the day. I found this book "All About Me" from when I was in the 3rd grade. I was a horrible speller then and I am a horrible speller now! Dad came in and saw it laying on the desk and began to read it...well, try to read it! I'm not real sure what I was trying to say on some pages! On my "Personal Inventory" page, one of the questions asked what my favorite color was. My response? Orchid. While I did have a very good imagination growing up (and still do!) I did not use it on my answer. How do I know this? The background of my page is colored in a purple-ish color. I am very certain it was the name of the Crayola Crayon I was using. The other thing that makes me certain is because Orchid is spelled correctly. At this point I'm not even spelling "sick" correctly so I know all I did was copy it off the crayon label!! My number one wish at this age was to "live to be 100 and never be sike (a.k.a sick)." I also had to make three wishes. One for my friends, one for the world, and one for myself. For my friends I wished that they all had color tv, for the world, I wanted it to be drug free, and for myself I wanted a college degree. Hmm...those where pretty odd wishes for a third grader! I wanted the world to be drug free but judging from my answers on some things and my not-so-great coloring skills, it looks like I was on drugs! Apparently I also wanted to travel back to the year 1871 so I could go to school outside. I guess in my little head buildings weren't invented at that point in time! Reading further into my book I found out I had an imaginary friend named Mr. Keel...I think I was trying to spell "Mr. Cool" but missed it by a long shot! But the real hum dinger of this whole book is the last page. When asked what makes me glad, I responded with "Iic crem, p.e., Cirtemas, and school." My how things have changed. I do not like ice cream, thank God I spelt "P.E" and "school" correctly, and thankfully I learned how to spell Christmas too! And in case you were wondering, the things that made me sad was "Win some won dids" (when someone dies)...Dear Lord, please don't let my children get my spelling gene!

I had forgot that I had this! This remote control whoopee cushion is making a come back! I cannot wait to start having fun with this again!!! Here is your fair warning...don't bend over if you are around me!!!

Four trash bags and three goodwill bags later, this was the finished product. Still isn't great, but it will do for now!

Home for the Holidays

Another Christmas Day has come and gone and before we know it, next year's Christmas will be upon us. As usual, we (mom, dad, Heath and I) exchanged our gifts on Christmas morning. While this is nice, it would be more fun if there were little children involved...maybe one day! I thoroughly enjoyed all my presents I received this year and truly thankful for everyone in my life. I received the last two editions (11 and 12) of my Waterford Twelve Days of Christmas flutes. I got in on the tail end of this collection so I am now having to go back and get flutes from the beginning. So far, the Waterford outlet in Destin has been my best friend for this! Last year after Christmas I stopped in on my way back to T-ville and bought three other flutes. The best part was I go three for a little more than the price of one in the department stores! That is what I call a good deal!!

This is my mom's tree...I always love looking at it!

I made this ornament many years ago and mom still puts it on her tree!

These are my 11th and 12th edition of my Waterford Flutes. Eleven Drummers Drumming and Twelve Pipers Piping.

For lunch we all gathered at grandmother's (my dad's mom). I went over a little early to set the table. This has always been my task...partly due to the fact of my obsession with china and all that entails. Mom, dad, Heath and I went together and got my grandmother a Wii. When she opened it she, along with her sister, Aunt Sharee, screamed like little girls. Needless to say, the Wii was hooked up immediately!!















Me with my grandmother and aunt
















Dad and Heath playing baseball on the Wii




My grandmother's happy dance!



My Aunt Sharee and Uncle Edward getting in on the fun!

That afternoon, I went to see my best friend Courtney. She has the most precious little niece! I could hold her forever but Court won't give her up! This is the sweetest picture of them...the only thing sweeter would be if Court was holding her own daughter and she would also be my niece...Court, Heath, quit fighting your love for each other! LOL!!





I'd be lying if I said this Christmas was great. It was bittersweet at best. For the first time in 27 years, I sat down at my grandparents dining room table and PawPaw was not right beside me. We all have our assigned seats and mine has always been right beside him. The only time this is not true is when my Uncle Scott is home from Tampa. I figure since he doesn't get to come home often I'll let him sit by his dad. We still have lots of "firsts" to get through. We've made it through our first Thanksgiving and Christmas without him. Next up, January 31...his birthday.

The one task my mother has begged me to do since I have moved out (in 2002) was to clean out my closet at their house. I am really going to try to do it this week. They have since turned my room into a home office for the farm, so I really don't see what it is hurting, but I will hold true to my promise! This is the before picture...hopefully the after will look a lot better! This is my disclaimer though: My closet does not look like this! My closets are a lot neater! My clothes are grouped by color and then the colors are alphabetized from black to white (no yellow because I don't wear yellow...it's not in my color wheel for my complexion!). The chaos of this closet is contributed to many factors...this is not the way I left it! It is full of old high school stuff. If you notice, you can see my ribbon from being Homecoming Maid, my athletic Letter with my pins, cheerleading outfit, prom dresses, sporting apparel and last but not least...bridesmaids dresses! For those who do not know this fun fact about me, I have been in TEN weddings and Maid of Honor in four of them. I have quite the collection of dresses!





P.S. I have no idea why some pictures are centered and some are not. My guess is that the problem is ME! LOL!!

Bentley's First Christmas!

(WARNING: this post is completely ridiculous!)

Christmas 2010 was Bentley's first Christmas...let me enthral you all with his experiences (some good, some not so good!)

We arrived in Walnut Hill on Tuesday afternoon. He did excellent on the trip over and while I did a few errands in Pensacola...which might have included a two hour visit with old co-workers! Nevertheless, he did awesome! I finally arrived at my parents house and let the "bull out of the shoot." He absolutely LOVES being off his leash! He pranced around, marked his territory, and chased everything that moved!

Tuesday was by far our best day! Wednesday, he was ok...not the best behaved puppy, but he fared well. I spent all of Thursday afternoon baking and he never left my side. He can aggravate the mess out of me when he stays under my feet all day. However, we was the best vacuum I could have asked for that day. If I dropped something, he cleaned it up for me!

Moving on to Christmas Eve, Bentley decided to go on a little excursion. I was letting him run leash free because he was doing really good at listening. Apparently that all changed on Friday! We were out in the yard and he pranced a little ways down the driveway, looked back at me (I guess he was measuring his distance from me) and then just took off down the driveway! I was not prepared for a morning run...especially since I was in slip on shoes! I took off after the sweet little angel and when I rounded the curve in our drive he was no where to be seen. Well, it was going to end one of two ways and there was nothing I could do about it. I just so happened to turn and look over toward our neighbor's and there he was....sitting all nice and quiet between their house and the tree line. We had a nice "come to Jesus meeting" on our walk back to the house. He spent most of Christmas Eve in the pin...maybe next year he will understand the repercussions of being on the naughty list. I did let him out later on that day. I couldn't leave him locked up all day, I do have a heart, or as PKD so sweetly said to me "you do have a heart, it's not just a gizzard," plus I knew he still needed to run some energy off! However, things continued to spiral. My brother had just come in from feeding the cows and was giving me an update on Grace (my favorite cow; I will blog about her later on this week) when I asked "Is that cow shit on your pants?" Teasingly he called Bentley over to sniff it and of course he does! Although, he did not stop at sniffing, he decided it smelt so good that he needed to lick it too! Just FYI to anyone who is curious...dog breath that smells like cow shit is ten times worse than just regular dog breath. Denta Bones came into play on this incident.

Christmas Day was doozie...most of it is my fault. I will admit to my faults and take the blame when needed. I was the first one up on Christmas Day, not because I was ready to open presents (ok...maybe a little) but because cry baby was ready to go out. Maybe cry baby is a little harsh considering he is still a puppy. Regardless, I am the one who has him on a schedule. I like a little structure in my life and so by default he has structure in his. We went out in the blustery cold weather and by the time we came back in, daddy was up. Daddy and I drank our coffee, chit chatted and then I decided that Bentley needed to be a little festive since it was Christmas Day, so I proceeded to put a ribbon around his neck. That lasted all of about three minutes...just long enough for me to take a picture. To worsen this early morning activity, I decided he needed his picture made in front of the tree with the presents. Why, why, why do I do these things to myself? Of course, the picture shows a cute little puppy...the picture doesn't show the whole truth. Just remember that!!

My best friend, Courtney, was home for Christmas so I went to visit with her and her family on Saturday. I left him with mom and dad, but when I returned I knew it was bad when he was already put up. Apparently, he took a bathroom break in the living room floor. That of course did not go over well. Especially since I've been waiting on the whole Letter to Santa Scam of 1986 to take effect, when I asked for a puppy my dad will let me keep in the house in my letter to Santa. Santa was in no hurry to put a rush on getting my request granted. He and I haven't seen eye to eye since! Well, not only did he relieve himself, he also ran around the tree touching every ornament with his nose and he also decided to chew up my grandmother's gift. Not too bad...just needed a new wrapping job!


Then today happened. Sunday's for us was usually when all hell broke loose...or so it seemed. I remember years ago (I was 6 or 7) I had just learned what the word "piss" was and I decided to use it in a sentence...toward my mother...on I believe, a Sunday. I loved to dance in our living room and make up routines and I am sure she told me to stop dancing, turn off the music and get ready for church. This was when I used my new word...I boldly asked "Who pissed in your cornflakes?" I did not know the true extent of the words I had spoke...lets just say we all needed church that morning. Anyway, back to Bentley. He seemed to have picked up on our Sunday "no-no's." While I was getting ready for church, I heard my mother yelling...and she has been sick so I knew her yelling meant something bad! Come to find out, Bentley found a snag in the wall paper and decided to tear it off for her. I am sure he was just trying to help, but his helpful gesture was not viewed that way!

The question that remains is "Will we make it till Friday or will we be asked to leave sooner?"

31 Years of Love

My wonderful parents are celebrating 31 years of marriage today. I am so proud to call them my parents. God has blessed me and Heath with such great parents who show us everyday their unconditional love for us and each other. People come and go in our lives but our parents will always be our parents. Using the same book I spoke about in my earlier post, today's concentration was "Seek Wisdom." The quote that is used is "If you seek wisdom over opportunity, opportunity will usually follow." This is very obvious within my parents relationship. God's wisdom was sought and many opportunities followed. I love you both very much and I thank you for setting such good examples for us.

"How wonderful to be wise, to be able to analyze and interpret things" -Ecclesiastes 8:1

After 31 years of marriage, I'm sure you have had many chances to gain wisdome by analyzing and interpreting each other! Happy Anniversary!

Being Still and Knowing that HE is God...

Wake up and hop in the shower and cry. Hear a song that uses the term "grandfather" or any word used for that and cry. Drive to Walnut Hill for a visit and cry. Leave my grandmother's house for the first time since his death and not getting to say (yell) the words "Bye Paw Paw" and cry. Tell my mother while I am at home that "I'm gonna go for a drive" (she knows I go to his grave) and cry. Knowing that I won't see him round the corner coming into our living room on Christmas Day this year to see what all we got makes me cry now and so does typing this. I'm not the best as expressing myself, so I find that typing it out for all to read without me saying anything face to face helps me a lot.

Last night, laying in bed, I thought about all my memories I have of him (more than I had mentioned in an earlier blog) and I just became overwhelmed with tears. I think that living so far away makes it worse, but at time it makes it better. Over the past week or two, I've been wrapping Christmas presents on my kitchen table. That table holds so many memories so it's hard not to think about him. I have the table that we all would gather around in Dutch Bend. Whether we were playing cards, having supper or just talking it is a piece of furniture that will always mean the world to me. I sit and wonder how we all fit around it. Paw Paw, grandmommy, mom, dad, Heath, and me. I'm pretty sure I was always Pawpaw's lap or daddy's (both were/are tightly wrapped around my little pinkie!) I remember sitting at the end that was closest to the living room, Paw Paw would be reclined back in his nasty black vinyl chair that had duck tape all over it to cover the tears. I would always rub his bald head (I'm blaming him for my love of bald men) and he would just laugh.

I remember being 3 or 4 and living in our old house and I had left my bike in the middle of the drive that went to both our house and the barn that use to be there. Paw Paw came flying in one day and ran over it. I remember crying to him "paw paw you ran over my bike!" and he simply answered "you shouldn't have left it there." Plain and simple. How could you argue with that answer? On my 18th birthday, he insisted that he have a special present for me. It was a small jewelry box with butterflies all over it. He made a big to-do over it and made sure I knew it was only from him and that he picked it out himself. How could I not know? He had my aunt Luanne write his name in the lid of it! He was so proud of it! While I don't really care for butterflies, I will cherish these forever. It still sits on my dresser and I dare anyone to mess with it.

We all get so busy with life and things that life throws at you. Some days I can get so angry about stupid stuff that I can just crawl you up one side and down the other. The perfect example of this was a phone call on Friday morning. Men don't usually like to hear they are wrong from a woman. What makes this worse is a young woman telling an older man. Hey, I can't help that you don't know how to do math right. I was ready to lose it and it still was bothering me today. I decided to see what my daily Bible verse/topic was for today out of my "Keeping God in the Small Stuff" book that my Aunt Lisa and Uncle Horace got me for graduation from Auburn. Just picking up this book made me think about Paw Paw and how he had to miss my graduation because he was sick. Not to mention that after graduation, while we were all back at my place, my grandmother had to leave because Uncle Billy called to say Paw Paw had been admitted to the hospital for pneumonia. The topic for today was ...Anger. There it was staring me right in the face in big letters and the verse that went with it was "Stop your anger! Turn from your rage!" Psalm 37:8. What a slap in the face. I know this was God's way of saying "Be still and know that I am God, Stacey. I've got it all under control." While I don't read this every day, I have read all of it in bits and pieces over the last 5 years. So out of curiosity, I went back to that day in August...August 25th...

August 25th-God is in the Big Stuff. Three short paragraphs to read so I read them and the last one was even more of memory for me. "Remember, when God's people pray, God listens, and He promises to "heal their land" (2 Chron 7:14). We should never think that God can't work in the big stuff as well as the small. And when He does, we shouldn't be surprised." What caught my attention was "Heal their land." This is a song that the choir sings and has always been a favorite of mine. Paw Paw sang his heart out in the choir and I can imagine him singing this song in Heaven, just as he did at church. I haven't been able to go to our church yet. I'm still not ready to do that just yet. Especially since he would always come and sit with me if my grandmother was keeping the nursery or doing the sound booth. Maybe at Christmas...although that is just two weeks away.

I also looked at the days following his death leading up to the funeral.

August 26-What You Have isn't Yours. God makes this very obvious to us. Everything we have is not really ours and of course we are His. He will take us whenever he pleases. "The rich and the poor have this in common: The Lord made them both." Proverbs 22:2

August 27-Sharing and Holding Back. Simply stated "Share your blessings with others, but keep your whining to yourself." Paw paw was very quick to share the word of God and to share his blessings with others. I hope that one day I can have one ounce of that. "Though they have been going through much trouble and hard times, their wonderful joy and deep poverty have overflowed in rich generosity." 2 Corinthians 8:2. No doubt, this fits Paw Paw to a "T."

August 28-Is God Too Weak? God is powerful enough to save a nation, and He is loving enough to save you. "When our enemies and the surrounding nations heard about it, they were frightened and humiliated. They realized that this work had been done with the help of our God." Nehemiah 6:16. Why does this seem to fit, you may ask? Because the verse we used for Paw Paw was "You have fought the good fight." We may be weak in flesh, we will fight our own battles, but we can't do everything on our own. God is never too weak to bring us home and watch over us. He will never put us through something that we (ourselves and God) can't handle.

August 29-What Motivates You? "Let your primary motivation be the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit." My dad gave us all an excellent speech the day of the funeral. He spoke about the hard work (the motivation) that is instilled within us from Paw Paw. Heath and I never had the chance to be lazy. If daddy wasn't "motivating" us, Paw Paw was. Sure, it's easy to want to do nothing, but wanting to and actually doing nothing are two separate things. The drive within us won't allow it. There are many days I say "I'm not doing a thing today" but within an hour, I'm up doing something productive. The day of the funeral, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to speak. I slipped away that morning so I could call Keith and he gave me additional motivation. I kept saying, "I don't think I can do this" he was quick to tell me it wasn't about me and that I had to do it for Paw Paw. When I got home from the funeral, he had also sent me a text that said "We all go through it. It's something we have to deal with. They know we love them. Keep your head up and be strong. Everything will be fine knowing they are looking down on us telling us to hurry up, this place is awesome." We all find our motivation. Whether it is instilled within us or from someone who God brought into our lives unexpectedly when you weren't looking. He absolutely knows what and who is best for us. "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth." John 16:13