I am BACK!!

Picture of the ladies on Easter Sunday. In the back: me, Mom, Deb, Jamie, Angie, the little girls are Malea and Tori. (Jamie and Angie are both pregnant!!) Pic of the kitchen in the camper, not a good pic but shows how big it is!! I it has the cutest little stove and oven, can't wait to whip up some yummy breakfast some cool morning!!

Pic of the outside as it sat in their driveway. Needs a good scrubbing, but great shape for a 95 and only pulled 250 miles it's whole life!!

Hi Everyone! I haven't been on, been so busy getting everything caught up after our trip to see Deb and family in Alb. But now I am caught up and going to post a few things. This is our new camper, we go to pick it up on Friday. I have been busy getting a few things for it so we can take it to Tony's soccer tournament this weekend. If they win they keep playing all weekend, so just in case we will bring it and he can have a place to rest and recoup before the next game. The tournament is held at a set of fields that is "way out there" in no mans land and it is hard to get back between games.

Our trip to Alb. was so fun. Deb was her usual super hostess self. Mom was a little on the annoying side but she means well, she just likes to make almost every single conversation about her so that does get tiresome. But she is 75 and guess she is entitled to be however she chooses to be. We feel like we cooked and baked the entire time we were there. We have a big ravioli dinner on Sunday and that takes 2 days of cooking to pull off for all those people. Then Deb sponsored someone for initiation into the church so she had all kinds of committments from Wed - Sunday. We made awesome cookies for the reception at the church after Sat. Mass. The folks loved them and that was fun. I baked egg shaped sugar cookies and Tony decorated them, well I iced them and he decorated the "pretty part". He is sooo good at that, we make a good team.

I am going to try to catch up with your blogs. You all have a great Wed!

Big hugs,
Di

Getting ready for ALBUQUERQUE!!

Okay, this isn't a picture of our last trip to Albuquerque, it is a pic of us in Makoshika State park in Montana. This is an awesome park right outside my hometown of Glendive. I was just looking for a good pic of Tony and me having fun on a trip. This was taken in July of '08.

We leave for Alb. Wed. afternoon so I don't know how much blogging time I will get in before then. I told Deb I would bring her cookies for her reception for the RCIA folks and bread sticks for Easter dinner so I have a lot to do. Plus I want to try out my new iron on the curtains I am hanging in the guest bedroom.

We had everyone over for early Easter on Sat. Tony made pork tenderloins on the grill and I made lots of veggies and red potatoes, rice and broccoli, rolls and deviled eggs. Amy and Jake came on Friday so we had a little visiting time and Scott was here too all week. We had Tony's mother as well as my girlfriend Patty, so we had fun.

Derek did drop in for eating with all of us on Sat. but left to go off to a band trip to Dayton Ohio. He seems to be doing better, only drank that one night that he was here...and got kicked out the next morning. He is really suffering not having a place to call his own but that is what he needs and I don't feel sorry for him one bit. He showered here on Friday after his landscaping job and left a pair of pants to be washed but that is the only thing he has done here since he left. He has both the landscaping job and the BoomBozz pizza job still and seems to be doing great at both. He is making lots of money on tips delivering pizza, averaging $70 a night. He brought Tony his phone bill money on Sat. and that was nice. So he should have enough to get a place soon, the van has to be really uncomfortable and cold sleeping in that all night.

I have the guest room all back to the way it was only better. I'll hang the curtains from the old house in Bellevue today, they are so cute, a light green plaid with a cream color in cotton, tab curtains, I love them. They will go with the floral spread nicely.

Tony has a cold and he is trying hard to give it to me!! Gotta love those husbands, if they have a cold does it occur to them NOT TO KISS you on the lips??? HECK NO!! lol! I love him to death and can't deny him a kiss that is for sure, waited Waaaay to long for a good hubby.

I want to tell you all thank you so much for your unfailing support through these times with Derek. It means more to me than I can say! If I don't get with all of you before we leave I hope you all have a great Easter week and a blessed Easter Sunday.

Big hugs,

Di

Derek's gone

Derek is gone again, this time at my insistence. He came home in the early house yesterday and was drunk!! He couldn't get up to go to his landscaping job at 7 and I went in and found him really hostile and very drunk in bed. I ordered him to collect everything he owned and leave and then the fight started. Apparently he thought he could just blantently abuse the privilege of living here and we wouldn't care.

I had to call Tony back from driving to work to get Derek to settle down somewhat. In the course of his rant and rave he smashed his head repeatedly into the side of his van, at rage at himself. He put a good sized dent in the van and I can imagine only added a headache to his misery.

So the end of the story is that he went up to Cinci and had dinner with his sister and Jake after he sobered up. Talked to her at length about his habit and then drove back down here. He parked the van in a lot somewhere and went to his landscaping job this am. He texted me and Tony several times throughout the day and begged to come back here, promising to change THIS TIME.......

He will not be back here until he completes a 6 month drug/alcohol program and graduates with honors, even then I doubt he will want to live with our rules, they just got even tougher.

So that is the latest in our story with Derek. One drink makes for one more drink and makes for total misery for him.............

Big pitty party..thrown by Myself, with Myself as the Only guest...

I threw an all out GIGANTIC pitty party for myself yesterday. I had eaten some bad for me stuff the day before, just because I guess. So yesterday morning, no surprise I was feeling really bad, pain in every joint (from the Frosty no doubt) and zingers running rampant in my body. But the real problem was between my ears, I had let this disease get the best of me.

So I sat down at my painting table and told myself I was going to paint a really mean picture of Jesus. Afterall God was the one that let me be like this, I was in a brand new marriage and full of pain and anxiety, that was certainly not fair. I sat there and just attacked the fabric with oil markers, just drew the worst looking picture I could think of , really upset and really just mad at God in general.

I texted Tony that I was feeling so badly and he texted me back to meet him for lunch. I had already picked a fight with him that morning and was thinking that I needed to say I was sorry in person. We met at O'Charles and had a really nice lunch, he rubbed my aching hands until our food came.

Later yesterday evening after our meeting I worked on the painting some more. I was thinking that Jesus has an odd way of mellowing my soul and spirit when I am angry at him. He makes me look straight at him and see the pain and misery that he went through for us. As I was putting on the final washes of color for the background and dragging the colors over his face I thought about the crucifixion and how it must have been so painful to endure not only the physical pain but the agony of his friends hiding from him in shame.

It came to light to me that God gave me this pain for a reason, I have something very tangible to offer up to him.

Di

Casey is home!!

I took Casey and Rocky out for a walk in a really neat park this morning. They loved it and it was just like old times, just me and the two boys. Note in this last pic the cool rainbow at the bottom of the picture, that says it all!!

Love Di

Been layin low........

Had to post this pic as Sunday is our 1 year anniversary of the first day Tony and I met in person!! We met during the sweet 16 games, our teams were playing on the same night, just not each other; the Cards and Xavier. We met at the BW3's in Highland Heights, Tony drove for 1.5 hours to watch the two games with me and have a beer and then he drove home. Goodness, that should have been a sign of a great guy in itself. Who would have dreamed that a year later we would have been married for 3 months!! Seems like a whirlwind courtship but in reality it was just right. We didn't want to waste one more minute not being married! And we have turned out to be the perfect people for each other, even our kids get along great.

I've been laying low the last couple of days, trying to get my back to stop spasming. I over did it at the gym earlier in the week and have paid dearly. I did get on the mini tramp yesterday for a few minutes just to do something, that didn't hurt but this am I woke at 4 with bad pains. I have to stop acting like I don't have a herniated disk before I end up in bed.

Casey will more than likely be in Indy on Sunday. There are horrid storms through MT and ND and they are moving slowly. They also have a stop in St. Paul to unload so that will take some time. Can't wait to see my baby, he will be tired from all that riding I am sure.

You all have a great day, I have more bookkeeping to do and then I am done, whooo hooo!

peace and love, oh and have a great weekend if I don't get on again.

Di

This is better...........

This is the Peobo resist that I wrote about last time. The gold line is very pretty and it comes out of the tube easily, doesn't run and give you a nice fine line. In the moving I lost the little pamphlet of directions on how to use this but I looked it up in my Dharma catalog, I do have to iron this resit to fix it to the silk, no biggie, this silk scarf will not be washed so I have no chance of washing out the silk paint with this method. These colors, this bright will always stay this bright, think I have come across a plan............finally!!

I bought 4 silk scarves from Dharma, 9" x 54", all blank white, ready for painting/dying whatever. So I will hopefully get at least two done this week for our trip to Alb. Mom and Deb will love them.

Our doggie Casey will be given to the transport guy today by my Mom in Seattle. We are very excited to have him coming home. Amy was here yesterday to pick up Jake and have a little cookout with us all. She is sooo hyped up, she hasn't seen her doggie in over 3 years!! Tony and I will travel to Indy on Friday (we think) to get him from the guy as he passes through on his way to northern Ohio. Mom is already on her way to Seattle, I talked to her this am. She has so many doggie things she is sending along, plus his big kennel that we used to ship him on the plane out there. This guy is going to really wonder when he sees all that stuff!

We had a blast with Jake this weekend. Scott ended up staying with us for Sat and Sun instead of going with his mother to her friend's house. That poor kid gets drug along to the weirdest places with her and her lady friends. We took Jake and Scott with us to church and Scott was such a help with Jake. Of course Jake pulled the "I have to pee" thing in the middle of mass and Scott volunteered to take him.

We had everyone over for a cookout during the Cards vs Sienna game and it was great fun. Amy had Sarah and Kyle come too as they both go to school at U of L and they were in town. Lots of kids, lots of food and lots of fun. I always wanted more kids but of course Don wouldn't allow it, once we had one of each that was the end of kids. It used to make me sad but not anymore, now I have the bigger family that I always wanted and I am loving it!!

Have a great spring day everyone!
Di