Love, Prayers, and a Freebie ....lol

hiya everyone....
well after the last post, several things have happened and one in particular really drove home the importance of letting those you love know it now...not tomorrow, not next time you see them, NOW....

I got a phone call at 7:30 this morning from my cousin Heather. She was calling to tell me that our 23 yr old cousin, Nathan, was driving way too fast, not wearing a seatbelt, and veered off the road and hit a culvert/bridge abutment and was killed instantly....

no time for "good-byes" or last minute "i love you"s....no time for my aunt to take his face in her hands, look him in the eye and say "baby, no matter how much you mess up or have messed up, i love you more than you will ever know".....not even a chance to sit at his hospital bedside and get out all the unsaid things in hopes that he heard it through the fog of a coma....nothing....
My uncle asked the question "Is there really a God?....because if there is I am SO mad at him right now".....my aunt replied, "yeah...there is...and i am too..."...he said "then we need to get to church because i need to know there is some hope that maybe my boy is alright now"....
Nathan left behind an almost 6 yr old son, 5 nieces and nephews, 2 sisters and a brother, and his parents....my prayer is that they had all said their "i love you"s and "you are something to me"s....
sorry to start this off with such a downer of a post, but it just feels so very important to me right now to let everyone who will hear or read know that God loves you (whether you believe or follow Him or not) and that whether it feels like it or not, there are people all around you who love you (online and off)....
If you are someone I talk to at all and I haven't told you lately, I am telling you now, I love ya...and i don't say that lightly....I would name you, but then i would, without a doubt, forget someone very important to me and i would feel like crap...so you know who you are....
please be praying for our family and friends who are mourning this loss...and please pray for traveling mercy and protection over all of us who have to travel to be together in the coming week for the funeral and such....thanks :)

ok...on to brighter things....

My kids are getting excited. Fall is upon us, the weather has changed for the better, leaves are changing and it is time to start decorating and celebrating the upcoming holidays....:) I am happy b/c it is picture takin' season again :D....
The boys will be staying with my mom & sister (they live across from one another) while I am away at the funeral and Mom is taking them to a local Canal Days festival...they are really looking forward to it (esp Elijah)....
Tink will be going with me on the 4 hour trip, which should be interesting with her new found training skills...eek!....she did "the other" all by herself TWICE tonight....so that means all day she had a grand total of ZERO accidents of ANY kind!!!! (this is the first day ever for that)....I am pretty proud of her ;)...
Mike said "i love you" to me twice tonight out of nowhere, just in passing....it made me feel pretty awesome...

now onto scrapping things....
I now have a CT :)...I will be giving the BIG announcement soon (i wanna do it with fanfare and all that jazz and not after a somber post)...but I will be on the look out for a couple guest CTMs within a week or two soooooooo I will be on watching for anyone who uses my stuff or who sports my fan blinkie (and I will have my li'l hillbilly helpers doing the same!) to fill those spots....
here is the blinkie if you wanna shot at it!

now for your freebie....this was going to be a mini-kit in my store at OneOfAKindScrapz, but with everything happening, I just wanted to give you guys something for all the nice things you have said/done for me, and I also didn't know if I would get it in the store before Halloween....so here you go....it is only slightly screamable....;)
it includes one 12x12 inch paper & 3 doodles (each one comes as just the doodle and as a sticker, for a total of 6 elements)...let Punkin Dewdell and WitchyWoo brighten up your layouts of your li'l ghouls and boos this Halloween....
click on preview to be taken to the download...
PLEASE leave some love here if you like the freebie....it really makes my day :)





I have actually scrapped a bit :)...here are some of my most recent ones....(click on preview to be taken to the credits...)
This one is of Elijah on the first day of school...even though it was the FIRST day, he was SO bored waiting on the bus without Lane, that he almost didn't know what to do with himself!...he was so nervous (i think he was a bit excited, but mostly nervous) and was really acting goofy to cover it...it was a perfect example of Bus stop Boredom...



This was for a challenge, and also for my guest spot on Kris Myers' CT....it really shows how my family deals with nearly everything...we laugh...through tears, through gritted teeth, through it all we love and we laugh in order that we might live a little better....the photos are of my daughter (lol our early attempts at potty training made her laugh at us, and us laugh through gritted teeth), my brother & sister & I at my sisters wedding after goosing each other during a photo shoot, my sons just being goofy last summer, my dh making his silly smiling face at the park, my 3 and my 2 nephews laughing after shocking each other at the end of the slide (it generates a LOT of static), my 3 laughing b/c one of them supposedly um uh "tooted" while i was taking their picture, my son going "airborne" b/c my dd "kicked" him while swinging (it was totally staged which made it all the funnier), DH Me & the kids posing for our Valentine's Day pic, and my 3 and my nephews again just laying "around"....lol see we find "funny" in everything from the day to day to the dys"fun"ctional ;)




I have so many photos of my 3 kids that i have not scrapped....these are just a few of them that I have taken in the 3 yrs since Tink was born....I really liked the way this turned out (and it was made using my Li'l Bluebirch Kit, so it made it even more special to me :D )


This one I did for the Not Just a Template Challenge at OAKS...I loved the way it turned out...
I used my Hallow-teen Paper Pack to make everything, and I used pics of Tink's first trip to the pumpkin patch...I loved using older photos that I haven't scrapped :D


and last, but not least I did an "all about me" one for the Embellishment Explosion Challenge at OAKS...these are all photos of me from Sept of 2006 until March of 2007...I no longer have my tongue ring (lol i would if Mike wasn't opposed to them probably), but it was all part of who I was and who i was becoming :)....each of the words on the layout describes a piece of me...not who I am, but why I am who I am :) did that make a lick of sense?...


remember that no matter how bad we have it....someone else has it worse...
See your trouble as your servant, not as your master and realize that often our problems are simply our prophecy...God uses our trials to build us up and put us where we need to be...so after a test, which do you choose: a testimony....or just the moanies?...;)

You are loved....

I just had a wonderful Bible study and wanted to share just a couple really quick thoughts...
I am reading Power of a Praying Parent, and today's study was on praying that our children will always feel confident b/c of the love we have for them...
In this book, Stormie Omartian made a couple points that really struck home with me....
She said that the opposite of being loved, is being rejected...simple enough, but I never really thought of it that way (lol to me the opposite of being love would be being hated). Any time we are rejected, that person, company, or group is saying "we don't love you/your work enough to accept you" and that hurts! but why is it that I can hear much more horrible things in a "rejection" than my husband or certain friends?..well she deals with that in this chapter too!
She says "Some people can let (rejection) roll off their backs because they know, deep within, that they are accepted. Others, however may bear deep emotional wounds from incident after incident of rejection.....A person who already feels rejected perceives everything as rejection-a mere look, a harmless word, and insignificant action".....
*light bulb moment*....this is a self perpetuating feeling!!! if a "rejected person" feels rejected by every look, action, or word, they will ALWAYS be stuck in the cycle of being an "already feeling rejected" person!....
As in all her books, Stormie has Bible verses that pertain to what she is saying, and what God says about each issue...As far as Love goes, she gives these verses...
Isaiah 41:9, God says "I have chosen you & not cast you away".....to be chosen by God?! to be loved enough to be told specifically "I have chosen YOU"....talk about being accepted...
and Romans 8:38-39 the Bible assures us that "neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, not height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"....NOTHING can separate us from the love God has for His children!!!!
So I challenge you today to make someone feel loved....call up an old friend or family member just to say "hey, I was thinking about you today, and even though i may not have said it recently, I love you...." then leave it at that, don't get into a discussion about your last falling out, don't get into the apology game (you can do that, just during this call leave it at "I love you")...If you have kids, get to their level (if they are toddlers you will have to be on the floor, or if they are like my lane, you just have to look them straight in the eye lol) and tell them, "I love you...you are wonderful and I consider you a blessing..."
just a thought ;)
we all love to feel loved, and you never know who might have needed to hear that you love them plain and simple....;)
have a blessed monday and know that YOU are loved!!!!!