Good Friday Morning to Ya!

It's FRIDAY! Yea!!
Those words used to have a lot more meaning to me when I was working but I still look forward to Friday and the weekends...Nathan's usually home, Taylor's Saturday soccer games, lazy Saturday afternoons, church on Sunday, lazy Sunday afternoons...
The girls are out of school today. We got to sleep in till 7:30 (thank you Emma!) this morning. Would've liked it to have been 8:30, but hey, I'll take what I can get. The girls have been playing around the house this morning...minimal fighting so far, so that's good! ;-)
I haven't been able to post much this week. It's been pretty busy around here. The last couple days I've been fighting a sinus infection and have felt like my face was going to split open. I've been drinking that "Airborne" stuff several times a day. It seems to be helping...I'm not getting any worse...maybe even a little better today. I just hate taking sinus medicine. It makes me feel like my head is the size of a watermelon and I feel all fuzzy till it wears off. So I'm going to try to avoid it and keep taking this other stuff.

I posted more recipes to my website this morning. I put the list of new ones added on here under "My favorite recipes & menus". I'm hoping to work on it a little more throughout the day today and maybe add a few more to it.

I bought a few pots of mums the other day and placed them out in the flower bed around one of the palm tress in an effort to try to make it look more like fall around here. The 90 degree heat and sweltering humidity keeps it lacking a fall feel though. We're supposed to get a "cold" front by the end of next week. So maybe we'll only get up to 88 instead of 90! Woohoo! I've noticed that I get the most homesick during this season. When October comes and all the fall things start appearing in stores and I'm wanting so badly to see leaves changing and feel cooler temperatures, I get really anxious for the holidays to get here so we can go back home. Just this week I was on my way to get Emma from school and I started thinking about the pumpkin bread that a girl was bringing to MOPS on Thursday (thinking about food-naturally!) and I started thinking about how much I enjoy those "fall" spices and smells and colors. That thought led to thinking about being with my family and how much I miss everybody...then come the tears...then I have to pull myself together before I step out to get Emma. Instantly when I get out of my car, see a few friends and have a couple conversations with these people who have become my family down here, that sadness and empty feeling is gone. I have to remind myself often of how blessed I've been being here in Florida. Yes, it's hard being so far away and not being able to see the people I love very often but at the same time God has really done amazing things for us here. It's during this season (ironically) that I struggle the most with being thankful and appreciative of what I have and where I am. Nathan usually helps in that area when I start saying "I want to go home.." (He doesn't like it when I use the word home in reference to AR or either of our parent's houses.) He reminds me that Arkansas is not "home"; My home is where he is and where my girls are. That's so true, you know. It's been a hard lesson for me to learn but since we've moved here God has shown me how misplaced my priorities have been. Not that they're always in the right order now, by no means, but I'm much more aware of it and sensitive to His calling now. So when I find myself wallowing in self pity and saying "Woe, is me" praise God that he brings me out of it and shows me what he has provided for me here. I don't think I'll ever get past missing my family so much and I don't want to. I believe that's one thing God uses to keep us close to each other and keeps us connecting with one another. Sometimes all it takes is just a thought of someone to make us miss them and make us want to pick up the phone or send out an email to that person and connect with them again.
On a lighter note :) ...I had to call our local poison control office yesterday. Remember the mums I mentioned before? Emma ate a few blooms off of one. How she managed to actually swallow them, I don't know. They have such a pungent smell. I can't imagine what they tasted like...not very good apparently. I heard her spitting and going "bluck" so I went over to her thinking that she'd taken too big of a bite of her lunch. When I asked her "did you take too big of a bite?" She said "No, I eat fwowers." "WHAT?!" So I check the floor and see a couple small buds laying there but they weren't wet or chewed. She told me that she swallowed them. Luckily, in small doses, they're not toxic. I did learn, from the really nice poison control man, that they are used in large quantities to make pesticides. He said she may show some signs of an allergic reaction but luckily she never did. "Woe is me...!" ~just kiddin'! ha!