Mama's 4th Heavenday

My mama was one of the most beautiful and special people I have ever known.  She was thoughtful, compassionate, funny, smart, and most of all she was loving.  She loved unconditionally.  She loved the Lord, she loved her babies she cared for in the NICU, she loved flowers and pictures, she loved her friends, but most of all she loved her family.  We never for one second ever doubted that Teressa Louise Hardee Gagnon loved us with all her heart.  She would always rather buy us clothes and toys than buy anything for herself.  As we got older, we practically had to make her go buy herself things.  She went to every sporting event we had (whenever she wasn't working to provide for us all these things that she loved giving us), she attended every church performance, and chaperoned countless school field trips.  She read unending bedtime stories and snuggled with us for hours.  When I was a little girl, I used to miss her so bad when she would go to work at night that she recorded herself reading a book on a cassette tape and gave it to us to play before bed.  She loved being in our business, which could get a little overwhelming, but looking back, it was just because she loved being involved in our lives and talking about everything with us.  When her mom was sick, she drove to Georgia at least 50 times, even if she only had 1 or 2 days to spend with her first family.  She was an amazing woman and such a great role model for my sister and me.

Terri was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on March 25, 2008.  4 years ago today she went to be with Jesus.  Those 2 months and 4 days held many a prayer session, fluid administrations, a prom, a Relay for Life where Terri had her own team, a beach trip, a wonderful Mother's Day, and even a day that my dad drug out the old recliner and put up the umbrella on the back deck to let her get some sunlight to try to get her bilirubin level down so she could have more than 1 chemotherapy treatment.  

Craig (my dad) fixing up the umbrella for the day on the deck.  And apparently Anna was laying out.  I didn't initially remember that until I just found this picture.

There are so many times that I wish I could call my mom and talk about my life.  She would always listen to my successes, my problems, and my little day-to-day questions.  There are things that she won't get to do on this earth that I know she was so looking forward to doing, like seeing Anna and me graduate and get married, and being a grandmother (at which she would have been amazing!).  But my sadness for myself and my family is assuaged by the fact that we will get to see her again someday.  It might seem like such a long time coming, but once we get there, we'll have all eternity to be together and praise the God who created it that way.  So we won't have to be separated from Him or from our heavenly family ever.

We are so very thankful to all of you who knew Mama and who showed us such support and love throughout that hardship in our lives.  The food that you brought, prayers that you offered, and visits and laughter you provided are priceless.  Just thought I'd say thank you again.

So happy Heavenday, Mama!  I miss you so much but am so excited to see you again someday!

Vacation

On Saturday, we got back from spending a glorious week at Garden City Beach with Hunter's family.  It was soooooo wonderful to get a break from the real world for a while.  We shopped, hung out on the beach, the guys (and Stephanie) went fishing, we played dominoes almost every night, and had a great time in general.  I also got a chance to bond with my camera, Posh.  Again, I still have a lot to learn, but I LOVE the pictures she takes.  I took 405 pictures.  Half of them were pretty unnecessary.  Although I did get to have a mini photo shoot with Stephanie and Cody on the beach, and it was a lot of fun.  I won't post any of the pictures because I don't know what Stephanie has in store for them, but we got some reeeeally good ones!  Here are just a few of my favorites from the trip or ones that tell a story.

Hunter's family likes to stay at a house on the channel and across the street from the beach.  This is the view of the sunset from the back porch of the house.  It was absolutely beautiful to watch every evening.  It just reminds me how big God is and how small we are, but how he creates such beauty and wonder for us to enjoy because he loves us so.

I was borderline paparazzi-ing it up on the beach when Hunter and Steve came down with us one day, so they decided to pretend like they were going to moon me.

Bocce ball is a favorite beach past time for us, and here's Hunter in action!  He was starting to get sunburned, so his shirt had to be replaced.  As long as we were close to the ocean, the breeze kept us cool, but in my opinion, bocce ball is more fun when it is played in the softer sand.  On the hard sand, the balls just roll and roll and roll.  No bueno.  Steve beat us all pretty badly.

Hunter and I on the dock before we went shopping at Broadway at the Beach.

But now it's back to the real world.  Work, bills, not spending frivolously, etc etc.  We're so thankful that we have such a wonderful family and that God blesses us so much that we can take trips like this!

Crock Pot Love

I straight up LOVE the crock pot.  You put in a few ingredients, turn it on, and a few hours, presto!  Your dinner is ready!  My friend Erica had a really delicious "zesty slow cooker bbq chicken" sandwich at work the other night.  I had one taste and I was hooked.  The fact that the recipe has 5 total ingredients didn't hurt.

It was on the menu last night for dinner.  It calls for frozen chicken, bbq sauce, italian dressing, brown sugar, and worcestershire sauce.  So I got the chicken out of the freezer, took the plastic off, and just assumed that I would be able to plop it in the crock pot.  Let me give you a little bit of background:  I had worked the night before on very little sleep to begin with, and then I had literally just woken up from a roughly 4-hour sleep after work.  I take the plastic off the chicken and it is completely stuck and frozen to the styrofoam.  So I berate myself for thinking that it'd be that easy, and set it to the side to mix the other 4 ingredients, which took approximately 1.5 minutes.  I get the chicken to put it in the crock pot, still hopelessly frozen, but in my sleep-deprived mind it should have at least thawed a little bit.  So I start peeling off the styrofoam, and it's breaking off in small pieces in my hand.  And then it occurs to me that I can run the chicken under warm water and try to thaw it enough to get the styrofoam off.  To the sink I go, and after a few minutes of the warm water running over the chicken, the styrofoam is still just coming off in little chunks, and now I have to worry about that special paper that the chicken sits on.  It's getting all soggy and the different layers are coming off, some are sticking to the chicken, and it's just a mess!  So after several minutes, the styrofoam and paper is in shambles in the bottom of the sink.

And this is only about 1/3 of the styrofoam, and that little white lump is the chicken paper.  The chicken breasts were still stuck together, but it was a vast improvement and I threw it in the crock pot anyway.

This was after a few hours in the crock pot, and it is already looking yummy.  And ta-daaaa!  Our delicious zesty slow cooker bbq chicken sandwich!!  I was a big fan of this sandwich, and it was so easy to make!

I did not create this recipe whatsoever, but here's the link if you wanna try it!   http://allrecipes.com/recipe/zesty-slow-cooker-chicken-barbecue/

Mmm mmm good!

My new toy!

Like most people, I have a hard time waking up when I don't want to.  I set 3 alarms that I normally cut off until the last minute.  Sometimes this cycle can last up to an hour.  I had to work Tuesday night and my allergies were acting up something terrible so when my first alarm went off at 4 p.m., I decided that I wasn't getting up early to exercise, so that I could sleep until my final alarm went off at 5 p.m.  So my alarms kept going off for a very long time, and I kept turning them off at the first hint of sound.  When I finally got up at 5:22 p.m., I saw that I had a missed call from work at 4:50.  I called back and they said that they were trying to call somebody out but they had found someone to take the call-out.  I was pretty angry at myself because I didn't feel so hot and would have enjoyed staying home.  But they had already called another coworker out.  It was totally my fault and I just dealt with it.

Salt in the wound was that on my way to work, Hunter texted me this:  "Guess whose camera came in a day early".  I was even more upset with myself.  If I had just gotten up and exercised like I was supposed to, I would have gotten to stay home and play with my new camera all night.  When I wasn't either working or showing off my mad rapping skills that night, I was thinking about my new toy and getting incredibly excited.

Hunter and I had doctor appointments on Wednesday morning, so I didn't get home until around 11.  When I got home, I saw THIS:

WOO HOOOO!!

And I opened it up to this potentially disastrous situation.  I could just picture these packing peanuts going everywhere.  But somehow I managed not to spill a single one.

There wasn't much I could do without a charged battery, so I plugged in the battery to charge it and got some much needed sleep.  When I woke up, I actually read the manual and tried to learn how to take the best pics.  I kinda struggled at first and I still have a LOT of learning to do.  My new camera looks so sleek and sophisticated.  I have named her Posh Spice.  Today, Posh and I got to know each other a little better.

This is my favorite picture of the plants outside.  I am just astounded by the picture quality!

Later this morning, Posh and I headed to downtown Beaufort for a little photo shoot, to try to get me more acclimated with landscaping pictures and different lighting and what not.

There are several good pictures, and this is one of my favorites.

I LOVE Posh!  And I'm excited to learn more and more about photography!

Rewards and self-imposed rules

I have been struggling with losing weight for quite a while.  I was a chunky kid and then diabetes thinned me out at around 12-13 years old due to my high glucoses (much to my kidneys' and liver's disdain, I'm sure).  And then when I was a sophomore in college, I got my insulin pump which started to control my bloodsugars and make my body use glucose for energy instead of using the fats that it was using when my sugars were high.  That plus some weight-gain-causing meds I got put on made me gain a good bit of weight.  

I have tried a couple of times to lose weight and I lost about 8 lbs the first go round, but then I gained like 3 or 4 of it back.  So shortly after Hunter and I got married, I decided to make a rule for myself:  I wouldn't buy any more clothes until I'd lost 10 pounds.  And since then, I've followed my self-imposed rule very well.  I have only bought 1 shirt in several months.  Which is a big change for me.  I love me some Old Navy and Gap.  Then I set some more little rewards for myself.  I decided when I lost 5 lbs, I'd buy a pair of Toms.

And I've lost my first 5 lbs!  Hooray!  Well, my mind got changed about my 5-lb reward when I decided I wanted to buy a really nice camera.  So I did my research, and with help from my research assistant and asking around, I decided on the Canon Rebel t3i.  (And I've already ordered it, so if you have a problem with it, please don't tell me, because I'll have a mini heart attack.)  It was pretty expensive, taking up almost all of my fun money.  I was so nervous that it took me like a week to actually buy the camera after I had made up my mind to do so.  With my nervous heart pounding, I ordered it tonight.  I am very excited to get it in a few days and go around Beaufort and try to get used to it.  So get ready for some higher quality pictures on here!!

Side note:  My wisdom teeth extraction is now officially scheduled for June 8th.  And I'm pretty nervous.

Here's a flowers update as well:

I took this after dark, but all the plants except for the Lantana are looking great!

These are my red Fran Lantana, and the little flowers are starting to fall off.  The ones over there on the right are looking pretty ill.

On a brighter note, these are my original orange Lantana!  And they're making quite the comeback!  And I removed the majority of the dead plants so they look less pathetic.

Until next time, friends!