Shady Patio Guy

I am writing this to vent my frustrations about doing business with a Shady Guy...who owned Nature's Best Landscaping...so if you live in the Clarksville, TN area DO NOT use him.   Let me make it clear that Josh and I are not the type of people to take someone to court.  Neither one of us have ever done it and I hope to never do it again!  Not that our court situation has been a horrible experience, but that I know that we have learned on doing background checks, etc on someone we want to hire to do work at or on our home!  Anyone we ever hire in the future better be ready for me to ask them a million questions before giving them our business or money.  I have learned my lesson for sure.

Last March we hired a guy to dig up under our deck and place weed control down with rocks to help with landscaping and rabbits.  We were finding dead bunnies under our deck daily (sometimes 5 a day) and that does not go well with me or our dogs.  Our dogs were playing with them and the last straw was when I was in the back with our 2 year old at the time playing when a dead bunny appeared.  I screamed and in turn scared Josiah to death.  Originally we hired Don to do the under part of the deck.  Well, he came up with this plan (an idea we had been thinking about doing for a while).  We have an area in our back yard that would be great for a patio and the people who owned the house before us just put some flag stones down and allowed the grass to grow in between.  We had been wanting to concrete it in for a while and make it more useful.  Well, Don said he could do it.  Very long story short, he did a shady job using brick mortar instead of concrete...the foundation moves under your feet...our 40lb dog's foot went through it after it was completed and you can pick up the flag stones because they are not cemented in.  It was overall the worst job I have ever seen.  He was supposed to dig up the foundation, make it level and take care of the grass and weeds so that they would be gone forever.  Almost immediately we had grass growing up through the concrete!!  It is done so terribly that our 2 year old (now 3 year old) could pick up the concrete.  Surely that is not supposed to be able to be done...let alone by a toddler.

After talking with some other workers in that field of work and having them come out to give us an estimate of fixing it, we decided to take Don to small claims court without a lawyer.  We had pictures, phone records of times that he never called us back, his contract stating he would complete the job, etc.  we had our act together.  (by the way, the day he "finished" the job he said he would be back to check on the foundation that weekend to make sure it was drying correctly...did he ever come?  NOPE...did he return any of our phone calls?  NO....did he cash our check immediately?...YES!  We pay our court fees (taking him to court originally was to make sure he didn't do this to someone else in town) and show up to represent ourselves because we didn't want to pay for a lawyer.  Don never shows, but had hired a lawyer the day before our court date.  The lawyer he hired knew nothing of the situation and came in saying that they only thing Don told him was that he would come back to our property and fix it.  NO WAY...are you kidding me?  We gave you more than an opportunity to fix what you had done wrong and we didn't want him back in our yard.  His "lawyer" saw our pictures, our phone records and all that we had come prepared with and said "clearly, I am representing the wrong party here."  lol  So, we then had to set a court date for a trial that involved us needing a lawyer.  We got an excellent lawyer and our court date came.  Guess what?  Shady Don did't show up and didn't have a lawyer to represent him either.  The judge obviously found us to be correct in our story and in the state of TN you can get extra for Lying and Deceptive Work.  We didn't want more..in fact what the judge came to is far more than we would ever expect someone to pay.  We just want it fixed..so we want the amount of money it would take to fix it.  We aren't doing this to make money on the guy.  We aren't trying to screw him over - we just want it made right.

I just want it over with...I feel stressed because we are moving soon and so it has to be fixed and that costs money.  When the guy claims to have nothing, I feel bad for saying this, but I don't believe him!  Maybe he is having a hard time in life, and I am sorry for that, but he fed me so many stories during his job that I just want him to pay us what we deserve.  I have definitely learned from this...and this will be a great example to use for Josiah (and/or future children we have) to teach that life just isn't fair sometimes.  Guess I am going to use my anger toward Good Ole Don on the patio when Josh and I are the ones ripping it up with sledge hammers!!!

(I have even more pictures of us being able to lift the flag stones out of the middle and the giant hole in the middle of it, but they are on a different computer that isn't working.)

Christmas at our House

I honestly can't believe that Christmas is just two short days away!!  We are super excited that my parents (aka Grammie and Poppy) are here (arrived at 2am this morning and got up with smiling faces to see their only grandchild....and Josiah was very happy to see them!).  I have been baking like crazy.  Not really sure why, except the fact that I love to bake and share goodies with friends and family.  This week I have made mint chocolate chip cookies, snicker doodles, mint crisps, Christmas sugar cookies, brownies and white chocolate snack mix.  I currently have a peppermint pound cake in the oven and will make an apple pie later.  Then I will be done.  I delivered some treats to neighbors and friends yesterday and today.  It is fun for me to share sweets with others!!

Since the Christmas season started our family of three has enjoyed some fun memories.  We have driven around to see Christmas lights (which we plan to do again with my parents tonight), gone downtown to walk the River Lights, went to the drive thru Nativity, watched Christmas movies, made Advent crafts, listened to LOTS of Christmas music and done a little shopping.  I will have to say that Christmas this year is even more fun.  Josiah knows more about it and I love seeing his face light up at the different things he experiences.  He still isn't completely a fan of Santa and will only wave from a distance.  We aren't pushing it because I don't want to scare our child to death and let's face it Christmas is definitely not all about Santa.  Every morning Josiah asks for me to put music on after breakfast and he knows exactly what song he wants to hear.  His favorite Christmas song is Jessica Simpson's version of "Let It Snow."  The minute it comes on he starts dancing!!  It is cute.  For me, at Christmas I love to give people baked goods.  It is something about the time and energy I put into making some special treats to share.  Josiah has really enjoyed baking with me this year as well!  He is really at a fun age!  I've said before that I am not a huge shopper.  We didn't buy much this year (as I am sure a lot of people are in the same boat).  With our impending move and the disaster we have on our patio that still needs to be fixed, we tried to keep things simple.  We will see how simple my sweet husband kept things since his love language is gift giving.  I love that he loves to give to others and sometimes I wish I had the same love language.  My love language is quality time and acts of service.  I love doing things for people to help them and I enjoy just spending time with others.  I am so grateful that Josh and I know each other's love languages!!  Yesterday and today I have started to feel bad that I may not have gotten him enough for Christmas or even gotten him the "perfect" gift.  I made him his favorite cookies :)  It is too late now, because I am not going out today to get anything else.  I am more of a worrier about the bank account than he is and don't want to over spend on Christmas gifts.  I feel like that can be super easy to do once you start seeing other things that you would want to get someone.  I have always kind of felt like I am not a very good gift giver...wish I was better, but glad I married someone who is.  We definitely balance each other out!!!!  He finds great gifts and then we talk about whether or not we should spend the money on them.  This year with him in Pathfinder School I ended up having to do most of the shopping on my own...so the few things we bought I hope people like them!!!  Josiah's Santa gifts are an Easel (which I am super excited about because I know he will love it...he has recently really started enjoying coloring and painting so I know it will be fun for him).  Maybe it is my inner teacher, but I am hoping we will have short "school" sessions at home with it!  We also got him the Mickey Mouse Drum he has been wanting.  He saw it one day in Walgreens and that is all he talks about when people ask him what he wants from Santa...luckily it was only $9.99 and the day I went they were buy one toy get one free so I picked out a blue (his favorite color) car for him as well.  My parents got him (from Santa) a tool set and a big dump truck which he will absolutely LOVE!!  I guess maybe I feel like I never want to spoil him too much on Christmas and have him not be appreciative of what he receives..and also forget what Christmas is truly about.  The BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST!!

Anyway, with that said our family is ready for Christmas.  No more shopping - just enjoying our time together!  I refuse to go out to the stores with the crazy shoppers!  We are just enjoying our time at home...tonight we are having Chicken Taco Soup, tomorrow (Christmas Eve) I am making Ham with all of the sides before we go to church for our Christmas Eve service and then dessert afterward (Peppermint Cake, Apple Pie and all of the cookies).  On Christmas day, I stick with Josh's family tradition and make Italian. We will have salad, chicken parm, spaghetti, asparagus, green beans and bread.  Just writing this makes me feel full.  I just that is what the season is...eating yummy food!!!

I am beyond grateful to have my husband home again this year for Christmas - that to me is the best gift!!  There are so many soldiers away from their families this year, so please keep the soldiers and family members left at home in your prayers!!!  We hope and pray that everyone has a wonderful Christmas!!!  We sure wish we could be with everyone in our family, but knowing that is impossible, we will just send our love to you all!!!!  Merry Christmas!!!!!!!

A True Blessing

I am feeling overwhelmingly blessed with our son!!  What a joy he is to my life!  I have often been told that three years of age can be a nightmare.  I am seeing the fruits of our labor every day and it just blesses my heart more than I can say.  Josiah is definitely not perfect...lets face it...NONE of us are!  Do we still discipline and train daily?  Of course...that is what parenting is!  We are called to raise our children for the Lord and I am so grateful that the Lord blessed us with him.  We have had times when we would go through stages that were tough, but we were consistent and disciplined with the way we felt the Lord was calling us to.  I can look back on the last few weeks of him being two and the first week of him being three and I remember feeling stressed and exhausted (physically, mentally and emotionally) with the constant discipline and teaching.  Well, I am glad to say it has paid off tremendously!  I am not stupid in thinking that we won't revisit things that we have corrected for in the past, but I am just thankful to the Lord for showing us each day that our hard work is paying off.  For example, today we went out to run some errands.  It was so much fun!  We spent over an hour in Hobby Lobby collecting items for our advent project!  It was awesome to walk each row and look at things I wanted to look at and have our sweet little boy walk beside me not touching anything!!  Then we went over to the mall to just walk around!  I think I can count on two hands how many times I have been to this mall in three years.  I am just not a shopper.  We went to Hallmark so that he could pick out an ornament for this year (which I got for $1.05! because of a reward certificate that I had and a $5.00 coupon...can't beat that for a Hallmark ornament).  He loved walking the mall, looking at things and staring at Santa from afar.  I gave him a dollar in quarters before we went into the mall and told him that if he obeyed that he could use that dollar to ride a machine when we were about to leave.  He was so excited about hearing those quarters (which he calls pennies) in his pocket!  But here is what melted my heart the most and almost brought tears to my eyes (I did tear up telling Josh the story tonight). I am in love with those sugared pecans (I have only had them 3 times in my life but they are so good).  There was a man selling them so I stopped and bought us a small bag.  That sweet man gave me an extra empty bag for Josiah so he could carry his own.  I put some of the pecans in his bag and we continued walking while snacking on our yummy pecans.  All of the sudden Josiah started folding the top of his bag down (with pecans still in it) and I said "buddy, are you all done or do you not like them?"  His response to me was "I saving these for Daddy.  I gonna share with him when he gets home."  OH MY WORD.  He thought of that all on his own.  He loves his Daddy and Josh has been at work late every night this week with Pathfinder school.  In fact, the other night Josiah said we couldn't eat dinner without him - that he wanted to wait until he got home...but we had to because I knew Josh would be late.  I just love Josiah's heart...We have prayed for him to be kind, loving, and that he would think about others before himself and I am seeing it more and more each day.  So, when we have difficult times with him testing his limits I will be reminded of these situations..I will be reminded that the Lord calls us to train our children and we will continue to follow His leading in parenting!!!!  Thank you, Lord for the gift you have given to us...a gift named Josiah Michael Sandler!

Proverbs 22:6
    "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."

"Inconceivable"

Several months ago a dear friend of mine who lives in Alaska sent me a book titled "Inconceivable."  At the time I was reading a Karen Kingsbury book, so I just put it on the shelf for another time.  I would walk by it every now and then (while dusting the shelf) and just look at it.  Well, the time came two weeks ago when I finally took the book off the shelf to read it not knowing at all what a blessing this book would be to me.  As you probably know by now, Josh and I have had a difficult year (+) trying to conceive another child.  I have had two miscarriages and lots of tears along the way.  I had no idea it could or even would be this hard to conceive another child considering it was very easy once we decided we wanted to start trying for Josiah.  We were blessed to get pregnant very quickly with him and I loved every second of being pregnant!!

The book "Inconceivable" is about a family who had two children without any issues and those boys were 10 and 12 years old.  The tried for many years to have another child and ended up doing IVF for their third child, a baby girl.  When they went in to use more of the embryos they had frozen from the previous retrieval the doctors put the wrong embryos in her.  Six weeks later when they found out they were successfully pregnant they also found out that they were pregnant with someone else's baby!!  They had the decision to make about whether or not to continue with their pregnancy and they chose to!  Praise the Lord.  I am about half way through the book.  I have gotten to the part where they are now meeting the parents of the child she is carrying.  I cannot imagine this ever happening to me.  For one of our pregnancies I was only 6 weeks along when we lost it and for the second miscarriage I was 9 weeks along.  This may sound crazy, but I feel like I bounded with those babies, so to carry one full term, deliver it and hand it over to someone else would have broken my heart beyond words!  The lady in the book was crushed knowing that the doctors told her for her health she should never be pregnant again.  The last baby she would carry and birth wasn't even hers.  The husband and wife end up hiring a surrogate mother to carry her last embryos in hopes to get more children...children that they prayed for and dreamed of.

Well, the other day I wrote in my facebook status about this book and one of my newer friends here commented back that the family from the book would be on the Today show that morning!! WHAT?  Seriously?  I read that comment at about 7:15am and quickly ran upstairs to our TV and started recording the show (thank God for DVR).  While Josiah was napping I figured I would just fast forward some and see if I started recording it in time!  Ten minutes into my recording they showed up on my TV screen!  I couldn't believe it!!!  Not only was I reading the book, but now I could meet this family on TV!!  They were there with all of their children...including 3 month old TWIN girls that were brought into this world by the surrogate mother using their last embryos!  The Lord blessed them for their faithfulness! What a blessing!!!!

I truly believe that the LORD has had this occur in my life.  The fact that I started reading this book when I did and then have the family be on television and I actually got to watch it is NO COINCIDENCE...it is a DIVINE APPOINTMENT!!  I am SO grateful for this book, for my friend, Jackie, sending it to me and for the Lord using it as such an encouragement and blessing in my life.

Tree of Thankfulness

A couple of weeks ago Josiah and I took on a craft.  We did a little each day for three days.  The first day we printed out some leaves, I cut them (he tried to cut some..those got demolished, but at least he tried) and we colored them together.  That took about 2 of the days.  Then we talked about things we were thankful for.  We want to teach Josiah to be grateful for things that he has and a perfect time to teach it is during the Thanksgiving season.  He has also been extremely interested in the leaves around the neighborhood.  Each day that we walk he has noticed them changing colors and falling without me telling him anything.  He always asks me why and so I explain that we are changing seasons and leaves change colors and fall.  He is so interested in it and I am proud of him for his awareness of the things that go on around him.  He notices everything!  On day two of making this Tree of Thankfulness (that is what we decided the name would be), after coloring the rest of the leaves we went on a little hunt around the neighborhood to find the perfect "tree" (aka branch made to look like a tree).  We came home and finished our tree by punching holes in the leaves (Josiah loved doing this) and then we put strings on each leaf and hung it on our tree.  I finished it up by putting it into a glass vase with some red glass balls in the bottom to weigh it down.  This project was completely FREE and totally FUN!!  Josiah will now point to his tree and ask what does the "lellow (or another color) leaf say mommy?"  Here are some of the things that Josiah said he was thankful for:
          *God
          *Daddy
          *Mommy
          *Dakota and Sequoia
          *our car
          *Family (he started by naming them individually, but I talked him into just having one for everyone...we could quickly fill the tree with that one)
          *Food (and then he wanted two separate ones for Grapes and Apples - lol...I guess according to him those do not fall under the food category)
          *Toys
          *Church
          *Friends (and then he started naming his friends so we wrote those names on the one leaf)
          *Water
And many more.

I hope to do something like this each year with him.  It is important to teach your child gratefulness and this was a fun way to do it.  Enjoy the pictures that I took of him after we completed our craft.

Everything - Tim Hughes

God in my living
There in my breathing
God in my waking
God in my sleeping

God in my resting
There in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking

Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything

God in my hoping
There in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting

God in my laughing
There in my weeping
God in my hurting
God in my healing

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me the hope of glory
You are everything

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me the hope of glory
Be my everything

BE MY EVERYTHING...there is just something about this song that brings me to me knees probably more than any song I have heard.  For some reason, I cannot get it out of my head.  I planned on cleaning the bathrooms today while Josiah napped (I already chopped up the vegetables for dinner), but I felt the Lord/Holy Spirit wanting me to hear the song again.  Josh would probably actually be impressed that I was able to google it and put the link on my blog without any help!  

The first time I heard this song (the lyrics are above and I encourage you to read them) was in our church in Columbia.  I remember liking it and enjoyed hearing and singing it.  Yesterday we sang it again and for some reason I had tears in my eyes as the Holy Spirit was just tugging at my heart.  Isn't it amazing how we can hear a song at one point in our lives and it doesn't mean much, but in another time/year of our lives mean so much?  We have been talking about the Holy Spirit in church and with our small group and I know for a fact it was the Holy Spirit telling me and teaching me something.  I want the Lord to be MY EVERYTHING...right down to the little things about my day.  I want to have a heart for the Lord in everything I do (including things that seem silly for Him to be apart of - He wants to be apart of those things) every single day.  I want HIM to be apart of my hopes, my dreams,  the things I laugh about, cry about...just everything!  As I wait for the Lord to show me things about my life, my future, my child and future children...I want Him to be my everything.  I want Him to continue to show me how to be a wife and a mother!  I have the best two people to be a wife and mother to!  He knows what is best for everyone.  He knows you better than you know yourself.  He knows your strengths, your weaknesses and your desires.  I pray that I will include God in my "everything."  

Confession

I know by the title of this blog you may think it is something serious...it isn't...just being silly.  Recently Josh and I have been really sticking to our budget and for the first time in our 8 year marriage we are taking a set amount of money out twice a month for just each of us to spend on whatever we may want.  We each get $25 a paycheck (so $50 a month) to buy something for ourselves.  That means if we want to go out to lunch with a friend, buy Starbucks (I get hot chocolate from there...Josh gets coffee), buy a book, music, clothes...whatever we want to buy for us.  I know Josh started this because I have a HARD time buying stuff for myself.  I never want to spend money on me.  Last paycheck with some of the money I bought a long shirt from Target that I have had my eye on for a while...it was originally $19.99, but I got it for $4.98!!!  (I never pay full price for anything).  I used the rest of it to go to Chick-Fil-A with a friend and bought myself a hot chocolate from Starbucks.  I don't know why it is so hard for me to spend money on myself, but I am grateful to Josh for starting this for us.  When we talked about "our personal cash" last pay period, we both admitted that it is so much harder to spend cash then it is to just swipe our debit card.  Now at the start of a pay period we take out the allotted amount of cash for haircuts, our spending money and entertainment (eating out/movies (which we rarely ever see a movie n the theater...way too expensive/ice cream).  It is really a good habit to get into!!  When the cash is gone...it's gone!

So, that brings me to my CONFESSION.  For a few months now I have been really getting tired
 of carrying one of my many Vera Bradley bags.  If you know me, you know that I have a lot of them collected over 8 years...mostly gifts for Birthdays or Christmas.  I have been a committed Vera Bradley customer - even went to the Vera Bradley outlet sale in Indiana last year with my friend, Lauren, who lives there.  That was a really fun experience.  Never saw so many Vera Bradley bags in one place...being sold and the people there that were carrying one!  It was nuts.  The line to get into the sale was insanely long and filled with women who were carrying their favorite purse.  I have Vera Bradley's purchased from all different states...my first one came from NY when the doctor's office I worked at gave me one as a going away gift.  I also have bags that were purchased in South Carolina, Georgia, Alaska and Tennessee.  Craziness.  Over the past few months I have been looking when I go out at different places (I am not a shopper, so I don't go out much).  The other night we went to JC Penney after an early dinner to get Josiah some warm pj's and I looked while we were there.  I think I was cracking Josh up because I kept telling him all of my purse rules before I buy one.  The purse has to have two straps just long enough for the bag to fit right under my arm (I hate long straps), has to have a zipper to close, must have several pockets for organization and must be able to stand up on its own.  I hate bags that just fall over when you put them down and then all of your stuff moves all around.  Yesterday, I wanted to take a look at Kohl's.  Josiah and I went out early in the morning for a quick check since I had been looking online and had a 15% off coupon.  I found a purse!!!  It is a Nine & Co. bag that was originally $50 that I walked away paying $25.03 for - my exact spending money for this pay period!  I am so excited.  It fits all of my rules.  I put all of my stuff in it to make sure I liked it, left the tag on it and carried it around the house a little yesterday just to make sure!  Josh and I meet for lunch after Josiah's gymnastics on Tuesday's so when he saw me carrying the purse he immediately said that I must like it since I cut the tags off.  Not many husbands would notice their wife's purse!  It is the little things in life that make me happy!  I am a bag lover - always have been.  So, I am sorry Vera Bradley...I am not done carrying your bag, but I just need a break from the patterns and enjoy my plain black purse!