Crochet Me Crazy

Well, Alison is soooo excited because she is getting to carry the American Flag at the opening of the rodeo next weekened. This is what she has always wanted to do. She will walk, then trot, then lope, then finally run around the arena to the Lee Greenwood song "God Bless the USA". She'll carry the flag in the 4th of July parade too. It's going to be a very busy week.

Here's a few pictures from horse club this week. Her horse Princess is doing amazing this year. Alison won first place in cloverleaf barrels and straights, then she got 2nd place in poles.

Two weeks after he has been released from jail has brought us to the conclusion that no real change has been made and my son is going to have learn from the hard knocks of life from now on. My hope was to help him through this but he has made it clear through his actions that he is only interested in doing what he wants regardless of the consequences. He started a new job today that we found for him but I seriously doubt he will keep it and if he does, I will be happy about that. However, I won't be prodding him to get up and get to work on time. I think he's planning on getting married or moving in with his girlfriend. Whether he manages to do that or not...from now on, we will have a landlord/tenant living relationship with my son and I am releasing him to the consequences of his decisions. This morning I wrote up a contract of what we expect if he's going to live here as a tenant in our camper. I think its a very generous contract...He is not required to give us notice if he choses to find other living arrangements. He just will be required to pay rent until he has told us he has vacated the premises and after that he has 60 days after that to remove his belongings. The rent includes his electricity, water, trash service, laundry service for his clothes only, and he will even be allowed to eat our food. I won't be doing laundry service for his girlfriend or her son, nor will they be eating our food. He is allowed to watch our Tv but he is not allowed to use our Tv as a babysitting device and he must babysit on his own premises and not in our house. He is required to pay his own cell phone bill which will be due when our bill is due or else we will suspend service to his phone until he pays it. It's very simple and straight-forward. If he fails to comply with the contract, then we will have the right to evict him. My only other job is to pray for him. I'm giving this one over to God.

We've actually had the kittens over a week now but I've been preoccupied with other stuff to post.
A couple of weeks ago, our landlord lady comes over with these two kittens in her hands. She basically, dropped the kittens off to us, said "we had to take them...they can just live outside" and ran off with me standing there holding these two kittens. So here they are... after the shock wore off, I'm getting attached to the little cuties. They stayed inside for a few nights because I was worried about my dogs getting them. Now they are staying outside and holding their ground with the dogs. They are fun and cute to watch.




Just for fun, here is a couple of pictures I took of Alison yesterday with her beloved Princess...

On a brighter note -- Alison got home from her beach trip with the youth group.

Alison got stung by jellyfish FOUR times while she was there! This was the first....


Phoebe got stung twice. Apparently, almost everyone was stung by jellyfish. I don't think I would have been back in the water! They said they still had a good time but that they were ready to come home. The two week long road trip they were going to take next month with the youth group is out. It's just too long of a time to be gone.

There are times that I feel like I am being stabbed and stabbed repeatedly in my heart but I am just laying here and not dying. My son almost got kicked out a couple of nights ago because of his attitude. The whole attitude is over the girlfriend now and he is not looking for a job or taking care of things he needs to because she's got him running around with her every day. We hate to kick him out because he it will end up pushing him to her but at the same time, he can't live here with this same attitude. I have banned her from our property so now she just comes and gets him. Banning her from our property, really made them mad! I feel like she is a big obstacle in him getting a job and doing what he needs to do. She has him brainwashed that he owes something to her son. He babysits him while she works every day. So, he has settled down a little bit since he almost had to leave. We are going to write down what he has to do to stay here and he is either going to have to follow it or leave. I've decided I'm just giving this whole girlfriend relationship problem to God. I am not discussing her with him anymore. She needs to stay away from my house...he needs to get a job and respect our house and what he does outside of that, it's in God's hands. Tomorrow, my husband plans on taking him to look for jobs. I hope that once he gets a job, maybe that will help.

My son's attitude has gotten worse and worse since we got out of jail. I don't know how we will be able to let him live him live here if he's going to refuse boundaries and requirements of him. He has done nothing but run around and talk on the phone with his girlfriend since he got out of jail. He has bothered to call the guy about the job a couple of times but I don't think he's talked to him. I finally got him to return a chain saw he had borrowed to someone after bugging him about it for days. It doesn't look good. With his level of irresponsibility and immaturity, I don't know if he's going to make it through this. My heart is breaking.


On a happier note....my 16 year old daughter got her permit yesterday!

We are doing parent taught driver's ed so now we begin the driving portion of the class! Yay! Fun! She is going to be a good driver though. I have let her drive a little bit on back roads and she even does very good with the manual transmission.

I tell you what. Children certainly bring you the most Joy in your life but on the same token, they can bring you the most pain.

Life has given me some blows but nothing hurts more than the anger, disappointment, pain, anguish, worry you feel when your 19 year old son is sitting in a jail cell. My son is in serious trouble. We were NOT going to bail him out and we let him stay in jail for 2 nights. It was actually the officers at the jail that influenced me to bail him out on Saturday. I had an officer pull me aside after I visited on Saturday. They were going to be moving him the next morning to the next county which is a bigger jail. They said we didn't want him in there with those other guys and that that might do him more harm than good. No one seemed to think he should be going there. We had reservations but we did it. My son said that several officers were coming in and telling him he needed to bail himself out if we weren't going to. My son confessed to the crime, apologized and had a good attitude the whole time. The officers said that he told them that he was raised better than this. My son called us crying and wrote us a lot of letters from jail. He is saying that he knows he has to change and needs our help. He needs God's help -- please pray for my son. We are in for a long road ahead with this. He will most likely get probation but that won't be easy either. He will be going to church with me every Sunday now and a man in my Sunday school class has offered him a job. He's going to have to drive a ways but the man is a strong christian and has been through some of the same stuff in his younger years. I would love to get some distance between him and this girl he is dating as well. She is just a complication in him getting his life right. So...all of you that pray...please pray for my son and for us!

We started out thinking this would be the first week of rides at the stables but soon learned on Saturday that it is not. We had one ride and then a day of sitting and being bored. I told "B" I thought we were wasting our time so we decided to just call it off until next week which was a good call because the week has ended up being rather uneventful. Not many tourists out here yet. I'm sure they will be coming this next weekend.

So....in any case, we have had a nice relaxing and fun week of summer this week. The timing is perfect because we had some friends out camping here this week. A boy that the kids met years ago at Garner and we have become friends with the family. The kids have been getting together all week and we had them all over on Sunday for dinner. Tonight Alison brought him and his friend to youth with her and then they all (Michael and his girlfriend, Alison, Jace and his friend) all went over to the cabin where they are staying and are having a fire and swimming at the river. Ah....watching my teenagers leave in a car is a weird feelling.

Tomorrow, we get Serenity for a couple of nights. I suspect we'll be at the river again tomorrow. (It's our friends last day here before they go home) I'm sunburned already so I'm going to have to lather myself up with sunscreen in order to be able to face another brutal day of the sun. And then, on Friday night I'll have Serenity AND Alison's friend, Phoebe. She's staying with us this weekend too because her parents are going out of town. We'll also be working horse rides this weekend.

Thursday night is the first night of HORSE CLUB!! A highlight of Alison's summer.....should be fun! Praying for safety for all those kids on those horses though!

Here is the display of my items in a local store. Proceeds are going towards Alison and Phoebe's summer youth trip in July.