Living In the Moment

November 13, 2012... It's been a VERY long time since I last posted! There's a reason why. In October my 90 year old Daddy fell and broke his hip. Three days later he had surgery. The pain meds really affected him badly and things just went downhill from there. Meanwhile, one of my brothers who's going through a bad divorce had to have serious back surgery and my Mom's health (she has Parkinson's) has deteriorated a lot too. My other brother Tony was trying hard to work full time and hold it all together. So I went up to Northern Virginia. Since then I've been gone almost the entire time except for 10 days around Thanksgiving until about 2 weeks ago. Christmas was just awful except that my wonderful husband Steve came to visit and I got to visit with my daughter and her husband and two of my grandsons for a couple of days. Dad's had seizures, gall bladder surgery, an E-Coli bacterial infection which put him in isolation for weeks and a couple of less serious falls. He's been in either the rehabilitation center or the hospital since he fell. I spent most of the time in the hospital with him when he was there while Bill recuperated and Tony worked. Dad and I both had a really hard time dealing with the isolation incident which lasted for over 2 weeks! It was sheer torture and was horrible!!! But somehow we've made it through together! Dad's mental state never recovered and he has very little short term memory. And right now he's fighting pneumonia. Yet God has been faithful and Daddy has made it through it all with strength, grace and sometimes even a little happiness! Bill is doing better and has returned to work. Mom's health has stabilized and Tony and I are still sane. The only explanation I have for how we all made it through is Jesus and our faith in Him! But MAN was it TOUGH!!! So tough in fact that I came up with a new saying. "It is what it is and we just have to deal with it!"

So I finally came home after being gone for 63 days straight and I don't know what to do with myself. It took several days for me just to unwind a bit. And then the My Scraps and More design team hosted a "One Little Word" crop!!! I started out thinking "This is PERFECT timing! I'll be able to do a couple of projects to help me get back into the scrappy groove." I ended up completing all 13 projects!!!!! I was so proud and happy! And then they announced the random draw winner... IT WAS ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God is so GOOD! :) My package should be here in a few days but I won the Fancy Pants "Time for Spring" AND the "Little Sprout" collections!!!!!

Now... You might want to see the 13 pages I created... But SOME of them will have to wait for reveals here because I pulled out several of my Kreaxions punches and I'll be sharing them later. However, I will share one very special page. The challenge was to use our own One Little Word. I struggled with mine and it ended up being the last project I completed. And then my friend Bev and I were chatting on Skype and she started talking about Today. It suddenly came to me! With everything that my family and I have been through the past few months I realized that we have been living in THE MOMENT. None of us are promised tomorrow... And there were times when we didn't know what would happen in the next few minutes, hours, days, etc. So I chose the word MOMENT. And this is the page I created...

I used Tim Holtz's embossed Grungeboard letters, covered them with silver alcohol ink and then colored the embossing with a red colored pencil. The background pattern is some VERY old Basic Grey paper and I just cut the design away and put it on the background cardstock. I added some fun quotes and some pretty brads and there's my page! And I had FUN making it!
So here I am not knowing what the next phone call will bring. But for now I'm living in the MOMENT. And whatever the next MOMENT brings, I'll deal with it. Jesus will help me. My family will help me and when I can scrap that will be my sanity time... Happy Scrapping!!!