She's a big girl now!

Yesterday was a milestone in the family. Miss Em turned 18. She's legal. She is a woman. As if she wasn't at 4 years old. She has always had the confidence of a 35 year old. Her wisdom exceeds her years. I can only imagine what God has in store for her. She is so diligent to follow the way the Lord has for her. He has made her strong with an amazing ability to lead.

Her personality. Looking through pics for her senior add reminded me that she was more serious than her friends. Not that she wasn't having fun, but her idea of fun was more on the "Ethel" side than the "Lucy" side. She was the one in control. I remember Andi and I watching as she an Ans were part of the "GO TRIBE" spirit team. One the "i", one the "b". We called them the Math spirit team. Very calculated moves and calculated cheers. (Notice we did not call them the Spelling spirit team. If they lined up wrong, well, "bi"...)

Her beauty. Her senior pictures are breathtaking. Dark hair. Dark eyes. And that beautiful skin. Then, there is the beauty that spills over from the inside. She is very loving and kind.

Her outlook on life. Em chooses to look for the good in the situation. She chooses to find happiness and to laugh. She chooses to go where happy people are. She chooses to lead instead of follow. She chooses to work hard at something instead of watching others.

So many wonderful blessings these past 18 years. Now, she is planning for college and excited about her future. Loving every minute with friends and family. She has come into her own. No more shadows. She has a name for her self. One of respect and admiration. Happy Birthday, Baby Girl. I love you.

Happy Mother's Day!

To my best friends I say HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! What in the world would my children do without you. Jenny, from the day our boys were in second grade your home has been a home-away-from-home for Randall. We always said we were sending him to Camp Smith. He experienced great wonders there. He learned that mountains and fences could be climbed with the leadership of a true friend. Nothing to fear but lots to laugh about. Randall and Levi figured it out as they went. Not always the best way but the most fun way. And Emily, found a forever friend in Lacey. Lacey taught her that bossing Cody was not only their duty but their God given right. Poor Cody. To this day Emily cherishes her time in your home.

Andi, you have done so much for my children. They love meals at your home and the fun you allow them to have. Riding horses or mules, playing pool, playing rook, and swimming. Emily and Ansley have giggled, laughed, and cried over everything from bodily functions to muddin' in the pasture, and the heartbreak that boys cause. Some of the best times ever were the "locusts" nights with rook games going on and Randall and Levi being challenged by Sam, Randy, and Keith.

We have a wonderful life. Our friends have seen to that. The time at St. George Island. Cody being part of the Yoo-Hoo Tribe. A deserted beach reserved just for us. More Rook. Jigsaw puzzles. Madeia - "Lock it down, Clink, Clink". Homemade Ice Cream on Sunday afternoons and the sound of the kids coming home after a movie. Ready to eat more, of anything.

So to you two ladies, have the best of days. Put your feet up. Let your hair down. Enjoy the day with your families. I love you.

Prom 2009

I love these pictures of Cody and Taylor!

Can't you just hear Cody saying, "I am the Man!"

Buzzed

A bit more about the girls... Well, bees can be bought in a package which is a small box of bees and a queen that you "install" in a hive or you can buy a nuc. I got a nuc which is 4 frames of bees that are already established with their queen and laying eggs. You take the 4 frames and put them into a hive. They should be able to produce a decent amount of honey the first year. I was so nervous when I took them out of the temporary box and put them into the hive. The bad part is they are able to sense when you are nervous or upset and much more likely to sting. I wore a bonnet, cotton gloves, and jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt with Velcro straps on my jean legs. I was really pleasantly surprised at how non-aggressive they were. So far they are behaving like sweet-hearts.

Busy as a bee...

Well, I'm officially in the bee business. I went to McDonough, Georgia yesterday evening after work and picked up my girls. I got home after 10:30 so I couldn't do anything with them until this afternoon. I left work a little early and came home and "installed" the little ladies in their new hive. I have to admit I was a bit nervous but I didn't ever feel like one was going to sting me. So now they are hard at work.

Beautiful, beautiful, Emily

Deneta you have a daughter who is beautiful inside and out. Thank you so much for letting us rag-tag bunch of Selmans share your lives. We love you all bunches and bunches. Emily made us all proud tonight.

Hey! Yes it's me : )

Hey guys! Sorry to be such a slacker. I love your posts! It's so neat to get to catch up on you two! Andie I totally understand how you feel about knowing I am soooo blessed and still finding myself whining about someone or something. But to be honest I never hear you complain about your work! However, between the three of us, when we talk shop, good or bad, we are NOT whining! We are simply processing the emotions and stressors and possible solutions...yeh that's what we are doing.

I don't know about you guys but I love my ride home at night now that it is still daylight. Seeing the different shades of green showing on the mountains and the fields as they come back to life, the beautiful flowering trees and bushes, the clear blue sky after the spring rains...is all so indescribably gorgeous! His creation truely speaks of His greatness.

My niece and nephew from Ghana will be coming home soon!! I am so happy for them and my sister. She and I have always wanted to adopt and I am glad she is getting the chance to live that dream. I am sure the fact that our Mom-mom and Grandpa were both orphans, and our Grandma lost her Daddy when she was very young has put the desire in our hearts to help children who have no family. I can't imagine my children being all alone in the world and it breaks my heart that so many children will never know the love of a Mama's hug. Hugs are so easy to give.

I've decided to take my old position in surgery back. I'll be managing the pre/post op and GI lab. Dr. Becky Lowery is now the Administrator over all surgical services and she asked me to come back. I have alot of respect for her and know she will support me in making some of the changes that are needed. I won't be in the GI-call rotation this time, though, and that should make the hours more tolerable.

Cody drove to Marietta by himself last week! Then Jonah drove down Friday and spent the night too. I can not believe they are old enough to travel on 75 by themselves! Lacie was sweet to invite them, they had a blast. Cody stayed up till 3-4 every morning. He is sure college is going to be wonderful : ) Keith and I think he may be at GHC for quite a while...

Brittany graduates on May 9th!!! Yay!!! Levi is still loving working with his Daddy : ) Our grand-puppies are getting so big!! Levi has started teaching Jake some commands like sit and shake. He can fetch too!

Well that about catches us up, except for the story about Keith dropping his cell phone in the bottom of the oil pan of his cutter, yeh, it didn't dry out too well with all that oil. So he takes it to Verizon to get another phone and asks if they can download his numbers from the old one. They said to take it home and let it dry out really well and MAYBE if it could power back on they could download them. So, as he is driving down the road he has the idea to hold it out the window to help it dry out...You guessed it, he dropped it on Riverside Parkway. Levi said, "You can't make fun of me anymore for breaking my phone(s)." But I'm sure we will : )

Love you both!
Jenny

Time really flies!

Randall #37

Saturday was Randall's last Berry College home game. The senior day recognition was nice. It just blow's my mind how fast time flies. I remember him playing Tee Ball, Coach Pitch, Live Pitch, Levee Ball, High School Ball and now, College Ball is winding down. It's been a trip! Lasting friendships made that bring the fondest of memories. We've watched baseball through some of the hottest days in Kenner, Louisiana and one of the coldest at Lee University in Tennessee. I've watched as he hit home runs and felt his frustration when he struck out. Knowing that all the scenarios in between taught him life lessons that God would use in his future to bring out the man God wants him to be.

Dad has coached him every step of the way.

Miss Em is one of his most loyal fans and always will be.

Hello, hello, Jenny are you out there?

How high's the water Mama?

Sam and I enjoyed the calm after the storm this evening. The mules decided we needed a little company. Sam spent some time looking for arrow heads where he had torn up some stumps. He was successful in his venture. I walked down to the "little" creek that runs through part of our pasture, to say the least it is full.

Taking time to appreciate home

What a beautiful morning it is!! Finally, the temperature feels like spring again and the birds are going nuts around our bird feeder. I think the movie Bambi calls it "twitterpated".

Being at home for the past week has opened my eyes to the incredible space God has given to me and my family. We have a beautiful yard full of flowering trees and space to spread out when kids come to play. The woods beside the house are just deep enough for young boys to imagine they are deep a jungle but safe enough for a little girl to skip through and pretend she is in the magic garden. The tree that holds the tree house is the one that was tangled in a muscadine vine and Randy thought would never make it. But now it shades the tree house and a swing that overlooks the backyard. We have sat in the swing many times and dreamed about how we wanted to change our house or what life will be like when the kids move on. We have worked to get grass to grow and fussed when mowing the lawn took too long.

Inside our home we have photos of family members. Those we still see quite often and those who have gone on to be with Jesus. We have family furniture that was passed down from home to home and trinkets that remind us of places we have been. There are clothes in abundance in every room (not where they oughta be) to remind us that we always have something to wear. In the kitchen, the pantries are FULL. No one goes hungry around here, just look at us - teehee. In this house the temperature is always comfortable and the roof doesn't leak. Everywhere you look there are modern technological conveniences that make life easier.

The house is so quiet until late in the evening and then it starts. "How was your day", "Did you pass your test", "Was work rough today", "What's for supper", "Can I have money for gas", "Guess what", "Who did that" (this one gets asked over and over :) and "Will you be at the game tomorrow". The answers are usually familiar. Answers that we trust and rely on.

When everyone is in bed. It is peaceful. No fear. No anxiety. Just sleep.

The greatest blessing of all is that God allowed me the opportunity to see this for myself. Funny thing is that it took surgery to make me stay in this one place long enough to see the awesomeness of God's provision...right here at home.

The Lord is my portion; I have promised to keep Your words. I sought Your favor with all my heart; be gracious to me according to Your word. Psalm 119:57-58 NASB.

Suck it up and count your blessings...

Do either of you ever find yourself engaging in a behavior that you cannot tolerate in others. I do. Unfortunately rather more often than I care to admit. Lately it has been whining...yep, throwing my own personal pity party. How can I get so caught up in the day to day grind that I fail to see how truely blessed I am? Somehow I manage to though, with frightening regularity. Things have been rather tough at work and instead of seeing it as a challange and an opportunity to grow I have just been feeling oh so sorry for myself. I should be ashamed...and I am. I have taken on the responsibility of the Diabetic Treatment Center and while it does increase my work load it has really been such a priviledge to work with the ladies in the department (who are truly an amazing group). Plus it has opened up a whole new clinical field for me to immerse myself in and learn about which I truly enjoy. Another area of my job I have been allowing to stress me out is the task of covering House in rotation with the Nurse Managers. Wow, what an eye opener. Once again I have only been dewlling on the negative aspects of this new role. It is totally different from what I usually do. It is hard not to worry about every little decision I make. It is a job in which you are so sledom able to please everyone (that part is very hard for me). But if I put all that aside and look at what this experience has truly done for me the positive far outweigh the negative. I have learned a whole new side of the hospital. I have been able to work more closely with some of the amazing nurses we have at the hospital. And most of all I have really grown as a manager.
How can I go though life with all the blessings God has poured out on me and still manage to feel sorry for myself? I have a really great job where I work with wonderful people. I have the most amazing husband in the world. I have a sweet loving daughter. I have a warm comfortable home. I live in a country where I am free to worship God openly. And while I did not grow-up with sisters who share my blood, as an adult I have been blessed with two beautiful sisters of the heart.
So next time you ladies hear me start to whine about how tough I have it just say, "Suck it up and count your blessings."

It ain't easy!!!

Okay, my friends want to stay in touch and they decide blogging is a good way to do so. The account is set up one week before my "H" and "T". I am recovering at home and decide that I can learn to blog while I have the time. It is amazing how lost I got trying to set up this account. Finally, my daughter comes in to save the day. That's her purpose in life...to save the day. Sad thing was that I already had an account and was getting really upset at the person with the same username...uh, me.

I have had a very interesting week. My family is incredible. My husband has been extremely wonderful to me as I recuperate. He literally waited on me hand and foot all week. Em fell in line right behind him to allow him to go out of town to a baseball game last Saturday. They have cooked, cleaned, did the laundry, laughed, cried and held my hand. R and B (my son and his lady) provided comic relief while baking cakes.

My dear friends Andie and Jenny were there for me when everybody needed to be elsewhere. I have to say it is the best feeling in the world to have these ladies in my life. It is wonderful to know that they are just a phone call away.

I can't say that these past few days were the easiest in my life but they definitely confirmed God's promise that He would never leave me nor forsake me. He came to my bedside and held my hand in the form of a loving husband, adoring children, caring family members and 2 crazy ladies I am so proud to have as friends. Love you guys!

Old Married Couple

Well, Sam and I have just spent another quiet evening together. It is so strange just being the two of us. Most days I come home put something on for supper and spend a little time working in the yard. We eat supper together at the table and talk about our respective days. When we have finished piddling around we sit in the living room and watch some TV. Very much the old married couple. I have just been amazed at how quickly we have adjusted to our "empty nest". I won't say that I don't miss Ansley...I do very much. But it is kinda fun being just the two of us. We talk more and have truly grown closer. Speaking of missing Ansley I will be in need of some major support when she goes to Ecuador. She will be gone almost the entire month of June. She is really looking forward to this semester being over and having a couple weeks to relax before she leaves. Brittany Stephens told her last week that she is not going to LSU next year. She has applied to Shorter for the summer and my understanding is that she is going to go to there next year and then transfer to a bigger school the year after. Ansley is so excited to have her close for a while. I look forward to seeing her more too.
Oh well Ansley just called and Sam asked, "Who is this?" He's being so mean...classic Sam.

And the beat goes on...

I finally finished the curtains for the dining room! I started them a year and a half ago : ( I am such a procrastinator. Keith put them up for me. It feels good to get that detail finished. I just talked to Lacie, she is having lots of fun hanging out and playing games with friends. She cooked supper for some of them last night and they played card games and stuff like that. She had interviews yeterday for a possible RA position. It looks like there are 62 applicants and 22 jobs. All 22 RA's from this year re-applied, and there were 40 additional applicants. So, we'll see.

Cody was playing basketball at New Armuchee yesterday and hurt himself. He went up for a lay-up and hit the wall with the right side of his face. It gave him quite a jolt, he was very sleepy, had a bloody nose, and headache for a while. But he never lost his memory or slurred his words, etc. I think he's gonna have a black eye from it, too. But other than that, he had a really good time. He's glad the graduation tests are finished, I'll be glad when the results are in : ) Right now he is playing some kind of racing game on X-box. His cost to the state from damages is >$111,000 and he has 26 police cars chasing him...not sure what the goal of this game is. Oh, he just showed me his score, it actually keeps up with how many police cars he rammed, how long the chase lasted...living vicariously through the X-Box.

Levi and Britt have some beautiful flowers beginning to bloom in their yard! Tulips and flowering bushes, and a tulip-tree. Their yard has puddles, it's such a low spot any way. Brittany finished the spare room as an office for Levi. It is so pretty! It has a very out-doorsy feel and he has his deer head and bass hanging on the walls. They went to the mountains last weekend and Keith and I "puppy-sat", the puppies, they are getting really big. I took them outside Sunday morning, I had my bathrobe on, and both puppies and Bonnie cold-nosed my legs! Yuck.

I thought of a way to store our pool-tools, chemicals, and toys without having to build a shed! We are going to build an "L" shaped bench on the back porch and the poles/tools will fit perfect in the long bench under the kitchen window and the toys/floats will fit in short end. So many ideas, so little money and time...

Well, I tried to load pictures of Cade's Cove but they wouldn't load for some reason.

Question

By the way what in the world are you doing up at 12:30 am on a work night? Can you not sleep? I myself usually have about 2 nights a week I participate in a stare-down with the ceiling. I put it down to "pre"menopause...or maybe its just Sam twitching his legs around.

Learning Process

Well my Otter friend you are determined to drag the three of us kicking and screaming into the technology age. So here we go. Blogging will definitely be a learning process for me. I think this will be a wonderful way to keep in touch with each other. Thought I would try to add a couple pictures of Sam and Ansley. So far this process seems pretty straight forward. I love the both of you and I look forward to this new way for us to keep up and share our lives with each other.

What is this???

Here we are in the Information Age with instant communication all around us. Cell phones, text messaging, "social networking" web pages all ready and available to communicate with anyone you could possible want to communicate with. An Otter's dream come true! So I tried MySpace...yuck. Next attempt at communication in the information age was on FaceBook...again~yuck. I tried a blog, but it didn't inspire me cause I was talking to myself...and me and I. And we can be really boring when we are not with our friends : ). So....I looked into the blogging thing again from a different angel and found out that we (that's you two, Lucy and Ethel) can have a blog with multiple authors.

What I am trying to accomplish is to find a way we can share what is on our mind, be it deep contemplation or slap-stick comedy, with each other when it is convenient. I get so lonely for friendly communication, but hate the phone, can't text, and we all work 40+ hours a week, and have immediate and extended family obligations. So when do we have time to connect with each other? A blog will allow us to write things as posts when it is convenient for us, and the others can read it and send comments back at their convenience. With this blog we can write notes, share stories, lift each other up...it can be anything we want it to be. It can be public or private, our choice, we just make the changes. And it can have up to 100 authors so we could invite others to join us if we wanted to.

What do you guys think? Does this sound like something you would like to try? It could be like our own private "FaceBook". The way this one is set up, the three of us can all post on the same blog, so you won't have to start your own. Let me know what you think. Love ya!

A Place for Us!

This blog is dedicated to my friends, Andie and Deneta. We have shared so many moments in the last 20 or so years. We have cried together, fussed together and laughed till we were out of breath. Thankfully the laughter has WAY outweighed the crying! I hope this blogspot is a place we can all post to, whether it is pictures, thoughts, devotions, jokes, whatever is on our mind! We are all three venturing into some unchartered territory in our lives and, praise Jesus, we won't be going alone. I love you girls! I hope we can include others from our circles of friends to post here as well. I don't know if this will work, but i think it will. Love you girls!