Hagler Happenings

Like it or not, she’s coming.

2012-02-22T22:20:00Z

It finally happened.

Blake lost his tooth.

You can't even see the adult tooth behind the hole.

It was kind of funny. We had just picked Lucas & Morgan up from school. The kids were actually quiet (a movie was playing), and very calmly Blake said, “Uhh…. Mom. Here’s my tooth. It just fell out.”

I looked back & he was handing me his tooth! …with blood running out of his mouth. I was so worried that he would freak out once he realized how much blood there was that a dropped the tooth between my seat & the center console! Grr…

Once home, I was able to retrieve the lost tooth after a few choice words, some scrapped knuckles, and the use of a flash light & a pair of tweeters.

(I also had visions of this happening to him. But nothing dramatic happened.)

I asked Blake if he had been wiggling it. He said he just pushed it with this tongue & it came out. It was THAT loose.

He made an immediate phone call to my mom. He knew she’d be the most proud of him! Then when we got home he grabbed the TouchPad & recorded this…

Later he & I wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy. It said

Dear Tooth Fairy,

Don’t come in Blake’s bedroom. His tooth is on the kitchen table. Please leave the money on the table, not his bedroom.

Thanks, Jill (Blake’s Mom)

This was our compromise, since he said that he didn’t want any money if she had to come in the house.

I had to lay down with him to get him to fall asleep.

And I’m not sure what time it was, but at some point during the night he made himself comfortable in our bed (which isn’t unusual on a normal night).

When we got up in the morning we found money where the tooth was the night before.

Blake still swears he heard her breathing in the middle of the night. That was NOT cool. I think I have him convinced that it was just Dad teasing him. Alex did no such thing, but it IS something Alex would do.

We’ll see how tooth #2 goes soon, since it’s permanent tooth is in behind it too.

Metal mouth.

2012-02-15T15:37:38Z

Yesterday Lucas got braces!

A bit of an exaggerated smile.

He really looks like a teenager now.

And I don’t like it.

He’s sore today saying, “I’m gonna lose a lot of weight since it hurts to eat.” This is NOT what my skinny child needs. I don’t think he believes me that the pain will be gone in a day or two.

I will say that he’s spent more time looking in the mirror than he ever has before. Ha!

Our 2012 Valentines.

2012-02-13T19:54:21Z

One of the very 1st things I repinned on Pinterest was this idea:

I really wanted to do this for Christmas with candy canes, but most of those cards went out via snail mail. I didn’t want to send out a bunch of crushed candy canes.

So Valentine’s Day seemed perfect since the kids hand deliver them to classmates.

When Alex saw this laying on the counter…..

….he said, “What is this picture of Lucas?” Morgan, with a roll of her eyes said, “He’s punching you, Dad.” Alex commented, “That’s what it looks like to me.”

Anyway, here’s how mine turned out:

stupid flash.

This was one task Morgan wanted to help with. Can you tell?

And the best part (in my opinion) is the kids didn’t need to write classmate’s names on them. We saved a ton of time!

But that didn’t stop Blake from doing just that. With only 10 in his class, he was done in no time.

One of these days I am going to make a Pinterest board just for things I’ve completed. And I’ll do a blog post about it too, of course.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s all you need to make these:

photo editing software. If you don’t have one, you can download Gimp. It’s free!
suckers. Mine were from Dollar Tree. 20 per bag for $1.
box cutter or x-acto knife
cutting board

It’s pretty self explanatory, right?

If you plan about a month ahead, you can have the photos shipped right to your door for cheap from Wal-Mart.

I ended up spending just as much as I would have for those everyone-has-the-same-kind-of valentine’s sold in stores. And these are much cuter.

*This is post # 601 for me! Holy Snikes!

Now you know.

2012-02-10T19:24:51Z

It has been forever & a day since I’ve played along with 5 Question Friday.

But I want to join in today. So here goes!

1. How often do you shave your legs in the winter?

Gah! My answer is a lot like Mama M’s… only when necessary.

Seriously. Why shave more?

(It makes me think of the song “Glory Days” by Bruce Springstein. As kids, we always changed the words to, “Hairy legs. They’ll pass you by. Hairy legs…”)

2. Valentine’s Day cards for your spouse: funny or romantic?

Valentine’s Day card? What’s that?

Just kidding. A card is usually all we get each other, and I normally go for funny. Romantic just isn’t our style.

3. What are you most looking forward to about spring?

It’s kind of weird… the 1st thing that came to mind was baseball!

I guess I’m excited to watch Lucas in the next league this year. Last year his team went 0-12, which I think every kid should experience at some point in their athletic careers. He quickly learned to work on personal bests within the team sport.

And with the new, MUCH needed changes the park district made for girl’s softball, I am very excited to see how the reorganized age groups fair. I asked Morgan how she would feel if I coached her team this year. Her response? “Uhhhh….” So we’re still thinking about that.

4. What’s your favorite way to pamper yourself?

Alone time or concerts. And since alone time is quite a bit cheaper than concert tickets, alone time is normally the activity of choice.

Dear Zac, I know you’ve missed me. But I promise I will see you at another concert soon. Love, Jill

And Jimmy, You know I will be there singing right along with you in the coming months. Please schedule Alpine Valley’s concert on a date that I have open. Thank you, Jill

5. Does your tax return go into savings or do you spend it instantly?

We put it straight into savings.

Then a few months later it goes straight to the county for property taxes. Boo!

An amazing teen.

2012-02-09T04:17:38Z

Tuesday night Effingham High School’s basketball team played Newton. During the game one of our (EHS) players, Nick, took a very hard fall.

Later that night Nick’s mother sent out an email to our church’s prayer chain.

The end of this almost had me in tears. I asked her if I could share this, hoping it will encourage all of us to be like Peyton.

Hi everyone…

First let me thank those of you who were praying for Nick this evening. As I write this, we are at home and D*** went to get him some food. He’s finally hungry. lol

If you didn’t know, Nick took a pretty hard fall at the basketball game tonight. He was knocked unconscious and as he started to come to, his body began to seize. This lasted for what seemed an eternity, but finally came to an end after a couple of minutes. 911 was called and he was transported to the ER via ambulance.

CT scans revealed no swelling and no bleeding (this is a good thing!). An x-ray of his shoulder revealed that nothing was broken or torn (again a really good thing because it was his pitching arm). We have to call tomorrow to get him scheduled for an MRI. This will show us the “little” things that the CT scan doesn’t pick up.

Right now he is very tired, hungry and incredibly sore. We will wake him every 2 hours tonight, and he will be unable to drive until we get the results from the MRI. Please pray for him as I know the next few days will be incredibly uncomfortable for him. Pray that the results of the MRI would be good.

Also pray for D*** and I as we help him. He tends to get really “cranky” when he’s injured. lol We praise God that he WALKED out of the ER tonight as we know that it could have been a very different story.

On a side note….. I would like to commend Peyton Wyatt. He was the one Nick was blocking when he lost his footing. Peyton and his family came to the ER after the game. Our basketball team was already there with Nick and it took tremendous courage for that 18 year old boy to walk into a room full of adversaries to let Nick know he was thinking of him.

It took even more courage for him to pray in front of them, us, Nick’s dad and step-mom, and Nick’s grandparents. I was blessed to see such a young man behave like a true Christian brother in Christ. Thank you Peyton, for reminding me that God truly is in EVERYthing…… even in the adverse moments, He shows up.

In His love,

Amy

Peyton actually attends our church. He’s a great athlete* & obviously a great Christian as well. I hope Lucas has the opportunity to hang out with him sometime.

What proud parents he must have!

*He recently became the all time high scorer (basketball) for Newton Community High School.

I kind of get it now.

2012-02-07T19:03:29Z

I think I figured out one reason Blake is so leery of the tooth fairy:

http://youtu.be/yCUfM0Z0mxU?t=1m6s

Yikes! That lady scares me.

He still hasn’t lost the tooth. As a matter of fact, he’s got another permanent tooth coming in now!

Still going!

2012-02-06T06:11:09Z

A few weeks ago I started this little running program.

And I’m proud to say I’ve stuck with it. I don’t beat myself up if I have to walk a little longer or if I skimp 10 seconds on the running here & there.

Week 3 was tough. By Friday I still had not “mastered” it, and I decided to do a “Week 3b” last week.

Monday went, well, bad. I didn’t even get through it. But I didn’t let it get me down. It was still more than I was doing a month ago, right?

By Wednesday (my next running day), I had a bit of a stomach bug and wasn’t about to try anything close to bouncing around. It wasn’t until Saturday that I was able to get back on the treadmill.

And I have to say that it wasn’t too bad! I got through it all with minimal thoughts of puking. #sweet

So today will be my 5th week at this whole running thing, but I will be doing Week #4.

And I’m pretty exciting about it, too. Only doing 4 sets sounds very doable at this point. MUCH better than 6 last week.

If I can keep my mind off of, “HOW MUCH LONGER?” I’ll do dandy. (I need to see if my stop watch can just beep at me after 5 minutes.)

Some of my distraction techniques have been watching HGTV, going through my squad’s Upward cheers in my head, & prioritizing my sewing orders. Or I think of this article my runner friend, Lena, sent me last week… the snot bit, in particular.

But what really pushes me through lately is thinking of Lori. She fought like a champ to live a few extra months with her kiddos & husband. So surely I can run a little bit longer, right?

I’m off to run 5 minutes, walk 2 minutes, and repeat ~~only~~ 4 times! (Funny… a month ago that would have sounded impossible to me.)

This couldn’t wait!

2012-02-01T22:37:55Z

I normally schedule posts to go live in the morning, but this is too big to wait.

Remember this post from January 18th?

Well I wanted to give you a heads up re: the donations for our friend.

I got $1350 worth of gas cards today!! As my friend suggested, I went to Burklands & ordered a small flower bouquet to be delivered probably tomorrow. Yay! The florist will put the 14 gas cards in among the flowers. That was their idea. Pretty cool, huh? I signed the card, “From lots & lots of prayer warriors”

The remaining money – approximately $100+ and more is trickling in – will be put in a card & given to them next week or so. Maybe we can sneak it to them at a Lightning game.

Thanks for donating & passing this on! Almost $1500 is AMAZING!

I started to keep record of everything coming in… like x number gave $20, and x number gave more than $50. But that quickly became impossible. Like when a teacher brought me a wad of cash & checks from coworkers; or when people kept handing me cash at a basketball game.

I do know that we gave them 13 $100 gas cards and one $50 gas card!

I loved being somewhere and someone would just walk up to me & hand me a $10 bill without saying a word. I knew exactly what it was for.

Other than this being completely anonymous, the best part is that I didn’t “advertise” much. I wrote 1 blog post, and put it on my Facebook wall twice.

The rest was all YOU!

YOU sent out e-mails.

YOU posted it to Facebook.

YOU did this. Way to go, good people of the world!

THANK YOU!!

PS: You can still give. Like I said above, I will put any remaining money in a card & get it to them on or around Valentine’s Day. Just click on that link up there for details.

Hodge-podge

2012-01-31T15:01:11Z

It’s been busy as usual around here, but I wanted to check in.

Nothing too major or life changing has been happening. However, I want to take a few minutes & jot down a few things.

~ Lucas is still doing well with Lightning. If he’d just be more a ball hog & get more aggressive he’d be the perfect player. I think that will come with age & confidence. In Sunday’s game, there was 1 second left and we were down by 1 point when Lucas got fouled. He made the first shot to tie the game! The other team called time out. When he went back to shoot, he missed (but the ball was 1/2 in THEN hit the rim & bounced out). Overtime is nothing to be ashamed about. We ended up losing.

~ Morgan had 2 mandatory cheerleading practices & had to miss her 2nd Upward game. She was SO sore!

~ Blake’s baby shark tooth is wiggly. Now he is obsessed/paranoid/OCD about the tooth fairy. We haven’t slept well the last 2 night because he claims he can hear her breathing or walking in the house. He hasn’t even lost the tooth yet! I’m thiiiis close to telling him that she’s not real.

~ Alex & I have done the 1st 3 weeks of Financial Peace University. It’s awesome!!

~ I requested Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership book from the library a few weeks ago, and it finally came in. It’s got me thinking, in a good way. I can’t wait to read more ~~and then re-read it~~. (PS: Libraries should only lend books to non-smoking households. This things reeks of cigarette smoke! Gag!)

~ I attended a free FaceBook seminar yesterday. It was really good. There were 300+ small businesses represented! FaceBook gave each of us a $50 advertising coupon. So of course I went right home & got mine all set up. It should be rolling out this afternoon. I set it up to show up on friends of people who already like Baby and the Beanstalk. There were a few other things mentioned that I want to put into practice, but I need Blake to leave me alone to actually think about what I’m doing.

~ Alex & I looked at a bigger house with more land for less money! But Alex didn’t like it. (boo)

~ I got my hair cut & colored, which is always good.

~ Speaking of hair, 2 girls in Morgan’s class got sent home with lice yesterday. I told Morgan she’s wearing her hair in a bun for the next 3 weeks. Good times.

~ AND I have officially lost 9 whole pounds! I will be selling my fatter-fat jeans (opposed to my fat jeans) & get them out of this house. I don’t want that size to ever be an option for me again. The weight tracker on my sidebar says less than that because I kind of yo-yo’d back & forth since I originally started using My Fitness Pal.

Now I am going to hit publish without proofreading this and get on with my day. The sun is shining; my family is healthy; the people I love are safe. Let’s do this day!

We’re all kids.

2012-01-27T15:45:02Z

I read a wonderful post on Wednesday.

And I can’t stop thinking about it.

I keep picturing God standing in the next room with a broom & dust pan, just waiting….

Here is Alycia’s post: Sweeping Up The Broken Pieces. Enjoy!