John's Schooling

This week has been the perfect example of how life will be when John is done with school! I am super proud of him, but to be honest these past couple years have taken a toll on all of us! This week has been great since he has been off of school! I had forgotten how it was to snuggle and talk and do things together!

We can do this babe! When you are done with school you will have accomplished a huge goal in your life and I am proud of you! If we can last out this storm, we can make it through a Tsunami together! I remember hearing a saying from Max Lucado.." Don't tell God how big your storm is, but tell the strom how big your God is".

I love you, we can do this!

Mirror-written by me

Mirror, Mirror hello it’s me…
Tell me again, what do you see?
Go beyond my looks, and into my soul
Tell me the truth, I need to know!
I put on my makeup and fix my hair,
I look at my reflection—I can only stare!
Mirror, Mirror, tell me what you see.
Am I as ugly, as I have been lead to believe?
All the imperfections are easy to hide,
Just put on a cover and hide all the lies.
The pain from the past, is not reflected,
Cause in you Mirror-I have protected.
You can only see what I want you to see,
Not even you can know the real me.
For my soul is not available for reflection,
You make it easy to hide, my imperfections.
I can walk away—and forget for one day,
What it is that I see,
What it is that you see,
Is the perfect example of
Me hiding Me!

author: Lena K Roach
not the best, but I wrote it nonetheless

Freida

For those of you who do not know, John and I are taking in a foreign exchange student from Sweden. Freida and I talk everyday and she is going to fit right into our family. I love her already. I will be blogging a lot about her. John and I are really excited to take this new journey and the kids are just as excited. Keep watching the blogs for great stories about our new daughter!

Sweet 16

Thank you all for the support of my blog. I am not so good at keeping it updated, but I will work on that.
I cannot believe that my baby girl is 16. I still feel like I am 16 and I keep thinking of what I was doing at 16. I was working at Hardees and John was in college at East Central. We just met and fell in love right away. He told his mom the day we met that he was going to marry that "Lena Campbell" girl. I am glad he did, I don't deserve him most days, but I am lucky to have his love and support. Anyway, to think that Hannah could be falling in love FREAKS me out!
Right now she is working at Lost Valley Lake resort and has already banked over 400 in savings. I am proud of her. She is a penny pincher, which she did not learn from us... Grandma and Grandpa taught her that..LOL She is driving and she is very responsible. I don't have to wake her up to get going, she knows what needs to be done and she does it. I am proud of my daughter!

Kennedi

So, I have dozens of nieces and nephews and I love them all very much. Kennedi is the latest baby born into the Roach family and she is precious! She already loves me and I know this because she is so smart she told me so.. Ha Ha!
Kennedi was sick for awhile and was in the hospital and I got to spend the night to help Karen out and what a great bonding time I had with her.
Last Thursday Karen brought her over for me to watch and I just held her the entire time and kissed her so much. She even kissed me back--so she was hungry I am going to pretend it is because I am her favorite auntie--wait I am her only auntie! :)

Below is a photo of my precious Kennedi and yes it does appear as though she is flipping me off! Whatever! LOL

Cruise Part Two!

I love blogging..it's so much fun.. :)

What else can I say about my cruise. I am blogging this so that I can share with my fellow readers and so that I can have a keepsake memory of my adventure!

Did I tell you that my sister and I were the life of the ship? Everywhere we went the staff would call to us " Hey, sisters".. it was wonderful!
There was one singer, Brian Scott, who we would follow around to hear him sing. He had a great voice. Below is a photo of him that I took of him in his off time. The shorts crack me up! He later came down and sunbathed with us and was telling us about his show that night in the casino. I said, "yea I know, we have a show tonight at 8:00 too".... LOL we were stars, we had people wanting us to sing Karaoke again--LOL


Later on in the week, Ginkers and I were still following Calvyn around and we ended up taking a class in folding towels.. Trust me when I say I could never do that again. Kudos to those who can, they are wonderful in the room, but I have zero talent for it!


If someone were to ask me what my favorite thing on the cruise was I would say:" Being able to be 34 years old and have good clean fun meeting new people, dancing until 2 am and of course seeing the beach!" What a magical time in my life. Here are a few more photos of my trip!

What can I say about my trip other than I had such a wonderful time! At first my mom and I took a train ride into Chicago to meet up with my sister and from there we had a sleeper car to New Orleans. We had a blast on the train and met new people.
Once we got into New Orleans we dressed up for a night out on Bourbon Street. In retrospect I really did not enjoy Bourbon Street, there were a lot of people there-mainly because of the Saints game that coming weekend-and the atmosphere was beyond the “party” life. There were young ladies dressed up in night gear and wanting men to come and see them, I felt sorry for the girls and their circumstances in life that led them to do what they were doing. We did stop by a Jazz night club and the music was wonderful and then off to a piano bar and then back to our room to get a good night’s sleep for our cruise.
Our First day----------AMAZING! I feel in love with the adventure and realized I am more adventurist than what I thought. The food was fantastic and I did not have to worry about gluten type foods because all the food was fresh and accommodating to my needs.
Tomi------Tomi was our breakfast waiter and each time he would see us he remembered our names and would call us, “My love and my lady”. I loved being spoken to like that!


Calvyn---Words can’t describe how much I love Calvyn. He was the “Fun ship” man and held a lot of the activities. He is truly the funniest person I have ever met-besides me of course (Ha ha). Below is a photo of me and Calvyn. My sister and I made T-shirts that said.. " Calvyn's Groupies" and we hung out with him and got to him some more-he made this very memorable for me!




For me, I have never seen the ocean or any major bodies of water except the Mermac River-LOL so I was amazed how the beauty of Cozumel Mexico. I loved swimming in the salty water and the waves were huge I wish I could have swam in it longer, but I enjoyed every minute I was on the beach. I came back with a super nice tan! Jealousy was evident by all my peers-ha ha



Well for now I must go, I will do another post to tell you about my trip! :)

To be continued............