My Summer

The shoulder is doing well. I have good mobility and have not been using the sling for about a week. My arm is a little tired and sore by the end of the day but it's improving.

I can tell I'm feeling better when I feel good enough to bake again. Since I love doing it-it's a win win. A couple of weeks ago I made some  treats for some neighbors who had had surgery. 

Mini Honey Oatmeal Bread, Strawberry Jam and Lemon Blueberry Muffin. 

For the 4th of July we headed out to the beach bright and early and enjoyed some sun. Not many waves and the water was a chilly 65!!! We met some friends there but had to leave around noon to go to The Whalehead Club. It's a historic building in Corolla. Emil and I have started helping with the Band Boosters and had agreed to help out selling funnel cakes at the Whalehead Club festivities.

Noah in front of the Currituck Lighthouse at the Whalehead Club

We set up and sold until around 9:30. Kirstin did face painting and Noah helped put on tattoos. I took the money! We made about $1500.00. Not bad for a single event. The best part was being there with the Cahills and just hanging out!

The business side of me couldn't help but wonder what type of money I could have made if I had brought a cooler of these and sold them?

Today I'm feeling human once again...

So I discovered in May that the shoulder pain I had been having over the past year and a half wasn't tendonitis but a torn rotator cuff with a side of inflamed bursitis. 

This was not joyful news. I do not like pain. 

I try to avoid pain as much as possible and when I do encounter it I'm not a happy person. 

( I would not make a good terminally ill patient. )

I'd be pretty much like our 15 year old cat, Jess.
Whiny, demanding and laying all over the house anywhere I desired.

This is Jess in our dog, Blaze's bed. She pretty much sleeps there even though she has her own cat sized bed.
Blaze has retaliated and sat in Jess's bed but Jess remains unfazed.

The prognosis was that it would need to be operated on. If I didn't act on it then it could become permanently damaged. I sulked for a few days then decided to bite the bullet and get it over with. 

Our family photos from last year- Me and Kirstin-Love!

Since I would have my arm in a sling for 6 weeks I decided to cut my hair. Before you protest, do you know how hot long hair is in NC in the summer? Yeah- It was pretty much all I could do. 

You can't put your hair up in a pony tail with one hand people. 

I tried. 

It didn't work. 

All styled after just having it cut!

My dear friend Tina did a wonderful job and it's only hair, it'll grow back

What it actually looks like when I do it.

So this is how I'm looking now a days but with much bigger hair since I only have one hand to tame it with. When my hair is short, it's the boss!

Back to the shoulder. Last Wednesday I had outpatient surgery. Which went well and I was home by 4 pm. Emil took off work the rest of that week to take care of me. And telecommuted this week. He's pretty amazing and I think he loves me more after this. 

The first couple of days were great. I was on a nerve block then Oxcodone and life was good up until Monday.

Monday I had started to feel nauseous from the Oxcodone and decided to try to go off of it and replace it with Ibuprofen instead. I felt like throwing up all day and stated on the couch the entire time. Tuesday I felt like a mental patient because I literally could not talk with out breaking out in tears. It was ridiculous. I can only surmise that as I was coming off the Oxcodone it was having some weird effect on my emotions. Yesterday was better and I just read all day but I did not sleep well. 

Today I feel somewhat human. I'm suppose to wear this sling for 6 weeks and not drive for the same amount of time. 

It's been a week and I can tell you right now I can't see me making that 6 week mark. 

Don't tell my Doctor.

Tomorrow I go to get the stitches out. 

Yep- Jess called it!

A word about Decadence

Simply Cinful Muffins by Decadence

A few posts ago I gave you a teaser about Decadence and where I hoped to go with it in the future.  I honestly haven't been doing much with it this past year. Emil had 4 surgeries, one on each of his shoulders and both his Achilles. It was a lot of time and recovery. I have still had orders but haven't actively advertised and worked to get business. Other than holidays I've only had a order or two a month which was fine for where I was at at the time. 

Easter  Cookies by Decadence

However, I have a dear friend that is hoping to opening a cafe with her husband this fall and they have asked me to do all the desserts and whatever else I would like at their cafe. I'm excited and scared and my mind is racing with so many ideas!

I have so many recipes I want to try and things to create.

I mean, these aren't mine but I would love to make them. Can't you just see these in little bags tied with ribbons for Mother's Day gifts?

Or what about these? How adorable for spring????!!! 

I do love the cookies but what I will be doing more of is probably things like the muffins above which I did make and are freakin' amazing!!! And I've got a recipe for BoBerry Biscuits, which are a sweet Blueberry biscuit that I literally can not keep for longer for a day because Emil M. and Noah devour them.

The Lorrie by Decadence

So this is where I hope to be going with the business in the fall. If things go according to the plan you'll be seeing me in a cafe near you.... (but only if you live in Currituck!)

Emil's Graduation

This was taken after Kirstin's last soccer game. You can see her on the left. So cool!

You know the Monty Python bit about Shrubbery?

Where Shrubbery is a bad word that you aren't allowed to say?

 I know where that came from. I was out the other day doing yard work and noticed that ours needed to be cut desperately. Emil had been saying he was going to get to it for weeks but he had been enslaved inside doing wood flooring so I decided to tackle it one day. It took me 4 hours and my back was aching so badly that night from being bent over for such a long time all I could think was -

SHRUBBERY!!!!!
(The english are brilliant!)

So Emil finished his thesis after 3 semesters and was finally able to graduate this month. (Did I mention it was a busy month?)

He already had his Bachelors degree in Biology from Old Dominion University

It served him well as he taught for the first 4 years of our marriage. He was an amazing teacher but you can't earn enough raise a family and have only one person working on a teachers salary, at least not for the size family we wanted to have, so he went into web design 16 years ago and computer programing has been his work ever since. 

He decided to set a professional goal to get his Masters in Software Engineering in the fall of 2009.

 It isn't a jump in pay but it is something he wanted to accomplish. He did a distance program that East Carolina University has set up and only had to go to the campus 4 times during the entire degree. 

See if you can spot him. He's right in the middle!

Undergraduates and their caps!

I have to say I was quite impressed with all the decorated caps and how detailed they were. 

Emil's Mom and Dad brought the kids down for the department specific ceremony that night. Kirstin had a AP test that day that she couldn't miss. His first ceremony on the football field was at 9am and the department specific one that night was at 8pm. So we went to see a movie and just hung out in Greenville. Mom and Dad and the kids met us for dinner at 5pm.

Our family! Noah has started wearing fedoras. Hmmmm. Wonder where he got that from?

 It isn't easy to work on a college degree when that's your entire focus, much less than when you're working a full time job,  supporting your family, working hard in a church calling and trying to find time to surf! We are so proud of you Love! Congrats!

Raven's Roost

The first weekend in May Emil lead a group of 4th years in a climbing trip to Raven's Roost.

This was our group activity for Girls Camp. Only the 4th years get to do a special team building activity. It's one of the advantages of being the oldest girls at camp. They had a blast! Here is the view from the top.

 The girls repelled down the rock face which is a 100 ft drop. It was quite an accomplishment for some of them. It can be hard to let go and trust your equipment and leaders as well as look down and see nothing but rocks below! Some of them were so light they had to work to get down by feeding the rope through the equipment. Oh to have that problem!

They also had the chance to climb up the rock 80 feet. 

I was down below helping the girls get set up and making sure they were in their gear nice and safe.

We had a very nice trip and I'm  sure we'll do it again. All the girls said they loved it!

Floored!

The flooring we chose was Hand scraped Burnished Acacia. It's dark and yes, it does show every single dog and cat hair but I love it even so...

Even before Kirstin's Prom we had started working on the downstairs flooring. It was a long process. Our house is built on a concrete slab so nailing in the new hardwood floor like we did for the upstairs rooms wasn't an option. 

We chose to put it down in a floating like method. Basically it's like adhering the planks to fly paper. It was a lot harder than what we've done before and not nearly satisfying in some ways. In the end we just went with the mindset that the look we were going for was "classically rustic."

We started with the study so everything had to come out of there. And this is what the entryway looked like for a few days. I was in agony!

So this is what it looked like before...

 and at the start of laying down the wood 

and the finish!

It feels larger to me. We still have to finish off the bookcase. We are going to trim out the base and top so it looks like a built in unit. Maybe add some library lights on the top as well.

Next we moved to the entryway.

This was not Emil's most favorite project. I pretty much worked him like a slave. But it had to be done because I couldn't stand looking at the pile of wood in the dining room for very long. I  may have been known to be impatient for projects to be done- which I think would make me a fine foreman if I ever decided to go into construction- which I wouldn't because the projects take too long. Now! Isn't that much better?

Then the hall way before 

 and after!

Lastly the dining room. Which was our staging area for most of the project.

 

 Ahhhh! look at those clean lines. Love, Love, Love it!

We're still not done. We have to finish a small portion along the right side of the dining room where there is a leak that has to be resolved before we put the last section in. We also have the stairs and thresholds to put in. I worked on staining them this past week along with the thresholds. Most of the floor took about 3 weeks to do. I do love it but you do see everything on the floor but as my kids are older it's not so bad. Mostly it's cat and dog hair but I love knowing I can just run a dust mop over it and it's clean, not hiding in the padding like when we had carpet. I'm hoping it will help with the allergies both Noah and I have.

What do you think?

Prom Season

It's Spring and Prom is in the air....

A couple of weeks ago Kirstin had her Junior prom. She invited Matt Penalba, a friend from Great Bridge, to go with her.

How cute is that?! I love that I caught him stealing a look at her!

They are good friends and so whenever I'd attempt to get a serious photo of them this is usually the reaction I got. Lots of jokes and laughter. 

We did have some fun with shrinky dinky photography. I couldn't figure out how to make the small people in focus at the same time. Melissa? Got any suggestions?

I was able to get a couple of them that were semi serious.

We borrowed her dress from her old baby sitter. It was beautiful and she loves it.

She said they had a blast at the prom and went to a friends house for a bonfire afterwards. She'll be doing it all over again in a month when she goes to another friends prom at his school! 

Oh to be young!