Aww, Rats!

Well, well well,..back from our latest camping adventure. I am beyond exhausted and so happy to be in my own bed, diffusing my eucalyptus oil and watching Judge Judy. Ha. Some things never change. Well, the oil diffusing is a new thing. Probably one that will stick around though. The hubby is even enjoying it. I may have to get him a diffuser for his side of the bed. But I digress.

It's been a couple of months since we've been camping and I was so looking forward to this trip. Both of our birthdays (hubs and mine) fall at the end of the year and it seemed like the perfect way to celebrate. I picked Palo Duro Canyon for the festivities. I went once when I was about 10 or so and have been wanting to go back ever since. Hubby had never been so it was a perfect fit.

Normally we would take the tent, but given the fact that the temps were supposed to be in the teens at night, we opted to do a limited use cabin instead. The cabins are located at different areas of the canyon and provide a terrific view. The one we reserved had A/C and heat, a double bunk bed, refrigerator, microwave and table/chair. Perfect! The trailer Justin is building isn't entirely completed yet so this would be a great way to avoid lugging the mini fridge and other camping equipment with us.

As excited as I was, I know by now that life happens even on vacation. Here's a list of the many life moments that happened over the course of the trip.

1. We left an hour and half late. Totally the norm for us, but still annoying. 
2. Audrey, who did NOT need to go potty when asked 50x, suddenly needed to when no restrooms were to be found. The side of the road attempt was interesting to say the least. Pull-ups to the rescue. 
3. We ran out of gas on the way. A first for the hubby and his ego is still slightly bruised over it. I don't know why, but I guess it's a guy thing. 
4. We stopped for a restroom break and whilst helping Audrey, I stood up quickly and hit the ever-lovin' out of my head on the metal part of the lock that sticks out from the door. Holy. I seriously thought it was going to bleed. 
5. We stopped for another restroom break (at a rest stop) and due to the trailer size we parked in the back and Justin went in to use the bathroom. Well......apparently the water wasn't working and in fact, at the FRONT of the building was a sign that said "restroom closed" along with several porta-potties that were supposed to be used.  I feel so sorry for whomever discovered that the toilet had, in fact, been used. His declaration of, "Those were REALLY nice bathrooms! So clean!" makes this even better. 
6. Unbeknownst to us, the entire park is currently under a burn ban. This means no fires of any kind. So those hours that the hubs spent chopping up firewood? Pointless. Plus the added weight of it to the trailer....fab. And just not having a fire in general meant we would really need the use of the heater in the cabin as we wouldn't be able to sit around and enjoy the campfire in the evenings (which, I might add, is Audrey's "thing.")
7. ****This is the big one***** Upon arriving at the cabin, hubs opened the door and promptly said..."Hmmm, well,.....I don't know that I should tell you this." Me: "What????" Him: "There was a rat on the wall." Me: "WHAT!" Him: "Yes, we scared him. He ran up into the roof." Me:....honestly I don't remember as the terror hit about this time. Yes, the cabin was rat infested. The way the roofs are built, there is an added wood drop down from the original brick structure. I don't know if it was done to insulate or for aesthetics or what, but it's a large enough crawl space for rats to get inside. I will continue with the rat story after the list is completed.  
8. The "heater" for the cabin was quite possibly the smallest space heater ever. And given the fact that fires were not allowed (there was a fireplace inside the cabin) it was FREEZING! I think I slept in 5 layers. 
9. I dropped a chair directly on my toe. The type of drop where your toenail bleeds from underneath. Joy.
10. The morning after the rat stay (yep, we stayed there - again, will continue after the list) all I wanted was coffee. Wouldn't you know, the Keurig we brought (the same one we did a test run on at home) would not work. Not in the slightest. 
11. The morning after the rat stay, we were told by the park attendants that in fact fires WERE allowed in the cabins. Too little too late. 
12. During the course of the trip Audrey acquired a "baby seal" (it's a raccoon) that she fell in love with....then she lost. Absolute meltdown and wailing and crying and gnashing of teeth (not really, but the first two, yes). She was so entirely distraught at the thought of the poor thing being alone in the world even though I reassured her many times that whomever found it would give it a good home. Luckily, we were close to place we originally got it and we went back, purchased another, snuck it in mommy's purse and she is none the wiser. Nice save, dad.
13. In a world where a Starbucks is on every corner, I do believe we spent half of the trip looking for one to no avail. We finally found one....on the way home....at 5pm. My frappaccino was amazing. 

Ah, life. I freaking love it. And that is said with zero sarcasm. I wouldn't trade those moments for anything..well, maybe the rat one and the toe one; that hurt!! 

RATS!! Oh.my.goodness. By the time we got to the cabin it was way too late to go anywhere else so we really had no option but to stay for the night. At first, I convinced myself that it wasn't a big deal. We set up camp (beds, food, etc.), ate dinner and listened to Johnny Cash as usual. Then we got ready for bed and oh my. You could hear them wrestling, and walking and squeaking. It was utterly terrifying. We've had coyotes walk through our campsite during the night and that was less terrifying than this. No joke. Audrey was clueless and slept like a champ, but not me and hubs. He would wake up every few hours and chase the ones that were on the walls back up (yes, on the walls!!) and I lay shaking under a comforter all night. When morning finally came, hubs and I looked at each other with a look that said it all...we are OUTTA HERE!! Luckily, the park attendants were amazing and fully refunded our money. We were able to locate a cabin at the local KOA and things got MUCH better after that. 

All in all, it was an amazing trip. We are tired and happy to be home with our Woof Woof, but fear not, we will be back out there and at it again soon! This time in a rat-free tent!!! 

Lots of love, 

Mrs. Branam 

P.S. Enjoy the pics! Xoxo

The "Rat Cabin"

The line up. 

She's such a doll baby

Our destination. 

Hiking up to the cave.

We made it!!

Unicorn made the trip with us. 

She was an amazing little traveler.

The views are so amazing.

Photo cred on these to the hubs.

My heart. 

Dinner for mommy's birthday.

Breakfast for daddy's birthday. 

Change Is A-Coming.

When I can sense big changes on the horizon in my life, my first instinct is to look back at things in my past; almost as though I'm asking my past for permission to move forward. I become reminiscent. I start looking through old pictures, old emails, etc. I have a good laugh or two and sometimes a good cry or two. And then I go through the phase that I despise. I call it the "holding" phase.

It's a phase where I'm not quite ready for the coming change, yet I know I can't go back. With one foot in my past and the other in my future, I find myself stuck; on "hold." It's usually a very long phase as well, which is one of the reasons that I despise it so. Some days I'll wake up thrilled about my future and what it holds. I'll be all smiles all day long; singing in the car, laughing with friends, loving life. And yet the very next day I could wake up terribly upset. I'll spend the day listening to old songs and thinking about old times with lost friends wishing that I could somehow find a time machine and go back to a place that is familiar. No matter how bad things might have been, at least they were familiar. I knew what was coming unlike the daunting future in which nothing is clear. And sadly, nothing helps. No one can help me make it better. No amount of prodding or pleading will change anything. I am the only one that can pull myself out of this phase and only when the time is right. 

I'm fairly certain the purpose of this phase is to teach me and to heal me. To teach me lessons from my past so that I don't make the same mistakes in the future and to heal me from any wounds that I might have acquired. 

So here I sit...on hold again.....at least I'm in charge of the music selection....

Bumps In The Road.

Tonight I've been sitting here thinking about life. Thinking about how it throws us curve balls left and right. No matter how much we plan ahead and prepare for the future, something always messes with those plans and preparations. In a way, it's a good thing because it teaches us adaptability and personally, I feel adaptability is one of the greatest qualities one can possess in life. However, it is still frustrating when things take a random and unforeseen turn.

For example, my road to motherhood. Originally, the job I was at had a work-from-home policy that allowed employees to work from home a few day a week with the correct approval. I took this into account when choosing the road I did. Granted, it was not the REASON I chose to be a mom and I can't say I would have chosen differently had I known what the future held. But, it was a nice add-on, shall we say. Then suddenly that job had an expiration date. Although unknown, it was inevitable and my survival depended on finding another job.

Since I was planning on being a mother in the near future, I decided to look for jobs near my family so that I would have them close whenever the time came. As luck would have it, I did, in fact find a job close to my family. So I broke my lease and relocated. Though the job didn't allow working from home, I moved into an apartment that was 4 minutes away from my job, thus allowing me less time on the road and more time with the baby. It would also allow me to go home during lunch and spend time with her as well. Fast forward to the present day. I am without a job and will most likely end up having to drive a good hour for work. This will put me dropping my child off for care around 7am and picking her up about 6pm; almost 12 hours later. I'll have to go to bed much earlier than I am now in order to survive sleep wise, so that will probably give me all of 4 hours to spend with her each day.  The thought makes me sick to my stomach.

Yes, I know I chose this life for myself and I wouldn't change that choice if I could. I'm simply mourning the time lost with her. I may eventually relocate again. That would put me further away from my family, but once I start working again, our time together will be limited anyway.

I know in my last post I said I wasn't cut out to be a stay-at-home mom, and I'm not. But I do wish I could spend more time with my girl than what will most likely be my reality. I guess on the bright side it will make our time together that much more special. 

Bumpity bump, bumpity bump...onward we go.

It's Not God, It's Life.

A few weeks ago my mother forwarded me a blog posting and asked if I had read it. I hadn't. She said she thought I would enjoy it.  The post was entitled "My husband is not my soul mate" and was written by a young woman who was celebrating her wedding anniversary. While the title may not seem to fit the occasion, I assure you, it did. If you get a chance to read the full blog, I highly suggest you do. It can be found here. But for this post I will be quoting one area in particular. 

The author is speaking about how, as a teenager she believed that God had someone for her to marry; that he had a "plan" for her life, which included a husband. She cited Jeremiah 29:11 which states, "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Her father quickly dashed her dreams. 
"But then my theologian biblical scholar father shattered my dreams by informing me that God doesn’t have a husband for me, doesn’t have a plan for who I marry. NOT TRUE I scolded him, attacking him with the full force of Jeremiah 29:11 that God “knows the plans he has for me, plans to prosper me and not to harm me, plans to give me a hope and a future,” and obviously that means a hott Christian husband because God “delights in giving me the desires of my heart.” He slammed through my horrible (yet popular) biblical abuse by reminding me that the first verse applied to the people of Israel in regards to a specific time and just didn’t even dignify my horrible abuse of the second verse with a rebuttal. Nope, he said, a husband is not only not a biblical promise, it is also not a specific element of God’s “plan for my life.” God’s plan is for us to be made more holy, more like Christ… not marry a certain person. (This advice was also used when I asked what college God wanted me to go to, accompanied I think by, “God doesn’t want you to be an idiot, so go somewhere you will learn.” )"

I was awestruck and thrilled at the fact that someone (her father) FINALLY spoke out about biblical abuse. It's something that has been done for ages and probably always will be. Take the example above. I can't tell you how many sermons I've heard preached around Jeremiah 29:11; sermons that were guaranteeing that the scripture was directly FOR me, TO me and ABOUT me. However, it's not, it wasn't and it isn't. Many things in the Bible were written for a specific time, a specific place, and specific people. They were not intended to be bandwagons for everyone that followed to jump on, but rather were intimate promises made by a God to His people for that time and place. I could go further in depth about the topic, but that is not the point of this posting. Back to the topic at hand.

It has always struck me as odd how many things people equate to "God" in life.  For example, if they get a flat tire on the way to work, God was looking out for them by foreseeing an accident in their path, and thus allowed them to get a flat tire so they would avoid catastrophe.  In life there is something called cause and effect. It basically means, because this happened, this is the result. The reason said person got a flat tire is because said person ran over a nail; cause (nail) and effect (flat tire). This law of cause and effect is true in all facets of life and has been around since the beginning of time, along with other laws like the law of attraction ("you reap what you sow")  and the law of gravity.  Now, since God created these laws, in theory you could say that God caused the flat tire, but that's really reaching.

Since I lost my job, I've had several freak out moments; times when I've been very afraid of the future for myself and my little girl. I've had people tell me that this is part of God's plan and that God has a plan, but in reality, that's not true. Going back to the soul mate response, as stated by dear ole' dad,  "God’s plan is for us to be made more holy, more like Christ…"  God does not plan out our lives in full detail from the moment we're born until we leave this earth.  Most would come against that statement with Jeremiah 1:5, but again, a specific word for a specific prophet (read it again).  Instead what God gives us is....choices. He gives us free will and choices. What we do with those choices and how we work them into our spiritual lives is completely up to us, but it isn't preordained. It's on us; it's OUR responsibility and not the result of a "God, guide my life" prayer. He gave us a strong mind so that we are able to reason and think for ourselves and he expects us to use it. You can create a guideline for yourself so that you make sure every choice you make is aligned with the type of life you wish to lead, but you have to put in the effort.

For example, God does not have a plan for me when it comes to my career and its future. But with the mind that he gave me and the free will/choices that I have made previously, I now have a great resume with good experience and a great network of people who are on the hunt for me. I will get job offers and when that time comes, I will then sit down and weigh the options based on the things that I value and how I wish to live my life. There isn't going to be a "right" or "wrong" choice or path, just different ones. One job is not more "godly" than the other, they're just jobs.

In life many things will happen, good and bad, none of which are "God" things, they're just that...things. They're life; life happens. People get sick, people get well, people die, people live, people succeed and people fail. But what matters and what God does have planned for us, is to be Him to all those around us.  So, when you get a flat tire and find yourself trying to throw God into it somehow, instead take the time to show His love to the wrecker who is towing your car. You never know, he might just be your soul mate. ;)