Alayna's Adventures

So, life has been busy for the last six or so months.  First, I was pregnant.  And miserable.  I truly hate to say that I was miserable, because a new baby is a huge blessing.  But for the sake of transparency and honesty, I was not a happy camper for the last few months of my pregnancy. Some people love to be pregnant, would be pregnant all the time if they could be...  I could not WAIT to be NOT pregnant and to hold and see my sweet baby boy.   Each of my pregnancies has been rough in its own way, but one thing that has been constant is a weird pain under my ribs toward the end.  With each subsequent pregnancy, this awful pain comes earlier.  I tend not to be a complainer when it comes to pain, as I consider myself to have a pretty high pain tolerance (I mean, I did take on a minivan with my head)...  But this pain was bad enough that I was taking Tylenol almost constantly, and my ribs were still tender about seven or eight weeks AFTER...

W e have a few fun family traditions that we love to do each year. Perhaps one of my favorite is strawberry picking on the farm. I love it, and it never gets old!  This year, Isaiah was 4 1/2 years old and Annika was 2 1/2 years old, but I was also 6 months pregnant. While I absolutely love the adventure of strawberry picking on the farm, my body did not like the stress and heat of strawberry picking with two toddlers and no hubby to help chase them. We did decide to go with a friend and her one year old daughter, but I pretty quickly regretted not bringing along my hubby or another helper.  So note to pregnant mommas with toddlers, take some help, or you may turn quickly into a grumpy mommy like I did... My favorite strawberry picking place has to be Triple B Farms which you can find at  823 Berry Ln, Monongahela, PA.  They have so much fun stuff to do, and so many Pick Your Own (PYO) opportunities, you really have to check them out! See their website for details on...

Sex, erotica, mommy porn, BDSM, intimacy, kinky sex, and fantasies.  If you consider yourself a Christian, you probably are blushing.  These topics are generally not discussed in many church settings.  Growing up in a mainline denomination, my church seemed pretty silent on sex and any surrounding topic, except the one sex rule - "don't do it".  Not up for discussion or conversation or even explanation, it was pretty much a forbidden topic.  Nevermind anything kinky.   It's apparent that the church still isn't talking enough about sex or erotica, because when the "mommy porn" book series, Fifty Shades of Grey came out, o ver 70 million copies were sold in the first year, making it the fastest selling books of all time.  Many who partook in the reading surely identified themselves as Christian women, whether they were teens to moms and even grandmas.  When no one is talking in church circles about "how to better your sex life", how to get y...

Social Media Alert...  There are people on the Internet, and they receive the messages that you send!  They are real people, not bots, who read what you write.  And they often have feelings, hurts, loves and touchy spots in their life.   I think of this phenomenon as social media madness.  People so blinded by their knowledge, strong opinions and sometimes hateful thoughts on a particular subject that they succumb to a temporary madness and forget to think before they send a tweet, post or blog out onto a social media site.  In their temporary madness, they forget that the internet is simply made up of other people all around the world, people who are just like them.  And in their blinded state, they say things that they would absolutely NEVER say to any living and breathing person who was standing in front of them. Think of the vitriol that conservatives may spew about President Obama on Twitter.  The hatred that liberals often express in ...

Do you feel like you should be conquering the world for Jesus, and instead you are cowering in a hole feeling defeated by life?  I do sometimes.   I know a few things as a Christ follower.  I know that the battle is already won.  I know that Jesus did for me what I could not do for myself - He defeated my sin, bought me back from the grave, and has a spot for me in heaven.  I know that I'm an ambassador for Christ to bring His message to a lost and waiting world.  I am more than a conquerer.   So why then would I be hiding from life and feeling defeated?   I think many things are a matter of our focus in life.   Do you ever stop to think where your focus is? I can tell you where my focus is, where my mind and thoughts are.  My mind is on the day to day, the little problems, the messy rooms and the misbehaving kids.  It's focused on the fact that I'm not consistent with my quiet times, I don't pray as much as I'd like, and ...

Isaiah has a newfound joy for story telling.  He asks John and I to tell him stories, and he also enjoys retelling stories that he hears and loves.  So we have told him the story of how mommy and daddy met, the story of when he was born and when his sister was born, and about the time that he drove mommy crazy when he was a colicky infant and wouldn’t stop crying in the backseat when mommy was stuck in rush hour traffic on Route 51.   That one was a nailbiter... ;) Just a few weeks ago, while he was taking a bath, he asked me to tell him a story, a new story.   And, well, I remembered a whale of a tale that he hadn't heard yet.   It just so happens that this story began eight years ago, one day late in August.    It’s a crazy story about a young woman who walked out in front of a minivan that was going at least 25 miles an hour.   She got hit, flew 35 feet in the air like a rag doll, landed in oncoming traffic, and survived t...

I have now cried most of my week away.  Staying up late crying.  Crying with the kids at home.  Crying while I'm cleaning.  And just so everyone knows, it's not because I'm pregnant... John is looking to make a career move that would include purchasing two car washes.  In Youngstown, OH.   It's a two hour drive from here, and he doesn't want to drive four hours a day forever.  So he wants to move closer to Youngstown.  Outside of Youngstown, or in Jamestown or Greenville, PA, where my parents are, are all places we could move to. And I'm devastated.  Absolutely heartbroken to the point of tears.   I love my community and the people we live life with now.  I hate change.  I love Pittsburgh.  I love my church.  I love my friends.  My friends' kids are awesome friends for my kids.  I love where we live.  There are hundreds of cool cultural attractions nearby.  I go to a gre...