Okay, I realize my last post was about fall color and now I’m jumping ahead to Christmas. But I logged on to Shoutlife this morning for the first time in ages, and found that Michael W. Smith is having a special “ramp-up” to the release of his new Christmas album. Each day of the “12 Days of Smitty,” there will be a new song up on his myspace player. They each last for 24 hours (although there are 2 there right now…), so go take a listen. I LOVE Michael W. Smith Christmas music; he has such a gift for capturing the season. I was trying to explain this to Jonathan this morning and he was laughing at my sappiness. But that’s okay. 🙂 So, if you just don’t know what to give me for Thanksgiving, here’s your clue – It’s a Wonderful Christmas – release date October 16!

Though it’s not feeling much like fall around here, I thought I’d start my fall decorations on my blog. 🙂

I hope you have a chance to catch this video of your youngest grandson. 🙂

It’s amazing to me how the things that are the most important are sometimes the hardest things to write about. I’ve posted five times in the last week, and I haven’t said a word about the events in my life that matter most.

On Monday, September 24, I had never experienced the loss of a grandparent. My Grandfather Morgan and my Grandma Marie Byrd died before I arrived in this world. They each left their own legacy to me, but I did not experience the pain of their passing.

Last Tuesday, September 25, my G’ma Byrd, who my G’pa had married before I was born, and who was the only G’ma Byrd I’ve ever had the honor of knowing personally, died in the wee hours of the morning. The grief of her passing was intense. She the first G’ma I’ve ever lost, but much more painful is the fact that as far as we know she resisted God until her last moment of awareness. I was going to write more about that, but can’t seem to do it…

Thursday afternoon, September 27, my G’pa Byrd went home to be with Jesus. We knew that he wasn’t long for this world, but I was still surprised that it was so soon. An amazing thing is that he was never consciously aware that G’ma was gone… not even that she was out of their room. And yet he was somehow released from his hanging on to take care of G’ma. Here’s what I posted to EBCAlumni.net that afternoon (blogspot wouldn’t let me in):

My Grandpa Byrd went home to be with Jesus this afternoon. It’s amazing how differently I feel about his passing than I feel about Grandma’s two days ago. While I’m sad and have shed quite a few tears, there is such peace and joy for him, knowing that he is with his Savior – no more pain, no more tears. Here’s one of my favorite pictures of my G’pa and G’ma Byrd. This is on the front porch of their home in the Smoky Mountains.

My G’pa and G’ma were so very precious to me. I know that I am still processing and working through their passing, and it’s probably a sign of progress that I’m finally able to write a little about it.
Here are links to their obituary pages – G’pa and G’ma Byrd. Much loved. Much missed.

… in real life? Here is a pro-life woman’s account.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtCmIYpfUHY]

New Eagles studio album. Woot!

Quite a while back (maybe two years ago?), we tore out a wall between our kitchen and dining rooms, giving the area a much larger feel. We’ve been living with very much un”done” space ever since, however.

Last Sunday we worked on tearing out and sheetrocking one section of the wall… yay!

Here’s a shot of that wall sheetrocked (with the last coat of mud finished):

And yesterday, after the chapel work day that totally kicked my pa-tootie, Jonathan tore out the outside wall. Lovely lack of insulation, eh?
The plans for this wall (besides adding insulation) are to bring it out a few inches so that the wall is flush with the stairs, and to move the window over to the landing at the right. Not move that old window, of course, but move the window location. 😉

More updates as we get more work done!

I feel today as if I’ve been run over by a truck. Didn’t even make it to church today… didn’t get out of bed (except to feed Stephen) until after noon.

So here’s what did me in…

Our chapel workday was yesterday, and Sue and I finally tackled the nursery (a project we’ve been wanting to work on for a year or so). The first thing on the agenda was stripping the wallpaper from the lower portion of the wall. Actually that was second – first was taking down the hideous drapes!

I had totally unrealistic expectations of how long everything would take, but realized that we did a great job to get the wallpaper stripped in the time we had available. Here are the “after” pictures:

Next comes paint!

I haven’t been able to login to Blogger lately. I’m not sure why, because I’m logging in and out of Gmail on the same account just fine. But I can’t login on the main Blogger screen. I finally got in today by leaving a comment on Katie’s blog – the login to leave a comment works for me. Anyone else been having trouble lately?

This has been quite a week for me. I don’t have time to write more now, but I’ll “sneak” in later and post.

I’m rather tardy about getting about to writing this post, but here I sit with gritted teeth, and I’m gonna get it done!

The last few months have been interesting ones for me health wise. In brief, I spent from June 2 to August 27 waiting to find out whether or not I had cervical cancer. Praise the Lord, the results came back negative (which is a big positive!). However, they did find some precancerous cells (CIN1), and I go back in six months (from the end of August) to get re-tested.

In the meantime, we’ll be working on making my body the least hospitable host possible for any nastiness trying to grow. For the record, here’s most of the regime that we’ve formulated:

**Daily Multi-vitamin/Multi-mineral supplement.

**Progesterone cream – Excess estrogen promotes cancer growth, and as I’ve discussed here before (and no, I haven’t finished that series yet…), I discovered last year that I was waaay estrogen dominant. I’ve recently gone back to using the bio-identical progesterone cream to help with that.

**Liver Support – Among a myriad of other functions, the liver helps with hormone issues. I’m taking Milk Thistle and Dandelion supplements to support liver function.

**Thyroid Support – I’m taking a natural supplement to support thyroid function, as well as taking an iodine supplement (under the supervision of a qualified health practitioner) to help restore my body’s iodine supply, which is critical to thyroid function.

**Topical Regime – I will also soon be starting a mostly topical regime targetting my cervix (under the supervision of the aforementioned qualified health practitioner). I’m not going to go into the details of that on this blog. 🙂

**Ph Balance – I’ve found that my body is extremely acidic, and getting a better ph balance will help create that inhospitable environment I’m working for. This is pretty much done through food, so I’m in the process of revising my diet. And I’ll admit that it’s not fun. 🙂 But it’s worth it.

I think that’s all. All – Ha! By the time I get all these systems working right, I suspect that I’ll be feeling better than I have in years.

This post is pretty much a sketch version of most of these issues. If you’re curious, I might work on posting more details on some of them. And if you want to read about the journey from “What’s that?” in labor to “There’s no cancer, but…” email me at grace_and_glory@shammelle.com and I’ll see about getting you access to the private blog I started for blogging about that.

And now, I must go nurse the little man!