BACKYARD APPAREL

I know lately my blogs have been pretty dark, what can I say?  If you have been following me from the beginning, I'm sure you can understand, if not..I don't what else to tell you except for "That's Baseball!"

But that's not the reason why I am am blogging to you right now, I am actually here to finally bring you some good news!  So as you all know my husband and I are going through some financial hardships with trying to find jobs and such, so we decided to take it among ourselves and create our own employment and have opened up online stores that you can start shopping at now!  So if you LOVE fashion as much as I do, you can check us out at www.backyardapparel.net .

Right now I am actually selling retail clothes, but my hopes are to soon have my own designs up for you to purchase.  I currently have made a lot of bags, scarves and hair bows, I just need to actually put them on the site under limited editions.  In the meantime, we have a lot of cute outfits to choose from and they are the perfect thing to wear for any occasion!

http://www.backyardapparel.net

Was This a Chemical Pregnancy?

Did I ever tell you about the time I was almost a mother?  Of course I've been like a second mom to my nieces and nephews and my Sunday School Children will agree that they are my children and so will my God children. But I mean me, myself and I actually being a mother, carrying her own child in her womb, laboring to bring it into the world and vowing to love and adore it for the rest of its life; Yeah that was almost me!

It was actually back in the Summer of 2014 that this happened to me, but I guess that's part of why I haven't been blogging in awhile, my heart just wasn't in it.

I actually started feeling symptoms I believe it was in May, you know the sore boobs, nausea, fatigue, dizziness, headaches, my gums were swollen and ached and I had to literally pee every five minutes, but I wasn't sure so I didn't do anything, but then 46, almost 50 days past since my last period and I said to myself that wasn't normal?  I've felt all these symptoms before, but I've never gone this long without a period?  So I made an appointment to see the Doctor and they ran a test to see if I was pregnant?  Once they did the test and I saw the Doctor, he told me I wasn't pregnant and it was probably due to stress as the reason why I haven't had my period, although I told him I really haven't been that stressed out compared to before?  I shrugged it off though, because I knew it was a pipe dream that I would ever get pregnant since my husband and I have been married for over a decade and nothing happened. So I went home a little sad, but I moved on, focusing on other things that I was doing at the time, when in the middle of the day the Doctors Office called me and left a message for me to call them back.

I called and when the nurse that called me got on the line she said, "I'm just calling to let you know you ARE pregnant and the test did come back positive."  She didn't even have to finish her sentence after "pregnant," I just burst into tears because I couldn't believe it?!  FINALLY, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!!!!  My heart was bursting and I couldn't even speak and through the tears, I composed myself enough to ask, "are you sure?  The Doctor told me that I wasn't?"  The Nurse paused for a second, but told me, "well the test is very faint, that's why it took so long to call you, it actually took awhile before the sign came up, I was actually getting ready to throw it away before I looked at it again, but I'm going to send you for blood work to be absolutely sure, the Doctor didn't order it, but I'll send your paper work over now so you can go, but it is positive."  I thanked her and told her that my husband and I had been praying and trying for 12 years and I was on cloud 9 with this news!!  I should have listened more closely to the signs in our conversation, but I wanted to be pregnant so bad, I refused to listen to things like "Doctor didn't order blood work," or "very faint sign" or anything like that, because I was hoping that in some small miracle, life was actually going to be positive for me for once.  I even called my husband and told him while crying about the news! He was skeptical and said he will wait until there is an actual baby in his arms before he celebrates, but humored me with the thought of me possibly being pregnant.


So I went and got the blood work done and they told me I wouldn't get the results until next week, because I took it on a Friday, so I waited and for a whole week and I still didn't get my period and I looked at all the signs and kept telling my husband that "I HAVE TO BE PREGNANT...ALL THE SIGNS ARE THERE!!"  Even the date of conception made sense for me to be pregnant and the symptoms were aligned with everything I was reading for how far along you are, which was a couple of weeks.  But then at the end of the week, I woke up to severe abdominal pains and bleeding.  My heart sank, but I went online and read that it might be due to implanting since I was supposedly a couple of weeks that's usually what happens an the egg is setting up shop in the uterus.  I kept hoping everything was ok and I prayed and just laid in bed not moving an inch, afraid of losing what little hope I had inside of me.  I called the Doctors Office again to see about the test and the same nurse who told me I was pregnant ended up taking back everything she said a week prior. She told me, "oh yeah sorry, you weren't actually pregnant, I spoke to the Doctor and he said you had to be a 5 or above to be pregnant and you were at a 2 so you should be getting your period soon, did you experience any bleeding?" I told her yes, I just started yesterday, but it's not like my normal period and I wish you would have told me all this a week ago, before I took the blood test and everything?!"  She apologized and I said whatever there's nothing we could do about it now and we hung up.  Once again, my heart broke into a billion pieces and the world I knew, started caving in on me.  My husband tried to console me and told me I shouldn't of gotten my hopes up to begin with and that nurse was a freakin idiot, but it's okay we will keep trying.  I told him I was alright and I sucked it up and told him he was right, I mean after this long for it to just happen, just like that is pretty much impossible. So I just acted like everything was fine and moved on, but the truth is that nurse literally ripped my heart out.

How could she just allow me to go a WHOLE WEEK thinking I was pregnant?  It just kept running through my mind over and over and over and I just kept asking myself, "how can this supposed medical professional, go through all the trouble of calling me and telling me I was pregnant if I wasn't?!"  Then finally after months passed by, I was sitting in church and it just clicked in my head again, "Why would she tell me I was pregnant, If I wasn't?" So I jumped on the internet on my phone and looked up "what does HCG 2 mean?"  Then I started coming across these posting and websites about "Chemical Pregnancies," and thought to myself "maybe I WAS pregnant and instead of saying I had a miscarriage, it was easier for her to just say I was never pregnant?"

A Chemical Pregnancy for those that don't know is a pregnancy that ends very early in the first trimester.  When women first become pregnant their hormones start to double which is how pregnancy test get their reading, which is through HCG (hormones).  However if it is a Chemical Pregnancy, the HCG levels drop rapidly, which signifies the end of the pregnancy.  They say that a chemical pregnancy occurs when the fetus dies immediately after conception due to chromosome issues which doesn't allow the embryo to implant in the uterus where it can grow and develop.

I have to be honest, my heart is still aching and as soon as I read this, my heart broke all over again as I explained it to my husband and told him, it wasn't really a pregnancy, that it was over before it even began.  But my husband, being the type of man that he is, looked me right in the eyes and told me to stop thinking like that! He told me, "as soon as that egg was fertilized, you became a mother and carried our baby inside of you and don't let anyone try to take that away from you and tell you it didn't happen!" So maybe I was pregnant and maybe I wasn't, either way I give God the glory that for at least a moment in time I could say that I was a mother......until next time my beloved

What happened to Russhelle this time?

Hello my beloved friends! I know it's been awhile since I've chatted with you; truth be told, it's been another tough year for me and I've been spending the past couple of months just trying to keep it together.

I really don't even know where to begin except to say that I have had enough sorrow these past few years to last me forever! It seems like whenever life starts to look up for me, something always has to push me down?

As you probably have gathered in my previous blogs, things didn't really work out at the Post Office.  I loved the environment and the people, it just wasn't something that I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing.  All my life, I have known with conviction that my dedication is working with children, and if I were to stay at the Post Office, I know my dreams would have never of been realized, that and the job was just way out of my league! I mean, you have to be at your top physical shape, otherwise that workload is BRUTAL!  After leaving the Post Office, my husband and I tried our hand at starting our own business doing what we did before which was medical billing and my husband contracted work against my wishes and his better judgement, with his sisters boyfriend.  One of the individuals might I add that made my life a living hell at that horrible job that took so much away from me!  Reluctantly, I agreed to work with him and after a couple of months, my husbands sister who doesn't like me very much decided she didn't want to be within the same proximity as me and convinced her boyfriend to end our contract, so again we were both out of work.

Frustrated, I decided I needed a break from the rat race and decided my husband need to take the reigns because I just didn't have it in me anymore.

My husband did find work and things looked like they were finally starting to get better, but then they decided to let him go and we were left scrambling for some solid ground again.  At this point, I decided I needed to suck it up and get back out there, but all the jobs I wanted or felt like I qualified for demanded at least a B.A. which is why I decided to go back to school and finally finish.

But then I got sick and had to slow my roll way back, which is where I am at right now.  I ended up in the hospital which is another blog, but it made me stop in my tracks and really think about my life and what was important and because of it, I had to give up a lot of things, such as volunteering so much.  It saddened me, but I stepped down as Children's Ministry Coordinator while I figure out what's going to happen to me next?  I stopped planning so many events, but most importantly I stopped worrying about the million and one things that are totally out of my control.

To be honest I think this is all the Lord's doing and I thank Him and give Him all the glory because it says in the bible:

"And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you." 1 Peter 5:10 ESV

and also, "Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him." James 1:12 ESV

I know that a lot of my blogs thus far have been pretty depressing and sad, but looking back and reading them, I can see more clearly now that the Lord is truly working in my life and I just praise Him at His mighty work because I know that He has a wonderful plan for me!...Until next time my beloved.

Easy Dole Whips Recipe

Hello my beloved!!! My birthday is coming up and as a special treat, I wanted to serve Dole Whips! For those of you are that aren't lucky enough to know what that is, it's an AWESOME treat they sell at Disneyland that is basically made of pineapple soft serve ice cream or if you get the dole whip float it's the pineapple soft serve with pineapple juice...it's so yummy...if you are ever at Disneyland, you can find the stand next to the Tikki Room! If you are not lucky enough to make it to Disneyland, have no fear my beloved, I found the recipe and it's just as delicious as the real thing!

What you need:
Blender
Large lemon
Heavy whipping Cream
Frozen crushed pineapples
Pineapple Juice
Glass cup

Directions:

1.) In Blender, put 2 cups frozen crushed pineapples and squeeze half of lemon juice in.
2.) Add cup of heavy whipping cream and blend until frozen yogurt consistency, if too tick, add a little of pineapple juice but you don't really need to.
3.) in glass cup, add 1 shot of pineapple juice and scoop pineapple ice cream on top.
4.) Add straw and enjoy the ride in your pineapple paradise!!

I missed him before I met him

Hello beloved! Sorry I haven't been writing for awhile, so much has been happening that I haven't had the energy! I was feeling inspired though and thought I would come on and share.

As I was doing my wifely duties today; you know, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, dishes, ironing my husbands work clothes, etc. I was listening to my playlist on my phone.  I always like to download songs that describes something that relates to my life or my marriage and I like to think that I am compiling a song list to the soundtrack of my life.  At any rate, I was listening to my lifes soundtrack and I started thinking about my life and my husband as songs often make us do and it was a song by Christina Perri titled A 1,000 years and also another song by my favorite band The Civil Wars called To Whom it May Concern, that really got me thinking.  These songs are about loving someone before even knowing who they were and that's EXACTLY how it was with my husband.

I was thinking back...waaaayyyy back from when I was a little girl.  I never could sleep very well, I was always afraid of the dark and never felt safe, so I would put pillows next to me in order for me to feel secure enough to sleep.  I wouldn't use just one pillow and cuddle with it either..NO, I would use like 10 and make a small mountain, then I would either cuddle or put my feet up over them and then I would fall asleep.  After I got married, now that I think of it, I don't use pillows anymore, because when I turn to my side, I see that same exact mountain and feel secure..LOL  But to be honest, I always felt so insecure at night, but since I got married, from that first moment that I laid down in my marital bed and my husband put his arms around me to cuddle, all my fears and insecurities melted away and I felt safe and secure enough to sleep.

It was like before I was married, I was only living half a life, like a HUGE part of me was missing and I knew in my heart that it was Marko and that he was out there somewhere looking for me too.  As cheesy as it sounds, I am a big movie buff and when I was younger, one of my favorite movies was An American Tail, where they sang this song that still gets to me until this day titled Somehwere out there. Okay that's not the cheesy part, the cheesy part is that I use to sit at my bedroom windowsill and sing that song as I looked up at the great big moon in the sky and I would wonder if he was looking at that same moon and somehow we were connected?  Yeah I know, cheesy right?  Nah, I'm just a hopeless romantic like that!  Anyway, as you probably read in my first blogs where I spilled about our whole love story, I would literally see him in my dreams, but never his face because I didn't meet him yet. Truthfully, I think God did it that way, because half the fun of the journey was trying to find him and if I already knew who he was, then what was the point of that adventure?

All in all, the point of my crazy ranting is that I missed my husband before I even knew him.  It was like in my dreams I could see the magnificent romance of it, but when I woke up, he was gone.  I think that is why I slept so much when I was younger because when I was awake it felt like an eternity before I would see him again in my dreams.  Then when I got married, I stopped sleeping so much, because finally my waking reality was my dream come true.....until next time beloved <3

Easy homemade eclairs

Hello my beloved and Happy Valentines day!!! I know we are still a day away, but when you're in love, it's Valentines day EVERYDAY! I actually started the beginning of this week being extra sweet to my sweety and making extra special dinners. Tonight after dinner, we watched a cheesy valentines movie and my hubby mentioned that he was craving something sweet. I turned to him and asked him what he wanted and that I would make him anything.  He started acting like a girl saying, " I don't know, I don't know..." So I gave him some suggestions and one of them was eclairs. He got excited and said he wanted me to make him 10!! But I said relax count Chocula...I'm going to make us like 2... So off I went to the kitchen to bake some love for my love and it's super easy to make so I thought as a sweet Valentines gift to you all I would share my recipe; here it is, enjoy and HAPPY VALENTINES DAY:

Ingredients:

4 eggs (large)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water

Prep:
Oven 425 degrees Fahrenheit, line cookie sheet with parchment paper

Directions:
1. In a medium saucepan, put 1 cup water and 1/2 cup butter over heat, until butter is completely melted.

2. Add flour and mix until it becomes dough then remove it from heat and put it in a mixing bowl.

3. Mix 4 eggs ( one at a time) until they are mixed well

4. Put mixture in a piping bag and on your cookie sheet (lined with parchment paper), pipe eclairs 3  1/2 " long

5. Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown

6. Cool, cut eclairs in half and put filling ( you could make your own custard, but I just take the easy route and use vanilla pudding).

Icing: to make the chocolate on top, just get some semi sweet chocolate chips and heat in a saucepan until melted and then dip tops of eclairs, let cool and enjoy!! To be honest they are delicous even without the icing...mmmmmmmmmm

The grace of God

I went to the store with my mom the other day and as we were walking towards the store, I noticed a store clerk collecting shopping carts. Usually this isn't something anyone would pay attention to, but I guess I'm more observant than the usual, but he caught my attention because he was new; I frequent this shop and know the usual employees so when I seen him, I guess I was registering him as a new employee or something, but also I noticed he was an older gentleman, close to my moms age and I even told my mom, " hey mom why don't you work here..this is where you first started working anyway isn't it?" My mom brushed me off and we went inside to shop.

We were suppose to just run in really quick and buy some doggy shampoo ( my doggy got a bit of a flea infestation, but that's another time, another blog). Anyway, before I was rudely interrupted by myself, getting back to the story...we ended up just walking around the store and spending more time then we intended to. By the time we got to the front of the store to pay a frantic older woman came in looking flustered and asked with a shaky voice, " did anyone turn in a purse by any chance, I doubt it though?" The lady at the register looked around and said " no, I didn't see anything."  Could see in her face that her heart sank as she was holding back tears, she replied, " I figured, can I use your phone to call my daughter? I was putting my bags in the car and there was a car waiting for me so I was rushing and I forgot my bag in the cart." My heart went out to her and I prayed in my heart for her to find her purse.

My mother started suggesting places it might be like her trunk or maybe the backseat of her car? The lady replied, " no it's not there, whoever took it came up to because I just went to the bank and there's $1,000 in there...her eyes started to water and just then the same man that I saw collecting carts walked by and I remembered and informed her that the male employee might know what happened to it because I saw him in the parking lot earlier collecting carts. She quickly turned around to the gentle man and asked him about her purse and he said "yes, we have it, let me get it for you, it's in the back." As he left to retrieve the purse, her face lit up and her confidence returned as she yelled, " he found it, he has it!!!" We all praised The Lord and as she waited for the employee to bring her purse back, my mom went up to her and gave her a comforting pat on the back as she turned around my mom gave her some comforting words and she thanked my mom. My mom told her though it wasn't her and pointed to me and said it was my daughter that remembered but it was God that put us there at the right moment. She thanked me and agreed and said she's going to go home and get down on her knees and pray now. She thanked us again and told my mom that her husband has dementia and she has just been so all over the place worrying and taking care of  him, that's why she had all that money because she had to go pay all the bills and run a bunch of errands. We gave her some more comforting words and left the store, but it's moments like these that we really see the grace of God. Times where you wouldn't even expect it. I mean, the fact that we were only suppose to get in and out and right when we got there for me to pay extra attention to the employee collecting the shopping carts. I truly believe it was all by the Grace if God if not for anything, but to be there for this lady at what could of been her darkest hour. Thanking The Lord for giving me the opportunity to see HIM in action and just wanted to share this story...until next time my beloved <3