The Chijioke Life

Today was Cadence's 5th birthday -- a milestone in her young life. Happy birthday my beautiful princess - hard to believe how fast the time is flying by!! We had fun celebrating with most of my family in town for the week. It was good to celebrate, as its been a rough few days here! My Christmas eve present was to discover a "warm spot" on my kitchen floor... Couldn't figure out what was causing it -- with the cold weather it was actually kinda nice (: Would've been great if I actually had heated tile floors, but -- I don't! :-/ When it started spreading farther into the kitchen and the living room and then became a HOT spot, we began to get a bit worried!! 3 days later, after much investigation and a call to the fire department - we got in touch with a plumber who proceeded to alert us that we have a "slab leak". **...Sigh...** So it appears that my house is about to be torn apart -- again. They tell me that they will try to bust up just my

Its Christmas morning...I'm sitting here in a quiet, empty house - pandora's playing christmas music gently in the background and the christmas tree lights are twinkling at me from across the room, wrapped presents still piled underneath... it is beautiful! We only got into our stockings this morning, my family took the kids to church this morning and we are going to open presents when they get back. I stayed home to "take a nap" because I am scheduled to work tonight... But, I am missing Cj too much today -- I started looking for any pictures of him that I could find and the tears simply won't stop today... I made it through our first birthdays without daddy and the first Thanksgiving without my husband was sad and I kept looking for him...but I got through without breakdowns -- I didn't expect Christmas to bring such a well of grief, this entire week leading up to Christmas has been been rough! I miss my husband so very much -- we are missing our daddy, it

The twins turned 8 years old!!! Can't believe they are getting so big... We celebrated a day early cause I had to work, went to see the "adventures of Tintin", pretty good (: the boys loved it! We then had a celebration dinner out with a few close friends - fun times. God bless these little boys, they bring a lot of joy to this momma's heart!! (:

So we went on a trip last week - I decided to give the kids a "magical trip" and took them and several family members to Disney World. We had never been before and a couple things led to me making this decision to take them out of school and head down there this year. We were desperately needing to make some good memories, our last family vacation ended in such tragedy and we all are still wrestling with feelings of anguish over that. Something that my side of the family had been planning for almost 2yrs and we had anticipated with such joy turned into such sorrow. The kids were needing this distraction as we waded through birthdays and the holidays, we were all feeling the angst of missing our central person and it was kind of "piling up" on us. Also, Cj had mentioned many times wanting to go to Disney and I had always put it off, "too commercialized", but, I decided to give it a try since it was something he had wanted to do with the kids. I wasn't

I believe that God uses circumstances and events in our lives for many things - not the least of which, is to teach us lessons in life... and to reveal more of Himself to us - strengthening our faith as we walk with Him. I was thinking about some of the lessons that I have learned over the past few months... I have learned that I CAN survive something of which I shuddered to think before...I have learned that the worst can and does happen sometimes -- we really are not immortal or invincible here on this earth... I have learned that we CAN indeed survive a traumatic loss... that God can help us to do this victoriously... not just slogging through mental/emotional breakdowns and despair... but with joy added, triumphant moments and smiles through the tears... where this strength has come from -- I do not even know -- except I DO know!! "...in my weakness, Your strength is made perfect..." A really huge thing that I have learned is that God CAN and WILL speak to my sweet childr

Quick note to all my friends and family who are on here!! I am in the midst of putting together my christmas letter/christmas cards - if you would like to receive one from our family this year, please email me your home address!! Thanks (: