What a week!!!!!!

Right now I am in the middle of the busiest 2 weeks that Greentruck B and B has had yet. I have 2 guests who are here for 2 weeks, and then the other room has been booked for 7 nights during the same 2 week period.  The first week went smoothly. Breakfast was made on time. I was able to keep the rooms clean. We had the balcony finished and ready for our guests to enjoy. And I had a pretty good schedule and rhythm set up. It was busy and the kids were rambunctious, but it was fun, and I was really enjoying having guests over. Then on Sunday morning I woke up and I couldn't really move my neck and moving my left arm made my neck really sore. I tried to take a shower to work out the "kink", because I figured I had just slept on it wrong, and it would be ok. But that didn't really work, I couldn't clean my hair because it was hard to lift my hands. And then I  had a really hard time getting dressed, Ben had to help me put a shirt on. So I was pretty worried and Ben and I had to figure out what to do. I really wanted to go to the hospital so I could know what it was and try and get it fixed as quickly as possible. However we have 2 small kids that needed to be taken care of, one of whom I needed to nurse, not easy when your neck is in pain. And I had to make sure that our B and B guests had breakfast. Thank God for my family. Ben called my sister and brother in law. My sister Angela is a nurse, so we figured if nothing else she would be able to tell me if I needed to go to the hospital or if I could just stay home and stop freaking out.  They were over within about 15 minutes of us calling them, which was awesome because this was at 7:30on a Sunday morning! And Angela asked me whole bunch of questions and she said that it would be a good idea to go to the hospital and get it checked out. Once we had decided that I should go to the hospital,  Ang and Jay just sorta took over, which was great! Jason promptly started playing with CJ, and Ang asked me what Cooper would need and what I had planned on making for breakfast.  Then she started getting breakfast ready, while Ben and I went to the hospital. I left the house knowing that even if our guests were a little surprised to see their new hosts that they would get the best service and that everything was taken care of! Thanks Ang and Jay!

Thankfully my neck pain was nothing serious. The doctor told me it was just really bad muscle pain, and spasms, there is a fancy name for it, but I forget that already.  And that the only thing that I could do was rest and take some medications. He said it would take about a week to go away and that I would just have to deal with the pain as much as possible. Needless to say I am happy that I went to the hospital, figure out what it was and get some medication to make it feel better. My neck is still pretty sore today, 2 days later, but at least I am able to move it better today. I can actually look to the left today as long as I don't move to quickly!!

I am now able to make breakfast, and tidy up the rooms etc. It is really amazing how I take for granted the small things in life. Being able to dress myself, nurse my 5 month old, make breakfast are things that I just do because I can. I never think about how much moving my neck is involved with all of these things.  And I also again realized how blessed I am with the family and friends in my life. My in laws came over yesterday to help out and then they ended up taking CJ home with them, so that I could rest! It's been really quiet at my house today, I don't know how I ever thought only having one kid was busy!! But it's been a blessing. I needed to be able to rest and take care of my neck.

Our guests have also been awesome!! They don't need or want a huge breakfast every morning, so that is really nice with my neck being sore. And, get this, they cleaned up our back deck yesterday while we were out, when it started to rain. We had left toys out and laundry on the line. We came home and it was all cleaned up and the laundry was folded and off of the line!!  And today they offered to get groceries and things like that for me because I can't really drive! It's been incredible the help and support that we have gotten from friends, family and our b and b guests!! Again God has truly provided and helped us when we needed it through the wonderful people in our lives.

A new balcony and learning to garden

Our house has changed yet again, and we are so excited about it. Every time that Ben and I look at our house and yard, we think about all that we have done to it we realize just how blessed we are! It's amazing that we have been able to do all that we have. We are very close to being completely done the entire renovation!!! We have to put up some siding and finish off the interior of the garage. Which I guess  is still a lot of work, but it seems pretty small compared to everything that we have already done. Here is a picture of the balcony well on it's way to getting done.

Over that last couple of weeks, Ben's parents have helped out so much! They have helped to build the balcony, planted flowers, picked rocks, landscaped and decorated our yard. Let me just say that the balcony is awesome, it adds so much more living space onto the Maple room and it's a peaceful place to sit and watch the sun go down. The balcony also created a separate entrance for the Maple room. Right now it's still a little tricky to go in through the back of the house because our rock path beside the house is not completely done, but once that path is done, people will be able to use the balcony as an entrance instead of going through our house, if they so desire. I also went out and purchased a couple of hanging baskets and put them onto the balcony, it's look so beautiful!  Finally after several days of hard work Ben's parents, Art and Sylvia were able to sit back and enjoy a nice glass of wine on the beautiful balcony that they built for us!!

 

It looks pretty good right?!! Lately I have also decided that I am going to actually give gardening/landscaping a chance. It's not something that has really ever interested me before. It always seemed very finicky, and like a lot of work. You had to know all the plants, and which ones were good in the sunlight, and which ones were not good in sunlight.  Oh and don't forget about the weeds! But I have decided that having a nice garden, and being able to enjoy the garden outweighs the negatives of having to plant one and work on it. I think it also makes a difference because I am home now and I love being outside with the boys, so gardening gives me something that I can putter at. I still have a lot of learning to do, but here are some of the little projects that I have been working on with the help of Art and Sylvia, they are awesome at these kinds of things. We have begun to make a rock pathway to the backyard. It will be a much easier and nicer way to get into the backyard.

I have planted a whole bunch of annuals, just for some color.  You can't really see it in this first picture, but there are a whole bunch of purple flowers right at the edge of the lane way.

We put an old bench in our backyard for some decor, it was Art's idea, and it looks really neat. I tried to transplant some flowers, they are the ones in the pots,, so far they are looking pretty dead,,, but hopefully they will work out!!!!

 Ben put up some teekee torches, and we(Ben's dad) are starting to put up a gate so that the kids and the dog will have to stay in the backyard.

Everything is starting to look really great! It's been an adventure and it's been a lot of fun!! Currently we still have a big storage tent up in  our backyard, it has everything from our garage in it. The next step in the "making our house pretty stage" is getting that out of the backyard and putting a garden in there!!