store

we opened my store today! after 4 months of nonstop gutting, clearing, purging, and scrubbing, we finally unlocked the doors. today was our original open date, but we didn't decide for sure until last night. while i was with my boss at the store yesterday doing last minute tagging and merchandising i evidently had a pretty scary seizure. although i don't remember a single thing about it, from the way ken, my parents, and the doctors describe what i was like, it was definitely my first external seizure. so despite my protesting and yelling at work, mom came over to pick me up and took me straight the er. the good thing about seizures is that you get in right away! :) anyway, the doctors gave me the regular morphine/phenergan cocktail and ran a few tests. i'm supposed to be back in for an mri and some middle-of-the-night eeg's in the next 3 weeks. the worst thing was that i got my driver's license taken away for about 6 months.
my best friend emily came down from moody on spring break and it's so good to see her again. she actually got in wednesday night and then the first time i saw her, she was sitting with me in the emergency room. she stayed all day with me and then came early this morning to drive me to work. she ended up staying at my store and doing 10 hours worth of work that we never have time for. she's amazing!


the kids have all worked hard this week...


this is kevin's favorite part of the store.



this is half of the bow wall that aubrey set up for me. i couldn't fit them all in one picture!



more pics tomorrow. i forgot i had the camera until the afternoon, so i'll take some pics of the actual sales floor tomorrow.
please pray for no more seizures and that my body would tolerate adjusting to the new fulltime workload, and for my boss and coworkers who choose to put up with me while i make this transition.

"purge" is the motto of the day

okay, so my store is opening in 4 days. i'm going back and forth (sometimes in about 10 minutes) between freaking out and being cool about it. we're now spending around 10 hours every day over there and it's finally looking acceptable. i thought that before i post pictures of the store as it is now, i will post some of what it was like 2 months ago when we "moved in". keep in mind that when these pictures were taken, we had already cleared tons of stuff out of there. this place was trashed...wall to wall, floor to ceiling. and this is just the back room. i had no way to take a picture of the main part of the store because...well, it was bad. but we had fun anyway....

beth found her one true love,


and victoria (my boss' daughter) and i found some unfortunate matching shirts. we didn't keep them.

so you can see why we've recruited help. alot of people (mostly poor family members who didn't really have a choice) have put alot of time into helping us purge, gut, and redo the place.
we're on our final push to get all the loose ends and last minute maintenance before we let the city in. i'll post prettier pictures soon. :)

work

some of you have been asking about my store so i thought i'd give everyone a little update. i'm over there almost every day cleaning, sorting, organizing, and moving everything. the place was so disgusting when we first got in...i can't even describe it. i've recruited anything that walks and breathes to come help me get the store ready to open, and after 5 weeks of scrubbing and filling the dumpsters about 200 times, it finally looks like we've actually done something. tomorrow we're power washing the floors...yes, "we". my boss says it's because "we" are cheaper than "they". my computers are coming on tuesday, and we should also have phone and internet service by the end of the week and i think by then we should be almost ready to open.

since i'll be managing the store, i decided to try and meet all the store owners in our strip and be really nice to them. i've learned that it's a good idea to make friends with neighboring businesses, because if you run out of pennies or toilet paper, you might have to go beg. most of them are really sweet, middle-aged, self-employed people who probably have no lives outside of their little stores. they all congregate during their "lunch breaks" and talk (read: gossip) outside about the landlord, how "hot" the ups and fedex guys are, their arthritic cats, the mean lady at "curves" who will never come out to play, and debate whether they should ever eat at taco bell again. when they see me scrubbing down shelves or kicking over buckets to make sure there are no mice, they will bang on my door and motion for me to come out and talk. i usually welcome the break and go unlock my door for them. since they are all in their 40s and have all been there for 20 years, i'm kind of like new meat for them. they all want to give me advice and warnings and phone numbers and "secret passwords", but always seem to work the stories of their dying cats and boyfriend problems in there somehow. while i'm standing there listening i can usually hear the voice of my brother in my head saying, "you have no life! haha!"

anyway, enough about midlife crisis drama. my favorite people are the ones who own the bookstore right next to me. they're hilarious and frequently come hang out in my store where it's quieter. (quieter than a bookstore?) one of the ladies there started a ministry where she ships boxes of clothes, books, and toys over to the ukriane to missionary families there. she wanted to know if we'd be willing to help, so i've been giving her all the clothes and toys i can't sell. so far she's picked up three truckloads of stuff, which really helps me out because i don't have to cart it all over to goodwill. in turn, the bookstore gives me all the parenting and children's books that they don't sell, and i put it on my shelves where it will probably sell more quickly. and, they have free coffee. who doesn't love that?

so...that's about it. i'm still trying to get used to the fact that this is my job and this is what i'll be doing for awhile. it's probably one of the last things i would have chosen to do. in fact, i remember telling my parents "that is the last job i will ever take. it's a complete last resort." if i'm still honest, it's not what i really want to be doing with my life right now, but it's what God's given me. so...a lesson in being content? probably. and another lesson in trust, which i think is God's favorite one to give me.

silly

trish is mad about the size of my font.
trish, if you move here, i will change my font.

family

beth and i are sitting on our beds right now, watching about 8 kids play in our room. the kids are all under 4 years old and they are playing with toys, reading books, and watching "school house rock". it's bible study night, and everyone's at our house this week. don't tell anyone i'm blogging during bible study.

i typed out a ridiculously long post last night and when i clicked "post" my computer decided to freeze up. i lost the post...of course. i won't write the whole thing again, so let me 'splain. no, too long. let me sum up.

i spent the weekend with mom and the a-team and a bunch of women from our church and homeschool group at a mother's conference up in dallas. kristen and annie were able to come down and spend the weekend with us, so that of course made it so much more fun. after the conference ended, we drove over to ft worth where dad and the rest of the kids were waiting for us. all 9 kids in our family got to be together at the same time with our parents and grandparents. dad took us all out to eat mexican food where we were mainly concerned about eating as many sopapillas as possible. when we got back to the grandparents' house, we went out back for a "purely warren" photoshoot.
it was definitely a fun time and we are grateful that God allowed us to all be in the same place at the same time. we are blessed.

it's my birthday and i'll cry if i want to...

...you would cry too if it happened to you

i've been singing this all day with my best voice, but the kids don't appreciate it very much.
so i'm pretty happy today because now when aubrey refers to "teenagers" in her exasperated tone of voice, i no longer have to feel included.
so today we all woke up with the flu, which was disappointing because mom had scheduled our house appraisal for this afternoon. we all walked around like old people in our pajamas trying to clean up our mess for the inspector man. in honor of dad who could not be with us for this day, i tried to make a mandatory "one sock up, one sock down" dress code for the day, but the kids weren't amused. so instead we moaned and coughed all day, and pretending to be cleaning whenever mom was around. we actually finished more than i had anticipated, but our feeling of accomplishment was crushed when the inspector man was only inside of our house for approximately 7 minutes. i bet he didn't even notice the clean closets or the cracks in the walls that beth so diligently caulked up. oh well...it's always nice to have a clean house.

ever since abby was born, we have shared a birthday party every february. she, of course, always gets to pick what kind of party we are going to have and interestingly enough, she always settles on a "dora the explorer" party. she will usually call me to tell me that she has decided on dora, and i "oooh" and "aah" appropriately and tell her that dora is my favorite. well this year, she actually had a change of heart and ran over to me one day, threw her arms around my neck and squealed, "oh dok! mom says we're having a party again! it's our birthday again! what kind of party are we gonna have? it's a dok and abby party!! what do you like? dora, princess, strawberry shortcake, or little ponies? what kind do you want?" i thought carefully and said, "um, i think we should have a strawberry shortcake party this time! i love strawberry shortcake!" she stepped back and her face turned serious. "no dok, not strawberry shortcake. we love DORA remember??? we're having a dora party! yay!! we love dora!" she then bounced away and reported to mom and aubrey that we had decided on dora. so...on sunday night we'll be having a dora birthday over here. i'm sure we'll have plenty of pictures to post when it's over!

don't you LOVE dora?

metal

well well well...it's too bad for aubrey that i don't have a picture of my new braces yet, but most of you have already seen them anyway. my parents have this idea that once the other two get their braces on, there will be some sort of mandatory photoshoot of our four metal mouths. so i'm holding off on any pictures until then. ;)

beth is almost flipping out right now because she claims that mom told her that, hypothetically, it would be fine for us (i mean beth) to get a small house dog. if you san antonians remember back a few years ago, "a small house dog" is how luther and ellie started out and now we're a week away from shipping ellie off to friends in west texas. and we're already talking about another *inside* dog? i have yet to thoroughly investigate this alleged conversation between beth and mom, but on the offchance that i don't know my mother nearly as well as i thought, would any of you mind if i came and camped out at your house?
i guess i'm really not a dog type of person. i'm an ant farm person. wait...nevermind.

since dad left today for a tdy to maryland, i figured it was my turn to make sure something horrible happened while he was away. nathan got his chance last week, mom and sam got theirs the week before, and so i was next on the list. after only 3 hours at work this morning, i had to all but crawl to the back office to call mom because i was having another of those blackout/seizure episodes that was bad enough to cut off my vision, hearing, speech, limited my overall balance, movement, and coherence, and of course made all of the regular symptoms and pain worse. mom was great and came to drive me home and we've been trying to decide what to do ever since. the weird thing is, i don't have a doctor right now due to pcsing, iraq, and general tricare dumbness. they let me slip through all their cracks again so dad, even though he's in maryland, has been on the phone with the hospital all day trying to get me back into a doc rotation. i would rather get right back into the clinics without going through the er again. if you think about it, please pray that some of the neurologists will take a chance and agree to see me soon (like, this week) and that God will give them wisdom for how to proceed and how to make this stop. needless to say, we're so tired of the same old "take a bunch of drugs and nap alot" routine and would really like some real answers.