Vehicles and Beds...

This is just going to be a quickie to answer some specific questions that have been posed several times over the past few weeks. I figured it was easier to just do it here....

The girls' beds....this is basically what they turned out looking like.

The first one is Emily's. She wanted hers to be lower than Sarah did, so this is what she and I designed. It's all just 3/4" plywood and there's a piece on the back (against the wall) to keep anything that is shoved into the cubbies from going out the other side - and to make the whole thing sturdier.

We are going to do the zebra duct tape on all of the edges - it's easier than sanding them all down and it looks cool. I think she's eventually going to paint the inside of the cubbies too, but that's up to her to decide.

Sarah wanted taller, so she designed hers to be taller - although it would drive me insane. I did put a second piece of plywood across the top of hers to further reinforce it to support the weight of her and her mattress. So far she has opted not to paint hers - we'll see if she changes her mind or not.

Both of the beds just take a standard twin-sized mattress. They are heavy and they are not going anywhere. Literally. They won't fit through the doors of the rooms.

Now on to the bigger question.....

The vehicle.

I still don't know what to call it. It's not really a van, or a car, or an SUV. I think technically it's a crossover, whatever that means.

Anyway......

My minivan died a few months ago, shortly after I paid it off. So I had to get something different.  But, I was in the middle of financing the house, so I couldn't run out and finance something else and risk screwing up my credit, right?

Enter the GrandpaCar - the Grand Marquis - I bought it from a friend's grandfather because I needed something that the kids and I could all fit into, but not have to be financed. It worked for us, but it was very crowded and uncomfortable.

I kept putting money aside into what I was calling the "house/van" fund - money to be used for both. I also got a very sizable tax refund which went straight into that fund. Once the house was settled and we closed and we had gotten done with the initial "big" expenses, I did some figuring and decided that I could start looking for another minivan. So I called a couple of the local dealerships and basically said "I need something used, inexpensive, mechanically sound, and can seat 7 - find it for me" and turned them loose.

One of them called me back the next day and said "I know you said minivan, but what about a Traverse? It seats 8....." The Dude and I went and looked at it with no intentions of buying it at all - I really just wanted to see how something that was NOT a minivan could seat 8 people. Long story short, I liked it. We went back home and I researched it and liked what I could find on the safety stuff and whatnot, and the price that they had on it was a couple of thousand below the blue book value. So we started talking money and I said that I was thinking about just scrapping my dead van - instead the dealership sent a couple of guys out to the house to look at it and they ended up offering me an insane (to me) amount of money in trade.

Between what they were asking for the Traverse, what I could afford to put down, and what they gave me for the dead van, I was able to get the payments under where I wanted them to be AND get a really good warranty on it. At that point, I would be stupid to not get it.....so I got it. I kept the GrandpaCar  for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that I have a kid who will be driving in a few months - and whether she likes it or not, she can drive that. And since The Dude's truck is iffy at times, he can drive it when he needs to go out of town or whatever.

Any other questions? :)

It's been a little while.....

So yeah. It's been a while since I've blogged anything. I've been wanting to, trust me. But I just haven't had the time or the energy.

Here's a nutshell for you:

Things are still progressing with the house. Like......all we're waiting for at this point is a date to close. The file went from the underwriters to the Rural Development people a couple of days ago, and RD is taking an average of 10 days to do their thing right now. Once they do their thing, all that's left is the closing. So I have reason to believe that I'll be a homeowner within the next few weeks.

Then there's the job. I've talked about the stress before, and it's really only gotten worse. Although CrankyPants hasn't been as cranky lately, she still has her moments. Not to mention that the job in general just sucks. I'm still not a morning person, and add to that being on my feet for 8+ hours straight without a break, and I'm miserable. I come out of there hurting so much by the end of the day that I can barely walk, and I can't get anything done around the house because I hurt so much.

Then of course there was the whole issue with my van finally self-destructing. It's still sitting in my backyard, dead - and it needs to go away. But I need to find the time to get it cleaned out and list it for sale. Or scrap it. Or something. Add that to the list of things to do.

I borrowed a friend's itty bitty car for a couple of weeks until I could buy my GrandpaCar - literally, it belonged to a friend's grandfather. It's not the most ideal vehicle for us, but I was limited because I can't just go out and finance something while I'm waiting to get the approval for the house. But, it works and it gets us where we need to go. It has a few quirks and needs a little bit of work done to it, but that'll hopefully be taken care of in the next few weeks sometime.

Add all of that to the normal stress of our everyday life, running kids to and from everywhere they need to go, trying to spend as much time as possible with The Dude, dealing with random health issues, handling landlord/maintenance issues in my current house, and trying to maintain some semblance of sanity - and you can imagine how hectic it's been.

Seriously though....the biggest worry on my mind right now is my job. I keep making lists of pros and cons in my head, and I can't really come up with anything good about it except for my coworkers - and I don't have to have the job to keep in touch with them. The hours make it extremely difficult for me to do much of anything for myself - and I find myself getting less and less sleep just to try to get the basics done. The job is making it harder for me to take care of myself - and if I don't do that, I'm just not going to make it. I know that right now, I've about pushed myself to the limit, both physically and mentally. I just don't think that I can do it anymore. Being in the fortunate position of not needing the job to survive makes it harder for me to go in every day - because why would anyone put themselves through this if it wasn't needed?

So at this point, I know that I'm going to quit - I just don't know when. I want it to be sooner rather than later, but I also have to make sure that the drop in my income won't affect my chances of getting the final loan approval. I qualify for the house even without the job income - but I don't want to risk it. I sent an email to Mortgage Lady asking her opinion on it, and I'm waiting to hear back from her before I do anything.

That's where I am. One big stressed out and anxiety-ridden mess.

But it could be worse. It could always be worse.

Speedbumps

I'm not exactly sure what we did to deserve this.....

I blew out the head gasket in my van.
Then the water pump went out in The Dude's truck (while I was driving it).
My dishwasher crapped out on Mother's Day.
My lawnmower died the other day.

Then this evening, The Dude was out running a couple of errands, including picking up supper for us, and he called me to say that the truck had broken down. Again.

Anyway, it ended up being really minor. I took the boys, went and got him, we ran to the auto parts store and back to his house to get his tools, replaced the solenoid in the parking lot of the pizza place, and boom - back on our way again, all in less than an hour.

Still.... it's frustrating. It seems like just when we fix something - another thing breaks. Luckily this time, it was cheap and easy to fix. But I'm getting tired of fixing stuff. Besides the fact that it's generally really inconvenient, it's also getting really expensive.

We keep spending money on fixing stuff - and it's money that we're trying to put towards other stuff.

We're trying to figure out a way to make TMOART:13 happen (if you're new around here, that stands for The Mother Of All Road Trips: 2013 Edition) but at this rate - it looks like it might not. We want to rent a bigger van to do it so that the kids are more comfortable (and let's face it - if it's a rental and it breaks down, someone else has to pay to fix it) but from looking into that, a rental will easily tack another $1000-1500 to the total cost of the trip. We just might not be about to do it this year.

Even though we keep breaking stuff, we
have fun fixing it.

We're still trying to get moved so that we can have all of the kids in the same school district, and moving takes money too. Funny how that works.

But still, even though this is all so incredibly frustrating, we're still plugging along. We're still making plans (and adjusting them) and we're moving forward and we're looking into doing some other things that involve some really big steps (no, not THAT kind of a step) and all in all, no matter what, life is good. We might keep hitting speedbumps, but that's all they are - they might temporarily slow us down a bit, but they're not sending us off into some other direction.

I figure at this point that if we can deal with this much broken crap, we should be able to handle just about anything. We'll just keep going over the speedbumps, one by one.

We might lose what little bit of our minds that we have left.....but it'll just make the ride more interesting.

This...

...is my happy face.

So I was trying to watch the road too.
You get the idea.

That is how I looked as I drove my van home tonight.

My van. We have it back. And it runs like a charm. Actually, I think it runs better than it ever did, but I'm going to reserve final judgment on that until I drive it for a few days, just to make sure. But I drove it about 20-25 miles tonight and had no problems - so I think we might be good to go for now.

I am so incredibly thankful to have it back. It will make all of our lives so much easier and so much less stressful. And for everyone who helped out while I was wheel-less....THANK YOU. The last month or so has been so incredibly stressful, and just having it back is such a huge relief - not only on me, but on The Dude and the kids as well. It'll even help Ex1, since the majority of kid transportation has been falling on him lately.

One less stressful thing to have hanging over my head.

Life is good.

A glimpse inside my head.

...and it's kind of a messy place to be right now.

Ever have one of those days when you just have so much stuff on your mind that you can't even make any sense out of it whatsoever?

That's me today. This is the 4th attempt at writing this post.

I don't even know where to begin.

I'm tired. I'm cranky. Actually, I'm just downright exhausted, and everything keeps piling up on top of me higher and higher and I'm getting really tired of it.

Between not having my van, and dealing with the recent breakdown of The Dude's truck, and working more hours at work, and him not working because of his injured shoulder, and trying to handle the normal household stuff, and still trying to figure out how to get us and The Dude moved into one house, and our newest project of trying to get him into school in the fall (I'll be dating a college student - how weird is that?), and handling the kids' attitudes, and preparing for summer vacation, and trying to plan a weekend getaway for me and him - I'm pretty sure that I'm about to lose my mind.

Not that there's much of it left.

To be completely honest with you, I had a bit of a meltdown (or three or four) on him tonight. Sometimes the stress just gets to be too much and I lose it, and I take it out on him. And I hate when I do that and I feel horrible about it - yet he just takes it all in stride. I kind of freaked out on him because there was no way that I could plan anything for this evening, because anything that we wanted to do was contingent upon other people deciding what they were going to do - and I snapped. What was the subject of my snapping?

World peace? Global warming? The economy?

No. It was what to make for supper.

And how did he handle it? He got up and starting digging through the fridge and freezer, and he made supper for us and the kids.

What did I do? I let him have control. I walked out of the kitchen and went and stretched out on my bed and I fell asleep. I have no idea how long I napped, but I did it.

I still don't know why he puts up with me - and I told him that again tonight. Whatever the reason is, I'm thankful for it and I don't know what I would do without him. I know that we're going to get through all of this BS at some point in time.....but I really wish that it would happen sooner rather than later.

At some point, we need to catch a break. But at the same time, at least we know that we can handle the rough stuff - because we've sure been through a bunch of it already - and we still kinda' like each other.

Can't really complain about that.

More fun and games....

A few pictures from yesterday....

We celebrated Jared's 9th birthday with our traditional cake and ice cream...

And we also celebrated Mother's Day with a big dinner with us and The Dude's mother and brother. However, somehow in the chaos we managed to not take a single picture - I'm still not exactly sure how that happened.

Although....I did snap this one right before the food was ready....this would be my dishwasher - that was full of dirty dishes and had just started to run when it decided to crap out and flood the kitchen. Luckily, I noticed it just a few minutes after it started so a handful of dirty towels were enough to soak up the water, but of course that left me with all of the dirty dinner dishes PLUS all of the dirty dishes inside of it that had to be washed. By hand.

So of course by the time I got done washing dishes, I had them piled up on every available flat surface in the kitchen - and I really need to get the rest of them put away - not to mention figure out why my dishwasher decided to spring a leak. Hopefully that's something stupid, but we all know the way that my luck with anything mechanical has been running lately.

I do find it ironic though - that dishwasher was given to me as a Mother's Day gift in about 2001ish - and it died on Mother's Day.



Alex had a Scout meeting tonight, and since we still don't have my van back (maybe tomorrow) we walked - which isn't that big of a deal since it's only about 6 blocks to get there. After the meeting, we decided to buzz over to the library since I had gotten a message that one of the books that they were holding for Emily was there and we had to go get it. We went and got the book, and started walking home. We got within about 2 blocks of home when Alex realized that he had left his Scout book at the library. So we turned around and walked back to get the book, and then turned around again to go home.


By this time, of course Daniel decided that he just couldn't walk another step - so he ended up on my shoulders. Thankfully he's still small enough that I can do that - but it does make tying my own shoes a little bit more difficult. But, that's what kids are for, right?

Random observations and happy stuff

I know I've been doing more random posts lately, but that's pretty much how life has been going for us. Nothing is nice and neat and tidy anymore - including my brain (not that it ever really was)...

HAPPY DANCE: The Dude got his truck running again! He showed up here around 6am this morning, got the boys up and ready for school, and then took them to school and let me sleep in a little bit before he took me to work -  AND he gave me a ride back home AND we picked the boys up from school. It was so nice to not have to walk everywhere for the first time in weeks.

RANDOM COMPLAINT: Thanks to my latest allergy attack, I have totally lost my voice. It squeaks in and out occasionally, but for the most part all I can do is whisper-yell. I have come to the conclusion that trying to yell at/for the kids with no voice makes me sound like a pissed off chipmunk. Seriously. Stop laughing.

HAPPY/HOPEFUL: The Dude took some more car parts to the guy who is fixing my van (we bought him some other parts as payment for fixing it) and the guy said that he had my van about 95% taken apart and from what he could see, there was no other damage to the engine from the blown head gasket. I still refuse to believe it until he's completely done with it, but at least it's looking promising at this stage of the game. And we might even have it back by the end of the weekend.

RANDOM ACCOMPLISHMENT: I have been totally slacking on laundry lately - between my work schedule and having to take the extra time to walk everywhere, I've just been washing and drying everything and piling it up in the laundry room. But I can now say that all of that in the picture is folded and put away with the exception of a few random things that still need to be done - and I've also done and put away about 4 other loads tonight. Baby steps.

RANDOM WEEKEND PLANS: Tomorrow has been deemed Official Yardwork Day. The grass needs to be mowed and the flowerbeds need to be weeded - and it's all going to get done tomorrow since the weather is supposed to be decent. Sunday is Jared's birthday - so far he has requested cinnamon rolls for breakfast, Snickers/peanut butter ice cream with his cake, and meatloaf for supper. And a football - but it has to be a real one, not a dumb one.



On that note, one more laundry flip, and then I'm going to dump all of the stuff off of my bed, and I'm going to go to sleep. I will kick these allergies if it's the last thing that I do.

Random thoughts and stuff.

 ~~As tired as I am of not having my van (or The Dude's truck)....I am grateful that I get to see sights like I did while I was walking the boys to school this morning. The sunrise over the creek running through town was gorgeous, and there was just enough of a chill in the air to make the temperature perfect.

~~Judgmental people are everywhere right now. Holy crap, people - I'm not even talking about blog stuff now, I'm talking about real life idiots who think that they know what's best for everyone when in reality they have no clue!

~~The rain and snow that we've had over the past few months have definitely helped with the drought that we've been experiencing. The creek finally has water in it, but it's still not at capacity, and it's still pretty slimy. But, it's water. And we need it so desperately.

~~The boys seem to be getting used to walking everywhere - and they even enjoyed walking home from school in the rain this afternoon (even though it was barely sprinkling).

~~Wint-o-green lifesavers are addicting.

~~No matter how much time I spend organizing the top of my desk, it still looks like a disaster area.

~~I get more cleaning and organizing done in the 10 minutes before company arrives than I get done all day long.

~~Having a store directly across the street is convenient when I run out of dishwasher detergent, but deadly when I have chocolate cravings.

~~My van is supposed to get towed out of here tomorrow evening and taken to the guy who is going to fix it for me. The parts are supposed to be here tomorrow, a friend is towing it for me, the guy says he can do it, but I won't feel better about it until he calls me and says that it's done because my biggest fear right now is that something else major is going to go wrong and it's not going to be able to get fixed and then we'll be back to square one.

~~The Dude went back to the doctor today to get the results of the MRI on his shoulder, and although there is some damage, it's not as bad as we previously thought - so NO SURGERY! Yay! Best news that we've gotten in the past few weeks months.

~~My legs and ankles are finally starting to feel better after Sunday's little race. I'm still a bit sore, but I definitely survived. Having to walk back and forth to work and to school has kind of forced that issue though (although I may have gotten a ride or two here and there)(I'm human).

~~I need more lifesavers.

Broken down

Today has been rough. Actually, the past couple of months have been.

When I was thinking about what I wanted to write about tonight, I started out thinking that it was going to be a total rant-fest, with me doing nothing but complaining about everything that is going wrong in my life - because honestly, right now, there's a lot of garbage that is going wrong. I seriously spent hours today crying my eyes out. I'm talking full-blown sobbing, snot bubbles, drooling, gasping-for-air ugly crying. For hours. I truly felt like I was having a nervous breakdown or something, because I just couldn't take it anymore.

But as I started to calm down and think more and more about it, I realized that yes - things kind of suck right now - but at the same time, there's still a lot of good stuff too. And I need to think about that or else I'm going to lose what little bit of my mind I have left.

There's been a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on that has been incredibly stressful on me, and honestly no one but The Dude knows all of it. I haven't even told my best friends about all of it and I know that I've been pushing them away because I don't want to talk about it yet. It's been so hard, and he's been amazing through all of it (as usual).

He hurt his shoulder a few weeks ago. Badly. He really can't do much of anything right now. The MRI is scheduled for Monday and then we'll have a better idea of how much damage there is and what the next step will be. Until then, a lot of extra stuff is falling on me. I had to drag my mower over there the other night to take care of their yard, even though I was tired and cranky and irritable - but you know what? I like to mow. I was glad I was able to do it. And I got a workout. And it's one less thing for him and his mother to have to worry about getting done. Win x4.

My van. Ugh. Blown head gasket. The garage wanted $2300 to fix it. Ha. Instead, The Dude talked to his friend who talked to his buddy and bargaining was done and deals were made and parts were ordered and it should be fixed within the next couple of weeks for about 1/5th of that quote. I can't complain about that.

The Dude's truck. It's been my temporary set of wheels for the past few days - until this morning when it started to overheat and spew coolant out of the engine. Fearing the worst, The Dude took it and dealt with it while I was at work. Although I ended up having to do an unexpected 3-mile sprint really fast walk to get the boys from school, he was somehow able to replace the thermostat by himself (with one arm) for a grand total of about $9.

Unfortunately, while the sealant on the new part cures, it can't be driven for 24 hours, so I missed the girls' band concert tonight. And I thought that I was going to miss the CF walk tomorrow, but thanks to a dear friend offering me a ride (which involves her going WAY out of her way) I will be there. I will be wearing a horrible outfit, but I will be there.

I got this part-time job a few weeks ago, only planning to work a few hours here and there for some extra spending money - but with everything else that is happening (and costing us money) I quickly realized that I need to work more hours. I talked to my boss about it and she is willing to give me more hours AND work around my availability - and until The Dude goes back to work, he'll be able to help me with the kids in order to make all of this happen.

There's a lot of other smaller things going on at the same time - but I always find it amazing how all of the big crap decides to go wrong at the same time - and it's so easy to get sucked into the horribleness of it and forget that there's still good stuff happening too. I know that we're going to get through all of this at some point - we'll get my van fixed and get his van running and get his shoulder fixed and find our dream house and pay off all of our bills and life will be better than it is now - but I just have to be patient and keep working toward that, one day at a time.

More zoo shots and stuff....

So I got to spend yet another day at the zoo today. Unfortunately the weather wasn't as wonderful, but it was still decent. It was hot, then cold, then hot, then cold...a few sprinkles, lots of wind, you know - typical Kansas stuff.

What's not typical is that although it was in the mid-80s for the past couple of days, it's going to be below freezing again tonight and tomorrow night. Blah.

So.....random zoo shots from today...

Excited to get there!

Excited to be there!

Are they..... SMILING at me?

I vant to.....oh, nevermind. Too cliche.

Add caption

Another red panda sighting!

Obligatory self-portrait - but he was getting tired.

This just makes me giggle.

If I had 1/10th of the energy that these three had....

Yeah. We were both pretty wiped on the way home.

In other news....

Came home to bloomin' irises.
Too bad they're going to FREEZE.

The Dude has been diligently working on a plan to get my van fixed - using his connections and whatnot to hopefully get it done for a fraction of the original quote, but we'll see what happens. Nothing is definite yet, so I'm still driving the chariot until we get the van done - and hoping and praying that his plan will work...

Winning the lottery would definitely help, but well, you know....

And last but not least...... if you haven't had a chance to donate yet, PLEASE DO. The walk is on Saturday and we need your help. Rumor has it that Ashley might be beating me in the donations, but I could have a few bucks stashed up my sleeve to throw in at the last minute - so if you want to see me strolling through the streets of Wichita in whatever ridiculous get-up she has me wearing - you'd better throw some more money in her direction. Or share the post. Whatever works to get the word out there and find a cure!

Wish Flowers

My kids call these "wish flowers".

They pick them, make a wish, close their eyes, and blow with all their might, hoping that the power of their breath is enough to force every single piece of "cotton" off of the stem, granting their wish immediately.

To see their innocence and hope every time that they do this is both inspiring and heartbreaking. Knowing that they have placed all of their hope and faith on a common weed makes me realize just how trusting they can be, but knowing that the weed doesn't have the power to make everything right is just as disappointing for me as it is for them.

As their mother, I want to make all of their wishes come true. As a human, I know that's impossible. How can I do for them what I can't even do for myself?

As a parent, I think one of the hardest things ever is to see my kids want something and not be able to provide that for them - be it a material item or not. It's no secret that I don't have money to burn, so when the kids ask for something.... a new bike, or new 'cooler' shoes, or to go out to eat, or whatever... and I have to say "I'm sorry, but we can't afford that right now" it absolutely breaks my heart. But at the same time, I try to use that as a teaching moment - "we can't always do what we want all of the time, but if we work toward a goal and save our money, we can do it another time" or something similar to that. I think that it teaches them something, and I think that they learn to appreciate things more because of this, and I know that will help them in the long run - but it doesn't negate the fact that right now - it sucks.

I hate using money - or the lack of it - to teach my kids life lessons, but when you get right down to it, so much of our lives nowadays revolves around money. Our kids are being taught by society in general that they have to have the newest best biggest brightest thing or they're not cool - and to me, that's just wrong. And I'm trying to teach my kids that they don't have to have all that to be cool.

Every now and then, there's a moment when I think that maybe I've gotten through to them - like today, when we were driving to church in The Dude's chariot and Emily looked at me and said "Mom, when I get old enough to drive, I want a truck just like this - I don't want a new one, I want an old one" and I could have hugged and kissed her right then and there if I wasn't driving. She thinks that the old beat up truck is cool - and that makes me so happy.

Right now, 98% of the enormous stress in my life revolves around money - or the lack of it. We need money to fix my van, we need money to move, we need money to get The Dude's surgery on his shoulder, we need money to plan our yearly TMOART to see my parents.....money money money. But as The Dude reminded me today: "We will get through this - we've gotten through worse, and we'll get through this too, because we're too badass not to."

Don't tell him, but I'm beginning to think that he's my own version of a wish flower - except that instead of me being able to push him around and get my way, his strength in tough situations is what is keeping me from totally losing my mind.

My chariot...and other random thoughts.

Since my van is officially dead - to the tune of $2300 to replace a blown head gasket (ha! right!) - it's sitting in my driveway until we figure out what to do with it. I refuse to panic about it yet - I did enough of that  yesterday. Today I started making phone calls to figure out ways to do it cheaper than that - and I will not panic again until all of my possibilities are exhausted. It's not worth the panic. There are bigger problems in the world. This is just a hiccup.

(Yes, I'm trying to convince myself of that as well.)

Anyway, since The Dude is out of town for an extended playdate with his buddies, he handed over the keys to his truck. It isn't pretty, and I can be heard from miles away, but right now it gets us where we need to go.....

Yes, we have reverted to the days of lap belts and actually rolling down the windows. There is nothing computerized or electronic about this baby - and that's ok with me.

We will use the chariot to get us to a 5K tomorrow - Emily and I are running. Well, she's running, and I'm probably walking since I haven't done anything to get ready for it. Life has just been too hectic lately. I'm bummed, but at least I'm still getting out there to do it. And no matter how slow I go, I'm still lapping everyone on the couch.

I have to remind myself of that next weekend when I do the half-marathon. Whoops.

.....speaking of Emily......

For crying out loud, people. The Tooth Fairy letter surfaced again today. People just need to get over themselves and stop armchair parenting other people's kids. Seriously. The pages who shared it were awesome - and they made sure that I got credit for it (which is more than the majority of pages who shared it did) but the people who commented on it - WOW. Most of the insults were aimed at me, which is fine. But there were a few who insinuated that my kid was lazy, or disrespectful, or whatever. Don't get me wrong - my kids are far from perfect, but I will not put up with strangers badmouthing them when they don't even know my kids. And so, to those people I say..... judgmental people suck.

Finally....I know that I've been sharing THIS POST a bunch. But it's really really important. Read it. Share it. Please. And notice the challenge - because as of right now, no one is going to see ME in a moomoo and mohawk. If you want to change that, the only way is to donate more money. Take that couple of bucks that you were going to spend on your next cup of overpriced coffee and donate it to a good cause. Seriously. It doesn't take much to add up to something big. And that something big could be a cure.

The best part of the day

I dropped my van off at the garage this morning to get the issues with it diagnosed - needless to say it did not end up being a happy experience. There's no way that I can afford to have them fix it, so I'm going to go back up there tomorrow and pick it up and limp it home and then we'll work on figuring out Plan B. I've already had my nervous breakdown over it, and I refuse to stress about it anymore. We'll figure it out, just like we always do.

The Dude is leaving tomorrow to go out of town for a couple of days with his best friend and he's leaving his truck here for me to use so I won't be stranded. It's big and old and ugly, but it runs so at this point, I'll take it. At least we have something to use for a few days.

I got lots of walking in today too. And it was kind of funny - as I was walking home from work, I heard this loud truck rumble past me and when I looked, it was The Dude and his mother heading back to their house after an appointment. I tried to get his attention, but he wasn't looking in my direction - so I walked to his house (I was only about 2 blocks away at that point) and made him drive me home so that we could talk about the van - but I also told him that he got brownie points because since he didn't notice me walking down the road, I knew that he wasn't eyeballing girls while he was out running errands. ;)

But the best part of the day was going to the boys' parent-teacher conferences. These were student-led conferences, meaning that the kids had checklists of everything that they were supposed to show us in the classroom, and they checked off each one as they completed it. Then we talked to the teacher and the kids got a coupon to use at the book fair. The Dude has been struggling with his injured shoulder, but he managed to make it through the conferences with me, much to the boys' delight.

Reading corner in Alex's room

Showing off artwork

Alex's tennis player

Daniel reading us a story

Daniel's artwork

The Dude and Daniel - they had to go get his flower that
he forgot to get from his room.

Both boys are doing well in school. Academically they are both ahead of where they need to be. There are some behavioral issues, but nothing that isn't already being addressed. All in all, I really can't complain. And having The Dude there to go to the conferences with us - especially since he really didn't feel up to it - means more to me than he'll ever know.

I'll rise

I went camping this weekend with Alex and Daniel. It was a Scout thing, and although it was horribly cold and windy and at times downright miserable, the boys had a great time and we survived the weekend with very few serious issues for the amount of kids that we had with us.

While we were there and I was basically unplugged from the world, it gave me a break from thinking a whole heck of a lot.  But now that we're back and the clothes are unpacked and the laundry is (almost) done, it's back to reality.

Things are piling up again, and my plate is full - and like I mentioned on my facebook page, it's not full of chocolate.

~The Dude is facing what will most likely be major surgery on his shoulder, and right now he is miserable - and I can't do anything to help. He's not working, but there are still bills to be paid on his end.
~We are still looking to move as soon as we can, but of course, that takes money - lots of money - whether we decide to rent or buy.
~It appears that my van needs to have some work done on it. Like, now. I probably shouldn't be driving it, but I don't have much of a choice.

Needless to say, all of that adds to my normally stressful and chaotic life. I actually spoke to my boss last week and she gave me a few additional hours this week so that will help financially. I've all but cut out any frivolous spending on my end in order to save as much money as possible so that we can get through all of this stuff, and I'm looking into some other opportunities to make money that I've known about but ignored up until now.

Bottom line is this: no matter what happens, we're going to get through all of the BS. Even though right now I feel not only like my plate is full, but that I've been smacked upside the head with it - things are going to fall into place and we're going to survive. The Dude will get his shoulder fixed and be back to 100% soon, we'll get moved into a new fabulous wonderful place, and my van will be roadworthy again.

It might not happen today or tomorrow or next week - but I know that we are going to get through it.

Thankful.

Today, I am thankful. For so many things - and I don't know if I can even express all of them.

First and foremost, I am so incredibly thankful that I have my wheels back...

I couldn't have gotten it done without the kindness and generosity of so many of you - and for that, I will be eternally grateful. I am amazed still by all of it, and it still brings me to tears if I think about it too much.

I am thankful that the transmission waited to die until we were home safely after our road trip.

I am incredibly thankful that the axle didn't fall apart until it was in the garage being repaired already - for those of you who missed that story...

The garage guy called me yesterday (was it yesterday? I think it was yesterday...) to tell me that he had good news and bad news. The good news was that he was able to locate a remanufactured transmission and wanted to put that in the van instead of a used one, but for the same price. I was thrilled with that news. But then he told me that as he was under the van working on it, the drivers side axle literally fell apart in his hands. It broke. Snapped. Crumbled. So he had to replace that, which obviously cost extra. So, I scrounged and came up with the extra money, which is going to make the rest of the month tight, but the van is fixed.

And I am so thankful that the axle broke then, and not while we were doing 75mph on the highway. Had it happened then, chances are that we wouldn't have landed upright. Or in one piece. And that thought just makes my skin crawl.

I am thankful for The Dude, for so many reasons. For him allowing me to borrow his van for the past 2 months. For making me smile when I don't really want to do it. For taking care of the kids for me while I was so sick last night that I literally couldn't stand up straight. For taking care of me and making me go to bed instead of staying up trying to get things done. For just being him and for loving me in spite of my neurotic tendencies and for "signing up" to be a part of our lives.

I am thankful for my little ghetto-esque house. The kids and I moved in to this house 2 years ago today. September 1, 2010 was the start of my new life and had I known then what I know now - wow.

I lost virtually everything in my second divorce. I lost our home because the mortgage wasn't in my name and I couldn't talk to the mortgage people to do anything about the payments that had been missed. I lost our van because again, that wasn't in my name and I couldn't renew the tags on it because of that. I lost a lot of my valuable possessions because I had to sell them to make ends meet. When I felt like my world was completely caving in around me, I found this awful little house - but I knew that I could make it work. Thanks to my church family volunteering their time to help, we got everything moved from the old house to this one. It took months to get things situated, but we eventually did it and we turned it into our home.

It's not the best house in the world - but for now, it's ours. And I know that we can stay here as long as we need to in order to save up enough money for our next move, which will be to the town where the older three kids go to school so that all of my kids can go to school in the same district. Although the house is tiny, we make it work (most of the time) and for that I am thankful.

Even though at this particular moment in time I feel like crap and all I want to do is curl up in a ball and go to sleep and not wake up until my allergy season is past, I am so incredibly thankful for my life.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Life is good.

More of the usual chaos

It was just another typical day.

But the good thing about being up before the sun is that I actually get to watch the sun rise. Granted, it's generally rising in my face as I'm driving, but it was still pretty this morning.

I got the kids off to school, and came back home and actually crawled back into bed for a couple of hours - something that I never do - and it was heavenly!

After I picked Daniel up from school, we hung out with The Dude for a bit. Things got a little goofy, as usual. Gotta' love those toys that come in kids' meals from fast food restaurants.

We then got to go to Sarah's first volleyball game of the season.

Wow. I don't know that I have ever been as proud of this kid as I am now. She really looked good out there tonight.

She's got an awesome serve and she was really just downright amazing out there. Her team won both of their games, and she played almost the entire time. The coach only pulled her out a couple of times for just a few minutes each time. For as much as she loves to play basketball, I think she might have found "her" sport this time.

I had to leave immediately after her games to take The Dude to work (he was at the games with us) and then I came back in time to watch the last couple of games, and then went to the other school to get Emily from volleyball practice. Things got a little more chaotic and Sarah opted to stay with Ex1 tonight, so the other 4 kids and I came back to town, picked The Dude up from work and took him home, and then came home.

And then I was told that I needed to make brownies for Emily's class tomorrow.

Yay. Late night baking.

And of course the house is a mess and I have a ton of things to do tomorrow (what a surprise).....

Oh, and the van update: I talked to the guy today, and he *thought* that he could have it done tonight. He took it to his brother's shop about 30 miles from here because his brother has a lift and he doesn't - so he's been going down there in the evenings to work on it after he closes his shop. He was supposed to call me tonight to let me know if he got it done or not, but I haven't heard from him yet, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to stop by there in the morning with the rest of his money....

...and if it's done, great. If it's not done, it'll be done by Tuesday (silly holiday) so I'll get it then. As much as I would love to have it tomorrow, it's been almost 2 months already - another couple of days isn't going to kill me.

At least, that's what I keep telling myself.