School Shopping DONE!!!!

I finally finished my school shopping, not only did I get the boys stuff all set but I managed to get a few new things for me too (for school that is)
The only bad part was I went with my Mom and left the kids at home with the husband...in a clean house. Well long story short the kids and hubby are still here but the house is no longer clean! I am at the moment sitting on my butt watching Claud pick things up, and I will continue to do so until he is finished. As it wasn't me here this afternoon! I truly wish I was Supermom and could do it all, but I am tired of that role and plan to change the way things go around here, as soon as I watch enough Supernanny to tell me how to get the family to help me out!
Well I am finished complaining for now, I hope you all enjoy the rest of your long holiday weekend!

TMI : ok you have been warned

I am so sick and tired of the week before my period!!! I am a total basketcase for the week before and the week of that it is insane! I go from tired to wide awake, from crying to yelling and every emotion in between. Not to mention the physical pain that I am in, my back, my stomach(right on the line where my c-section scar is) and of course my breasts...I hate this time of month!!!!
I know that my weekend is not going to be getting any better as I have to do the school shopping that has been put off the last 2 weeks, I am not looking forward to dropping over $200 more dollars down! I just went on Weds. and ordered shirts for the kids....$110.00 and I got to leave.
I know that kids are expensive, I know I spend a lot on them that is spread out and I don't realize it then, only when I have to spend it all at once does it bother me this way.
Anyway, I hope you all have a good weekend I am going to curl up and be lazy the rest of the day!

Surgery Date Has Been Set...

They called me today from the dentist office about Dillion's surgery. It is scheduled for October 3rd. On Spet. 26th I have to be available to take the call from IRMC for the pre-op interview. As of right now I know that the surgery is scheduled for 12:30pm but I don't know what time we have to be at the hospital, that I won't know until the 26th.
I am slightly less nervous than I was before, I have decided that this is the best option for him and it will be a great thing once it is done and over with. My neighbor will be watching the other kids for me that day, so that is one less thing for me to worry about.
Please just keep Dillion in your prayers that day, it will help more than you may realize.

I Did It!!!

Last night I had to retake the math portion of the compass test, I went in there with the attitude that if I passed...good....if not the only thing that would happen is I would have to take basic math. Well I passed and was bumped up to pre-algebra!!! I guess the last 6 weeks of refreshing really did pay off for me. The only negative thing about passing was that they had a limited number of classes left that would work around my schedule, so I ended up stuck with a Thursday night class (6-10pm) I had really tried to avoid taking classes that ran until after dark because my eyesight is not so good at night and I hate driving in the dark. Although it is all highway from here to there, so I suppose I will do ok that one day a week...and the other positive is it will cut my babysitting costs a little.
Today will be a major cleaning day for me, last week and the last two days have been so busy that I haven't had a chance to do much around here, but finally my week is coming to a slow down.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about how it will feel to only have one kid home with me during the day once my boys are both in school? I have a feeling it will feel funny to me, but who knows. The one thing I do know is that I will be able to get more errands run and things done duing the day than I can currently.
Well I have nothing else exciting to write about....I hope you all enjoy the rest of your week!

Wedding Time!!!!

This weekend we were very busy! My nephew got married on Saturday...it was a beautiful wedding and I was very thankful to see that it all went over so smoothly, which was all that Kyle and Rachel had hoped for. I have watched these two "kids" since they started dating in high school. I have watched Rachel go from a shy and quiet outsider in our family, to a really big part of it. I have of course seen Kyle go through all of lifes stages even the 16-18 year old stage where it took all my energy to even be around him for 5 minutes and even more not to kill him. I have been witness to this relationship growing over the years, I have seen the good times and some of the bad. I got to see Rachel stressing on Wednesday over the last details of their special day, and I tried my best to help calm her, and let her know that no matter how things went over the day would be beautiful because her and Kyle were going to be married by the end of it and after all that is the whole point right? But even I have to admit what I saw Saturday was the most precious thing I have ever seen in my life. I saw how much love those two truly have for each other, it was expressed so obviously through the night.

It was emotional for me, as in most ways Kyle is more like a baby brother to me than a nephew because there is only a 5 year age difference. Although I wanted him to get married, it is still hard to let go of him being a child.

Well now that I have rambled on I will let you all enjoy some of the pictures from Saturday!

Medical Problems...please pray

This morning we took Dillion in for his dentist appointment with the specialists in Lansing, wow that is one nice office with a great staff! But here is the part that I knew in my heart would have to happen but I prayed that it could be taken care of differently. See Dillion has bottle rot more or less on his front teeth, and some things in this back teeth that were caused from the decay on his front teeth. Well there is needless to say a LOT of work that must be done in his little mouth. I was given 2 options: The first was doing the work in the office under a sedative(such as giving an adult a valum) but having to go there 3-4 times to get all the work completed...in the mean time scaring him from the dentist which at this point he is a tough boy when he goes to.
My second option is him going to the hospital, and being put under gene ral anestiea (sp?) in an operating room and all the work being done and over with in a day's time. I chose option 2...although I REALLY didn't want to, the thought of having my baby put under scares the living hell out of me! But I would rather he got it done and over with so he does not get any more decay and is not scared of the dentist for all of eternity.
This is going to be sometime within the next 6 weeks, and when we go it will be an all day thing...the Dr. told me to plan it for all day as it can take with all the pre op etc....like 6 hours to be done. I plan to find a sitter for CJ and Savannah and then make Claud go with me so I don't have to sit with only my nerves the whole time.

On top of this, I had to make an appt. for Claud to go to the Dr. on Monday as he finally showed me something on him (that has been there a year) that I am concerned about. At this point I will not say where or what it is, hopefully I am overreacting and it is nothing, but I want to be safe rather than sorry. I will let you all know more about it when I do.

Oh and I have yet another kidney infection, I get them once in awhile and I have to say I am sick of them. For the most part it only hurts in my back but the pain sometimes is worse than others, so I am laying around today...and trying to feel better.
I hope you all have a good weekend!

Random Ramblings

Here it is Tuesday and I already have a long list of to do's for the week. Last night I worked at the resturant until 11. Today I have to clean the house...again. Then go get my niece so she can babysit in between my going to class and Claud getting home from work. I have class from 4-7 then I have to go and try to find a pair of flip flops for Savannah to wear this Saturday in my nephews wedding.
Weds. I have a funeral to go to for a friend of the family, the nicest man I think I knew...no matter what others may think of him I think he was a wonderful man who wore his heart on his sleeve. He was one of those few people in this world that really had nothing to give but who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. Also on Weds. we have to go to Jackson and pick up Claud's tux for the wedding...hopefully it fits!
On Thursday we have to take Dillion for a dentist appt. that I am not looking forward to, he has some teeth in pretty bad shape and I assume they will remove them, but they will have too sedate him to do it..and that is the part that scares me to death! Plus I again have class on Thursday.
On Friday, we have rehearsal and rehearsal dinner to attend....which will take us well into the night.
Then on Saturday is my lil' nephews wedding day...it seems impossible to me that he is getting married...but all I can do is wish them both all the happiness in the world.
So as you see I have a long week ahead of me, and at the moment it is 10am and I have a house waiting for me to clean it...so I better go and do that now. I hope you all have a good week!

WE ARE BACK!!!!!

Hey did ya miss me??? We are back from vacation! We got back on Friday around 2 or so I guess. We were greeted with some bad news that we did not get selected for the Habitat house, but oddly enough I am not as sad about it as I thought I would be, I suppose because the entire time I kept an open mind and didn't get my hopes up too much about it.



Anyway, off of that subject and on to telling you all about our trip!



It was a lot of fun although I have to admit I don't think my parents had much fun if any. I knew that them going too was a bad idea from the start. Don't get me wrong I love my parents and enjoy being around them they just don't feel the same way about us, well they do but 3 kids is a lot to handle when you aren't around them very often. It was ok though they did better than I expected and I didn't have to cook:)



Well on Monday we took the boys fishing at Fletchers Floodwaters, Dillion had the most fun, and caught the most fish..lil' booger! We spent the majority of the day there fishing with them and it was a good time, I so enjoyed just watching them.



Tuesday we went to Mackinaw City/Island. This was a fun trip but a little too much for Dillion and Savannah, they are just too young to really care about it. Cj was interested in the fort and the lighthouses. I will say that they all enjoyed the ferry ride, which is my least favorite part, but the water was not choppy so that made the ride a little easier on me. It made for a real long day though, we took my parents with us and they were not prepared to haul 3 small kids around the island. Especially up the hill to the fort...which is a hike for long legs let alone short ones:)



On Wednesday we went to Gaylord and visited tourist trap #3,458 The Call of the Wild. I am just kidding about the tourtist trap part, kind of lol. Both of my boys had already been there, but it was 3 years ago so they didn't remember it. They both really liked looking at all the animals, and even Savannah liked it. Which suprised me, I figured some of the exhibits would make her cry but she is a tough girl! While in Gaylord we went to Jays sporting goods....because in this family you cannot go north without stopping at Jay's...Savannah got a fishing pole (which she pronounces pissing pole) On the way out of Gaylord Claud took a turn to try and avoid the city traffic in downtown, and we came across an elk pen....that was way cool! We had to go around the block to get a better look but it was SOOOO worth it! None of us had ever seen a live elk before, it was great! We took pictures and fed them a bit...then the biggest bull in there came to the fence where of course my husband and I discussed where we would place the bullet given the chance...to which Mr. Big Boy (as Dillion named him) decided to blow his nose all over us...in all reality we deserved it LOL!

On Thursday which was supposed to be the day we left we decided to stay one more night, but my parents left as planned. This made me more relaxed, and we just sat around and enjoyed our day with the kiddos!

On Friday morning we packed up and headed home. And now here we are, I arrived to a clean house thanks to my neice who watched our dogs and now after two days of being home this family has trashed it...so my plan for today is to clean it all up! Sigh....back to the daily grind!

**I will post pics on Myspace because I cannot get them to load here for whatever reason...so you can look there! Just look under Family Vacation 2008...and if you aren't one of my friends just add me!
http://www.myspace.com/mom2_3_iswhatibe

Crunch Time!

Today is really the final day for me to get all of the things done that I need to get done to leave on Sunday, yet here I am blogging! What a procrastinator lol.
We ran into a BIG problem yesterday! We don't have a hitch on my van yet to pull the trailer, so we went on Sunday to Autozone and ordered a REESE hitch, when Claud picked it up yesterday he noticed the box said PUTNAM a lot cheaper and not what we paid for or ordered....so he told them and they said sometimes the boxes get mixed up. So he took it, I brought my van down to the in laws and he tried to put it on...it didn't fit. So we call Autozone and explain it, ask them if they can get the right one by Saturday a.m. Well they jerked us around for a long time and finally we just started calling other places, we found a place that had one in stock but not the 2" that Claud wanted, but they could have it in by today at noon! So we got our money back from Autozone and went and paid $40 more for this one, although at least it is a REESE and it will be here...most other places said it would be 3-7 days to get one in. Yesterday was not a good day...if I had waited until the last minute I can see this being my fault but I didn't.
So I am planning to clean the whole house, which if you remember I did a day or two ago and my family has trashed again, also I need to get things packed and clean out the van! At some point our hitch will be here and Claud will need to put it on, I had planned on him doing that tonight, but it may be in the morning depending on how things go today here. So far it is not looking good, Savannah is in one of her moods today...she is whining about EVERYTHING!! When she gets like this I can't get anything done besides get a headache.
Well I am off here for now, got to get to cleaning or it isn't going to get done, the maid did not show up this morning....I think I am going to fire her LOL
Have a great day!

This IS Funny

This has been a busy busy week for me! I am at the moment catching a break from my morning work, which involved cleaning the house or at least part of it, and beginning to get the kids clothes around for our trip. My goal is to have everything packed and ready by Friday night so I can help my Mom get the rest around on Saturday. I still need to clean my van out, which ought to be a thrill! I don't understand how so much crap can build up in that thing!
I have however decided that a family of five needs a lot of things to leave for a week in the woods. Did I mention that there is no electricity where we are going? This is the way I have always loved to camp mostly because there are less people there, although now I am a little nervous about it because it really does require more stuff believe it or not. When Cj got up this morning he asked me if they had cable at the campground because he has a show he NEEDS (lol) to watch on Sunday night. When I informed him there wasn't even electricity for a TV you would have thought I told him the sky was not blue! The look on his face was priceless. I do hope though he will still have a good time without his video games and TV. In fact I am looking forward to showing him that there is a whole big world outside of the normal things he does.
I am getting excited about going, although I am NOT excited about the 5 hour drive to get there and get back. That part is going to suck! I know that we have taken 2 hour trips and it about killed the kids to drive that far so this ought to be interesting. And since we are leaving at 10 am the chances that anyone will sleep are slim, but I remain hopeful. We do have "fun boxes" packed with toys, coloring books, notebooks etc. to keep them occupied. And since my Mom is driving separate, one of the boys will ride with her, this will keep the "he's touching me!!!" to a minimum.
Well I have to get back to cleaning now, so I better go...I will update asap!

De da da

Well I have managed to get some laundry done, of course there is a lot more that needs to be done. There is not a whole lot new going on with our family...I wish there was a lot more to blog about but sadly there isn't.
Oh I know one thing that I have yet to mention and that is we are in the process of potty training Savannah. I am kind of sad that I am finally potty training my last baby. I will not have anymore kids....ever. It is a sad realization for me, I really don't want anymore kids I am happy with having three, but I guess when the option is taken away from you it makes it different somehow. I still believe we made the right choice by have my tubes tied...I guess it is just in the last 7 years, I have had a baby every two years or so, which means I should have one right now...makes me a little sad.
Ok enough rattling on and on. I am just trying to keep my mind off of the habitat decision to be honest with you. I knew this was going to be the longest month ever...I have looked at it from both sides of the fence, in a open mind kind of way for the last week. I know that if we are not picked I will be disappointed because we want this so much, but I will also be happy that someone (whoever it is) will have a home. Honestly that is the hardest part is not knowing who the other family is. I kind of wish I knew because it would make it a little easier to know what their situation is and kind of guess as to what our chances are. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not. I do know that they are planning to build in Mason sometime in the near future so whoever doesn't get picked for this house will be automatically included in the selection for the one in Mason. Although I have to be honest with myself, I don't want to leave Leslie...I have grown up here and would really like to stay here if at all possible. Ok I am back to rambling so I will stop now and go back to my laundry and the kiddos!
Have a good day ya'll!

This is going to be a busy week....

I have so much to do to get ready for our camping trip, packing a family of 5 for a 5 day trip is a lot more work than I would like to think about at the moment. Pair that with normal housework and classes and filling in at the resturant tonight and it is making for a busy week.
There is laundry to do, so I can pack clothes and of course floors to sweep and mop, dishes to do and rooms to pick up. My neice will be staying here while we are gone so that she can watch the dogs, I couldn't see paying a small fortune to board them for 5 days. And of course I want to have the house nice and clean before we leave so that I may come home to it the same way.
Also at some point this week I need to go do some of the blankets and things that go in the camper for my Mom since she is out of town, and clean the camper out too. I don't want her to have to do a whole bunch when she gets home from working at the end of the week.
I need to go this weekend and pick up my bridesmaid dress for my nephews wedding which is in 2 weeks, in case it needs any alterations to it. There is so much to do and so little time to do it, now if I could just get the motivation to do it all.

On another note I want to thank you all for your kind words and thoughts while we are waiting to hear back from Habitat on their decision. I am still very nervous but trying to maintain a positive point of view from both sides. We will know soon enough, and I know what is meant to be will be.

I hope you all have a nice week, I will try to update later in the week...if I have time!

7 Days and A Wake Up

Next Sunday we are leaving for our once a year family vacation. This year it is yet again camping, this time however my parents will be joining us. We are leaving for 5 days...this is the longest vacation that we have ever taken as a family. I am a little nervous but I am sure that we will have a great time.
So far we have plans to take the boys fishing for one day with just Claud and I and one other day we are going to take a day trip with everyone to the bridge. It should be lots of fun for us although I am not sure that my parents really know what they are getting into....3 kids is a lot of work and they do yell and play since they are kids. But I am sure it will be ok.
Anyway, my week is going to be spent packing and cleaning and laundrying to get ready, not to mention I still need a hitch on my van which I was hoping to do this weekend but due to a job we did that we have not been paid for as we expected the hitch has to wait.
Well hope you all have a nice weekend!