Blogging by Dee

These past 10 days of the kids' spring break have been long and mostly tough.  Stuck at home, both by financial necessity and then as each family member excluding myself, got the stomach flu 2 days apart.  First Aubs, then Micah, then Pete, then Pieter.  I spent 3 nights on the couch, mostly awake and cleaning up rugs and couch covers and rinsing puke buckets.  Getting cool washcloths, and soothing my family.   We did in this time also: Adopt Seahawk Visit the Skyzone trampoline center for a half an hour.  This was fun and hard.   It was $33 for the 3 kids for 30 min.  So they complained it was too short.  Also, Pieter hurt his back trying to slam on the basketball hoops, and Micah got very upset when he got "out" during dodge ball fairly quickly.  Mostly because he was playing with kids in high school and jr. high and he's in 2nd.  He struggles so much with wanting perfection. One day we also went bowling with Grams, as I had free ...

It sucks really bad to work every day to eat healthy and exercise and often go hungry or miss out on foods I love so I can lose weight but yet never lose a pound. To try handfuls of "miracle cures" after trying what I know is the right and healthy way, but no way at all is working. I seriously give up.  Eating whatever I want, buying cheap groceries, and not exercising keeps my weight the same as if I work my tail off and miss out on the food I enjoy and spend tons of money on expensive groceries. #XXL4Life

I know there are a few people who are with me on this.  A few people who can't afford to go anywhere on Spring Break or even afford to do fun stuff locally for Spring Break.  People like my husband, who can't take time off work even though they get tons of vacation and personal days, they work so hard they can't even use them and they just end up wasted in the trash each year.  And people like me who are the spouses of that hard worker, who work hard in the home to keep it running, for whom Spring Break actually means a ton more work, cleaning up after, making more meals for, and trying to entertain kids that would normally be at school.  Kids who understand that we can't afford to do anything so they want all of their friends who didn't go anywhere to come here to play and spend the night and have me entertain them too. Spring Break is one of those times I stay off of Facebook completely.  I am glad so many people can go visit their families or visit their time...

Surprise!  Pete and I spent the last few weeks researching hypoallergenic cat breeds and deciding if this was best for our family.  Aubs has sure missed having her Callie Cat. Well, last night we picked up this gorgeous Russian Blue 11m-old sweetheart from the ASPCA in Kalamazoo.   She immediately bonded to us and has been purring up a storm.  Licking and cuddling and loving to be petted.  She still has all of her claws so today Micah and I spent the day making her a scratching post/climbing bed from scratch.  Be proud Grandpa Ed!   We used an old fence post that someone (not me) accidentally knocked out of the ground this winter.  We don't have a fence anymore so it was perfect!  We made a base with a scrap piece of wood and a carpet piece from the dollar store.  We used wood glue to adhere it and Micah painted the sides and bottom.  We cut the post in half and wrapped one piece with 50feet of sisal and wood glue, and I was going t...

My sweet pumpkin had to have an EEG yesterday as 7 points of her NeuroPsych testing pointed to her having pediatric temporal lobe seizures.  We will find out...