Oh Crap! – Musings of an Unperfect Mommy

Our Park Adventure

September 28, 2012

Never mind that this was three weeks ago, I am finally posting pictures of our park adventure. What you won’t see is the excitement of the kids running from tree to tree as they read the plaques in front to see what kind of trees they were. Nor will you see them dumping the water out of their water bottles and replacing it with pond water to look at under our little microscope at home (next time I’ll bring it along). Or the horror of seeing the dry cracked ground and the little pond that was all but dried up. What you will see is the beauty of the day and the joy of kids enjoying nature on one of the first cool days after our second heat wave. We need to go back this weekend since we have now had rain to see the differences it has made – if any. We haven’t had that much rain, but enough to help the grass in the yard out a smidge. Enjoy!

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September Progress Report

September 27, 2012

Well, well, well, looky who’s here :-). Yep, I decided I’d better say something before ya’ll think I fell off the face of the earth. Let’s get started with the report shall we?

Health – As you know, I’ve been battling high blood pressure since being diagnosed in June. I made progress and then didn’t make any progress for awhile. After changing doctors and changing meds a couple of times, I seem to be where I need to be – finally. My bp is now almost normal (in the 120’s/80’s instead of 150’s/90’s) so I feel really good about that! I go to the doctor this Friday for a check on it and he should be happy. I know I am.

Also, I was diagnosed with low thyroid and after two almost two months of being on a lowered dose of meds (the initial dose was way, way too high), my level is almost normal – well, hooray for that! I go in another week to have another blood test to see where I am at.

As far as my mental health is concerned, well, I had kind of a backslide, and had to call my counselor to see if I c9uld get back in with her (after a 2 year hiatus). She welcomed it and I’m SO glad to be going back – my first session is next Monday and I can’t wait!

Weight – Well, there’s actually good news to report for a change. I’ve lost 12 pounds since all this started and trying to keep the downward trend going. Unfortunately, I keep hitting plateaus and I also had a backslide here as well. Can you say throwing all that work in the trash for a couple of weeks? Next week I am going to do Deal-A-Meal with fervor and try to only eat whole foods – as little processed as possible. Some things like pasta I can’t avoid buying processed, but there’s a lot I can do better on.

I have also decided instead of walking 20 or 30 minutes at once, to spread out my walking into 15 minute increments 3 times a day. I think that may work better. I have to say, I’m kind of worried it may push my bp up again, but we’ll see. At this point, I just don’t want to break whatever good is going on with that right now.

School – We started back in school the last week of August and so far so good. I had to rearrange a couple of courses for Steve, but otherwise all is well. The kids are going to do a lot more writing this year than they did last year and trying to find writing projects they’ll enjoy doing is the challenge. Last week I gave Maggie and Joe an assignment to rewrite a fairy tale from a character’s point of view. They loved that challenge and Maggie wrote 3 stories! I love it when I hit on good ideas. So, with a month under our belt now, I feel like we are on the right track.

Sundays – We have decided to institute Sunday Family Time. Now, whether Mike will come along much now that it’s football season I don’t know, but the rest of us will be doing something. We’ve been to the library and also to a local bookstore as well as parks. It is fun to get out and about and do something different than just sitting at home which often means a long afternoon. What I’d really like to have is an Unplugged Sunday and will continue to work toward that.

Restoration – We have had to make some big purchases this month but they were very much needed. We finally replaced an old very decrepit sofa when a local store had a pretty good sale on. We now have one really beautiful piece of furniture in the living room and I look forward to buying the matching pieces.

Our stove died a fiery death (yes, literally) and we had to replace it too. It took almost two weeks to get our new stove, but it arrived today and works wonderfully! It has a few extra features on it our old stove didn’t and I think it will suit our needs better. I know the kids are looking forward to cooking on it too :-).

Steve is going to be getting orthodontic work done soon and I think it will start in earnest next month. He should have a really nice smile in a couple of years. Maggie will be following soon and possibly Becky as well. Le sigh.

The best part of all these purchases is we payed cash for them all – no credit cards – and that makes me feel really happy.

So, I think that’s it for the last two months. Hopefully we can continue to make headway and not have any more stuff thrown at us. Things breaking down or surprise exterior home inspections from insurance companies (yes, that’s hit us too) are not what we need right now. All I can do is pray that God will let us catch our breath from this stuff until the next round. Because you know there’ll be another round :-/.

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Maggie Makes A Movie

September 13, 2012

Yep, I have another movie maker in the family. For those who don’t know, my older boys (Matt, Jeff, and Chris) went through a phase of making movies a few years ago. Some (i.e. Fat Lumps) will go down in family history forever. So, this runs in the family.

Well, Maggie got a little Hello Kitty camcorder for Christmas last year and she has made lots of little movies, but this time she decided to make a stop motion animation! I had bought her this book and it has helped her be even more creative with her work.

Her first movie is what I call Whimzy Movie because she made it with her and her sisters’ Whimzy animals. I have to say, I’m really impressed by how well she did. We have two more videos that we are currently pulling together and I will upload those as soon as we have them done. In the meantime, here is Whimzy Movie for your viewing pleasure.

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Weekend Gallery

September 9, 2012

Hi everyone! Tap, tap – is this thing on? Well, if you still are coming here – thanks. If not – well, you won’t see that I’m posting a slew of pictures today. :-) It was a long, stressful summer and some health issues are still not resolved but in the works and that is why I haven’t been talking much here. However, I don’t want to abandon my blog completely and it is a way of journaling what happens around here so I figured I’d better post SOMETHING. So, Weekend Gallery is fun and there have been some really fun pictures of late so…the Gallery is open.

That Sally – she is always wanting her picture taken.

We were hoping to get rain from these clouds. We didn’t.

Barrett met with a terrible accident and had to be in a body cast for a week.

Remnant clouds from Isaac. We didn’t get any rain from him either.

The weather is finally cooler and my leaf fan is in season again.

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