Thursday 13 - Back to Blogging!

Things have calmed down a little (okay not really) and I have a moment to actually put up a blog post. It's been awhile...but I do want to get back into blogging publicly on this blog. So...this week Thursday 13 is an update and welcome back to blogging post! Hopefully you'll see more from me in the future...as I have some great things going on!

1. The girls are doing well in school. They're both loving 5th and 2nd grade. The both love their teachers and love the things they're doing in class. So far, we haven't had any problems at all this year. This was the first day of school...they look so cute. :)

2. Both girls are in cheerleading this year and they're having a good time with it. Ashlyn was SO excited that they opened up signups for grades 1-3 this year and she was able to participate. My little diva LOVES cheering. Aubry is likes the fact that she gets a trophy at the end of the year. ;) She's on the fence about whether she wants to do cheerleading or volleyball next year. She has awhile to decide.

3. I can't believe that the year is almost over already. I woke up and it was October again! I'll be turning 31 years old this month...seems so crazy!

4. And yeah...it's October. Which means it's almost November. And this is an election year. Which means my facebook has exploded with people talking politics. I loved the thing I saw on pinterest that said pinterest makes me like people I don't know and facebook makes me dislike people I do know. ;)

5. Ashlyn turned 8 years old last month. EIGHT! My sweet little seven year old turned into a defiant little eight year old. She's always been my mama's girl and has been so good about doing what she's told. Until like the DAY she turned eight. Then it was like someone flipped a switch. Mom wants me to take a shower? NO! Hmmm. ;P

6. We celebrated Ashlyn's birthday at Chuck E Cheese this year (just like Aubry's 8th birthday). The girls had a wonderful time...but it was a lot more busy this year than two years ago for Aubry's party. The kids didn't mind at all, of course, but it started to wear on the patience of the adults. :P My dad actually went this year (it was his first experience ever at Chuck E Cheese) and I think after two minutes he'd decided that he wouldn't mind never repeating all the fun of Chuck E Cheese. ;)

7. My health has been fun lately. NOT. Had some new issues pop up that haven't been fun. My doctor decided it was time to start testing again and trying to get a definite answer. So I have an appointment with an MS specialist scheduled and hopefully that goes well.

8. Oh! I am working! I'm now the proud owner of my own cleaning business. I've been tinycandi on the internet since I was 15 and at 30 I'm not tidycandi cleaning an office. ;) It's only a couple times a month but the flexibility has been a blessing when it comes to my health issues popping up. And it's also during the afternoon while the girls are at school so it doesn't interrupt my time with them, either. It's just been a perfect opportunity.

9. I was honored to be able to take photos for another birth this year. I didn't photograph the actual birth...but I was there through almost the entire labor and several hours after delivery. It's always an amazing experience. And this one was special to me because they have become my second family and I love them dearly.

10. And speaking of my second family...I've been dating someone again! I'm sure I'll write more about it later...but suffice to say I'm incredibly happy and my life is complete. I have my girls and I have my love (and my family and friends) and life is complete. Life doesn't always give us second chances to have exactly what you want with someone and I feel very blessed that things have played out the way they have. He's an incredible man and thinking about him just makes me smile. :)

11. I've been doing a lot of studying lately...though I'm not getting through all of my books as quickly as I'd like and some of them are a little more time-consuming than others. It's not always fun reading a textbook cover to cover...especially when it's a statistics book. :P But...I'm soaking up all the information I can! It has to go in spurts...because I write my notes by hand (it helps put things in long-term memory because my short-term memory is kinda useless) and after awhile it starts to cramp. I've always had a bad habit of writing down too much...and starting over again and again so they're neat and have the information the way I want. :P Note taking with OCD is awesome! ;) lol. But...the more times I write the information the more I'll remember anyway so I'm looking at it that way. It just takes a little longer than it probably should. ;)

12. I'm SO happy that my shows (most of them, anyway) have come back from summer hiatus! I'm really, really sad that they killed off Mark Sloan on Grey's Anatomy and Pete on Private Practice...I liked both of those characters (especially McSteamy!!) but so far the shows are carrying on better than I thought they might. Law and Order SVU and NCIS have been wonderful so far. I'm trying to get used to the new girl on Criminal Minds...I miss Prentiss. Which is funny...because Prentiss was on the first episode of SVU and I actually didn't like her on it very much...I thought her acting was much better on Criminal Minds. But the episode of SVU was good and Criminal Minds is doing alright. If they get rid of David Rossi on Criminal Minds, though, I'm gonna be pretty darn upset! ;) I'm also super excited that in a few weeks Burn Notice will be back again from hiatus! I think that's my favorite show out of all of them. :) The only show I'm really sad is gone is CSI Miami. I miss Frank and Walter and even Horatio and Ryan. It was one of my favorites, too.

13. The weather has been crazy lately. A few days it's been SUPER cold (like the day it was 40 degrees and we were sitting in the bleachers watching the girls cheer for a youth football game), some are rainy (today it's 60 so it's a cold rain) and then other days it has been in the 80s. Welcome to Kansas in October! I'm not ready for the cold. I like 70s...I could handle 70s year round. :)

And there's my Thursday 13 of randomness! I will be back to blogging in full-force now! So expect to see more from me soon! :)

Health Problems = Suck

I woke up early this morning...and about two hours after I woke up, I wished I was asleep again. I ended up with a major migraine and spent most of the morning with vertigo and nausea. And the nausea is on top of the stomach problems I already have right now. Plus about an hour after the migraine started, I ended up with the worst neuropathy I've had in awhile.

Neuropathy basically feels like a million tiny shards of glass in your skin. So it's extremely painful every time it is touched. I have it in my lower back, stomach, and my legs. The medicine is supposed to help...but sometimes it doesn't Or maybe it helps it not happen as often. But today it's not helping.

There are a couple other MS symptoms going on but it doesn't seem as bad right now as the neuropathy. It wears me out. And it makes me hate to wear clothes. Which kinda sucks when I have to go to Ashlyn's softball game. :P So I found the softest, comfiest pair of pants I could find and made it through. I really didn't care how it looked that I was there in my "pajamas" because I'm 100% sure the person judging me for my comfy pants doesn't know what neuropathy feels like in the first place. So...we'll be happy for your good health, dude, and happy for my comfy pants. And next time...don't make your comments in front of my kid, kthanx.

And now I'm wiiiide awake because all the caffeine I had earlier to help my migraine decided to finally kick in at bedtime. :P So...I'm going to make good use of my time and try to work on these grad school applications!

GREAT Weekend

I'm awake with a massive headache. And vertigo. Vertigo is horrible. HORRIBLE. It's like...if you were to ride a swirling, twisting amusement park ride over and over and over...and then stop the ride. That feeling where the world still feels like it's spinning and you're going to throw up? That's what vertigo feels like. The room is SPINNING. I'm actually not too bad...until I lay down. I've had vertigo off and on before but it wasn't until the last year or so that it started to cause problems when I'm laying down...which kinda sucks when I want to sleep. I can't sleep sitting up...never have been able to recline and sleep. I guess except in a hospital bed where there is a squishy mattress and I can lift the foot of the bed, too. But at home...no.

For some people, vertigo is an ear problem. My mom has had it and the doctor told her it had something to do with "crystals" in her inner ear or something. Mine is a brain thing instead of an ear thing...just one more thing on the list of MS symptoms that I deal with. But...I have some meclizine and that usually helps a little bit. So hopefully I will be able to sleep soon. :)

But anyway...aside from that I had a really great weekend. Friday night, my oldest had a softball game. It was here and aside from being REALLY WINDY it was a pretty good game. She just started her first year of kid pitch so there's a lot of crazy pitches and walking instead of strikes and actually hitting the ball. But luckily there is a 5 run limit PLUS a 1.5 hour time limit. So that helps. After the game we came home and had dinner and showers and then went to bed kinda early since we had to be up early the next morning.

Saturday morning we headed to Botanica for their annual "Teddy Bear Picnic." They had groups of teddy bears set up around the children's garden and the girls had a lot of fun seeing everything. Of course, I got sick about half an hour after we got there. I handed off my camera to my mom and spent the rest of our visit in the bathroom. :-/ I've been having a lot of digestive problems lately which may or may not be related to my adhesive disease (where the organs in the abdomen are fused together by scar tissue). BUT...after a looong half hour or so, I met up with mom and the girls to finish walking back through the garden to leave.

I haven't finished the pictures but here is a quick one that I snapped before we left the children's garden (I'll try to share more on Wordless Wednesday):

Afterwards, we came back into town and went to my grandparents' house. It was my grandma's birthday and a bunch of the family came over for LOTS of food and good times. The adults chatted and the kids played outside all evening until it started thundering. We stayed until about 8pm or so and then we came home, showered, and stayed up watching movies. Well...I stayed up. They played hard and fell asleep before our movie was even over. ;)

Today was a relaxing day. We slept in a little bit and lounged around during the morning. Then the girls got dressed to play outside for a bit. It was muddy from the storm last night so they mostly rode their scooters around. It was cut short, though, because poor Ashlyn got stung by a wasp. It had apparently made its way into her shirt because she got stung THREE times on her stomach. It was my first experience with bee/wasp stings as a mother and I didn't like it. :( Poor kid was crying so hard. She came inside and we put an ice pack on it right away. One of them had already swollen quite a bit. She laid down on the couch while Aubry did some dishes and I fixed lunch. After lunch Ashlyn was feeling better. The two spots on her ribs were just two little dots and not red at all. The lower one on her stomach was still a bit red and swollen. I made a water/baking soda paste and covered it with a bandage to help even more. Then she was feeling all better and wanted to go play at my grandparents' house again. I let them go over for about an hour while I showered and cleaned house a bit. They got home and we had just enough time to play a couple games of Candyland before they had to go to their dad's house.

I actually got out of the house for once and went to spend the evening with a friend of mine. It was nice to just go DO something for awhile. I haven't been feeling well a lot lately so I have been kind of a homebody. But I actually dried my hair and put some make-up on and wore something other than my ratty house shoes. ;) Very low-key but great evening. And yay for Walmart being open 24-hours because I needed to stop and get a few groceries and things on my way home. Now...here I am. :) All in all...pretty good weekend!

Long week...

Well it's been a long week without any posts from me. It's kinda ironic since my last post talked about how I didn't want to be such a slacker when it comes to blogging. :P

I haven't been feeling well, though. My doctor thinks I've been having problems with my gallbladder so I go in Friday to have a scan for that. I also had a headache that lasted about three weeks. I got some medicine for that on Monday and it's been helping, thank goodness! And now I'm getting over a bad cold. Hopefully it will be gone soon, too.

I am loving pinterest. I usually browse through it every once in awhile. I've found so many great ideas. Sometimes I even do something with all those ideas! ;) It gets me in the mood to be organized and creative.

This is one of the first things I did...organized all the kids' school papers inspired by this pin:

Source: mommyminded.blogspot.com via tinycandi on Pinterest

I started doing this with my girls after Christmas:

Source: mama-jenn.blogspot.com via tinycandi on Pinterest

I'm in the process of doing this with all the girls' artwork:

Source: jengrantmorris.blogspot.com via tinycandi on Pinterest

I'm going to be doing this soon if the girls don't get in the habit of putting their things away:

Source: madsmemories.blogspot.com via tinycandi on Pinterest

I even went to pinterest to find ideas before I got my hair done...decided on something kinda like this:

Source: google.com via tinycandi on Pinterest

Pinterest even inspired me to come up with something all on my own! This was an old DVD stand that I repurposed to hold the girls' shoes by the front door. :)

Source: flickr.com via tinycandi on Pinterest

And...now I should probably get busy and actually do some things around here instead of looking for more ideas to stockpile. ;)

Slacker-ness!

I don't think slackerness is actually a word. Actually I did google it...I found it on urbandictionary.com but I don't think that counts. But anyway...it's been about 4 days since I wrote in here and I was hoping to be a little more consistent.

I've been feeling like crap the last 2-3 weeks. I've had a constant headache. Sometimes it's better and sometimes it's unbearable. It's definitely wearing me out, though. It's also messing with my sleep. I was all excited because I actually got to bed at like 8:30pm...except then I woke up at 11:30pm and now I can't sleep. :P At the moment my head doesn't hurt very bad though so I'm putting that in the plus column.

Right now I'm trying to work on some photo-editing. My mom took some photos for me and I've been working on getting the finished product done. I'm also watching Dawson's Creek while I work. Did anyone else watch that show in the 90s? I was in high school at that time so it was rather pertinent to my life. I spent every week during the first several seasons watching the show with a friend of mine. It's funny to go back and watch it now that my life has experienced a lot more things. Of course, it does make me a little terrified of the fact that my own children will be teenagers before I know it.

But for right now they're still my little girls. And they're doing really well in school! We just got report cards back from this quarter and I'm so proud of them! Aubry got all As including 100% in Science, Health/PE, and Music. She didn't get lower than 95% in any of her subjects. And Ashlyn got all As and 1 B! She is reading 3 levels ahead and her teacher says she is "an absolute joy to have in class." I have such good kids. :)

I'm contemplating school, too. I just graduated in December and I'm already thinking about going back. I really do want to become licensed...either as a social worker or psychologist. I could get my Substance Abuse certification and become licensed and start practicing without my Master's degree but it's limiting. And it would be almost 30 credits to get all the required coursework...but with about 15 more, I could actually have my Master's degree. But there's so many issues about going back to school...what program, where, how much, etc. So...trying to figure it all out.

But for now...back to editing photos.