In The News

In case you've not noticed they have been closing places right and left because of bed bugs. Movie theaters, clothing stores, etc. Bed bugs are on the rise in this country and they are taking over. I'm going to allow you a glimpse into what I've been going through for the last 3 count them 3 months. First off let me explain that this past year I've been throwing away/giving to goodwill truckloads per month. So My house is cleaned out and uncluttered. I sweep, do dishes, and clean my house daily. I have one of the cleanest houses of all my friends. I tell you this to explain that a bed bug infestation is not necessarily because the person is dirty. It happens in the cleanest of homes. I've been really embarrassed that this happened to me. I want to tell others so that they know there's nothing that could have been changed for them to not come into their home! There's no reason to be embarrassed. They happen!

Finally after a year of bad news we have some good news!

Whoohoo! I got a job that I am very excited about. I will be tutoring for Educate-Online for 6 months. After that I can move into recruiting, training, curriculum writing or tech support. If I choose recruiting they will require me to travel and right now that does appeal to me. I'm sure it will get old if I end up doing that. The possibilities of this job are very cool. I've never been in a job that I could advance in. (Day care and teaching and preschool the only thing you can do is be a principal and I have never had the desire to do that!)

The second good news we got today. My hubby was at work and his boss was talking to him. In the last 4 years he's been doing some managing of the other technicians and is the lead tech. As he was talking his boss said you know you have real potential for advancement here. Ok here's my thought...there's only one space he can move to. Service Manager! I see a brand spanking new acura in my future! lol I believe if (IF) (you never know what's around the corner obviously) (IF) it happens it will be a few years out. I'm so excited for him! He will be a great leader for this company! He has the potential to make twice as much money as I ever could and all without a college degree! Who says hard work and dedication aren't rewarded today! Way to go honey! I have always seen the greatness in everything you do. You were named employee of the year when you hadn't even been with the company that long! You are amazing!

School has started and I'm relieved that all children are in school. The pre-k girl goes 4 days per week and it's heaven! I'm enjoying cleaning my house in quiet, planning dinner, getting groceries, and being able to go have lunch with my dh. All by myself! I can't imagine how amazing next year will be when she goes to K 5 days a week in a public school (magnet) but it's free compared to what we're paying now! Excited, excited, can you tell I'm excited. We've got some exciting things going on here! Thank you God for turning this back around and reminding me who's in control!

Our adoption story

Our adoption story began before our first child was born. Before he was born I had an ectopic pregnancy which resulted in emergency surgery. Then 18 mos later my son was born. They told us this pregnancy that he would probably never walk as he had spina bifida. Stupid test. He didn't and he's perfect and I never had that test again. It wouldn't have changed anything had he had it so why have the test. Anyway then we wanted another child. So we began ttc again. Shot after shot after shot was given to me by my dh. We had 4 subsequent miscarriages after that which resulted in another 3 surgeries. Finally we became pregnant with Noah. He was by far the worst pregnancy. I was on bedrest from 12 wks on because of a cervix that had decided it didn't need to close. At 16 weeks I had surgery that effectively sewed it shut so that little Noah would stay in where he was safe and cozy. At 36weeks I noticed I was bleeding heavily so back to Vandy we go. Scared to find out if Noah was ok or not. Turns out he was and all that lovely scar tissue I had had ripped in half (thus the bleeding). He was fine. A week later he was born in a flood. No, really it was raining so hard the dr had a hard time getting to us. Aptly named, no? When he was born he had a fever and had to be rushed to put on an antibiotic drip. He was fine after that.

During this time of many multiple miscarriages I began to feel that maybe we weren't supposed to be having children. There are many children that need loving homes. After much prayer we began our adoption homestudy. We had our homestudy done for a year before we finally decided what country to go with. We had originally thought Russia. But then we felt led to Korea. We chose our little A.G. after much prayer and input from family. She's perfect. By Korean standards she wasn't. She had bells palsy when she was born which did correct itself. Then she had a strawberry on the back of her neck/head which has faded and is covered by hair. Our perfect little girl came from a wonderful couple who could not afford to keep her. A young lady and man who fell pregnant way too young. She has blessed our lives beyond measure. She may not have been born out of my body but she was definitely placed in our hearts. A spoiled rotten princess diva is what we have now. She is loved! We are the lucky ones who get to parent her not the other way around.

She is learning about adoption as we go. We've never kept from her that she was adopted. We have a scrapbook with pictures of her foster mom and she loves to look at it. We talk to strangers non stop about where she's from. I've actually gotten to the point I want to say she's from Smyrna!!!!! I know they are just interested but it constantly points out that she's not ours when she is. She told her little friend that she was adopted and her friend came tattling on her. A. said she's adopted. (said in best bill cosby voice whining as a child) It was so funny. We responded yes she was. There was shock on her face. It was precious that it never occurred to her that we look different. All she knew was that this was her friend. I loved that moment. It was so precious.

I hope and pray that by the time she is 18 Korea will have a birth mother registry so that if A. wants to she can find her mom and dad. We didn't visit Korea when she was brought to us. But when she's older we'd love to take her to her birth country. We could technically also say she's from Detroit as that's where we flew to pick her up at. Regardless she is simply our daughter. We are blessed!

My feelings on adopting again

I struggle with whether our family is finished growing. I love my 3 children and sometimes they wear me out. I don't want a baby again, yet I think about the fact that we have room in the house and heart to take in another child that needs a home. We can not adopt internationally again. I can't go through the financial stress of doing that. It's expensive. But we could do foster care. Haiti broke my heart and made me want to take in two or three. But I don't see that happening. So I guess I will be still and just listen to see what God has in store for my family. We will do nothing and have our hearts and ears open. Sometimes it's hard to be still and know that he is God! We know it's all in his control and his time so we just have to see what happens next to our family.

Older homes, smaller homes rock!

someone we know just bought a million dollar house. Wow. Who has a million dollars lying around. I have to say I envied her house but do not want it. Sure if I had 10 million dollars I would probably own a 1 mil dollar house. But, alas, I do not. For me, it's more important that I have a paid for house. I do not have a paid for house but the house I'm in will be paid off as soon as I get a job (next 3 years for job then 4 years after that we'll be debt free of everything, we are debt free now except the house.)

In a little house, I'm loving that my children are always close by in my 1900 sq ft home. The boys share a room and love it. There is room for my father to move in and have his own space. It's cozy. Maybe love does grow better in little houses like the song says. :)

I know that people in big homes have just as much love. There's just nowhere to go in little houses and you have to be able to work all the issues out. It makes for a good family life. I am blessed regardless.

My last 4 months of my life have been spent in a hospital or a nursing home!

It all started last Oct of 09. My brother got sick. He was hospitalized for two weeks and then passed away. Very unexpectedly. This has had a profound change on my life. Life is short and you never know when your time will be up. A month after that my dad was hospitalized. He ended up in a coma for two weeks and then finally 3 weeks later sent to a skilled nursing home. I'm not sure that the hospital thought he would live. Well they hadn't fixed the problem so how could he. Stonecrest finally fixed the problems after two more stays of a week or more in the hospital. He had c diff colitis. Got that cleared up only to find copd, emphysema, and lung cancer. He just had surgery last monday to remove part of his lung and all the cancer. He's still in the hospital trying to recover. We went into his room on Valentines day and he sounded a) like he was drowning and b) like he was a percolator. They rushed him back to ICU and there he remains. We're still prayerful and hopeful that he'll recover.

On this snowy day I thought it'd be fun to find out what we're eating

last week we had roasted asperagus, grassfed roast, roasted potatoes, carrots, and onions.
We also made chicken fried rice (that was to die for!)
This week I'm making red lentil bean chili, homemade yogurt, fresh bread, homemade pizza, burritos/tacos, sausage,black beans, and rice. I need new ideas. What are you making for dinner?

Food, INC

anyone seen this movie. It's a really good movie about where our food comes from. Everyone should check it out! It has changed the way my family eats. I don't want to eat chlorinated burgers so we stopped going to McDonalds (luckily we had already stopped going so the kids don't notice we aren't stopping there!). BTW grocery stores sell the chlorinated burgers too. I'm so thankful we bought a cow from a small farm that grass fed him! We are instituting a meatless mondays. We have no meat on MOndays. It's not going to be all about beans either. We will have veggie pizzas, soup, fritatas, stir fry, and more. I'm pumped! Tonight it's going to be a meatless chili hmm or burritos. I can't decide. I would highly recommend everyone in this nation watch this movie. We need to be eating the way they do in other countries. You know the ones where they go to the market daily because everything they eat is fresh!!! To help us in this area we have a plan to have a good garden this year full of tomatoes, peas, lettuce, squash, etc. Using no pesticides! I'm looking into getting blueberry bushes as well. Hm maybe a raspberry bush too. Let's change the way we eat America. Maybe I'll even lose some weight. What a bonus that would be!

I can't even imagine

how the ladies in the west (or south for that matter) cooked over an open flame. Here I sit in my lovely air conditioned kitchen cooking dinner. It's so stinkin hot in here. How did they cook over an open flame in the middle of 100* weather? Ugh.

On another note I'd like to give a shout out to my good friend Ang for keeping my kiddos for the day. Thanks Ang! I seem to be losing my mind alot lately. Being about to turn 40 I keep wondering about menopause. I know it's early but the symptoms started with my mom around this time. We leave for vacation in a few days and my lovely reading material will be "The Wisdom of Menopause". I have got to figure myself out. The mood swings alone are giving me and my dh whiplash. My friend recommended I go back on the pill (didn't we have surgery so we could stop taking that?) to level out my mood swings. I am seriously contemplating this. Sounds less expensive then those compounded hormones. Yikes. I'm not sure I can afford those so the pill might be the way. Hey, at least, then I'll be doubly sure I'm not going to be pregnant ever again. LOL No more kids in this house. Period! Done! The baby factory has shut down for the duration. Better go dish up that dinner I slaved over a hot stove for. More later.

Love,

Dina

EA Sports Wii Active

I am loving my new wii active game. It's keeping me busy and helping me get healthy. I have the wii fit too. But for some reason I love the EA Sports Active more. I guess it seems more adult than the wii fit. Anyway I've not lost weight on it but am doing a great job of toning up! If you're thinking about getting one, do it! It rocks. It comes with a elasticized band with handles and the game. You have tons of exercises to choose from. You can do the ones the game picks for you or customize your own workout. I'm about to use the customize for the first time tomorrow. Can't wait. I'll be back to tell you how it went tomorrow. :)

Summer lovin..

happened so fast, unless you're a mom. Then it just seems to drag on and on. I'm currently enjoying the sound of children playing. But that's because they can't turn the electronics on before 10am. So here it is, 10:17am and I have peace and quiet. Why again do we make rules for children? Oh yeah, so they don't get up at 5am and begin playing on the electronics. No reason to get up so they sleep later...if I'm lucky.

The 4th of July is coming up. Am I ready for it? I never am. Who knows what we'll do. Probably hang out with friends, eat burgers, and relax. Relaxing is something I'm very good at. My dh is the opposite of relaxing. Although with me not working and getting all the housework done, he's getting much better! My dh rocks. I love you J! He thinks it's ok if I don't work...well he does while I have 3 little ones at home. He's already planning what to buy when they are all in school. I just want to thank my hubby for always allowing me to follow my dreams. Foolish as they might be you always tolerate and never laugh when I want to do something different. I don't think I'll ever work at a job longer than 5 years. That seems to be my magic number. Once that 5 year mark hits it's time for me to do something different. At the moment I'm trying my hand at writing. I'm not sure if I'm pretty good and my friends love it or they're humoring me and secretly think I stink. Hmm I guess if I can ever sell one I'll know. Writing is fun. It allows me to put myself in other people's lives. Ok yes they are made up people but hey they're still people. I'm no Nicholas Sparks (I hate that he always kills off a character, what's up with that?). But I'd love to be the next Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Molly Harper, Jennifer Cruisie, or someone that just sells books.

Well the children are screaming now. The fun begins. Being a stay at home mom some days is amazing and other days you don't have much hair left at the end of the day. You think about the person you used to be. Fun, adventurous, inventive and somehow that turns into content, mediator, and booboo kisser which isn't nearly as exciting. C'est la vie! C'est si bon!

Summer Vacation

is exactly what I thought it would be. Lots of sleeping til 8 or later, even for the kids! That part is awesome. Then there's the all day fighting, instigating, annoying the crap out of the other two siblings. One is always doing the instigating. It's usually the 3 year old aggrevating the 6 and 12 year old. Sometimes it's the other way. The 6 year old has quite a mean streak. I think sometimes it's cause he's been younger than the 12 year old all of his life and he's not yet learned to be sneaky like the 12 year old. Sigh. Constant playdates with friends and especially if those friends have a pool has definitely helped my sanity. We had a pool last year. But this year I don't see the point in buying another one for my hubby to throw away again at the end of this year. He's constantly throwing stuff away. Anyway thank you God for my good friends who help me stay sane during the summer. :)

Writing, school year ending

So I began writing this book. My first attempt. It's going ok. Except now I'm a touch blocked. Ugh. I've been reading some of my favorite authors to try to see if that will spark something. Nothing, nada. Except I realize how witty their writing is and am not seeing witty in mine. Hmm something to work on. 

The school year is coming to a close. I'm excited that I don't/won't have to get up every day. But then I get the joy of the all day fighting between 3 precious I mean precocious kids. LOL I know the first week should be ok though. Then it'll be all downhill from there. If I can sell this book and get a contract maybe I can get a nanny! Hmm there's a thought. Oh well that's all I got for now. More later.

D

I put the poll up because I'm torn

we need me to work to pay off the adoption, the house, afford retirement, and be able to help put the kids through college. But my desire is to not work. My dh desire is for me to work now. Sigh how do you reconcile that? I worked in 07/08 for around 5 mos and I did enjoy it. I'm just not sure I'm ready to go back to the grind.  I teach preschool two days a week and to me that's alot right now. lol I mean I know I can do it but how do you reconcile that with the fact that your not sure you want too? I know people think what do you do all day but I'm busy!! I feel sometimes I contribute so much just not too much monetarily.  Today was crazy and it's not over yet. I'm ready for bed so I'm anxiously awaiting your replies/comments! Let me have it!

How do we get anything done?

You know, with children I mean. I had to go to the store, post office, and drug store today after waiting this morning for comcast. So I made lunch, put Abby to nap, and then proceeded to organize some coupons for grocery shopping. I decided to wait til after I picked the kids up from school....what was I thinking. So I pick them up, we head to Publix first, pretty smooth here. Then we ran into to do a simple mailing at the PO. Wrong....the guy infront of me had 8 pkgs all going overseas so it took forever.  Hungry children trying to wait patiently isn't pretty. Ugh I managed to not kill them and we ran to pick up my prescription. I could have used the drive through but nooooooooooo. I wanted to do a quick run in. It wasn't too bad. My dh is saying uh I think you might need a time out...please...put me out of my misery...let me go to my room by myself. LOL

Christmas Vacation

Well it's started already. The fun of Christmas break with the children out of school. So far one child has ruined a tupperware pitcher by placing it on the eye of the stove that I was making tea in.He looked a bit upset, I was a bit upset, but it's not worth him feeling bad. So I just told him oh well it's just a pitcher and not worth getting upset about. I didn't like the color of that pitcher anyway. 12 just said to me, "I need some henchmen do you know where I can get any?" me "uh no why do you need henchmen?" 12 so I can do my chores and they would do them for me...lmao how funny is that?  Then 6 has been complaining non stop about his brother hurting him. 2 has been bossing us all around and even told 12 that he was working for her and she would pay him on the first day of school. How funny is that? 12 is doing dishes as we speak (thank you God for children) This post should be about all the things I need to get done and me being on here isn't helping me get them finished. I need to reboot the laundry, fold the laundry, do turbo jam, watch my calories so I can lose weight instead of gaining...it's been a rough month what can I say. I'm very grateful to say that all my shopping is done, all my presents wrapped and hidden so that 2 doesn't single handedly destroy...aka open every present if we were so crazy as to put it under the tree. 

Snickers, our chocolate lab, just ate his ball and so much food I'm not sure where he put it. I've started making his dogfood and all his gassiness has gone away. I thought it was because of the price of dog food that I started making his own. But after watching dirty jobs it's because dog food is gross that I'm making his own. Dang, add that to my list he's almost out of dog food. I need to make that by tomorrow at the latest. Doh! Well I better go get turbo jam done so I can then reboot my laundry, start the dogfood, begin my diet to a new body and somehow manage to make all my children behave. I'll let you know if I accomplish anything other than my nap I had earlier today and watching Muppets Christmas Letters with the kids. 

My weird world

today I have gone to church, directed children from 2-11 to sing Happy Birthday Jesus in a choir, and then came home from church and began the process of pulling my wallpaper down. See we've been in this house for 10 years and only painted the living room and the kids room. Our house has needed paint being as it was built in 1986. The previous owners had put up wallpaper in 3+ rooms. I was very worried that it would be stuck permanently to the wall. I went in there and just started pulling it and it all came off, just that easy. It was awesome. So then I decided well let me see if it will come off in the other bathroom...not quite that easy but maybe if I load it up with some hot water it will pull right off. That's my dream. I'm going to paint them a light brown or kind of the color of cocoa. I'm so excited. I will accent with brown towels and maybe some other autumnal colors too. Of course this will all be purchased with my birthday money in January as we're too broke to pay attention. LOL Lucky for me my dad always buys me gift cards for Dillards so I'll be coming to see you soon Dillards!!

Welcome to my friends. Here's my family pics for you to see. I have a beautiful daughter who is 3, son who is 6, and son who is 12. My dh and I have been married for 15 years and been together for 17. We are happily married. I just concluded 3 classes to reinstate my teaching license with the state. Who knew they had an expiration date?? Hopefully I'll have it back by Summer. :) Welcome to Mom Times.

Lifetime of Learning crammed into a year

I realize that by some standards I'm not old...and according to others I am. But I feel like I've learned a lot in this time of my life. Today was my friends son's birthday party. It was a fun time and a blessed affair. Lots of children, candy, dirty faces, hitting, give me that back, etc. But there was a hole in our hearts. You see One year and four days ago today his mother became a statistic of domestic violence. Yes, my friends, she was murdered by her ex. This has left a hole in all our hearts. We miss her, cry for her, long to hear her, cry to see her, and in doing so we go on with our life and try to help care for her son in the best way we know how. I can't imagine a more selfish act than killing someone and thinking it will end your problems without giving a second thought to the people who loved her and who have to go on everyday.  For example her son who goes on without her and his father. Why? Why would you do this? 

We've been blessed, as her mother says, to learn from this experience that we all love and care for each other. We now keep in touch more, love each other deeper, and in general realize how short life is. Because it is very short. Well my friend, I miss you today just as much as I missed you a year ago. I'll praise you in this storm and I will lift my hands...cause you are who you are no matter where I am and every tear I cry you hold in your hand you never left my side though my heart is torn I will praise you in this storm!