School has started and Jaden had a great first two weeks back. The mornings haven't been the best but I'm determined to get that under control. As much as I love all 3 of my children, I am glad that school has started for Jaden. It was getting to the point that my entire day was filled with monitoring her and Alexis non stop because they fought non stop. I mean if I would leave the room for a minute they would fight or act up. Example: Eating lunch -If I left the room for a minute to do something they would start something. It could be anything from throwing food, making disgusting sounds to fighting. It was to the point I yelled all day long and was in tears half the day from the two of them acting up. So Jaden truly needed to go back to school and it's not because she was the one causing the problems it's just because they needed separated. The evenings when everyone and everything calms down are truly my sanctuary. Its sad but it's the only time I have and I just don't want to do anything, some nights I don't even watch TV, I just like the peace and quiet.
Alexis turned 5 on the 27th of August. We had her party on the 23rd. Thanks again to those of you who came to the party. We truly appreciated it. At times I wish I could just hire someone to do all the work so that I can just sit around and visit with everyone because sadly party day is sometimes the only time I get to see some of my family & friends.
Work has calmed down a tad for Kelly but we look for it to pick up again here soon. And when I say calmed down I mean he isn't working crazy hours or working 60+ hours for the week, he has been working his normal 40 hours. The end of September -- October is when he gets hit with a lot of storm work, normally. We always have a close eye on the tropical storms and hurricanes around this time of year. He is still a foreman and loving it.
I've been trying to keep to myself lately -just been going through some stuff that I need to work out somehow. I'll get there, one day.......
"Let the leaves fall where they may..."
The dogs are great. We are still missing Sampson so much. I don't know if I even wrote about losing him but we lost him in April. It was so hard. Jaden and I came in from the bus stop and found him laying on the floor in the living room. To make a long story short he passed away later that evening surrounded by his family. The first time I walked Laylah and Sophie after Sam's passing I cried. And even after school started and I did my morning routine of walking the dogs I cried again because I could just imagine him standing at the door waiting for his turn. I very rarely ever walked all three dogs together, I walked two at a time. I can't even being to tell you how much he is missed. Christmas is going to be extremely hard this year because Christmas was his favorite time of the year. He would get so excited when we would put the tree up. And he would always lay under the tree. And Christmas morning...he would always try to get the girls' gifts because he knew he, too had a gift awaiting him. He would always guard the gifts. Laylah is turning out to be a really good dog. She will be two next week on our anniversary. Sophie will be 6 (or maybe 7? I have to look to make sure) in Dec. And she and Laylah are finally getting a long for the most part. After Sam passed away neither of the dogs ate for almost a week. I'm not kidding. Then they started getting a long. After Sam passed away Laylah also got spayed so we don't know if it's a combination of everything or what but they are finally getting a long for the "most" part. Laylah still likes to bully Sophie though.
Weekends are so busy for us. That's when we run most of our errands and do our grocery shopping. Some weekends that's all we do is run -all weekend long.
We have seriously yet again been considering selling the house and moving closer to Kelly's division at work. Let me explain what that means for some who may not understand. His work has different areas to cover which are called divisions. Anyway most of his co-workers live in that area (that we like and want to be closer to) and he would be closer to work. It's just the whole stress of selling our house and buying again. And do we rent our house out or sell it? Right now we can make a decent profit from our house to use towards another house--a nicer/larger house, maybe? But then I look at our house and think "But we just did this and that to it..." A lot of time, work, and money has went into it and it discourages me from selling. And we live on the perfect road, lol! Its like our own little road which is safe (most of the time) for the kids. And our neighbors are all pretty awesome. So I don't know, we just ponder the idea over & over and not sure where to go with it. There are times where I just want to sell and then go rent because maybe we would have more "play" money if we didn't have to put all of our $$ into the house all the time for repairs, we would just let a landlord do it?! lol!!! Decisions, decisions.......
A bit of a vent for me...actually it's a peeve of mine: What's up with people just not paying their bills and thinking it's okay? No it's not any of my business because it's not money that is owed to me but so often I hear of people not paying their bills. We actually had neighbors (yes this is where this is peeve is basically coming from) down over the hill that did that. They just got up and left and they just didn't pay their bills. Who does that? Seriously? I know if you have no other options you have to do what you got to do, I get that and I've been there but you don't just go around burning bridges behind you and not pay your bills because eventually there will be no more bridges to cross. Do people realize how hard it is to get good credit back after you have had bad credit? We realize it because we lived it once. So trust me I KNOW first hand how things can change quite quickly. But if you have a choice -choose to pay your bills not leave them behind and think they will never catch up with you. It's ironic because when we went to buy the truck the salesman was talking about this. He said "One of the things I think they should teach you in school is about your credit." He is so right. There are things I have just learned this past year about credit and credit scores. When we bought our house Kelly had excellent credit, he barely had any credit but what he had was good. After buying the house with a job that paid $20 per hour -and counting on that amount (that was 14 years ago too!) and losing the job to a lay off, well ......we were in trouble! We didn't have any help from anyone- nor did we have a bail out, we simply did what we could by ourselves and we both worked our butts off (I was working at the time) to keep our house and just get by. (I have to add here that I am very thankful that Kelly got the job he has now & thankful that he climbed the ladder in his job to get us to where we are now!) But, we acquired some bad credit during that rough period -we saved our house which of course was a + but we also acquired some bad credit too which wasn't good. Anyway we have worked so hard to get his credit back up again, and we paid our debts off....and now we finally got our credit back up and now it's better than ever. But back to what I was saying...a lot of people don't realize the impact of not paying your bills has on your credit. It's hard to get anything anymore without decent credit. But it just makes me sick these people who think they can just buy everything and anything they want and then not pay their bills or take care of their responsibilities. Like the neighbors that just got up and left a year ago and never looked back. Ugh! Its a huge peeve of mine. It's like Kelly said the other day "It's called commitments." In fact the neighbor that left his house doesn't cut his grass until the township gets on him. So the other day his brother was cutting the grass (one of them usually cuts it twice a summer) and Kelly was down burning some garbage and they talked for a few minutes. Kelly told the brother "I never had a problem with your brother other than he needs to take care of his stuff, he has commitments here and he needs to tend to them." So true. Too many people forget that! So I guess that's one thing I want to teach all 3 of my kids: Take care of your commitments and pay your bills or one day it will come back to bite you in the butt! And this advise would be to teach them not belittle them.
I have to get moving I have some cabinet doors to sand and paint today and I have to do my regular household work yet. I've been trying to make myself get on the treadmill and do my work-outs every day. It's just so hard to find the time to do everything anymore. Somehow I have gained approximately 15 lbs and I honestly don't know how or why. As much work as I do around here and as much running I do it doesn't make sense and I barely eat, but like I told a friend of mine "But when I do eat I know I eat the wrong things." lol!
Keep in touch everyone!
