Spring Break - Over Already?

The fastest week of the year is officially over in just a few short hours. This week was Spring Break, and what should of been a week of relaxation turned out to be a week of running around and chaos. It wasn't bad chaos, just not relaxing by any means.

Monday and Wednesday I had to work. My days ended at 2, rather than the 5pm that I'm used to.. but it still didn't allow for those days to spent on anything remotely relaxing. On Tuesday, I ventured to my mom's in Oklahoma. My cousin was there with her new baby girl, and I did the baby's first photos. They came out really well - I will post some when I get them all finished. Wednesday, after work, I went and helped one of my bestfriends take his daughter's senior photos. I'm going to be doing some editing for them, so I will post some of them when I get through with them also. Thursday, it was back to my mom's to spend the night. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my family - but I end up coming home from their house drained and exhausted as it's customary for my mom and I to stay up to the wee hours of the morning playing Yahtzee. Friday evening, we all came home and my youngest brother came with me to spend the weekend. I love having my siblings over for the weekend - but this, again, is hardly a recipe for relaxation.

Here are pics of the kids that I took at my mom's on Tuesday:

Saturday morning I woke to the smell of waffles cooking, and looked out the window to see hard snow falling. WTH?? It's the end of March and it looked like a blizzard outside. This wouldn't be so weird, but the day before I was wearing shorts for Christ's sake. Ahhh - gotta love Arkansas. My brother and I ventured to Wal-Mart Saturday afternoon for a few basics, and it was freezing outside. Reminded me more of December than late March. It was kind of cozy to have the fireplace going last night. Today, I spent the day moving Jada out of Brayden's room and putting her into Payton's room. That involved rearranging furniture...hardly relaxing.

The best part is that in a couple of hours (around 9pm tonight) I have to meet my parents in Siloam Springs (about 20 minutes away) so that they can pick up my brother. They are on their way back from Norman, OK where my sister competed in the state Spelling Bee. Unfortunately, she didn't win - but I'm proud of her anyways. So, that's my week...tomorrow life goes back to normal. Back to work, back to school, back to the craziness. Ahh - only a month and a half and it'll be summer!!

Feeling Better!

So, despite the drama that's going in my life with DHS I've chosen just to move on with life as usual and let them do what they need to do.

I went to meet with the principal at Decatur, yesterday, to discuss Brayden going back there next year. Being that I'm going to be starting University in the fall, I won't be able to do as much running back and forth between my house and my mom's, and being that Brayden has done so well at Westville it seems a good time to let him go back to Decatur. The principal seemed genuinely ok with Brayden returning, and actually thought it would be a good idea for him to start back after Spring Break as to help him transisition a little easier. I agreed that it would be a good idea - so that's what we're going to do. Tomorrow, I get to take Brayden up to Decatur to meet his new teacher and visit with the principal for a while.

Tomorrow is Brayden's birthday, so we've got a few fun things going on this weekend. Tonight, a friend of the family is taking all of us out for Chinese food - Brayden doesn't know but he's going to be so surprised and happy. Tomorrow evening, my parents are coming over to spend the weekend. We're going to play video games, board games, and possibly make a trip over to Chucky Cheese on Saturday. I think Brayden will like that too.

I'm on Spring Break with Payton next week. I'm going to spend the week relaxing, cleaning, getting caught up on some homework and project work. I need to rejuvenate, that's for sure, so this couldn't of come at a better time. I can't believe that there's only about 4 weeks of classes left - then finals - then graduation!! I'm so excited to get it all over with.

Well, until next time. :)

I Knew It!

So, in my last post, I predicted bad. Well, my predictions were right. Only a week after that post, I received a visit from a DHS worker because they had received a complaint about me. I'm not going to go into specifics, but obviously I pissed someone off - and they thought that the best way to get back at me would be to take it out on my kids. UGH!! It's a very frustrating situation, but I'm trying my best to just move on and let them do what they need to do and be done with it.

So, while I'm on the subject, do people actually realize how much they affect the children involved with they make false accusations to DHS or CPS? The end result is rarely some kind of problem for the adult, and more on the child. If I piss someone off and they want to retaliate against me - fine! But don't do something that involves my kids!! The "grown up" thing to do would be to confront me - but no, that's the decent way out. It's much more satisfying when you go and try and screw me over with DHS, hurt my kids, and stir up my entire life - that's so much better!! I wish people would just grow up. No matter what anyone did to me - I would never make false allegations about them to DHS just to make myself feel better.

Ok, I'm done ranting. I needed to get some things off my chest - and I guess this was the best way to do it.

Life is Goooood!!

The past few weeks have been very interesting. Life has been good, things have gone right, everyone is happy. Is this just the calm before the storm? Being that every time something good happens in my life - there is always some bad to follow.

A few months ago, I started doing some photography work. Things have been going really well with that. I have done several family/kid shoots, but last weekend I got to shoot my first wedding. It was a very long, tiring day - however it went really well and I had a great day. The photos seemed to have come out really well, but there is still a lot of editing to be done.

Because of my recent increase in photo shoots, and the fact that we just got our taxes back - Steve and I have been able to "blow" some money on luxuries that we've been wanting for a while. I finally got to buy him the Playstation 3 he's been wanting for months, I got to buy me a Wii Fit that I've been wanting for months - and we both mutually agreed that we wanted a 42" Flatscreen LCD TV. Even though we've blown some money - I was sure to put some money back.. cause like I said, bad things always seem to follow the good.

Things at school are going really well, also. I graduate from Community College in May, and will hopefully transfer to the University of Arkansas to get my Bachelor's in Elementary Education. I've only wanted to be a teacher for 22 years... so it's about damn time I actually did it!! LOL

The kids are growing like weeds. My little baby, who is now 15 months old, is changing every day. She's running around the house, she's talking, and she's so independant. The little stinker wants to try everything at least once herself - and then if she can't do it, she will ask for help. She feeds herself, cleans up her toys, and tries her hardest to get herself dressed.. which she does with only a little help from me. Payton is getting more beautiful, and dingy..LOL, by the day. She is still doing great in school, but her street smarts are that of a 19 year old blonde...No offense blondes!! LOL Brayden is doing really well in school - I'm so proud of him. He's really grown up a lot since going to school in Westville. Well, until next time - let's just hope it's not to report any bad..LOL :)

My Cold Week in Hell!!

So, everyone has probably heard or seen about the ice storm that hit Oklahoma to Kentucky last week - well, we were lucky enough to be right in the middle of it!

Last Monday, I was at work, and it started raining about noon. The rain was starting to freeze after only a few minutes on being on the vehicles - which caused a small panic to those that had to travel out of town to get home. By 1:30pm, I was ready to head out the door - and all the schools in the area were closing. I got home a little before 2:30, and a few minutes later Payton got home from school. Being that our house is very prone to power outages during ice storms - I decided to head to Oklahoma and stay with my mom with the girls.

The trip to my mom's was a scary one. Not even a mile from my house, a car had flipped upside down coming around a corner - and the backroads were just sheets of ice. Luckily, I only had 1 backroad to contend with before getting on to the highway. After a very scary car ride, we finally made it to my mom's. That evening we kept power, although it flickered several times. Tuesday, we were also lucky enough to keep power, although there was about 2 inches of ice on all the trees and power lines. Tuesday night it snowed - and being that none of the ice had melted, it put the accumulation up to about 4 inches. By Wednesday morning, the powerlines around my mom's house just couldn't stand the weight - and we lost power. The ironic thing was that Steve stayed home - and he had kept power the whole time, and had power after mom lost hers. Mom is lucky enough to have a gas stove, but has an electric water pump - so without power we were able to cook, but no running water. Also, she has a fireplace and a kerosene heater that kept the house warm despite of the below freezing temps outside.

Thursday was the first day that temperatures were going to be high enough to melt some of the snow and ice, so my family decided that being as Steve had power at my house - we would all head to him. Well, we waited until about 1pm before leaving so that there had been some melting - and just as we were heading out the door, Steve called to tell me that he had lost power. :( Because of that - we had no choice but to stay at mom's. We still ventured out to the store, because we were in serious need of bottled water and basic supplies. The weather was so bad, that it took my dad 30 minutes to be able to get out of the driveway, and he got stuck on the way to the store. I had problems getting up a hill, as I just kept sliding backwards. After a while, we finally all made it.

Power didn't come on all weekend, and yesterday Steve and I decided that we needed to find somewhere else to stay - as we still needed to get to work, and my parent's house is a 2 hour drive from where Steve and I work. A friend of ours told us that we could stay with her for a few days, as she lived in town and had power. So, that's what we did yesterday. It was so nice being in a home that had a running shower and power!! We got a phone call at 7pm last night that our power had finally been restored at our house!! YEA!!! Being that it was so late, we decided to stay with my friend - but that's where I'm going as soon as I get done with work and school today. It will so nice to get home - it sux being away for so long - and sux even more when you have no power or water. Something like this has really made me appreciate the little things in life, that's for sure!!