Just Me!!

We started on this journey in October 2012. The journey was filled with lots of appointments, tears, arguments, monthly bills, and the other day we added joy and celebration. On Thursday Valerie got her braces off. We are so proud of her. She had a slight setback during the appointment when she found out her bottom retainer will forever be there, and that she has to wear her upper retainer constantly for the first 8 weeks. Her smile returned when they gave her a bag full of "no-no" candies, popcorn, and peanuts that she was banned from having the past two years. For the most part she is happy. Her teeth look fabulous! Beautiful smile for a beautiful girl! Right after her braces were removed she had a choir concert. I love her concerts, so good!

Mrs Bowlby asked me to Volunteer today for Christmas Craft Day. I ended up at the painting table, which could've been extremely bad! The kids did a great job of painting. They had an example in front of them but most of the kids elaborated on their own masterpieces. Very talented children. They did three Christmas craft in just two hours. I loved helping out and have plans to return soon.

Everywhere I go! I was so worried about going to WOF because I had not shopped for Christmas nor had we decorated, or purchased a tree. I knew it would put me behind by two weeks. Thankfully my smart husband decided we were using our old Christmas tree to save money this year. He even brought all the decorations in, put up the tree, strung the lights, and decorated the living room. I LOVE him for that. He took all my worry away! I even had a chance at WOF to buy presents for the kids. I found the perfect gift for Mark the other day so Christmas is no longer stressing me out. Heck, we've even wrapped all our gifts that we've purchased. Val has purchased all her own gifts and Ethan is working on earning money for his. We've devised a new plan by having him show us his assignments every night and if he does he earns $2.00/night. We hope this will motivate him. He starts back on his meds Tuesday and is currently taking mini meds to help his focus. I see a huge difference when ...

Learning, relearning, softening, gracening (a word I made up), awakenings, finishing, listening, opening. I'm NOT done! I'm NOT forgiven, until I forgive. Spent the weekend with my sister in Portland for two days at Women of Faith. The speakers are always amazing, and inspiring. They have so much grace. I need grace, peace, and a spirit of forgiveness for myself and others.

Our cabin in the woods was a blast this year because we took our three beautiful children to our quiet place! We decided since there wasn't too much ado about Halloween that we would spend some time away with the children. We spent a lot of time in the hot tub, playing games, and of course eating! Valerie drew a picture of the Elk that were wondering around town, In the visitor's journal (which I've written In for the past four years). By night we were all exhausted and spent the last few minutes looking at the stars in the sky from the hot tub. Ethan had a blast learning how to create different knots, Valerie won Monopoly, and Charlie loved being able to sleep with her sissy and eating every last gummy snack I had brought. Love those kids...love my husband MORE for willingly sharing this special place with our children!!!!

He is a teenager...has been for nearly a year. He is one of the sweetest, gentlest, kindest, funniest, fact finding, fact sharing, Mindcraft madman, mathematical minded, open hearted, full of love, always sharing with others, good looking young teen I know. He has had a rough year in school trying to make his way without the ability to create focus for himself and for that I am proud of the grades he has brought home. His average was around B/C without F's. We have worked hard to help him and I have even been a little embarrassing to him by showing up to his school to help him with homework but he has never once told me that I'm bugging him. He is always grateful for help. Thanks to Dr Taggarts speediness we are getting his focus back for him as early as next week. He is honest about his ADHD. He isn't embarrassed about it, nor does it define him. I love this guy. Yesterday he had a dentist appointment for a filling. He did great (better than his mom at that age-I walked o...