Soo...

This blog is so neglected. It's weird. I went from blogging daily on xanga, to here where I blogged consistently at first. Then myspace, now facebook. I did blog on myspace, but I don't on facebook. I guess I just don't really have the urge or drive to write much anymore. I barely even update my facebook anymore. I think some of that is because I have too many co-workers added as friends.

Well, what's new?

* School (for me) starts up again next week. I have this semester and next semester before I graduate in April with my 4 year Accounting degree.

* School for Todd Jr and Luc starts Sept. 7th. Luc is starting 2nd grade at his first year in an Emotionally Impaired class. Todd Jr is starting 6th grade.

* Todd Jr is 10 (11 in October) and he has a summer job working with a friend of mine at her produce stand and out in the fields with her boyfriend picking the produce and doing anything else that needs to be done.

* Luc is 6 (7 in October) and he is going to have ear surgery soon to repair a ruptured eardrum. He has had numerous ear infections throughout his life and he had tubes in his ears at a year old. The past few summers, he has gotten really bad infections in his ears after swimming that caused his eardrums to rupture. Every time that happens, the tissue that grows over to heal the hole gets thinner and thinner. This time, the hole is very large and the surrounding tissue is just too little to repair itself. He meets with the surgeon on Thursday (August 19th) for the consultation.

* Benny is 3. He is so smart and so active! He loves super heroes and dressing up as them. He has a Super Why cape and mask, and he has a new Batman mask that he wears every second of the day if allowed.

* Todd is good. He is getting back into playing out and he is trying to get into another band.

* Work (for me) is going okay. I don't too much like my job, but it is rather easy and it beats having to invest the time it would take to find a new one. Especially since I will be done with college in 9 months, and will then be looking for a professional job in the accounting field. I am sick of retail work, but it is convenient so I guess I'll stick with it until I finish school. I'll have my 2 year anniversary with this company in October.

* I am, yet again, trying to lose weight. As of last Monday, I had lost 5.5 pounds, and I feel good about this week. I will weigh in again on Monday morning.

Will I update again soon? Not likely. You never know though!

Long time, huh?

Yeah. I sign in daily to read the blogs I follow, but I never have much to post about. Todd has to see the urologist again in a few months to see what the changes look like. Luc has been in therapy since September. He just started taking Intuniv last week. He is on 1 mg and it does seem to be doing what we were hoping for. He has been doing better (behavior-wise) at school since the therapy was started. He started going to special education classes since his last IEP meeting, and his teachers are positive about how the medication is affecting his behavior.
I am nearing the middle of my first semester at Northwood. It is hard, and I wonder if quitting is worth it sometimes. I will get through it, but it is a challenge.

So, Luc is now going to weekly therapy sessions and still being evaluated by his school. On top of all of that drama last week, this is the week of drama for Todd (jr). Last Friday, we let both Todd and Luc spend the night at Grandma's house. They came home on Saturday afternoon. That evening, Todd went to the bathroom and kept yelling for me to come in there. The nice mom that I am, I kept saying "Why???" By the time I finally got in there, he was mad at me. He wanted to show me the blood in his urine. Eeew. But, seriously blood in his urine. Not like slightly pink, red.
So, I was unsure of what to do about it. Todd (sr) and I talked about it and decided to wait to see how it was the next time before racing to the ER. The next time, it was the same. He peed normally and then at the end bright red drops of blood. He wasn't in any pain, he hadn't been tackled or anything else that brought internal injury to mind, so we decided to wait until Monday and go to the pediatrician unless something else happened that seemed worse.
We took him in on Monday, but by then the blood had not been seen again since Sunday. He had a few urinalyses done and lab work. We went for a kidney/bladder ultrasound on Tuesday. The blood work came back normal, and the first urinalysis showed blood in his urine. The results of the second urinalysis haven't been called in yet. The ultrasound showed thickening of his bladder walls. So, now I am waiting for a return call to set us up with an appointment with a urologist. He will be 10 in two days. Isn't that a bit young to be seeing a urologist? I mean, I'll take him anywhere to find out what's wrong, but I did a google search just to see what the possibilities are and the only results are involving older men or women who had recent hysterectomies. WTF??

The latest

So, today I took Luc to the therapist. I haven't written about what's been going on with him, but he's been having lots of trouble at school (suspended once already within the first week of school) and the school asked me for permission to have a behavioral analysis on him to see if he qualifies for special education services. They said that they were concerned that he has ADD/ADHD and/or Asperger's Syndrome. My immediate reaction to Asperger's Syndrome was "no way, not Luc". I have seen other children with Asperger's and I seriously doubt that he has that. As far as ADD, I knew that was a serious possibility, but I didn't think he would have ADHD. So, I took him to an outside therapist on my own to see what another opinion would be. Today he was diagnosed with ADHD, dysthymia, and over-anxious disorder of childhood.
I feel sad. I also feel like a jerk that I have seen his sadness and his worry but put it all off as "that's just Luc". He's always been this way, so serious and sad. Always.
Now I feel like I should have known that it wasn't normal. Todd says he isn't surprised, but I am. I wish I didn't feel so guilty. I mean, he knows we love him, but I feel like I failed him.

I feel like I rarely have anything to say, but I guess I'm the only one who reads this anyways, so no real reason to hurry with updates.

Summer has been pretty good. Well, except Shirley getting sick and dying. The garden has been awesome, and I am already making plans for next year. I need a lot more space than I had this year. Everything is growing into everything else. I have two pepper plants that are completely in the darkness of looming tomato plants. I bought some teeny, tiny mums at WalMart on clearance for $.50 each. I built a flower bed just for them, and planted them a while ago. They were small, scrawny, and I just wasn't sure what would happen with them. They are doing great! They are getting bigger and bigger and I know they will have flowers this year. The peonies and hostas I planted may be a whole other situation. I am not holding out much hope for any of them. Which is sad, because I really was looking forward to having them.

We are preparing for back to school. I bought all of the school clothes a week ago. Luc still needs socks. Todd needs a backpack. They both need shoes. That's it. We even started new bedtimes last night, even though school doesn't start for another month. I was saying today that we should probably consider new bed times starting next week, but Todd told me he already started new bed times a few nights ago. I guess when I work evenings and then have homework the evenings that I am home, I just don't know what's going on.

I'm getting prepared for school again in the fall myself; even though I'm not yet done with the summer class I'm taking. It sure is going to be nice when I finally have the degree I'm working for and can be done with school. It's been so long now, though, that I don't know if I will be able to function without some type of learning. Seriously.

Lazy summertime, but getting a lot done at the same time.

How weird is that? I watched tv for about two hours today, yet I still cleaned out the junk drawer, the boys color book cupboard, the shelf above the kitchen sink, the canned goods cupboard, the kid dishes cupboard, the snack cupboard, the top of the refrigerator, and the bulletin board area of the kitchen. AND I cleaned up the garage, cleaned the cement with the push broom, and watered the mums, onions, and the peonies that I hope decide to grow next year. Whew! that was a lot to type! The junk drawer and the coloring book cupboard took the most time. There was so much stuff shoved under there that just didn't belong! I have another box full of stuff for our someday garage sale, and a whole pile of papers that went into the recycling bin.
I use a lot of coupons. I mean, A LOT. I will buy any condiment if it's on sale and I have a coupon that makes it $.50 or less. I should take a picture of the condiment shelf I made today in my garage. My cupboard was so full I couldn't tell what was in there. I have 13 bottles of bbq sauce. Seriously. 5 containers of Miracle Whip. 5 bottles of mustard.
I have a lot of boxed stuff, too, like macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper, stuffing, and boxes of noodles. I wanted to organize that stuff a little, but I couldn't make a shelf in the garage because we could get mice or squirrels or spiders or whatever in there. Our garage kinda sucks. So I moved all of the kid's little plastic plates and cups into the cupboard with all of the adult dishes, and moved the extra boxed stuff onto that shelf. I am really happy with how I can see what we have now.
I did a lot of organizing, too. The top of the refrigerator has been a place that everything is thrown. There were about 6 different chargers for various cell phones, camcorders, whatever just thrown in a pile up there, so I wrapped them all and put twisty-ties around them and put them all in a little box in the cabinet with batteries and extra stuff.
I have a 500 word article review due tonight at midnight and I haven't even found a topic much less an article yet. I really should, but I think I may be putting it off until tomorrow. I started my period today, and I feel awful. I never feel like this. I am crampy and grumpy, and all I want is to eat ice cream and chips and onion dip (separately of course) and sit in the recliner watching Clean House. NO KIDS ALLOWED! But of course, that isn't how it is. I'm sitting at the kitchen table with the breeze blowing in the kitchen window, typing on my laptop.
Hope you all have a good night, I think it's going to be an early one here.

I have veggies!!

My garden is exploding!

Here are the tomatoes.


See the green pepper in there?


My cucumbers are climbing right out of the garden! I had to dig out the chives and transfer them to the area under my living room window because the cucumber vines were strangling them. They have lots of flowers, too!



My single pumpkin plant has a flower! A few more are forming, but they aren't open yet.


The tomatoes are getting big!


Here is a side-view. I'm so glad we decided to do this this year! I'm excited about it!


I even decided to put in a flower bed next to our shitty old garage. We bought some perennial ivy plants because we want to have ivy climb up and cover the wall. (We have siding on the rest of the house and garage, just not this side wall.) After getting the ivy, I had to put in a bed because it's all cement there. Once I built the bed and added the dirt and the ivy, it needed more. Petunias are so pretty, so I bought a flat, and I LOVE IT!! (If you click on the picture, it will enlarge and you can see the ivy better.)


Benny got a new chair for outside, but decided to bring it inside and sit in it ALL the time.


And Todd got...
an EARRING!!!

My tomatoes!!



I've been working on this. I put patio blocks around the garden, and I planted the bean sprouts and banana peppers and a pumpkin.

Luc lost his first tooth!

Todd caught a fish.


Luc caught his first fish.

Todd enjoyed fishing so much, that he kept at it when everyone else was ready to go.

My tomatoes!!

So here is one of the cute little green tomatoes! I took a pic of the other one, but it was too close and blurry.


Here is my pepper plant that has the first flower.


Here are the cucumber plants in front of the peppers and tomatoes.


And this is a big stinky bush that I HATE, but Todd insists we keep. It is so big! I drive a Suburban. You can barely see it behind this monster.

So, I gave my speech. I am not a public speaker. I get so nervous, I feel like my heart is going to explode. So, I got through it (just barely) and got a 90%. Not great, but not bad.
I came home, and guess what I found? Two of my tomato plants each have one little perfect green tomato! Those little tomatoes made me so happy! I take a walk over to my garden whenever I come home; just to take a look. Today and last night, we've had a lot of rain, and I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. I noticed the flowers were on the tomato plants even before I planted them. Today, I looked closer, and saw two shiny green tomatoes!!! My pepper plants are getting tall and looking so healthy. The cucumbers are low and getting kind of spiky. The chive onions look good, too. So, I'm happy.

I need a topic

I have to give a speech on Wednesday. I have to introduce a (hypothetical) speaker. I can choose anyone; real, dead, fictional. Any thoughts on who I should pick? I hate having to narrow things down like this. It would be so much easier just to be assigned someone to introduce.

It's... Planting Day!!!

And we're done. Mostly. I've decided that I want to add some beans, so I bought the seeds, but I'm going to start them in small pots inside and plant them in a week or two. I have 1 Burpless Cucumber (just to see if they really are better), 5 Marketmore 76 cucumbers, 3 Health Kick tomatoes, 3 Cherry tomatoes, 4 onion chives, and 5 California Wonder Sweet Peppers.
It's amazing how much soil I needed! I used 8 40 lb. bags of topsoil, 3 40 lb. bags of Miracle Gro potting soil, and 1 40 lb. bag of Scott's garden soil. That's a lot of dirt! And the garden is pretty full, so by the time I'm ready to transplant the beans I'm getting ready to sprout, I'll need to dig another section to add next to the garden which will need garden soil, too!
Wanna see what we did? Sure you do...
I have two different angles, and one from far away because it looks small up close. (You can see larger pics if you click on the pic.)

Outside a lot!

I have been outside so much in the past few days! Benny is loving it! I have my garden dug, but I think I will be making it bigger either tonight or tomorrow. I have Miracle Gro soil to add with the regular soil. I'll mix it in together in the plot I dug out and then tomorrow is the big "Planting Day"!
We used to have two garages. We have an attached garage and when we bought the house there was a second one car garage about 2.5 feet away from the attached garage. It was a mess and the roof was falling in. Years ago, maybe 7? Todd and some friends tore it down. It had a cement floor, so we have a nice sized cement slab next to the garage where the boys can ride their scooters or skateboards. I decided to dig up the dirt between the garage and the cement slab and I wanted to plant some sunflower seeds in that strip. I went out with my shovel to pull out the weeds and the small rocks and just turn over the dirt. It's all cement! It had about 2-3 inches of dirt on top of cement! Crazy! We've lived here for 11 years and I didn't know that!
So, now I'm considering putting in a little garden box on top of the cement and still growing sunflowers in it with some mulch and a nice little wooden border. We'll see. I dug all of the dirt and weeds off the cement earlier.
Benny will be 2 in a little less than two weeks. Today I plan on starting the birthday shopping. I'm thinking outside toys like a little wheelbarrow.
The boys' school year is almost ending! June 8th is their last day. Todd is almost done with 4th grade and Luc is finishing Kindergarten. I feel old, and these white hairs aren't helping.
You know what I hate! I hate how Luc's name is always underlined in red when I type it as though it is spelled wrong!! It is SO ANNOYING!!

Dug up the garden

I made a garden today. Kinda. I think it will need to be bigger. All I really did was dig out the top part with the grass and chop up the earth underneath. It doesn't look very big, but I'd say it's almost 4 feet wide and at least 5 feet long. It's supposed to freeze tonight, so I'm glad I wasn't ready to plant my veggies yet. I'm going to go out and buy some good garden dirt in the next few days. Then I'll mix it all up and plant my stuff. I'm happy about this. It's going to be fun!


Here are my plants. They are spending the night in the kitchen since it's supposed to be low thirties tonight.

And Luc learned how to climb a tree! He only got about 3 feet off the ground, but he was so proud!

Spring time

So, it's spring. New classes (of course I have to mention school up front, right?), and new ways of life. This year anyway. I have really been thinking about the things I do in my life and how it might (or might not) affect others.
So, I've stopped using plastic grocery bags. I now have 12 reusable grocery bags made from recycled cloth. It was kind of hard at first to remember to take those bags into the store with me. Then, whenever I forgot them, I just told the cashier I didn't want a bag and had to to carry my things out. I quickly started to remember them. Also, Kroger gives you a 5 cent rebate on your purchase for every bag you bring in yourself! When I go grocery shopping, I buy a lot. I have three kids, a husband, and a dog to buy for; those 12 bags are handy.
I've also started recycling. I have considered it before, but where I live there is no pick up for recyclable items. So, I've looked into what is allowed and what isn't allowed. I have four bins in my garage and we put all of the recyclable things in those bins and once a week we drive to the recycling center to drop it all off. I went from having three full trash cans of trash a week, to one that isn't even full! Now, if Benny would just become fully potty-trained, we could cut down even less.
I've also started buying more recycled things. Specifically toilet paper, paper towel,, paper, and aluminum foil. It might cost a little more, but it makes me feel good.
I have been a coupon freak lately! I am saving so much money. Kroger doubles coupons up to $1, and for a while KMart was doubling up to $2. I won't have to buy shampoo or toothpaste for at least a year!
The final new thing that I've been doing to change our lives (haha, that sounds so silly, but it is at least partially true) is I'm starting a garden. This isn't like last year when I was like "I'm starting a garden". This is me going out yesterday and buying 24 3.5 inch potted plants to get it started. I had Todd and Jason out in our yard a few days ago. They cut down two trees and a bunch of branches that were in my way. I dug out two old stumps yesterday. This weekend, Todd and I are going to get an area ready, dig it up and put some topsoil in, plant our garden, and put a cute little edging fence around it. If that doesn't keep these monsters, I mean kids, out, I will buy razor wire. Or maybe just keep a better eye on them. We'll see.

Help??

I am looking for a book I need. I have looked on ebay and other sites like amazon, a1books, dualj, and half.com, but I'm not finding what I need at a price that I like. I did find what I wanted on ebay and I did bin, but when I got it, it was the wrong book. (I don't know all of the ebay rules, but I think it is wrong to list the ISBN number of a different book, and then farther down in the listing say it isn't that book.) Anyways, this is the book I'm looking for. I did find one auction on ebay that's at $40, and another copy on half.com that's $59.99. The biggest problem I'm finding is that a lot of the books are international copies, or instructor's editions. Does anyone else have any suggestions?

It's all come down to.....

this...
I have gray hair. Just a few minutes ago, I found the 6th gray hair on my head. SIXTH! I'm only 26. This is bull shit. I am going to have to start dying my hair if it keeps up like this. Todd says it's not a big deal, and I mean, yeah it could be worse. I don't want to get old. Even more, I don't want to look old. This sucks.

I swear all I ever post about online is school. Apparently that's all I have on my mind. Ever. So, I got an email about two weeks ago saying that my financial aid for the spring semester was denied. I resolved myself to trying to think positively about having the summer off even though I was pretty disappointed. This morning, I got a second email telling me how much my student loan was approved for. AFTER I canceled all of the classes I was signed up for. Nice.
Easter was nice. The boys got small Easter buckets instead of big baskets. They got some candy, but no toys this year. I think for not being religious people we should scale back on Easter.
Todd shaved his head again. He had been growing his hair out since January because I wanted him to. It was getting too crazy, so he shaved it off again. I'm getting used to it again, but I really liked it longer.
I have to leave for class in a few. I've been waiting around for the mail to get here, but I guess it'll come a few minutes after I'm gone.
I've been reading Fast Food Nation for my business ethics class. Pretty interesting.

P90X Day 4

Todd and I started P90X together this past Monday, so today is day 4. He already wussed out of today's workout because it was stupid yoga. I know it's kind of stupid, but it was a lot of work, and I sweat a lot, so that has to be good, right? I've already lost 2.5 pounds in these first few days. I'm a little sore and tired, but otherwise feel pretty great. I feel extra fat doing some of the yoga moves, though. It's a lot harder to do them when I have a lot of extra stuff in the way. I can't wait until I'm smaller and I'm able to do these things properly.
One of the weird things about this program, is that I'm not really very hungry. I follow the diet guidelines and I'm eating more food than I would have thought to eat on a diet. I eat every few ours and I'm hungry, but not hungry like I was before. Before I was REALLY hungry a lot more often. Now, I'm kinda hungry. It's more a feeling like I know I should eat, more than actual hunger.
Not a lot new going on besides the workout program. One of my classes ended and I passed with 99%. Another class ends in two weeks and I'm sure I'll get an A in that class as well. I have three more classes that run through the end of April. Two I know I'll pass with an A, well one might be a B, but I'm striving for the A. The third class, though, I am really worried about. I have to pass with a C and I just don't know if I can. I am seriously considering dropping it and taking it in the fall semester with a few easier classes. The sad thing is, if I do that, I will be postponing my graduation from May until December. I have been really looking forward to graduating in two months. Kinda sad about this whole thing, but I just can't get up the motivation to really get into this subject. It's tough.