Lots of stuff has been happenin’ round here…

• Belle rode in her first horse show 2 weekends ago!  It was something fairly small put on by the stables where she takes her lesson.  It was a long, hot afternoon, but I enjoyed the heck out of it and she did amazingly well!  I have to say that I really thought that she looked the best on her horse when she was showing.  Of course I know nothing about horses and riding…I’m just sayin’…;)  She was in a group of 6 other riders who I’m guessing were a little bit older than her based on size.  And serious to goodness, she was such a beautiful rider, I couldn’t have been more proud of her.  She competed in walking, trotting and cantering.  She earned one 1^st place ribbon and two 2^nd place ribbons!  It was an awesome experience.  The fact that she loves it so much makes it that much more wonderful.  I love supporting her in something that she’s so passionate about.  You’d have to see her in action to fully appreciate it.

• The boys are still playing on their all-star baseball team.  The team is doing okay in their tournaments.  The boys are having lots of fun with it still, so that’s all that matters in my mind!  And I’m still enjoying the heck out of sitting on the sidelines screaming my head off every time we do something great!  Go Hawks!!

• We are all enjoying our summer here.  I have been taking Fridays off of work and spending time doing fun stuff with the kiddos.  And every other freakin’ kid on the block…  Every Thursday night I get suckered into multiple sleepovers.  I usually end up with oh…3 or 4 extra kiddos, which makes for very interesting Friday afternoons!  But it’s all good.  We usually just end up at the pool anyway.  What’s the big deal?  Whether you’re watching 1 or 10 ~ you still have to be alert and on the lookout.  Somehow it comes easy to me to keep up with a million kiddos, I don’t mind.  I’m so cool like that…:)

• Belle went to her first ever summer camp last week!  She went with one of her besties, V’s daughter.  V and I drove the girls to camp last Sunday afternoon and picked them up yesterday morning.  My baby girl was gone for an entire week, I can’t believe it!  But she’s good like that.  She’s been going and doing since she was a wee little thing.  She’s very social and isn’t fazed at all about being away from home.  Plus the fact that she had her little bestie with her made it all the more easy to deal with.  They spent the first part of their days in horse camp (imagine that) and then they did all kinds of other fun stuff during the second part of their days.  Lots of swimming, canoeing, banana boating, blob jumping, arts and crafts, etc… She had a really good time and I’m pretty certain we’ll be doing it again next year!

• I’ve been back to the beach!!!  Yay me!  My entire family made a trip to Hilton Head Island last week, including my mother, sisters, brother and their families.  I wasn’t able to make the trip because of the million activities we’re involved with.  But my sister who was staying with my mother left in the middle of the week, so my mother asked me to come down with the boys.  The trip was up in the air for me because we had baseball games last week.  It all depended on whether or not we won or lost our games…luckily, we lost and that freed up our week!  See, winning’s not always the most important thing…especially when vacation is involved…;)  So we packed up and headed out last Wednesday, staying until Saturday morning.  We had an absolute blast!  The boys had so much fun with their little cousins, skim boarding, swimming in the ocean, and playing baseball and football on the beach.  Too freaking cute!  The skim boarding is new and I, ahem, tried it out as well.  Didn’t fair quite as well as the boys did…I sustained a slight injury to my left knee and shin…pretty much the entire leg below my knee, I should say…damn skim board…  But anyway, we all had a fabulous time.  I love my family to pieces and so enjoyed spending time with my brother and his family and my sister and brother-in-law and of course my mother.   

There is a little more to report on, but quite frankly, I’m tired of typing…so I think I’ll call it a post.  I’ll update again soon to include some of the stuff I left off here, so be sure to stay tuned for more Days of my Life…

Until next time, be great!

That’s the theme of my life these days.  I totally feel like I’m falling apart at the seams…  My marriage has already fallen apart.  My house is falling apart.  My car is falling apart.  Everywhere you look, I’m totally and completely falling apart…

H and I had a conversation Thursday night.  Thank goodness we’re on good enough terms to have conversations like this.  At the end of a very long day and night, we were up rather late and started talking about the usual stuff, when we both just looked at each other and said, “what in the hell are we doing here???”.  I can honestly tell you that finances are the only thing keeping us officially “married” at this point.  We’re done.  Our marriage is over.  It fell apart 2 years ago.  We’ve been done for a very long time.  We’re both pretty much doing our own thing these days.  We maintain our family under one roof, but we live completely separate lives.  Financially, we can only maintain one household considering the standards to which we want our children to grow up with.  Unfortunately, we’re not in a position to sell our house and divide things equally.  H’s line of business has directly been hit by the shitty market we’ve seen as of late.  We cannot in our right mind put our house on the market at this point. It would be a stupid move for us…  And I’ve had my heart set on a new place.  A new home.  A new home with just me and my kiddos.  I’ve been ready to leave this place behind and start anew for as long as I can remember…  But it’s simply not possible at this time.  I’m stuck.  I’m literally stuck right here where I’m at…  Therefore, I think it’s wise for me to make the best of my current situation.

Given the circumstances that I’ve been dealt, I’ve decided to focus on my house.  I love this house.  H and I built it from ground up.  We were the first owners here in our subdivision almost 7 years ago.  I would leave here in a minute if I could, don’t get me wrong…nosey neighbors, holy rollers, everyone being all up in our business…  I’d love to leave it all behind.  But again, that’s just not possible at this point.  So I’ve decided to focus on the here and now. I’ve *got* to get this place in shape.  Back in the day, I was a clean freak.  I’m talking my carpets were vacuumed 2 or 3 times a day.  That, of course, was BK.  Before Kids.  I was anal as hell when it came to my home.  You could eat off of my bathroom floors at any given moment ~ my shit was that immaculate.  I’m totally over everything in the house having to be totally perfect at all times, however, lately it seems that my house has been collecting lots of junk.  Like stuff just seems to be piling up everywhere…the entire house just needs a complete overhaul of sorts.  And that’s what I’ve committed myself to doing.  And I’m putting it all out here for all to read.  I am undertaking a major project to completely strip clean this house from one end to the other.  I’m starting off easy.  Taking one room at a time.  One project at a time…  I’m not putting a time line on the “overhaul”.  I’m just gonna do what I can do and not make it a stressful event.  My goal is to go through every room in the house and completely clean from top to bottom, getting rid of the old and bringing in the new as I see fit.  The first room I’m tackling is the kitchen.  I began my mission today, cleaning out every drawer in my kitchen, re-installing tack paper, getting rid of all the unnecessary junk, and organizing like a mutha.  And my shit looks goooooood…;)  I’m so excited about my new project!     

The car…  We bought a Sienna mini van the day before the boys were born.  We needed a vehicle that could accommodate 3 car seats.  My God…when I think back on the fact that I had 3 babies, all under the age of 2, it makes me shake.  Literally.  How in the hell did I do it???  Anyway, we’ve had the van for 8 years now and it is literally falling apart.  The back door handle broke, so we can no longer access the “trunk” of the vehicle from the outside.  Seeing how the boys have ball games and/or practice 2-3 times a week, it’s  a major hassle to have to manipulate baseball bags and chairs out of the trunk of the car through the side doors.  Speaking of which, the side doors have also broken within the past couple of weeks.  You can no longer access the side doors from the outside of the vehicle.  You’ve got to open that shit from the inside now.  Driver’s side door ~ it’s fixin’ to give out at any moment now.  Totally not functioning as it should.  Driver’s side window no longer works either…  Get my point…??  The freaking car is falling apart.  Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the fact that I drove over a curb Thursday night, blowing out the back right tire so now it’s sporting a spare…  Good Lord, we need a new vehicle…

Okay, enough bitching and whining for one entry.  The good in my life heavily outweighs the bad.  My kids are healthy and happy, and that is the most important thing to me by far.  These other things, the house and the car ~ they can be repaired, cleaned and organized.  They can be fixed.  I would trade a perfect house and a perfect car in a minute to have “perfect” kids…luckily, I don’t have to…my kiddos are as perfect as they come, in my opinion, of course…;)

Stay tuned for updates on “the overhaul”!  Wish me luck!!

Until next time, be great.

Backtrack 8+ years…I am pregnant with my boys…  Physically, my pregnancy was perfect.  My doctor told me routinely how well I was doing, especially considering the fact that I was carrying twins.  I never had any sort of medical difficulty with my pregnancy.  I was certainly blessed in that regard.  Emotionally, however, it was a completely different story… 

My Dad had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure 5 years prior.  His doctors gave him a death-sentence, which he should have met some 6 months after diagnosis.  Here we were 5 years later and Dad was still with us.  It was a blessing I will forever be grateful for.  About the time that I became pregnant, Dad’s medical condition rapidly deteriorated.  He was in and out of the hospital constantly.  He had a procedure done that left his right foot partially amputated.  He was forced to retire from his job, even though he was no where near ready to do so.  His medical condition forced the early retirement and it was painful to watch him have to give into the fact that his body could no longer keep up with his spirit.  On the outside I was happily pregnant, expecting babies’ number 2 and 3.  On the inside, I was an emotional wreck.  I feared every day that my Dad would not live to see my twin babies born.  “Dear God, please let him live to meet his newest grandchildren…please, please dear Lord, grant me this one final wish...,” were the words I found myself desperately praying every night before sleep…   

During my pregnancy with the boys, I was at the hospital a lot visiting my Dad.  Many times, I took Belle with me.  She was under two years of age and a total handful, yet every visit to go see “Grampy” she was on her best behavior.  It was as if somehow she *just* knew.  She was angelic-like on these visits…it was the first glimpse I had into her caring little soul.  She was a “monster” of a little girl, and I say that in the most loving way possible…;)  Typical, I guess.  Very head strong, very argumentative, very determined and outgoing.  But during these hospital visits, I swear she had a halo hanging over her precious little head of curls.  Somehow she knew the severity of the situation and never ever gave me grief while visiting with her Grampy.  She was indeed his little angel…

When I was pregnant with the boys ~ as with Belle, I did not find out the sex of my babies.  I loved that surprise upon birth.  The not-knowing…it was the most awesome experience ever finding out if my babies were girls or boys.  This time around, I knew there were two and I knew they were identical.  So I knew I would be having either two boys or two girls.  We had picked out our girl names and shared those with the world. Likewise, we had one boy’s name picked out, which we shared with everybody.  What we didn’t share was the fact that if the twins were in fact boys, one of them would carry on my Dad’s name.  I wanted this to be my special surprise for my Father, so we kept this secret for the entire 9 months of pregnancy, telling everyone we were stuck in picking out a second boy’s name.  Being that in my family, the oldest 3 of 4 kids were all girls and the first 3 grandbabies were girls, we were all pretty much expecting girls.  Little did we know what was in store for us…

May 11, 2000.  Imagine my surprise in the delivery room when baby #1 was born and I was told that he was indeed a boy!  I smiled through my tears in anticipation of the gift I would soon be giving to my Dad.  Baby #1 took on the name we had chosen, Noah Riley, and in the hour and fifteen minutes before baby #2 was welcomed into this world, I can’t tell you how many times my sisters and mother, who were in the delivery room with me, reminded me in panicked tones that I still had to come up with another boy’s name for baby #2!

Baby #2 was born, like I said, an hour and fifteen minutes later.  When they laid him upon me I announced to the room that his name was to be Philip Ross.  Talk about a room full of crying women..;)  Then I asked for someone to please bring my Father into my room…  One of the most incredible memories I have of my Father is the time spent with him in that delivery room after his first grandsons were born.  Dad walked in with the biggest, proudest smile on his face and immediately walked over to my bedside.  He took my right hand and asked me how I was doing.  I, of course, was a pro at this baby-birthing thing so I told him that I was perfectly fine.  My epidural worked wonders and I couldn’t even feel my legs let alone the trauma of what just went down…;)  Then I asked him if he had heard what the second baby’s name was.  He said, “No, what is it?” and I told him, “Philip Ross”…  I saw the tears immediately well up in his eyes and he had to let his head drop for a few moments.  When he looked back up at me, he asked me to repeat what I had just said.  Again, I told him that the baby was named after his Grampy, Philip Ross.  He tilted his head to the side and asked me if I was serious and I, of course, told him yes!  My baby’s name was Philip Ross…  He shook his head in disbelief and then looked back up at me with tears in his eyes and a wide smile across his face and said a simple, “thank you” as he squeezed my hand. 

June 11, 2000.  It had been one month since we welcomed Noah and Ross into the world.  Life was good.  I had three beautiful, healthy babies, and Dad had been out of the hospital for a few weeks.  I woke up on this morning, June 11^th, 2000, to my crying babies.  I got up with them, allowing H to sleep in.  I was in the process of feeding Rossy his bottle when the phone rang.  It was about 7:30 in the morning and because my schedule was completely off due to having newborns, I wasn’t even fazed by this unusually early morning phone call.  A minute or two later, H walked into the living room where I was with the boys.  Not realizing that he was trying to hand me the phone, I told him to go back to bed ~ that I would take care of the babies this particular morning so that he could catch up on some much needed sleep.  And that’s when I recognized the look of sheer terror and panic on his face.  He told me to give him the baby.  I told him no, I was feeding the baby.  He again reached for the baby and I held on tighter in an effort to not let go.  It was as if I knew what was coming and I was desperately grasping at anything to make it not true.  I needed to live in my bubble for just a little bit longer.  I wasn’t ready for this.  Not yet.  Finally he maneuvered the baby from my arms and handed me the phone.  That is when I heard my Mother’s voice on the other line unable to speak to me.  I somehow managed to get out, “is Daddy gone?” and she replied a sobbing, “Yes baby, he’s gone…Daddy’s gone…”

My Dad died exactly one month after my boys were born.  That was 8 years ago today.  My life took a drastic turn on that fateful day 8 years ago.  I can’t believe it’s been that long.  I can’t believe I have lived for 8 years without my Father.  I have learned that life goes on after the loss of a loved one.  I have learned that you never get over such a loss ~ you just learn to live with it.  Life is different.  It will never be the same.  It is good, don’t get me wrong, and I am doing fine these days.  But it took a very long time for me to come to terms with the fact that my Dad is gone from my physical world.  With him, he took a part of me.  A part that can never and will never be replaced.  A part that only a Father can fill.  I have a Dad-shaped hole in my heart.  It is permanent.  Sure, it’s a bit shaded and shadowed by the father figures in my life and not the aching, gaping hole that it was in the beginning…but it is still there...  It’s definitely still there. It will always be there, until I see him again…

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!  I love and miss you tons.  You know my heart and you know where I am in this crazy journey of my life…  Please watch over me.  Watch over my babies.  Guide us and protect us, please.  Please know that you will always be with us.  You will always be with me.  You live on in the depths of my soul and I cherish the blessing of having you as my Dad.  Thank you for all that you are and all that you mean to me.  I love you, Daddy. 

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

43

This one is long overdue…my girl’s trip to Hilton Head Island with my bestie, V!  We headed out on a Friday morning and I somehow was put in charge of driving.  I hate driving.  Really, really hate it.  I suck at directions and I’m like a Nervous Nelly on the road.  Don’t know how that happened, but I am just not a driver.  Ah well, at least it was daylight.  At nighttime, I dislike driving even more.  But I digress…  The ride there was pretty uneventful.  We chit-chatted pretty much the entire way (except for V’s short lived attempts at sleep..;), and we were there before we knew it.  Checked into our condo and promptly made a trip to the store for corona, limes and some other staples for the weekend (bottled water, chili cheese fritos, and watermelon ~ random, I know).  We put on our bathing suits, poured our coronas and headed to the sundeck, which overlooks the beach.  Ahhhhh…it was wonderful.  Perfect sun, perfect temps, perfect wind, perfect beach sounds and smells, perfect beer…and all shared with my bestie.  What more could a girl ask for?! 

The urge for bloody marys, oysters, and crab legs found us heading to an early dinner.  Yummmm…  While there, we got some recommendations on where we should head for the night.  We got the biggest laugh out of the fact that one of the hotspots was called “The Triangle” ~ the nickname that V, N (another one of my besties) and myself have taken on.  Good stuff… 

Back to the condo we go, shower and dress for the night.  While we were getting ready, V and I were talking about what a great time we were having and how fun it would be to meet some really cool people.  No “hook ups” or anything like that.  Neither one of us was looking for anything like that.  We simply wanted to have a good time.  A fun time.  A stress-free time.  And we thought adding friends to our girl’s trip might add to our weekend “funness”.  Oh, and get this…we knew, obviously, that we didn’t want to drive when we went out.  Much too much drinking going on for all that.  We tried *desperately* to call for a taxi service to come pick us up at our condo and would you believe we could not find a single taxi available to do so???  WTH?  We got answering services and everything else, but not a single live person to request a taxi for pick up.  Ridiculous.  We ended up driving to our first destination and leaving our car there for the night.

First stop, the piano bar.  It’s one of my favorites and I frequent this place whenever I’m in HHI.  There’s a guy who sings and plays the piano and takes requests.  He is awesome!  So that’s where we started.  V and I scored the best seat in the house (a.k.a. “the nest”) and before we knew it, a group of bar-goers were using our table to set their drinks down on.  Soon, we made friends with them ~ all doctors and pharmaceutical reps, some in from Charleston and the rest local.  In all, there were probably 10 in their group so V and I fit right in there…;)  We continued our night running from bar to bar and ended up at “The Triangle” which was our favorite hotspot of the night.  We had *so* much fun…never paid for a drink, danced our asses off, danced our asses off with strangers, bar hopped, and hung our with our new bestest buds.  The guys drove us home at the end of the night and V and I walked on the beach when we got back to our condo.  It was a beautiful night…the kind of night where the stars are so clear and bright that you can’t take your eyes off the sky…  The perfect ending to a totally killer girl’s night out at the beach…

So Saturday, we slept in for a little bit, got up, got ready for the beach, and headed out for the day.  We beached it for a few hours and then walked to the square for lunch at an awesome little Greek restaurant.  After that, we went back to the beach for the rest of the afternoon.  We got a ride to go pick up our car from my Aunt who was in HHI as well and headed home to get ready for our evening.

We got a bit of a late start Saturday night because we squeezed in a quick nap before getting ready.  How nice is that ~ a nap?!  Who does that???  We took full advantage of our time away…ahhhh…  So we started off at a bar called Wild Wings.  We’d been in touch with one of our friends from the night before.  He was meeting up with a new group of friends Saturday night, so we made arrangements to hook up at some point.  After indulging in yummy wings and several drinks and shots (our cute waiter talked us into blonde-headed-sluts), our friend “D” met up with us at the bar.  Another drink with him and we were off for the triangle.  We pretty much had more of the same fun we did the night before.  Lots of drinks, dancing, meeting new people, etc…  Towards the end of our night, we met another doctor friend of D’s.  Very fun, very cute, very entertaining…  We hung out with him until the bars closed and he drove us back to our condo.  “Dr” and I sort of hit it off, so we took a nighttime stroll on the beach together.  We had a really neat connection.  We talked a lot, laughed a lot, and really had a super fun time together.  Again, the perfect way to end a fun night out…  (Sorry, but there will be no more details on “the doctor”…;)

Sunday, we got up and got packed and hiked to where we left our car the night before.  We checked out and drove off the island, stopping at a fantastic little Italian place on our way out.  The drive home was uneventful.  We did, however, have lots of interesting conversations about our weekend!

And that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.  What a fantastic time we had.  I can’t wait for our next girl’s trip!! 

As always, please stay tuned for more...Days of my Life…

Until next time, be great!     

That’s what I have to blog about!  Tons of stuff!!  Funny how that works now.  I’ll be going through my day and out of no where it’ll hit me ~ “I’ve GOT to blog about that!!”  I’ve got plenty to write about.  It’s just a matter of finding the time to do it.  My days are jam packed and my down-time very limited, so it’s hard to find the time to write it all down.  But I’ll work it out.  Have no fear, my dear dedicated readers!  (hahahahaaa..I love talking…er…writing to myself! ;)   Coming soon to a blog near you…I must report on my girl’s trip, which was freakin’ FANTASTIC, by the way.  Seriously, if we had anymore fun than we did, I’d have turned into the freakin’ fun-fairy, grown wings and flown away to Funland…it was *that* much fun  I’ve got the weekend to report on ~ lots of kids’ activities, including allstar games and a horse show!  Right now, it is Thursday night and I’ve got 3 additional kiddos to my brood, which = 6.  I’ve got 6 kids that I’m in charge of.  Just because.  Just because I’m that freakin’ cool.  Speaking of which, I think I’ve said “freakin’” like 50 million times already.  Sorry.  I’ll change it up for ya. ;)  ANYWAY…as I was saying…I’ve got 3 extra kiddos spending the night with me; Belle has 2 girlfriends over ~ v’s daughter and “Orphan Annie”, who pretty much lives here full time.  The boys have Noah’s little bestie spending the night.  At some point I’m gonna have to blog about Orphan Annie and my experience tonight with picking up the boys’ friend.  Here’s a little precursor to those blogs…they both involve the police.  Yeah, I know.  You’re totally on the edge of your seat.  I feel your pain…;) 

I’ve got 6 kiddos still awake and it’s after midnight here.  I should probably sign off now and demand some bedtimes around here!  But before I go...I’ve decided that I’m going to start taking off work on Fridays so I can spend some time with the kiddos having some killer summertime fun!  I’m *so* excited!!  We’ve got big plans for the summer…trips to the zoo, Stone Mountain Park, Lake Lanier Water Park,  Six Flaggs, White Water, etc…  Tomorrow we’re kind of taking it easy.  The boys have a game at 6 so I don’t want to totally wear them out.  We’re going to the library in the morning and then we’ll spend the rest of the day at the pool.  I will have 6 kids in tow.  Did I mention that already?  I am taking 6 kids to the library…the FREAKIN' library...  Dammit, I just said "freakin'" again.  Let me rephrase ~ I am taking 6 kids to the library tomorrow...the DAMN LIBRARY, FOR GOD'S SAKES!  This is just sinking in for me…  Good Lord, pray for me people….

I hope all is well in everyone’s world.  Thanks for checking in!  Well, you’re very welcome!!  (I *love* talking to myself…;)

If I survive the library trip tomorrow, then you should be hearing from me very soon.  Lucky you!  (a.k.a. ME!!)

Until next time, These are the Days of my Life…