Playing Catch-up

I’m appalled that it’s been a year since my last blog post.  I wrote a few times in 2012 but it was nothing I could post for the world to read.  2012 was a tough year for my family.  We had some good with the bad but we are all definitely glad for 2013 to be here.  We will make this a good year!

To catch you up…

Jayden’s finger healed properly from his surgery and he’s back to playing basketball.  He pretty much missed the whole season last year, only getting to play in the final playoff and championship game.  He was a trooper about it and attended most of the practices and games to support his team.  He turned 11 in the summer and is now in 5th grade.

Taryn finished pre-K in May and is now half way through Kindergarten.  She turned 6 in November and is as sweet and sassy as always. She loves school, loves to read and according to her teacher is a big helper in class.  She has no patience for people who are not following the rules (wonder who she gets that from) so her little stories each day are priceless.  She learned to ride her bike last summer so she is on the go!

Kiarra broke her knuckle at some point during the school year last year and had surgery on it over the summer.  It’s healed nicely as well and she was able to play volleyball for her school team and is playing club again this year.  We've seen great improvement in the past few months and really enjoy watching her and the girls play.  She will be 14 next month and is in 8th grade.

Tamia is now a freshman in high school. She’s in dance and is enjoying high school.

I hurt my knee early in 2012 and was in denial all year that I needed surgery.  After enduring months of pain, I finally had knee surgery in November.  They fixed my torn meniscus and my knee cap was crooked so they clipped a ligament to get it to straighten up.  OUCH, is about all I have to say about it. I didn’t miss much work, surgery was on a Thursday and I returned to work on Monday.  I just had my 6 week check-up and the doctor said it’s doing ok and she has cleared me to jog/run again.  YAY!

Jeff was healthy most of the year. It seems that the rest of us all had some major illness or surgery but he held down the fort.  His year was pretty stressful dealing with custody stuff but in the end, we have to remember that God is bigger than all our worries.  It’s been 18 months since Tamia told us she wanted to live with us and the court system is still stringing it along.  They’ve strung so long that she’s changed her mind back and forth a dozen times.  One weekend she wants to come live with us and begs us not to take her home and then her Mom decides to give her mass freedom and she thinks she doesn’t want to live with us.  It’s been an emotional roller coaster for Jeff, the kids and I.  Although we try to shelter them (especially Taryn) from it all, the reality is that it’s very difficult when it’s consumed so much of our time. 

On a happier note…

We bought a house in June.  The kids were so excited to have neighbor kids to play with again and design/paint their rooms to their likings.  We put pressure on ourselves to get into a house that was zoned to the high school that we want the kids to go to (and we thought Tamia would be living with us starting in the summer of 2012) that we looked past some of the things in the house that normally would of turned us away.  We also settled for this house knowing we could make the back yard beautiful with a pool and an outdoor kitchen.  The previous owners said they’d scoped out a pool so we knew it wouldn’t be a problem.  At closing, we discovered the backyard has a 14 feet easement!  FOURTEEN feet!!!  That is practically half of the back yard.  So much for the big beautiful pool.  Because of this, and a few other reasons, I hated the house for months…absolutely hated it.  I tried so hard to be grateful for what God has blessed us with and be positive for the kids but the reality was that I hated the house and as the days moved forward, I hated it more and more.  One day, soon after closing, I realized that the color of the bricks is the ugliest shades of light brown??... How does one not notice this when they’ve gone to see the house 5 times… I’ll tell you!  They, I, wore sunglasses that are tinted with red which totally changed the color of the brick!  I had those sunglasses on each time we went to see the house and didn’t notice how ugly it was until after we signed papers. Hmmm, not much I can do about this now.

Some of my dislikes in the house are fixable with a little paint.  With my knee situation, I was not able to paint so I’m still looking at the ugly baby blue that it’s my master bedroom.  As if it’s not bad enough to drive up to the house every day and tremble at the ugly brick, I walk into the master bedroom and tremble at the baby blue on walls.  Who paints the master bedroom and bathroom BABY BLUE!!!  Isn’t that for a nursery??!!  Again, it’s fixable with some paint and I have the paint, I’ve had it since June 29th!  I bought all the paint for the master and all the kids’ rooms and the only room we’ve painted is Tamia’s.  Kiarra, my Mom and I surprised her and painted it while she was visiting her Auntie for a day.  It was a rough day, but we pushed through and painted one wall hot pink, one wall turquoise and the other walls white.  It was a dark green so it took several coats to cover it.  It is bright but looks beautiful.  She loved it. 

My main annoyance with the house is the kitchen.  I did recognize the kitchen was not to my liking prior to signing papers but I looked past it since I was going to get a nice outdoor kitchen.  Our last 2 homes have had 20+ nice size cabinets. This house has 11 narrow cabinets.  We are talking to contractor now about rebuilding the kitchen so I’ll update you on that at another time.  It’s just crazy to me that a house of this size would have such a small kitchen. Again, it’s fixable - just time consuming and costly.

A great thing about the house is the closet space; we are not lacking in that at all!  I have a closet in my laundry room that I’m using as my second pantry to store the crock pots, roaster, rice cooker, etc.  I do love all the closet space.  I also love the sun-room and the office.  The dining room is a bit small, our table will not fit in there with the extensions so that pretty much sucks but the room itself is nice.  There is an awesome app ‘Houzz’ that is amazing so I've found a lot of great ideas for projects to make the house a home I absolutely love. 

With the new house, came the apprehension that the kids had to change schools.  A brand new elementary was being built in our neighborhood just around the corner from the house so Jayden is having to spend his last year of elementary at a new school. We are zoned to a different Jr High as well so Kiarra had to say “see you later” to all the kids she’s known since pre-school.  They’ll meet up again in high school. Neither of them had any problems with the change and actually Kiarra was glad to change. Jayden wasn't as ok with it at first but once he met a few kids in the neighborhood, he was perfectly fine and happy for the change.   

Another great thing about where we are now is all of our neighbors.  We couldn't have asked for better neighbors with great kids. We've had great neighbors before so this was very important to us and something that caused me great anxiety because you just never know what you are getting yourself into when you move. The day we moved in, our neighbors across the street introduced themselves and invited Jayden out to play!  This gave me such peace. By the end of the weekend, the kids were invited out to play many times and we’d met the majority of our neighbors.

The best thing about 2012 was the birth of our sweet niece Corinne.  She is a true blessing to our family.  She brings us so much happiness.

We were fortunate enough again this past Christmas to be able to go spend time with my family in Iowa.  I really love spending time with all of them. My niece and nephews are growing up too fast, so it was nice to be able to hang out with them and I finally got to meet my cousins’ new baby and my other cousins’ twins.  All in all, it was a great trip.

Fast forward and here we are.  We barely get home and the doorbell is ding-donging and it’s someone wanting to play or “hang out” with the kids.  I love this.  I’m also coming to terms with the fact that Jeff is not budging on selling this house anytime soon so we will move forward with the changes we want to make including adding a pool.  Only time will tell…