Family ties

Isn't this a true statement!  My daughter (15yrs) picked this out for me over the Christmas camping trip we went on to Austin.  It has to have been one of the best family times we have ever had.  We were all together, which being a blended family sometimes doesn't happen.  This in of it self made it special but the fact that we all had such a great time made it the best ever!  Together we have it all!  We aren't perfect, none of us, not me and my amazing hubby as parents, not our teens who have made some poor choices and not our littlest one's who are on the road of trying to find out the boundaries.  Our family has had it's bumps but we have recovered from them and we will continue to have bumps that we will eventually recover from.  But I love when we all come together.  A funny story about this trip, it was the first one our now adult, sorta, child came with us.  Trev hasn't lived with us for two years now and since we got the camper last summer he hadn't gone with us.  We also hadn't gone in the cold yet.  So here we are in a new park, very excited to go explore and we set up camp.  We go to bed, nothing new, didn't pay any attention to how cold it was going to drop during the night and we wake up FREEZING!  We hadn't ever used our heater, never needed to.  So we can SEE our breath inside the camper!!! We're blowing hot air out as if to warm the inside of the camper.  We are all laughing uncontrollably with chattering teeth, not because it's funny at the time but because we can't seem to get the heater on quick enough and then the fire alarms go off due to the heater's fumes.  It had never been used before so it smelled really bad.  As miserable as we all were it was a great moment!  Trev had only two little blankets and he's a 6'4" man.  This wasn't probably what he had expected as his first camping experience with us.  Welcome to our exploring Trev!  Good Times!  We all managed to defrost by a fire they quickly got started and got the heater to run for the rest of our trip.  It never got that cold again but at least we know it works now.

Today was Joe's baseball try outs.  Neither one of his dad's could be there but both his moms were.  We sat together and were excited for him, nervous for him and disappointed for him when he didn't do as well as he would have liked.  It was good.  Our other children ran around the baseball fields like they do every season but this year will be different.  We will have the loudest cheering section for him.  He always does but maybe this year it will be in sync.  It will be harmonious.  I'm excited to watch the boys play but I'm even more excited that the previous tension during baseball will no longer exist!  It will be only about Joe and not about being uncomfortable.  I can't wait to share more about how this goes.

So again FAMILY, we may not have it all together but together we have it all.  I know some might not agree that we are family but we have family ties.  My stepson has brothers at his other home and he has brothers at our home.  They all like each other and get along.  This will tie us together.  It's good for Joe.  I believe its good for all the boys to see the adults get along and that Joe doesn't have to have loyalties that separate his homes.  I hope that he will be able to go easily between the two homes or even enjoy his brothers all together if he chooses.  That way he can have it all together if he wants.  I'm not saying the adults will all get together but when we are together we can all be proud of how our families enjoy each other.  That sounds great to me.

Just my thoughts for today.
Hugs,
Deanna

"Just Dinner" My rant for today, I will post something yummy in my next one.

Ok so one of the topics that I want to be able to share about on here is very sensitive and dear to me, my family.  My hubby and I met 10 years ago and have been married 9yrs this Feb.  We have had many ups and downs with our children’s other parents and this is what I want to share about today.  Today is my wonderful hubby’s 35^th b-day.  I hope we have many more to share together!  And yes I married a guy 5yrs younger than me.  Any way we don’t do much and usually don’t request our children’s presence unless there is a “to do”.  There isn’t one today.  However over the weekend my step son made it clear he was going to ask about riding the bus to our home after school so he could have dinner with his dad.  I made no attempt to ask, suggest or speak to his mom (for future reference I will call her JM) about it.  Basically left it up to him to handle.  He’s 12 and some things have been changing so I just let things be.  Let me back track before I go on.  JM and I became friends a few years back and then do to the sensitive nature of our relationship some misunderstandings happened and we discontinued the relationship.  I never felt right about it but we proceeded to fight and things got ugly.  But last summer I decided enough was enough and offered the olive branch one more time.  She accepted and since last August we have been trying to mend our friendship and trying to do this shared parenting thing differently. 

  Soooooo here we are.  Joe (my stepson) took the initiative to be where he wants to be.  No adult discussions took place, we didn’t ask her, or encourage him to do what he did.  But this morning I received a text that made me cringe.  I hope it was nothing but seriously I have to address it with her.  So here’s the conversation in text

Me last night:

Hey I will see you in the morning but its Francis' birthday so no lunch tomorrow either! Sorry I'm such a flake

JM this morning:
Joe said he is riding the bus to ya’lls house today for his bday. For dinner, just dinner. Thats okay about lunch, peyton has hearing test today, I forgot.

Me:
Oh ok :) r u coming to Zumba?

JM:
Not sure, body pump kicked my butt really bad yesterday, I'm so sore!

 Me:
Ok but the moving will help with the lactic acid ;)

No more responses from her and I called to check in after class (we Zumba together) and see if I was reading more into it.  No response on cell and still no return call an hour later.  I’m sorry but really in this day in age, cell phones are attached to folks all the time!  No I don’t believe all relationships have to have an immediate response but this is a very sensitive and personal relationship. It deserves attention.  But that’s me and how I handle things.

Ok so in that conversation do you know what irked me?

This:  For dinner, just dinner. 

REALLY!!!!! Have I just missed something?  We didn’t even ask for this!  I’m not a child, never assumed anything else was happening and why the F. does she feel she needs to reiterate that to me? (Sorry Jesus for cursing!)  See it even makes me loose my sense for a second.   Ok so I’ve just exploded.   I’m done.   Thanks for listening.  I’m sure it’s nothing but a couple of years ago I would have been pissed for days about it and probably not spoken to her about it.  I will though this time, that is if she ever calls me back.  I don’t know what’s going on with her, I do know that she has some big issues she is dealing with but this kind of communication will only hurt our relationship if I don’t say anything or if she really is trying to take a punch at us.  I really hate passive aggressiveness.  I know it too well; I’m pretty good at it so I recognize it right away! Hahaha at least I know it. That’s half the battle. So any way that’s my deal.

  I’m so excited that I have a stepson who is taking the initiative to really be in his dad’s life not just based on what the courts gave his parents. He is a rock star in my eyes and I hope that his parents (all of us) can live up to being the rock stars we all can be!  Our kids are all amazing and have such sticky situations to deal with and so many times I feel like we the adults act like we’re the kids.  I hope we have made some major strides in changing how we deal with these sticky situations.  I know it’s a process.

Hugs,

Deanna

After reading this my sweet level headed hubby says “I think it’s nothing.  Probably just how Joe put it.”  Well isn’t that just like a man!  I gotta laugh and say that yes that did cross my mind.  That’s why I’m not mad but want to at least double check.  Love my man!

Moment of truth and ants!

So I said last week I would face the music on the dreaded eeeevil scale today.  I did.  Not as bad as I guessed it could have been but not what I wanted either.  May I say first before I share that I've come a long way in accepting it's just a number to use a guiding point.  You do need some kind of measure to compare to in order to see that you've made some improvements.  That could be your measurements, it could be your shopping list, it could be that you've switched from regular sodas to diet, whatever it is it's just a starting point.  I also would like to say that on this journey I got down to 130lbs (from my highest being 200lbs) two years ago.  My dedicated weight loss journey started in the spring of 2009 and at that time I weighed 177lbs.  I have always had a hate relationship with my weight and body image.  Does it really take almost mid life to come to some acceptance?

  Sooooo here it is 142.4lbs Like I said not toooo bad.  I weighed 138 before Christmas though.  So that's a little over 4lbs gained.  I had weighed 134 a year ago. I had a particularly rough spring with a fainting spell that I had never experienced before and then put me into a tailspin through the summer.  I was in the middle of accepting that I had son who was about to graduate or possibly NOT!  SCARY!  But he did, thank you Lord.  And then I was faced with making the hard decision to put our youngest back into public school after homeschooling for two years.  I fell in love with that.  But it was our first experience with it and the reasons we had decided to do it were no longer an issue for him.  So mommy needed to put her big girl panties on and let him go.  It was the right decision and I feel like we have been blessed in both decisions. 

  Why I was telling you all this is because I started living my life.  Not just living for the diet and gym.  Putting some weight on is going to happen.  Now it's for me to figure out how not to keep putting on weight and to find a middle ground I'm happy with.  A nice middle would be 134-136.  I think I would be very accepting of that.  My new skinny clothes would always be comfortable and I wouldn't feel so restricted.  But right now I feel bloated and my new clothes don't feel good.

 So there it is.  My reality is that my goal is 8lbs, 10 would be fun for my birthday though.  But that's just not accepting the middle.

Ok on to a fun subject CAMPING!  We took out our new little love this weekend to a park we've been to before.  It has the Colorado River to fish and swim in, a park to climb on, trails, and lots of wildlife!  That's what I want to share about I saw one of the most amazing thing ever.  When Noah and I homeschooled we ordered an ant farm, ya know like we had as kids?  It was so cool but nothing like what we saw this weekend.  TRAILS of ants going through the fields, over the trails and making they're way through anything they wanted.  I wish my pictures showed the depth of the little interstates they had.  In the top picture that's our camper with trails leading to it through the field of clovers. 

These were way cooler than our little ant farm!

These trails were very distinct.  You could see how they had cut the grass and cleared the path.

You can see all the leaf cuttings that they carried to the hole and the hole is huge in comparison to them. 

Noah and Joe were very intrigued by these little workers.

I was amazed by them.   

   

Some other animals we have seen at the park are deer(they didn't a make an appearance this go round and neither did bandit), ducks, cows, alligator gar and this guy or gal.

I had to play with the exposure and color to get the details but I was very close to him.  So cool!

          

So that was our weekend: animals, smores, trails and football.  I love being outside and feel very blessed to have the opportunity to go exploring new campgrounds. This week I hope to follow a low-carb, low expense dinner menu, go to the gym everyday and try making this great phone charger to match my new kitchen decor-http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2011/12/holder-for-charging-cell-phone-made-from-lotion-bottle.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20MakeItAndLoveIt%20(Make%20It%20and%20Love%20It)

Wish I had thought of it.  She gives great directions and I will post how mine turns out at the end of the week.

Have a great day!

Hugs,

Deanna