Today kinda sucked. I had to register my 4 and 5 yr old for school. If I have to fill out 60 pages of paperwork to register 3 kids every year since we keep moving I may just hang myself. It is dreadful all the things they make you fill out and sign. I had the kids with me and the minute we got there they started whining. "I am hungry, I am gonna die, I am going to throw up if I don't eat, I am freezing, can we go home." And they wouldn't stop for anything.

I find out that since the time they were in school last year they needed some vaccinations. A.J needs one and poor Matthew needs four! We don't have a Dr here and since a new patient office call for 2 kids would cost more then it was worth we went to the health department. OMG... There must of been 100 people waiting for shots. No lie. We would've been in line for 6 months had we stayed. We left and decided that dh would take the kids and be there tomorrow at around 6:30am for their 7:30am opening time. The schools registration is only till 11:00am so he can't sit around there all day.

Then I had to go get the kids some more school clothes. Their school shirts need to be plain, but I thought a plain shirt could at least have a stripe on it. Well it can't....blah

So tomorrow we start over and hopefully it will be more productive then today.

Wow, where do I even start? It has been one of those weeks. To start things off my 2 youngest boys get the stomach flu for the SECOND time since January. Now seriously, what is that about? A.J. gets it first followed by Matthew so about 4 days of all the lovely things that go along with it. Meanwhile I am just praying it doesn't hit me like it did last time they had it (so far, so good).

Next on the list of goodies are the possessed smoke detectors in our house (we rent). They have taken over. They go off at all hours of the day and night at will. They are electrically wired with battery back-ups. When one goes off they ALL go off. They are loud, high pitched, obnoxious and they are lucky to still be "living", so to speak. There is no smoke, no fire, no reason for them to go off. Maybe a short?? Who knows. Could I do something about it? Yeah, if I could reach the 10 foot ceilings they are attached to. Last night they were going off (on and off) from 1 a.m. till 7 a.m. They may go off for a minute or two, or 10, 20 minutes. It is like some bad head of household competition on Big Brother.

Tomorrow Alex is going to work on his latest video. When this gets done you will want to come back here and see it. His latest effect he is trying for is getting shot and having the "life like" blood splatter thing going on. Gotta love what $20 of pieces, parts,(he had to build the equipment to make the blood spatter) corn syrup and red food coloring can do.

We have also had our share of bad news this week also. We found out Sunday that my MIL has breast cancer. She needs surgery and 5 weeks of radiation. We hope it has not spread to any lymph nodes. If they get all the cancer out with surgery her prognosis is good from what I understand.

Also my future brother in laws grandma is dying. He lost his father 2 years ago and his younger 32 yr old brother to cancer in January and now the grandma who raised him is not going to make it, maybe not even through tonight. He really needs to catch a break. I cannot imagine that much loss.

On to better things. My blog has been linked from Parents Magazine.com
I think that is so cool, for me, a small time blogger. Whoo Hoo!!!

That is what my 5 year old said to me today. I mean obviously he doesn't want anything to happen to me. But if some unforeseen force should snatch me from this world he wants to make sure he is on the top of the list for my laptop.

Yeah, in fact he *thinks* he needs one of his own. I won't let him use mine since I only got it less then a month ago. I would kinda like to enjoy the newness of it without worrying about sticky keys and who knows what might happen to it.

Gotta love kids, huh?

Usually that is a good thing. Except when it means that two outta my three kids are sick. They started off with colds. One developed a raging ear infection (no fever) and the other a fever (no ear infection).

A.J. is the one with the ear infection. He can get really bad infections and he will never even make a peep about it. Luckily he hasn't had but only a few, that I know of anyway. Like I said, for him I guess they don't hurt or something because you would honestly never know he had one. Knowing this when he said his ear hurt a "tiny" bit I scheduled him a Dr appt to find out what was going on for sure. Glad I did. I only wish my years and years of suffering through them as a child were the kind that didn't hurt.

Of course I give them medicine and you would never know they were sick at all. When kids are sick why can't they be like us? Retreat to the bedroom and hide out (ok, as if a mom ever had that option, but that is what our husbands do right? Mine does anyway).

And although A.J. was sick a couple days before Matthew, wouldn't you know Matthew would get sick just after his first two days of preschool lol. Coincidence? Perhaps. I am sure A.J. got his cold from school anyway and Matthew was bound to get it from him eventually.

Right now Matthew is crashed out, and A.J. is hopped up on Motrin like a mouse on speed.

It is going to be a lovely weekend I am sure.

That is what I have been. Last week was filled with appointments for the kids (school(for A.J.'s and Matthew's speech), art class, touring the high school). Dh left for Colorado on Tuesday. Then my sister headed to Michigan on Friday. I am still in the process of moving my things into the master bedroom. Everyone left me WHAaaaaaHH

I had a couple of Designs to do this weekend. Even though I do them on the computer I find that the designing is all I do. All my blogging falls to the wayside. Bad me!

The first design I did was for Melinda at Look What Mom Found I had something happen when designing hers that had never happened to me before. When the margins looked good in FireFox, they were totally off in Explorer and visa versa. Now I have NEVER had an issue with this before and it is totally frustrating me to no end. I am wondering if it is a FireFox issue seeing as since I got my new laptop I downloaded the latest version of it and prior to that it was not an issue.

I also did another design but that is not installed yet so I will wait to show you that one.

HA! and if you haven't noticed, I redid my blog a bit. I haven't decided what I think about it yet. It does have a sleeker look to it. I just hate change lol.

0k, this is late but my son Alex turned 14 years old on Friday. The only thing I think of when I think of my son turning 14 is that it is only 2 more years till he is driving (YIKES!!!!!!)

This is Alex on his Birthday.


His cake. I let him pick it out and he got a yummy Black Forest cake.


As you can see from the first pic that Alex has naturally curly hair. He was wondering what it would look like straight so he let me flat iron it last night lol.



A pic of me, sometime during Christmas I believe. Oh, and I am trying to grow my bangs out. Not sure why, never worked the last 1000 times I have tried.

Not just to my kids but to everyone around here. I live with my younger sister and I know she has a full time job and my kids do make 99% of the mess and I do stay at home all day. But it would be nice to get a thank you, or a "cool, you cleaned!"

eh, what the hell. I had to do it when this was my house so why not continue with it. However when I cook and everyone eats, it is still me that has to clean up the mess.

And ya know what?? I HATE CLEANING!! With a passion no less. Not that anyone adores it but I really despise it with all my being.

Isn't it funny that kids are never too tired to make a mess, but when you ask them to pick it up, that is the response you get.

So, if they are that tired maybe they should take a nap. Right, they are never THAT tired.

I have been sick for two days now. I feel like I am going to die (you know what I mean) and you would think the kids would be kind and help me out a bit.... not! I swear they use it to their advantage to get away with more.

Did I mention I hate being sick? I haven't even been on the computer hardly at all today. (imagine that!) My head is so fuzzy, I can barely think. I need 24hrs of completely uninterrupted sleep. Wishful thinking there too.

I better get my butt in gear if I plan to participate in Scrapbook Saturday tomorrow.

I am going to lose my mind I swear. I would rather live in the RV then this house cause that would mean dh would be home every evening. The kids don't listen to me at all! Dh has to only give them a look and they do what they are told.

They can be somewhat decent all day but I swear about an hour before bedtime they turn into raving, hyper monsters. Then to try and get them to bed (on time) is nearly impossible. Then I am getting mad at them and they all have some excuse why they aren't in bed yet (have to potty, need a drink, can't find their blanket, blah, blah...) I seriously want to strangle them by then.

During the day they can drive me just as crazy. If they want something and I say no or not now, you can bet they will be nagging/whining about it for the next 12 hours.

I am rambling I know and I am stressed these days.

Lets drink, (a lot, lol) to kids!!

Finally all my kids will be in school this year. I now have a preschooler (Matthew), a kindergartner (A.J.) and an 8th grader (Alex). Now I just have to work around Matthew and A.J's schedule. A.J. will most likely ride the bus but he and Matthew have close to the same schedule since Kindergarten is a half day and I need to be there when he gets on and off the bus. It will be hectic in the morning here now being as there is only one very small bathroom in the RV.

Knowing Matthew I can only pray that boy doesn't get kicked out of preschool. He has a lot of learning to do to survive in a group of kids and not get his way.

Now it is time to school shop for three!! Wow, that is going to be expensive. Good thing I don't have three girls, that would really hurt the pocket book lol. Luckily school here doesn't start till the 25th of August so we have some time to get everything done and in order.

So at some point during the mornings, I will have a whole three or so hours to myself. What will I do? What will I do......? Oh that is right, I'll be here on the computer, however shopping sounds good too. Shopping without the kids? Not sure I remember how to do that. Practice time!!!!

Am I a bad mommy for not being sad my kids are growing and becoming more independent and my last one is starting preschool?? I tend to get sad when my kids won't kiss me in public anymore, ow well.

That is exactly what I was today. I am an excellent driver. I have never gotten a ticket and even have my Class A commercial drivers license. I am very attentive and safe. However some days it is harder then others with my kids back seat driving and alas I have posted about this before.

So today I was looking for a particular place. I had to drop off some paper work to get A.J. into school. I am new here and really haven't been out much. When I lived here before I lived on the other side of town. I was driving around and couldn't find the place so I start entering info into my phone GPS while sitting at a red light. I finished entering the info and was waiting for it to load with my head down looking at it. Out of the corner of my eye I see the car on my left start to drive forward, I look up and see green. I got to the middle of the intersection before I realize the green was not for me and what was green was the left turn only arrow light. Here I am driving through the intersection with a completely red light for my lane. I was utterly mortified. I had all three kids in the car. Someone just give me a heart attack and a reality check.

I am not talking about the teenager who just gets his/her license. That post will be in about two and a half years so keep a look out. No, I am talking about those little knee high, booster seat sitting, rug rat, back seat drivers. It is bad enough running errands about town, but a seven hour trip with them makes me want to drop them off at the nearest exit.

Now kids are not stupid, they understand a lot of things but driving is not one of them. They just don't get why mom can't reach the toy from her drivers seat that they dropped which rolled to the back of the van. No clue why mom can't pull into a McDonalds on the left side of the road from the far right lane. And why isn't there a gas station at the exact moment they need to pee?

Rugrats: Mom look, look, look, mom, mom, mom......

Me: I can't look I am driving.

Rugrats: Mom, mom, mom, mom, looooookk!!!!!!

And there it is, the nagging, the screaming, the yelling about who took who's toy. Then they expect mom to just put the car on cruise control so she can come back and smack one of the kids and give the toy back to the other.

So, seven hours of this while my radio keeps getting louder and louder. Because just maybe if they think I can't hear them they will leave me alone long enough to actually drive in a safe and unstressed manner.

I also encountered my first sand storm. It was during the worst driving part of the day too. That time between dusk and the total darkness of night. I would've pulled off to the side road if I had been able to see the side of the road. It was so thick and pretty scary. Luckily it was only for a couple of miles. With all the wind I can't even tell you how many tumbleweeds were blowing across the highway and how many I ran over lol.

Can I hope the trip back will be better?? Yeah right!!!

Do you ever know if the decisions you make are right? Maybe you know right at the moment you make it, or maybe only later you find out if it was the right decision or the wrong one. We are talking big decisions here, not the "what's for dinner" types.

Because of dh's work we are now full time RVers. It is hard for people who are not in our situation to understand it, especially my family. The kids and I were living in AZ and dh was here working in Vegas. We were apart for eight months. People wanted to know why he couldn't work in AZ? Well, for one there needed to be work in AZ. Yes, there are buildings and houses going up everywhere but that doesn't mean it's union work as dh can only work for a union. And well, the most important thing for dh is to be able to "support" his family of five. The difference between AZ and NV is the union here pays $17 MORE an hour then they do in AZ. Hmmmm, which would you pick??

So why don't we just get a house here in NV? At some point the job dh is on will end as all "contract" jobs do. Then we either hope there are only a few people on the union book so he can get right out on another job or we wait on unemployment. However there is usually work somewhere but more then likely it isn't where you are right now. That means dh leaves again (chasing the $$$) and me and the boys would be right where we were when we were in AZ. I would be playing the single mom while dh was working in another state. Which really sucks by the way.

By living in an RV there are no rental leases to try and get out of, packing, moving expenses and all those headaches. There are some things that really scare me though. What about the kids??? Are we doing a disservice to them by them possibly having to change schools every couple years? Is it the same as if we were military and moving around? Or is a bigger disservice to my sons not having their dad around when they need them? Now I have trivial fears too. We have to sell everything we own, our furniture, excess things that we as people have accumulated in our life. I am 40, I have accumulated a ton of shit!! But what happens years from now and we decide we have had enough and want to settle down in a house? It is hard to just set up shop and we wouldn't have any furniture and the things that are common place in a house. It takes time and MONEY to get all those things. The things that, like I said earlier accumulate over years.

I really tried to dissuade dh on our moving here and doing the RV thing. However, he is my dh, am I suppose to say no? I am not some mindless wife who does "what dh tells me to do" by any means. We have talked about this extensively, the pros, cons and everything in between. I just happened to fall in love and marry a man with, albeit a great paying job but a screwed up one at that.

The RV we are looking to buy is really nice. Sure it is way smaller then a house but the boys would have their own bedrooms. A.J. and Matthew would share a room as they would be doing in a house and Alex our teenager would have his own room, as he would in a house also. We would have our own bedroom as we would in a house. If we wanted to go on vacation we wouldn't need the expense of a hotel and such. We can just hook up the house/RV and go. How easy is that?

Right decision? Wrong decision? I guess only time will tell.