Green peppers...

Katherine and Abbey remind me of my sister Jenny and myself when we were little. There's a story I must share before I can tell you what happened between my girls tonight.

I don't remember how old we were. But something happened when we were young that neither of us have ever forgotten. I HATED green peppers. My mom kept putting them in our salads though. And one time, I was convinced that Babe, our cocker spaniel at the time would eat the peppers if I picked them out of my salad. So what did I do? I did what anyone who hated peppers would do. I picked them out of my salad and threw them on the floor. And what happened next? Well I can tell you that Babe did NOT eat those stupid peppers! Someone found them though. That someone was my mother. And she would not rest until she found out who did it. Of course, I told my mom the truth right away-I told her that Jenny must have done it because it certainly wasn't me. And what did my sister do? SHE DENIED IT! Can you believe that? I mean here we are in trouble because SOMEONE threw their peppers on the floor and she just denied it. So what could my mom do? She fed us both peppers until someone finally told the truth. We still laugh about that, Jenny and I.

Tonight...I got to be my mother. Abbey and Katherine put me through a situation so similar it was both amusing and frightening at the same time. What started out as a simple game turned into much, much more. It took a good hour to finally get one of them to cave. Abbey caved. Prior to this, Katherine was BEGGING through tears for Abbey to tell the truth so they wouldn't both lose their privileges tomorrow. We were 95% sure that Abbey was lying and Katherine was telling the truth. But there was that 5% that wasn't convinced. Finally we got to the bottom of the matter and Abbey admitted she was lying.

It was really eye opening for me. Oh the joys of parenting!

Oh and by the way, I actually eat green peppers now from time to time!

On the road again...

This is probably the most interesting day of travel I have ever experienced. It is probably more interesting to me than anyone else, and I can't really explain why I find it so interesting...I just do. The driving today has gone by extremely slow...we've had long pit stops, got on the road late. It just seems to be dragging. That, however, is not what I find so interesting. What I find interesting is that we started in Pennsylvania, then we drove through Maryland to avoid the PA turnpike and tolls (MARYLAND WAS BEAUTIFUL!), then into West Virginia for a bit (also beautiful!), then BACK into Pennsylvania and are about half an hour away from OH! That's a lot of states to travel through in just 4 hours! The hills in Pennsylvania are also beautiful-I was not intentionally leaving that out. This whole 'region' is full of God's beauty.

I am also admitting how much of a geek I am. I am pretty excited to be blogging while Kris drives. He found a way for me to use my cell phone as a modem (for FREE) and so I am connected to the internet while we drive. Through Maryland/West Virginia the signal wasn't very strong but I am back online now and writing about it and am amused by being able to do this.

We are going to wind up in Dublin, OH much later than we had planned or wanted, but there isn't really any rush so it's ok. We are just hoping we gain enough distance on Cindy and Dean (they were ahead of us earlier) to get to the hotel before they do, since the hotel was reserved in our name. And I am really hoping we get there in time to take the kids to the pool one last time. Though the speed limit has just gone down from 70 to 55 which doesn't make us happy! Oh well...tomorrow is going to be a lazy day for us. The Drury Inn always lets us have a late (noon) check out so we plan to sleep in, enjoy their breakfast buffet, and take our time in the morning. It will take us almost 7 hours to get home tomorrow, but we will gain an hour on the way back so that will be nice too. Even with longer stops along the way, if we get on the road by noon we should be home no later than 8pm tomorrow night.

I don't have much to say. I can always tell because I bore myself. So I will stop boring you now too!

Pictures from vacation

Gettysburg PA

Hershey PA - our resort and Hershey World/Museum

Signs, signs everywhere there's signs...

Tonight is our last night in Pennsylvania.  It has been a great vacation and wonderful that I haven't worked at all!  That is a great feat...as I am kind of a work-a-holic.  It wasn't as difficult to stay away though as I thought it was going to be.  Though I did log in once to monitor my email but I didn't do any actual work.

Pennsylvania LOVES their signs.  There are signs everywhere, hence my brilliant title for this post.  The signs are ridiculous too.  Some of them are legitimate.  Some of them are just pointless.  "No shoulder in 2/10 of a mile."  "Are your headlights on?"  "Turn your headlights on.  State law."  All of the signs we saw now explain why we had to pay $11 to drive on the PA Turnpike!  I'll try to get some pictures of the signs as we head back to OH tomorrow.  I found myself amused by all the signs...we've thrown around a lot of jokes this week due to the large amount of signs.  

We went to Hershey World today.  The theme park was closed but we were able to go to the Hershey Musuem-that is not its actual name but it is escaping me at this time.  Milton Hershey was an amazing man.  Reading about how he went from bankruptcy to building a company and a town...it was pretty cool.  The younger kids weren't that interested in it but Katherine was absorbing it all.  I was disappointed to learn that they haven't allowed tours of the Hershey Factory since the 1970's.  However, Hershey World made up for it because they had this little tour that showed you how the factory operates and that was interesting, and geared more towards kids, which meant that it was much more interesting to them than the factory tour would have been.

I am going to try to post a slide show of pictures from our trip on here-we'll see if I am able to get that done.

Overall it has been a great vacation.  I'm sad to see it draw to a close.  Oh and we got to find out that Olivia shares Katherine's car sickness...as soon as we got into West Virginia and the roads got hilly and curvy...fun times!  So we now have two children we have to drug with Dramamine before going on trips.

Chocolate

I love chocolate.  It's no big secret.  :-)

Saturday my family will embark on a journey to the sweet, sweet town of Hershey, Pennsylvania. We'll 'caravan' with Cindy, Dean and Brandon, stopping halfway there for the night.  I just didn't think the kids were ready for a drive like that in ONE day, so we're breaking it up over two days.  Maybe it was more that I wasn't ready for a drive like that with the kids--but I really do believe they are just a bit too young to tolerate more than 6-7 hours a day.

I'm really looking forward to some time off work.  Of course I will find myself worrying about it while I am gone, but I need a break.  I'm really looking forward to getting some reading done.  I plan to finish Dekker's latest book "Kiss" and hopefully read the fourth book in the Anne of Green Gables series since I can't seem to find that one online anywhere to listen to (for free); that is, if Katherine will let me borrow the book!

I am sure I will have plenty of pictures to share!  Below are a couple of pictures from our weekend trip to Castlewood State Park.

It's me again

It's too late (early depending on how you look at it) and I am too tired for anything heavy or interesting.  But I am still alive!  I have just really busy.  Tomorrow is the first day I can remember where we have nothing planned.  No work for me, nowhere to go, nothing we have to do...Kris and I are both really looking forward to this.  Kris dad came out yesterday and layed (laid) large carpet squares down in our basement (no padding in case it floods again).  So we spent the evening getting that back to a liveable space.  It's so nice to have that space again! 

My medication is in full swing within my body.  It feels good to feel alive again.  It feels good to be able to get out of bed in the morning.  3 days this past week I got to work by 7:30am (one day by 7am).  This, my friends, is miraculous as before I was lucky to make it to work before 9am.  Fortunately for me my schedule is obviously somewhat flexible.  But because I got in earlier, even with leaving at 3pm most days so I can be home when the bus comes with my kids, I haven't had to work in the evenings and don't have to work Saturday to make up the hours.  I'm still getting the hang of managing my anxiety/panic attacks.  I have gone from taking the Xanax 3 times a day to primarily only taking it before bed to help me sleep.  The last two evenings I have taken it while the kids were still up, having been feeling more on edge than usual.  But it's nice that I am not dependent upon it!  And the Rozerem, now that my mind isn't constantly churning (because I take the Xanax before bed) is actually doing it's job and helping me fall asleep and STAY asleep.  This hasn't happened in a long time.  I tested the theory of whether or not the Xanax helped me sleep.  Sure enough-the two nights that I didn't take it in conjunction with the Rozerem-I could not fall asleep and kept waking up.  So for now, the Wellbutrin, the Xanax and the Rozerem are a great evening cocktail.  And because I am sleeping better and because the Wellbutrin is now fully in my system, I am less overwhelmed and anxious and therefore do not need the Xanax on a regular basis.  I am happy about this, as there is always the concern of becoming addicted to certain medications.

Kaleb and I have gone to the psychologist twice now.  We go back this coming Monday, and then 2 weeks from that day as well.  It is good.  It is necessary.  It is expensive.  But it is worth it.  I am calmer with Kaleb (and the others as well) with my medication but also with the new techniques/revelations from the therapy and Kaleb I think really likes that attention and he is actually really excited to go to his appointments.  I think that this is a good thing.

We are gearing up for a big trip over spring break, which begins on Friday.  Friday is not technically part of spring break, but it may as well be.  There are parent/teacher conferences Thursday (so the kids of course have yet another half day after being off a whole day today too) and then are off again on Friday.  I think it is odd that they are doing it this way...but it is kind of nice for travelling I suppose.  You kind of get an extra day and a half head start.  We don't, because I think Cindy may still have school that day and we didn't realize they had this day off until last week but that's beside the point.  So I am planning to take off Friday to be home with the kids, and then I can get everything packed and ready for our long journey to Hershey, Pennsylvania.  I am looking forward to it.  It will be nice to get away, though I will still need to do some work from there so that I can afford to take time off in June when Kris and I go to Miami.

This is what happens when I wait until 1:00am to start writing.  I babble on with useless information that no one but me really cares about.  But that's ok...because as I have said before...this is my blog and I can write about whatever I want!  :-)