Blogging: I have dropped some in October with only 11 post. Just kinda of a average month. I am super late in getting this review up so hopefully things improve in November.
                                              Goal: 15 per month
Devotions: Slowly but surely, I would guess 2x a week still working toward the goal.
                                              Goal is 3 a week.

I seem to have alot of these today so I thought I would share . . . . . . .

• I have set a new “weight loss/fitness” goal. In order to earn my full day of PTO at work I have to exercise 3 times a week and lose 20lbs. So I am going to focus on exercise 3 times a week to start. I did use the Wii tonight and it was encouraging in some way but I don’t even want to read or think about the other numbers. I am currently at the same weight as when I was 9 month pregnant with Zach..not pretty I told you!
• I found a new book that I am reading called When God Winks at You  it is basically based on the idea that there is no such thing as  a coincidence. I have said this for year so it is nice to read that i am right. I need the encouragement right now.
• Last Friday morning, a dime fell out of Zach’s sleeper when I was dressing him prior to my surgery. That was my “God wink”
• Lily has a dermatology appointment in the morning, then Haley,Lily and Kendall have Flu shots tomorrow afternoon.
• I am planning on ordering most of our Christmas presents this weekend.
• I only have 2 more weeks of working at the Nursing home.
• The girls have a chance to dress up 3 times this year for Halloween, once tonight for church, a fall festival on Saturday and the actual event on Monday. Hopefully we will get lots of pictures and I will post.
• Lily got her first school pictures today and I forgot how unflattering they can be!

DISCLAIMER: I am writing this as my own opinion/thoughts/experience. If think you are going to be offended or disagree (my daughters) stop reading now! You can Never use this post as part of an arguement!

That being said I have been struggling with several idea/comments that I really want to vent about. I hope you can laugh, agree, or learn from them.

I will never be the “FUN” parent. I am much too busy trying to teach all my children to be responsible adults. So therefore, I will alway have to say No to some things.

I have struggled for years to follow the simple sounding guide line of “Never talk negative or badly about your ex.” What good has it done me….nothing so far. As the kids have gotten older it continues to get hard to keep my mouth shut on a regular basis. I am finding that in some cases the opposite is true. Neither one of the girls realize how much I have struggled or how much I have chosen to not involve them it.

If someone else wants to be consider one of my children’s mother then they should be required to provide support and discipline otherwise it is totally unacceptable and very hurtful to me to hear of any of my children call another woman any form of mother. I gave birth to them and have known them every day of their lives who else can say that??

Divorce is not fair or good. I have made all my choices with my children’s best interest at heart. I can’t say that all my choices are correct. But they were made at the time and I will continue to stand by and defend them.

Divorce is about the money. Finding the money to survive and to provide for the child. No matter what is said remember these decision will affect the rest of your life.

I am going to end with one decision/way of life that I will recommend and say to date is probable one of the best thing I did as a single woman. I chose to date during the time that the kids were
with their father. I did not want them to be exposed to the “flavor of the week.” And yes I wanted to date alot of people. They were only allowed to meet 3 or 4 guys that I dated the entire 5 years I was single. I still think this is the best plan. I had a life of dating while the kids were with their father, the rest of the time. I was a mother only.

Just so I can be called fair. Both the older girls got cameras for Christmas so maybe I will have more good pictures of them!

It was not until on the way back to Farmington Hills on Friday that we actually decided the schedule for our return home. We decided that we would stay on Saturday, basically to give the kids a break from the car. So Saturday, we had a great breakfast downstairs came back to the room and decided to enjoy the pool. We actually ended up in the hot tub the entire time because it was much warmer and with the jets the kids enjoyed playing around in it. We were the only people in the pool area until the last five minutes. We spent over an hour in the water. I thought I saw a microwave in the room so I plan to feed the kids mac and cheese for lunch. Matt and I were going to eat the leftovers. But after getting back to the room we realized that the microwave did not exist. The kids laid down for a 2 plus hour nap. It was awesome. After the nap we had planned to head to both Costco and Trader Joes. We made it to Costco and it was as Matt described it, “The reason I moved out of Michigan.” Traffic was awful and people in Costco were rude. We ended up at Keith and Belinda’s were the kids watched Toy Story 3 and we enjoy conversation and laughed.

This is the part were the adventure begins. We ended up staying at Keith’s until around 8pm. When we opened our hotel room door, we realized that our room was located directly above the ballroom. A bar mitzh was taking place in the ballroom and we were able to identify the songs as they changed. I did call the front desk and was told there was nothing they could do about the noise. It was strongly suggested that I call the corporate office to. I did there was no resolution but I did receive our breakfast for free both morning and got a discount of half on the price of the room. Luckily, the kids were so tired they went right to sleep. Matt and I played name that tune until it stopped at 11pm.

I don’t regret waiting to start our trip home until Sunday at all. We had the car loaded up on Saturday night. Sunday morning we enjoyed a great breakfast and the ladies were nice enough to send us a to go box loaded with pastries and fruit. Travel was fairly smooth until around 4 pm getting on the West Virginia turnpike. Things went downhill from there. First the brakes on the car started to vibrate. We are coming up and down mountains and each time you try to slow down the whole car shakes. At one point we were literally sitting in traffic, moving at approximately 5 miles an hour. The reason…..traffic. As we were sitting in traffic, Lily suggested we pray so that we could start moving and get home. We did. From the point that we prayed we maintained a steady movement forward with only 1 other time when we came to a complete stop. It was amazing. We decided to pray again to thank God for letting us start moving. Around 15 minutes after our thanksgiving prayer, we came to another stop. Matt mentioned we might need to pray again and Kendall agreed. Lily was very clear with her statement “I already prayed and God gave us a miracle so I don’t have to pray again.” The faith of a child…boy do I have a lot to learn from that girl! Lily was right we did keep moving slowly but steady. Zach ended up car sick as we entered North Carolina so we had to stop and clean both him and the car seat up. Total travel time on Sunday was 14 hours. We ended up not even stopping for dinner because we just wanted to get home. We made it, the adventure is now complete!

These are all related to Lily’s Birthday but this way I don’t have to connect them in a logical manner, just as I think about them.

Lily birthday party on Sunday was a Hannah Montana Tea Party. Mrs. Nellie Tesh agreed to host the party.

The party started with coloring and making a placemat.

Mrs. Nellie spent about an 30 minutes teaching the girls (Lily, Kendall, Laural, Isabella and Katelyn) how a proper tea is served. The girls were all dressed as princess and Mrs. Nellie brought hats for the girls to wear.

Halfway through the party Haley and Andrea disappeared to Haley’s room to play on Facebook.

The party games were Pin the spoon on the teapot and Musical chairs.    

Everyone had a great time.

Lily’s favorite gift was a real camera from Pawpaw and Granny.

Matt made Lily a Teapot cake from his head. (Pictures will come on Wednesday)

Lily’s actual party was on Monday. We bought her a ZU ZU pet hamster.

I only worked in the morning so that we could go to Pizza Hut for lunch.

The end of the day was the annual Lexington Parade. It was COLD. Temperature was around 28 with a gusty wind.

Amanda joined us at the parade and for about half of Lily’s party.

Nancy and Tim came by straight from church to help us decorate and make the party favors and games.

I have yet to look at the pictures taken at the party but plan to post at least 5 on Wednesday.

My intentions were good, I had planned to continue to post at least twice last week. But they say the best of intentions… Anyway I am sure that I will be able to make up for some lost time this week. Currently we are traveling the OHIO turnpike on our way to Bloomsfield Hills MI to visit the cider mill. I am going to use this post to catch up on the events of the past week. This past Saturday deserves a full blog post of it’s own so I will save that for a day that I need additional material. I plan to post a new blog at least once a day and more if I have the time and material to write. Most of the week was spent trying to stay ahead of the game for Saturday which included Angel food distribution, a quiz, a birthday party and completion of packing to leave. IF you haven’t figured it out yet this will be a stream of consciousness post to try and bring the blog up to date.

Last week because of the extra day off that I had on Thursday, I was able to spend a good part of Saturday and Sunday assembling and completing my snow village. I will try and post pictures once we return home. My plan was to have this up so that went we get to Bronner’s , I will know what I want to purchase to include this year. I am convinced I need to purchase some flamingos and maybe a “trailer”. I will definite get at least one new building piece and one other accessory while there.

On Saturday we also had scheduled family pictures and dinner at Outback as a Christmas gift for my parents. These pictures ended up taking two hours so it was a VERY frustrating experience but my brother instead of my children was the one who was rude and got in trouble. Dinner was awesome!

I am currently typing on the netbook which we purchased because of this trip and because I wanted something small to use at home to free up the desktop for the older girls to use for school and for Lily to play games on. Matt’s laptop is currently 5 plus years old and a bear to use. In addition the battery will only last one hour. The battery life on this is supposed to be 8 hours so we shall see. One of the neat features this netbook has was word software already installed it is concerned a starter version but so far I cannot find a need to upgrade! I have never had a word count visible before and thought that man now I need to make sure that each post is at least 500 words long unless it contains pictures. I am hoping in the future to limit post to that as well. I am currently at 488 words so I am going to end this post and then hopefully write a post about Saturday. I do plan to only schedule post every 12 hours so each one will have time of its own.

Today is November the 11th, since I was able to list 7 items last Thursday, I was thankful for, today I will add the 4 to equal 11.

1.Matt’s unemployment- yes this is strange but it has allowed us to both have more time to spend with the kids. It also has really opened his eyes to how much stuff needs to get done around here on a daily basis. It is also teaching me to pray for my husband and not to worry about money because we are being provided for by our heavenly father.

2. Unexpected days off- I was schedule to work at the nursing home today. But they called yesterday to say the caseload was down so I have the entire day at home. Haley is out of school so I don’t have to get dressed or leave the house at all. We have spent the morning and part of the afternoon cleaning the floors. Hopefully I can accomplish several more things to make this a successful day!

3. A new bed. It sleeps wonderfully. We waited so long and now I can’t imagine sleeping on a water bed again and the air mattress was AWFUL!

4.My best friend…