The mole revisited...

So, I have melanoma. That is all I know. I am not sharing this tidbit on my Facebook or instagram accounts until I have more information. I go into the doctor on Monday and hopefully gain a better insight into the stage it is at and what the treatment will entail and what further tests I need to do. Life can sure throw you curveballs!

I fell off the wagon...

And I fell off HARD.  I was doing so well...and then life happened.  Stressful, crazy life happened.  I started drinking mountain dew again. Diet to begin with.  Then it was regular. Then it was a liter of regular.  Yesterday, I didn't because I didn't go to the store.  But, I did practically only eat sugar.  I have been having way too much sugar these days.  Yesterday was the start of a couple of other things so last night, I decided enough was enough.  I NEED to get healthy.  I want to be there for my kids and my grandkids in many, many years.  I am spending way too much money on crap.  That needs to stop.  So, today is a new day.  I am back on the wagon.  I know it won't be easy.  I am a sugar addict.  I crave all the candy.  Endrit is even awesome and brings me candy and brownies and other things.  So, I will go back to going to the store one time a week and buying the fresh foods for the week.  I refuse to buy mountain dew no matter how bad of a headache I get while I am getting off of that addiction.  I have decided that I might pay myself a minimal amount of money each day I reach my goals.  Then when I get healthier, I can use that to buy some clothes or something.  Pray for me.  Kicking sugar and caffeine addictions are crazy hard...but I can do it.  I will do it.

smartphoneless

Just as I thought I was going to have my smartphone back, the proxy charger stopped working...whatever dude...it is so frustrating.

But, we decided that we would just get 2 batteries and a wall charger and call it good swapping out batteries.   We only have to make it to the end of May so it isn't that bad.  Technology and I have not been having a good relationship since about December.  Hopefully in May, it will get better.

Mole

For a LLLLOOOOONNNNNGGGGG time I have had this mole.  It has been getting bigger, more asymmetrical and then started getting bumpy.  So, I finally bit the bullet and got the dang thing removed.  It was really easy.  We talked about farming while my doctor sliced and diced.  I will find out in the next 10 days or so if we have to take out more if it is cancerous.  It was about the size of a dime so it took 8 stitches to close the hole.  I accidentally stretched and broke the skin around the stitches that night because I knelt down to change Dorian's diaper.  I have to be very careful now so I don't end up popping the stitches.  Good riddance dumb mole.

Dorian naps...

We decided to get a proximity charge pad instead of waiting until May to get a new phone.  I uploaded 42 new pictures on Instagram this afternoon.

But, today Dorian had a great nap!  He fell asleep on his own and stayed asleep for 1 hour and 20 minutes!  That is HUGE.  I hope that I will be able to have him sleep on his own like that more often.  He has always been such a crappy sleeper. It made me super happy that he was able to go to sleep on his own today.

So, if you want to see more pictures, follow my IG.

The little things

I taught Marsi's Primary class today.  I didn't know I was teaching until Saturday night.  I also teach an adult Sunday school class so it gets a bit busy when I do both.

Well, we were talking about the fact that even little children their age could be missionaries by openly talking about Jesus Christ.  You get 5 little girls (where 3 of them are oldest children) and a boy together all aged 4 and 5 and it gets a bit crazy.  When I gave them missionary tags, they were SUPER excited!  Like over the moon excited.

It made me even happier when right before bath, Marsi still had the tag on.  I also got a picture from one of the other moms showing me how excited her daughter was to be able to be a missionary and have a tag and everything.

That took me 5 minutes to find and print out, another 20 putting them together, and it was totally worth it.  It cost hardly anything to brighten these kid's day.  It is truly the little things that go above and beyond in a lesson that make these kids love the church and learning the gospel.

Fitting in

It has never been my strong suit.  Like, I usually am playing a whole different card game.  Oh well.  As an adult, I really couldn't care less what people thought of me.  Yeah, it would be nice if I had some friends and actually got out every once in a while without having a panic attack.  But, I am content in the life that I have.

BUT...

My kids.  I want them to NEVER have the childhood drama I had around the subject of "friends".  I want them to learn a lot of things I learned growing up.  But I want them to actually want to come back and visit us if we continue to live in CO after they are out of the house.

If my parents still lived in Weston, I would visit; begrudgingly.  I would cringe and get knots in my stomach if I had to go to the grocery store praying I wouldn't see anyone that I knew from my childhood.  I thank my Heavenly Father quite often that my parents move halfway across the country.

So, there is this dichotomy.  My kids are young.  I can't just send them down the street to a friend's house.  I have to be there.  I have to interact.  I have to be somewhat of a friend of the parent there too.  That is the hard part.  Gaining and maintaining friends isn't something that comes naturally to me.

I overthink things a lot.  Especially with my children.  Mostly I do that because I want them to be friendly to all and to be liked.  Being a parent isn't easy at all. Seriously, how could anyone not like these cuties? ;)

Hair Donation

Marsi first donated her hair on her 3rd birthday.  Her hair grows like mine which means about 2 years between donations.  This donation will be different.  We will be doing it "in memory" of a special cancer fighter that is barely younger than her.  On the 3rd, this sweet girl was given about 6 months left and mom and dad made the decision to not make her go through horrendous surgeries and to just make the time she has left on this Earth as joyous as possible. I went to school with Mom.  We were never friends, but at a school as small as mine, you knew everyone.

So, I made the promise that when we hear of this little girl's passing, Marsi will donate her hair.  That means that if it is tomorrow, we go on Saturday and give her a pixie cut.  Or if it is in several months, her hair might be long enough to not have a pixie cut.

I get to keep my daughter when they will lose theirs.  The least we can do is give of my favorite physical part of Marsi to make a beautiful red haired wig (along with several other donors of course) for another child.

This will be our first donation to Wigs for Kids.  I found a salon to do it for just the price of the tip.  I hope and pray that it will be quite a while before we make the donation.  It would mean that special family gets that much more precious time before saying goodbye for now.

I am grateful for my testimony of Heaven.

3 years

3 years ago we moved to Colorado.  In the middle of the move, I found out I was pregnant.  I was due October 14...the day set aside to remember babies who have died in womb.  Valentines day, I lost that baby.  I have been thinking about her for the last few weeks.  I wouldn't have Dorian if I had her.  It is phyiscally impossible as I got pregnant in July.  I didn't have her with me long.  But, I know she is the guardian angel to her siblings.  I hope the bleeding hearts survived the winter, but if they didn't, I will get more.  They will survive if I have any say.  I hate that pregnancy loss is so intimately connected to our family.  But, It has made us stronger.

A hard to answer question.

There is one question that I really don't like answering.  It is probably because, I really don't know the answer.

It is one of the first questions people ask you to get to know you when you move in..."Where are you from?"

Well...I don't have a hometown.  I really don't.  I was born in Arizona and moved around to Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and back to Idaho before I graduated high school.  I attended university in Idaho and Utah.  My parents up and moved to Missouri right after Marsi was born which made any reason to go back to Idaho null.  I won't go to any reunions.  There is no reason to go back to any of the places that I have lived once my inlaws move to Colorado.

So, Where am I from?  I usually say "born in Arizona graduated in Idaho but don't go back to those places ever".  I am from Colorado.  I live here.  I love it here.  I hope that my children can say that it is their hometown.

Injuries

Dorian is a crazy child.  This week he decided to run with a fork and stab himself near the eye.  We had to take a trip to urgent care as the fork wasn't actually clean and he was crying blood for a while.  He is all but healed now and there was no infection thank goodness.  I bet his wonderful guardian angels get really tired taking care of him.

Snow storm and home school

Marsi LOVES to dance.  She is growing up so fast.



Dorian looks sweeter and sweeter every day even though the 2 year old antics are creeping into his personality.



We had a massive snow storm this week that had Endrit come home early on the 1st and he couldn't drive to work on the 2nd.  It is pretty, but not fun to drive in.  The snow plows finally made 1 pass on our neighborhood road on the 4th.








I paid for a home school resource today.  Marsi is SOOOOO happy with all of the activities that she is able to do.  Color by number is her favorite!























Dorian, for the first time in his life, fell asleep by himself on the floor for his nap.  It was pretty cool, but at the same time gave me flashbacks to Marsi doing that because of her heart when I just thought it was cute...but, I know that his heart is perfect, it just reminded me of her.

The fun times

Dorian woke up super sick this morning.  Major fever and snot.  Poor boy.  So, he got his iPad and Tylenol.  He loves technology.



Marsi and Dorian also like to use our big tub as a slide.  They can have fun in there for crazy amounts of time before I have to kick them out in order to lock the door so Dorian doesn't ultimately play in the toilet.

Technology woes and update

So, My smarty phone went to technology heaven 5 months before I could get a cheaper one.  I decided that we are just going to forego the smart phone for those 5 months.  This was after my laptop died and my iPad was taken over by the toddler.

We have been homeschooling so I knew that I would need a desktop computer.  So, with our car dying in Texas, we looked at our situation and decided that the desktop computer would be the first thing to tackle.

So, I have this computer!  YAY!  The only bad thing is that I no longer can post to instagram. Boo. I also got my fancy shmancy Nikon D3300 so I have been trying to consciously take pictures with the good camera...with no where to put them. I think that I might have to resurrect the blog.

Dorian is almost 2 years old!!!!  How did that happen?  He still nurses 1x a day right before his nap.  I haven't figured out how to stop that and have it work at the same time.  We always get a week routine down and then at church it flies out the window and he is nursing to sleep in the mother's lounge.  We will eventually figure it out.

Marsi turned 4 years old in October.  She is our beautiful spunky spitfire red head to a tee.  She is in the process of learning to read and she is soooooo excited about it!  She gets discouraged every once in a while if it seems too hard, but I am trying my hardest to teach her that life will be full of having to try a bit harder so we can grow.  She is SO eager to learn.  "Mom, can we play homeschool!" is a sentence that I hear every day.  

Life is good.  We have been in Colorado for a full 3 years today. It amazes me how much this is HOME!  I honestly do not consider myself to have a hometown.  We moved a lot, got bullied a lot, my parents moved to Missouri (YAY!!) so there is no reason to go to most of the places that I have ever lived in.  I truly hope that my children can call Colorado Springs HOME.  I wish I had that sometimes and it is hopefully something I can do for my children. 

Endrit is doing quite well at work.  He still works at Chromatic Technologies Inc. as a research chemist.  I love that he is able to be in the lab getting his hands dirty and innovating like he always wanted to in graduate school.   

Me, I am a homeschooling stay at home mother.  Pretty much my favorite place to be.  I also care for a child of a single dad each weekday.  It has added an interesting dynamic to the home, but, as I have had him for a few months now, he is a really good kid and it is good for us.

With the desktop, I am also able to do more of the design I like to do.  Currently I am working on my 2017 calendar in the format that I have finally found that I like.  It only took me 30 years. I will also be starting my digital scrapbooking once I get the refresher on my Photoshop skills.  I can't believe how much I have lost on how to use that program.  

We love our home that we moved into over a year ago now.  We like what we do.  The kids seem to be happy a majority of the day.  We have our share of troubles, but we are happy.