Doctor Doctor Doctor

I was late for the Dr. appointment today. Not by much, but enough where I feel silly for trying something new out.
I have to get J out of Kindergarten before 2, get T from pre-K and then make the appt. by 3. This usually leaves me a little too much time, and since they go every other week, I thought I would try just letting him stay in school for the full duration. That would have him out at 2:20ish and then we would have plenty of time for picking up T and getting to the Dr. by 3.
That was my big mistake.
I had never experienced the high-frustration-nothing-you-can-do-but-sit car rider line. Ugh.
I now know why my sister would just take a nap in the parking lot for the privilege of keeping her 'first car' status. It took almost 25 minutes to zig and zag my car, inch by inch, through the line.
Oh well, at least school will be out soon!

Monday..

I am so tired. The negotiations are over and I am so happy to get back to 'normal'. I took the day off today to repair the house.. lol.
Matthew did an outstanding job with the kids, as always, but I still have a lot to do to get things around her back to the way they were when I left them 5 days ago.
So, I am spending the day with T, doing chores, and watching Noggin.

Tonight J has a game, I missed too many games last week and this weekend, so I am excited to go.

Other than getting back to normal I am exhausted and planning on a good long mid-day nap coming up after lunch!

Sickly Sunday

... but getting much better! The kids are their usual again, being talkative, inquisitive, and trying to break the rules. Haha.
I took my excess energy this morning and cleaned up T's room and BOY did it need it, she had toys and papers squirrelled away everywhere. It took forever! I had bought J a new bookcase last night and he was so thrilled to have everything tidy again. We cleaned up his room last night. Two rooms down..

Saturday

We are all still sick. Fever is gone. I am feeling a lot better, but still just sleepy.
The kids actually ate breakfast and a pre-lunch snack, and are still really lethargic, but able to move around and vocalize more today.
Matthew had to work today, but he called to check in on us, being sweet.

WooHoo!!!

Well, all of our important pics, music, and docs have been transferred, Matthew came home and formatted the old hard drive and reinstalled XP. We now have a like-new computer! Although I think Windows will be seriously updating it all night.. haha, only 7 yrs worth of updates!
Today was stressful. To give a short description, both kids have strep, and Momma ain't feelin' too good herself.. with a possibility of Daddy showing up late to the strep-party.
Matthew is on a rescue mission right now to pick up everyone's prescriptions and grocery shop for absolutely nothing but 'comfort' foods.
No baseball this weekend... everyone is bummed about that. The kids are just sleeping constantly now while they are still feverish.

Hopeful

Well, after the 30 minute frustration of my computer at home not even pulling up to login, I finally was able to come up under Matthew's login, and am slowly transferring all of our files onto the hard drive. As long as I ignore all of the system error pop ups and work around them, I should be able to finish transferring sometime this weekend.
I am crossing my fingers that it doesn't shut down during all of this.

I am really glad I was able to find a good deal at Best Buy yesterday.. it saved me $50!

I went to best buy n got an ext. hard drive. talked to the geek squad guy. came home and now computer doesnt even logon.. just hummin and blank screen... so i got here with the drive too late..
ugh.

Please Pray for Us!

Our computer caught a virus. So, I downloaded and ran free virus scans, to no avail.
The computer ran slow, had a million pop ups, etc.
Last night it decided to just shut down the entire system after I logged on for a few seconds.. repeatedly. I can log on to Matthew's logon, but from his desktop we cannot get the internet to pull up with any of the three browsers we have.
It is not looking good.

Ugh. I just hope we can find a way to salvage 7 years worth of digital pictures and music onto either a new computer or an external hard drive before the whole thing dies.

So, I am open to suggestions.

Tax Woes, be Gone

I was super frustrated last night (hence the rambling blog below).
This morning I woke up with a clearer idea of what I needed to do. See, I had been checking myself with several programs.. but I actually e-filed with TaxAct using a different login.. grr. I can't believe I didn't think of it last night, but apparently I had to learn the lesson to step away from my frustrations instead of flying around the house like a crazy person, haha.
So, the power finally came back on after 12 hours of being off. The freezer defrosted, the fridge became warm.. and all of our food needs to be replaced. Yippee.
We spent the evening eating dinner outside ( I guess we need a patio now too, adding to my list ) burning more sticks, chopping down more little 10 ft. trees, and listening and watching the neighbors chainsaw their huge tree that fell on them the previous night. I got a load of dishes done and Matthew caught up the laundry some, but I am looking forward to an evening with nothing planned so I can get EVERYTHING back into it's place in my house. I hate clutter.
Tonight we have two ball practices. I hope it isn't too windy.
Wednesday night I am going to the Ladies Guild meeting at church. One of the ladies called me up and said they wanted me to come to the meeting, that they had heard we were foster parents and wanted to do something small for me. That is so sweet, and at this point of our journey with the kids I would just like to get a greeting card every now and then, lol.
Thursday we have more ball practice and a game. As tiring as it is becoming, having the kids be a part of their teams really lets them get excited and I know it is good for them.
Friday the caseworker comes for her monthly visit, and then it will be the weekend again!!!!!!

Screaming obscenities

Today has been rough. So many things going on with the power outage, work, money, etc.
I left work and headed to DFCS and had a good conversation with the kids' caseworker, turned in some papers, and got some advice about the neighbors.
We were really excited to see the house across the street from us find renters, but now they have become the talk of our little street.
I am nestled inbetween a nice family. The house on our right is owned by a really nice woman who sometimes comes over and gives us the latest gossip while we are working outside. The house on the other side is her son and family, then next to him is more of their family, so our little house is kind of an island in a sea of relatives. The good thing is the house on our left is going to be a foster family soon.. YaY!
Last night she came over and said she had to call the police because cars were speeding up and down the road and the (now known as crazy/bad) neighbors had their kids unsupervised in the road, on their bikes(bigwheels, etc)and the smallest (2,4,7)almost was ran over. Ick.
So last night as our kids sat inside and watched TV before bedtime, Matthew and I were outside cleaning up the chairs, toys, tools we had been using. The neighbor lady and us were all out in our yards and the crazy/bad neighbors kept locking their toddlers out on their porch. They cried, pounded their hands on the doors, to no avail. It was dark and scary, and cruel. Plus, they keep two little yapping dogs on the porch and I had seen the Dad earlier that day literally shovelling the poop off the porch.. so you can imagine the state of it.
So, today I was letting my caseworker know that the family across the street was attracting the wrong kind of attention to the neighborhood.. so tomorrow I call another lady.
Today I planned to come home and do my taxes. I had already filed federal, since we were getting $ back, but the GA state taxes kept me agitated and I procrastinated. Turbotax says I owe 31, TacAct says I only owe 253.. go figure. I brought home the forms, instructions, and schedules to try and do it all by myself... but that proved useless. I was only a few minutes into it and ready to run into the yard kicking any available object and screaming obscenities into the yard of the bad/crazies. Ugh.. I hate taxes.
So, I don't know how much I owe. I have to do a partial year, and they want all of this info from the federal return that I have no clue what it is referring to, and since the IRS website says I did get my fereral refund on 2/18/09, I know I e-filed it through TaxAct, yet when I log in they show no record of them e-filing anything for me.. sheesh. So, I don't know what is up with that. I filed through the website, I have e-mail confirmations that I created and started a return.. and I finished it.. but they don't have anything on the site to confirm that.. ugh. I am so over it. Tomorrow I cam going to pay 39.99 to turbotax so that I will have the joy and priviledge to pay GA 31.00.. of which I am sure to get audited because I have no clue how to do the partial return, and neither does TurboTax or TaxAct, it seems... and I don't feel like paying the tax places in town 100 to tell me they don't know.
So, it stinks, and it makes me hurt. I fell off the chair this weekend and bruised my arm, back, and rib.. trying to figure out taxes tonight just made me cringe up all over again. Poor muscles.
We went to the Ringgold HS helicopter egg-drop-egg-hunt-disaster-of-09 on Saturday. It was horrible. They had way too many kids there, and probably half of those kids never got to lay their little hands on an egg. The front line was like a vacuum just leaving nothing in it's wake. Luckily T got 5.. because I pushed out ahead of the front-liners. Poor J didn't get anything. The people were upset, kids were upset. It was just too many people for the football field. They should do it at the Battlefield next year. It was horrible.

Long Holiday Weekend

Friday both Matthew and I were off, and we sat at home, watched the thunderstorms roll by, was visited by my Mom (bearing Easter gifts), had the best time keeping T's twin and playing, and finally had a good dinner with the kids, T's twin and his Mommy.
Saturday we woke up and cleaned, went to the home improvement store and bought the necessities to construct a fire pit, and then commenced chopping and burning our brush pile. We had a fun egg hunt in the yard, and played their new Easter games. Matthew got all dressed up and went to the Easter Vigil Mass and sponsored Aaron. It seems so long ago that we began RCIA. It was my second year in a row that my person had dropped out. LOL. I think we will take a year off.
Sunday we spent outdoors and in God's beautiful sunlight. The kids played ball, helped clear out the sticks from the yard, and we all had a good day of quality time. Surprisingly, we were able to clear a good portion of our backyard, and finished about 1/3 of it in one day. Whew, we are so tired! We cut down small trees, raked leaves, and just cleared out a lot of groundcover and under-brush that hadn't been touched in Lord-knows-how-long. The house is a mess from going outside to inside so many times, but we all slept well last night!
This morning there was a bog BOOM at 5:00, waking me up to the distinct silence of a power outage. We got the kids up and in our room, and slept another half hour. We got everyone dressed and ready by flashlight and out the door. Our neighbor came over and told us the house next to us had a tree fall on it's roof, knocking the power out. Ick. Then the schools closed and I had to go retrieve poor J from Matthew (they were waiting on the bus). He was so ready to get back to school!!!

Holy Thursday

I took the day off of work yesterday. The kids went to spend the day/night with my sister. I met her with them and spent about an hour before saying my goodbyes and heading off to the bank, post office, lunch with a friend, and back home again.
They were absolutely over-the-moon about getting to spend time with her and my nephew. I am glad that now that they have been with us and are adjusted to us they can go and enjoy getting to know 'Aunt Stefanie'. LOL. It makes me smile.
One of the strangest parts of being a foster/adopt parent was the whole 'frame of reference' aspect. To us and to our family it had just been 'us two' for over six years. Now suddenly we had insta-family-just-add-water and to us and to everyone else we have had to change the way we see ourselves. I know it has to be strange too, for our family to see us in that parental light.
But it is what it is, and we are where we are thanks to Providence. I am thankful for each day, and I hope soon to be able to post pictures, and have two more Smiths. Three months already.. time is flying past us so quickly.
Ball has slowed down because of the weather and the Holiday coming up.. but their baseball pictures are soooo cute!
After Matthew left work we met at the house and spent some time roaming the mall, commenting on how every store keeps moving around, and how we really dislike all of the clothes nowadays. This is a sure sign of getting old, when I can not pop into JCPenneys and find a handbag... there IS something wrong with this picture!
We enjoyed a lovely dinner (with yummy desserts) at Red Lobster. The entrees were not so great, but dessert was, and just having the time to ourselves was special.

The Right

I still carry a balance on my Lenscrafters card.. I admit it... like 2 years running... but of course it is like the lowest bill on my high stack of people needing my money.. so I still have a balance.
This morning I make a payment online and see my available balance is 0.00! I call the guy (a foreigner I can actually understand, and vice-versa!) and apparently GE Money, who holds the card, has a new policy. I had not been skipping payments, or running the balance up, or anything abusive.
Due to the economic upheaval my card has been cancelled. They 'do not have the right' to carry my credit for longer than 18 months. What a load of bull.
So, now this is even less incentive to pay the darn thing off... I mean, if I can not use my card, why would I want to pay if off quickly?
And not to mention Matthew and I were supposed to get lenses in his frames this week... guess I will be pricing that out for cash..

So disappointed. The point of credit is to initiate and sustain spending, not to withhold availability.
:-)

So glad to be home

This week was exhausting. I worked super hard. We figured it out today. Just this week (and not last week) we put in 61 hours. Of course I was only paid for 40, haha.
Matthew has definitely been schooled on dealing with behavioral issues this week. We never imagined it would be easy for him, but the kids really didn't like me being away so much. I can't blame them (of course, considering) but Saint Matthew only had to use my super-momma skills once via the phone, otherwise he was an excellent Dad.. of course, he could have made a larger effort on the dishes.
I will have to say, being back to work on Monday will be nice, these 12-14 hour days wore me out.

This weekend I intend to clean up the house, play with the kids, go to the park, and chill out!