I'm trying really hard to be brave and strong... this isn't easy.
I've had to part with some of my most cherished cameras and accessories this month to pay our bills. This has been harder than I thought it would be. I know, it's just stuff, stuff that can be replaced... but actually that stuff wasn't easy to get in the first place, and it's not like it can just be replaced whenever.  It was an important part of my life, an outlet for my creativity where I felt like I had more control than I do with my drawing or painting.

I keep telling myself it's worth it. And I know it is. I love it here so much. Our family is so happy here. Every day my children say in their family prayers how thankful they are to have this "wonderful home to live in". I know it's kind of materialistic, and that things that really don't matter are houses and we could find happiness anywhere, but this home has the possibilities of legacy. This is a place my children can bring their families to for days at a time. It's a place where my grandchildren will be excited to come to and stay for weekends or even weeks and they will love it here. It's a place that will gather my family together for generations. That's what is the most important about it, to me. And that is worth more than a million cameras.

Woo Hoo!

My triage team got the best score (90%) in a mock scenario of an accident with several victims. Woot! That's good because it was really hard to get three women with busy lives together to do it!  And I got the best score in the class for two of the three final exams. Not tooting my horn, but I'm really pleased because I always feel like I'm not doing good enough or learning everything I am supposed to. I'm glad it's something I can use in the future to help someone if I'm needed, and hopefully I don't screw it up!

Okay

I had some diagnostic stuff done this month, and I'm glad I did. I got initiated into the 40 and up women's club and had a mammogram done, that came back clear. I also had a tube down my throat to discover why I'm having pain in my abdomen and why food gets stuck, etc. I posted about that before this post. I'm back on my happy pills so I'm feeling more relaxed.

We are still trying to sell our other house. It's getting discouraging for me. It's been on the market for almost a year now and things in our home are getting so tight I'm having to sell off some of my most prized photography things. This makes me feel really sad. I'm glad I have my medications to help me through this, or I'd be a complete wreck.  Especially since I'm having a shooting bug again, and I haven't had it in so long, I never thought it would come back.Today I sold one of my favorite lenses. It was hard to let go of it but I have so many bills going unpaid now, there's really no other option at this point.

I know it was the right thing to do to move our family here. I know this is where we need to be. I just don't know what lesson I'm supposed to get from all the trouble and problems we are having selling our other house. If giving up my photography helps us stay here, then I guess that's what I have to do. I just wish it wasn't so painful. Didn't someone once say, "no pain, no gain"? Maybe that's what I have to go through to earn the peace and joy I feel here.

I have another showing on Saturday. Maybe this will be the buyer we've been needing! I hope!

Diagnosis: Hiatal Hernia

Finally some answers to some of my medical issues. Monday I went to a GI specialist and had an upper GI scan done. They found out I have a hiatal hernia. This means the top of my stomach is pushed through the diaphragm and is interfering with normal digestion and flow of food.  He said that for some reason my stomach is higher than normal. (I can take a wild guess why! two 8+ and one 9+ pound babies, maybe?) I have to learn to eat several small meals a day and to limit water with meals. I also have to learn to avoid foods that cause high acid in the stomach. I'm trying to learn more about it and how to take care of myself better.



I've dealt a lot in the last couple of years with chronic fatigue. As I've been looking up the hernia symptoms and such I've come across a lot of people mentioning fatigue as their symptoms, but non of the mentions seem to be on medical websites. So it doesn't look like it's substantiated, but I wonder if that's why I am so tired all the time, along with the depression. No doubt depression causes it too.I've brought up the fatigue with my doctor, but she didn't seem to be concerned about it. But it's bad enough to be troubling to me.

It sucks when you don't feel good on the inside, and people can't see how you really feel. People expect you to always be the same, but it's hard. There are days I feel like being out and about, and then there are days that I feel tired, I feel exhausted, I don't feel like being around people, I don't feel like being friendly and conversationally fun. I have aches and pains that don't make sense. I have poor mind clarity.

 I remember seeing a commercial once a long time ago, and I wish they played it now, because I think everyone can use the reminder. It was about depression and if only people could see the "bruises" we have on the inside, then they'd be more understanding.

I'm back on my happy pills, plus some new ones, that are supposed to help the migraines. So far I'm doing better than I was last week. The kids are happier with me too. I think I'd be feeling even better if the heat we are having right now wasn't so oppressive.

Around the Yard

Mom, this one is for you :)

A while ago I told my mom that I was starting to collect pictures from around our place so that I could share our home with her. I finally have some time to put a few up.

This is my pathetic little scarecrow that you see when you come down our driveway. You can see the driveway behind him. Right now it's just a dirt drive, and probably always will be. The scarecrow doesn't like to keep his hat on. He's done a fair job keeping the deer from the garden so far as we can tell from the footprints. 

When you get to the door, my little boys will greet you. But don't worry, they now have shock collars on to keep them from jumping on you.  Duke is the bigger dog, he's the puppy the kids got at Christmas, he's so soft and cuddly. Buddy is the smaller dog, and he's very protective of the house.

 This is "Pier Pon" our garden gnome. He lights up at night to welcome you too! The family gave me this little guy for Mother's Day. I have another garden gnome that is 3" tall, and Jaeden named him "Je Ponche".  Our place has lots  and lots of frogs and toads, so it's fitting that "Pier Pon" has one on his shoulder. This guy below climbed up the back deck to sit on my stairs.

 Next to the garage is an older apple tree. It has lots of apples on it! We didn't think we would get many this year because of the early blossoms and colder weather, we didn't think there had been bees out to pollinate them. But happily there were! And we still are getting lots of big fat fuzzy bees all around the yard each day. I hope they are finding my tomato plants!

 In the back yard, under the deck there is a little nest. When we moved in we took down several nests, so this is a new one, and this little bird in the next two pictures is one of the parents of the tiny little babies that are in the nest now.

I want to point out, that my favorite camera, my Canon 5D is a 12.8 mpx, and the above shot is a cropped image from the picture below :)

 The other morning I was lucky enough to look out the kitchen window and see this little guy poking his head out from the woods and then walk along the mowed section before returning to the woods..


 On the North side of the house we have cemented in a couple of clotheslines that used to belong to Joel's parents. They are heavy duty and solid, not like you find at the hardware stores now days. As soon as they were up some Eastern Starlings decided to set up house inside the holes. As far back as I can remember birds nested inside these while they were at my mother-in-law's house.

 I decided to play with some new flowers this year. I can't even remember what these are called.

 On the North and South sides of the house, the land slopes a lot, so that at the front of the house you only see the upstairs level, but at the back of the house you see both the upstairs and the basement. On the north side they have put up lumber to grade some of the slope. But there are so many gophers and moles the ground is full of holes and this spring when we got heavy rain the sand started washing away, and some of my poor hastas were lost to the cave ins.

 This is Jake with the Buick Electra he bought. He's so cute, he asked me to take his pictures out in the field with it. Next time he wants pictures of him with it while he is wearing his suit. Although, he did show it at the Back to 50's street rod show, and made several changes to it before he left. It now has two black skulls painted on the hood, skull heads as door lock knobs, and a revolver chamber for his shifter knob. These pictures were taken in the field on the south side of the house. .

 

You can probably see that we have a large infestation of  these babies...

For those of you that don't know, these are milkweed. When we found out we had milkweed I was a little hopeful that we would see lots of butterflies. However, we haven't so much and so the excitement has worn off, and been tarnished from finding out that they are poisonous to animals. Huh. So, now, my plans for that being an alternate grazing field for horses is diminished. Also, I had been thinking about getting fainting goats to keep the field clear until we do get horses, but they can't eat them either!

We also have these weeds that make big puffy things to blow!

 There are lots of weird wood fixtures around the yard.

 This building is at the North end of the property, by the farmer's field. He, by the way, is growing corn this year. Last year was soybean. I liked playing with shooting different angles of this tipping greenhouse type structure.

 

 Another weird wood thing in the yard.

 

I love this old time knob on one of the shed doors. So cute!

 

 There are also lots of places around the property with stacked up dirt (maybe a gopher city?) or wood that they were going to burn? We aren't sure, but we will have to work next year on getting it cleared out. We have other projects for this year.  

 The house also has several moose decor on it. This is a bell that Joel gave me for Christmas.

 The house came with several of these moose lights on it. The house decor, when it was staged, was "backwoods" kind of themed. I loved it, and plan to eventually move all our stuff over to that kind of style of decor.

 This cute little planter shelf sits outside of our window. It has little moose cut out of it.

 This is a bush that we have in the flower garden that I'm not sure what it is. We thought it was dead and were going to dig it out, but before we got to it, it had developed leaves and these pretty pink flowers on it. If you know what it is, let me know!

 This is a flowering tree that is at the edge of the woods, I was wondering what it is too. It's not a buckthorn, although it reminds me of it, but it doesn't have the thorns on the end of the branches.

This next tree ended up being a mock plum tree (I suspected it was, but Joel wouldn't believe me). It has a disease called black knot. We have to trim some more branches from it and spray it. Black knot is a fungus.

 I just had to ad this because I liked it. This is looking East over the trees between the house and the rail road tracks.

This is a shot into the field on the south side of the house. I took it from the driveway while I was waiting for Jake to pull his car into it. The arch in the middle of the field was what caught my interest. It turned out to be a raspberry plant, and I got a surprise when I zoomed in!  Can you tell why this is the last of my cameras and lenses to be sold?

When I get a chance I have more pictures to play with. Hope you enjoyed seeing some more of the yard!

Still Hurts

It's still hard to think about Roger and not cry. I wonder how long it will be before I don't choke up every time I think of him being gone.

He was a really good man. So nice and friendly to everyone. So patient. So super patient. I felt so bad that his body was giving so much trouble at the end of his life.

He spent a lot of time with our family, coming to the kids games, family trips to the apple orchard or the Audubon Center for maple syruping, helping Joel with projects around our house, or just hanging out on his deck while we visited.

I have a couple of memories I love to think about. One is when Joel and I were first married we bought a little house 5 blocks from my in-laws. Roger worked on the other side of the neighborhood at the golf course. In the winters when he couldn't golf, he would play cards at the golf course. I thought this was cute. Many times during the summer, when we grew a garden, I would glance out my windows and find Roger in my garden having a tomato. Just like an apple.

One year his school had a reunion. I'm thinking this might have been their 40th . That night he stopped by the house late in the evening. I greeted him at the door and told him Joel was already gone off to work. He knew. He stopped by to visit with me and tell me about his reunion before he went home. I'm still puzzled by this visit, but really enjoyed that he stopped to talk to me and tell me about it. I enjoyed the times we spent with him.

He's left a big hole in all our hearts. I'm so glad my kids were old enough that maybe most of them will remember him when they grow up.

The last week has been super hard on our family. We lost Joel's dad to a heart attack on May 31. That evening Jacob watched a police officer be forced to shoot down an armed man in front of my mother-in-laws home. I've been really worried about him and his psychological wellness since that happened. Maybe time is the best medicine. Maybe also moving out of grandma's house and getting out here to the country will help him too.

My happy medicine is nearly out of my system, I've been off it for 3-4 weeks. I can tell a big difference in how I feel and it's not fun. We started a new health insurance plan on the 1st, but they are excluding pre-existing conditions, so I have to wait until my student money comes in, to cover my doctor visit.

We might have a buyer for our home, but that will depend, I think, on them getting financing. They don't want to take our terms, and want to get financing through a bank instead. I'm not sure how that is going to work for them, but I know they'll be paying a much higher rate than we are offering. They asked me today if I knew of a bank that finances mobile homes. I hope they can get financing! It would be nice not to have to sell it through a CD.

Busy Weekend Ahead

We lost our buyer. But it's OK. We'll keep on, keeping on. Lucky for us they weren't in our house when they decided to split. That is such a curious thing to me. One minute they think they want to make a huge purchase together and the next minute they are taking a break from their relationship. Maybe they knew they needed big changes, but weren't sure which extreme end of it.

We are in the countdown to summer break! I'm excited. However I have a class that starts before my kids are done with school, and that's no fun. It's a CPR/First Aid class. I picked up my supplies for my summer classes and Joel was flipping through my book for this class. There are a lot of gross pictures in it, and I am not looking forward to the class. There's a reason I'm not going into nursing! I hope none of the kids in my class lose their fingers or have a broken arm with the bone poking out while I'm in charge! Eeek!

It has been raining here a crazy amount this last week, and we have more on the way. Our rain gauge said we got almost 4 inches of rain on Wednesday and Thursday. Some of our plants are growing so much! It's exciting to see them all come up. Although, I am still waiting for my Elephant Ear to grow, I'm excited to see how it turns out. I plan to spend all of tomorrow and Monday working in the yard on various things. I haven't forgotten about the pictures I took last week that I promised to post for you, Mom! I will get to those too!

Today I learned that our beautiful plum tree, which is about 10 feet tall, has a disease called "black knot". I have to treat it this weekend by cutting off branches that are affected, and burn them, then I have to treat the tree with a spray. I hope it works, because we were super excited to see fruit growing on a tree we thought was an imposter "mock" plum tree.  Our apple tree has a lot of fruit growing on it, and we are excited to see that too! We didn't see any bees out when the trees were in blossom and we got super cold after the blossoms too, so we thought it would be a bad year for fruit. Happy it's not! I think it might be a Golden Delicious tree.

The kids are also bugging us to get the pool up. We have some friends who are moving and sold us their pool and trampoline. So I might try to get that up too, we will see if we have time. I could have used it a few days ago when it was super hot!

Update

We might have a buyer! I advertised, on Saturday, our home as a possible contract for deed and right away got a call from this couple who were very excited about our home. I was so scared we were going to have to advertise and advertise to get some decent interest. But these people said they had to make a decision by Friday and could I show them the house on Monday? So when I met with them Monday they were in love with it. And what's even more amazing... the huge puddle in the road, the screaming neighbor, and the kids running up and down in the puddle did not deter them one bit! They even wanted to give me $1,000 in earnest money that night!  I was floored, thinking, "how is this possible?" So, I am cautiously optimistic. I really want it to be true and to be a good fit for all of us! I hope, hope, hope this works out. We really could use the financial relief. But, sometimes I have been excited about something, and then something bad happens and I feel so rotten. They want to put down 10%, which is awesome! They also are talking about paying it off as soon as they can so they can have some financial freedom too.

Jake is on his own now. We have the car he's been using, back in our hands again. He bought himself a car and insurance. He's done with his associates degree.  He's still living at grandma's and says he wants to go on his mission after this summer. Letting him be a grown up is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Even harder than the 18 hours of labor I had giving birth.  Harder than the 18 years of raising him. Often my heart aches for when he was a little boy and still here. Every evening he would  help me make dinner, and it was so nice to talk and chat during this time. Just me and him. Now I don't know where he is, where he's going, who he's hanging out with, what are they doing, when will he be home? Has he eaten anything healthy today? Does he have gas? And to top it all off... I know his car doesn't have a good seat belt that he will use regularly :( this scares the daylights out of me. It's so hard to stand in my spot and know I've done all I can and I just have to worry about me and the rest of the kids I'm raising, and let go of them in their own time too.

Tonight I got out with my camera for a little while and hope to soon give you a small tour of some things going on around the property this month. Unfortunately I had put my camera away before the dogs noticed a group of deer in the field behind the house, and had chased them off by the time I got it back out. Bummer.

The house has been very warm the last few days, and it's been very tempting to turn the air conditioning on, but I've resisted, mostly because we can't turn it on until we have it serviced by the company that repaired it last fall while we were waiting for closing. I'm thinking of naming the property Breezy Acres because we always seem to have a breeze going on here, and that was helpful in keeping the house a little cooler. I'm taking suggestions if you have one, for names. Some I've thought of are Wood Wind Acres (because I've been amazed at how loud the wind in the woods are since we moved here, it's a sound I'm not used to), Windy Acres... and a few more.