Telling The Kids About Divorce

I have to say, growing up I never thought I would have to tell my kids about their father and I splitting up. My parents divorced when I was about four years old and thinking back, they never sat me down and told me what was happening. I simply woke up one day and they were no longer in the same house. I knew that wasn't what I wanted for my kids. Jason left and hasn't had contact with me or the kids in over a month, so it was a little easier explaining it to them. Sitting down and seeing their faces crumple was definitely not how I planned on spending my day though. I answered many questions about if we would still be a family, and the simple answer is yes. Jason may have left me, but I will never leave the kids. It was important that I reassure them all that no matter what happens, I am here for them and love them. It's something no one ever explained to me growing up, and I feel like it really effects how secure a child feels. Right now, the most important thing for me to do is make sure they all know they are loved and this divorce doesn't change that at all. We are still getting used to life without Jason in the house, it is a lot harder than I imagined it would be, but we are succeeding. I am so proud of all of our kids and the amount of stress they are able to deal with. In addition, I now have a better schedule and am able to post more often so please check back often!

Starting Over

Yes, my last post was about how I'm going to post more- oops. The passed few months have been the worst things ever for our family and I am finally ready to talk about it. A month ago my life stopped when I got a phone call from Jason. He had moved to Boston a few weeks prior and we were getting ready to move as well. He called to ask me a question I never thought I would be asked, "Are we seeing other people?", when I laughed and said "No!" he continued on and said "Oh, well I am." If you don't know me, you don't know how seriously I take cheating, but I will say it is probably one of the only reasons I would ever file for divorce, which is what I did. Little did I know that was just the beginning of a crazy rollercoaster ride. If you have been following our blog for awhile you know Jason struggles with addiction and had been clean for a year, apparently the stress of Boston got to him and he started drinking and using drugs again. Things that I made clear would not be allowed near our children again, they had been through too much last year when he did this. This just confirmed what needed to be done, I filed for divorce and cried for an entire day. My life was shattered, the world my children knew came to a stop and will never be the same again. This is not the life I wanted for my kids, but it is the life we have now. Yes, being a single mom of multiple children will be hard, but in my mind having a husband you can't trust is much harder. I would love to go back in time and stop Jason from making the choices he made, but sadly I can't. All I can do is do what is best for my children and at this point the thing that is best for them is staying away from him. I hope and pray that one day he is ready to be a dad again, because he really is an amazing dad when he wants to be, but for now I have to protect my children. They are all still in school, playing sports, and doing all the "normal" activities that they were doing before our divorce and I plan to keep it that way. These kids are my everything and I will go through hell and back before letting them give up the things they love. I am going to TRY to post more, because honestly a blog about being a single mom of multiple children doesn't exist and it needs to. I am ready to share our story and start this next chapter of my life.

We Are Back!

Wow! That was the longest break I have ever taken from this blog since starting it. We cut our Internet and Cable bills temporally while I was recovering from surgery, but I am going back to work so we got them back. I do not even know where to start when it comes to getting caught up on everything going on in our lives. I guess right now the biggest thing in our lives is looking for a house to buy. Due to a harassing landlord and me not wanting to take it anymore, honestly I just can not stand being called a hoarder-if you have seen my house you know it's far from it! We decided to start looking more seriously at buying a house, it's something we have talked about for about two years now but never wanted to take such a big step until we were finically ready. Well, sadly we have to take that step now ready or not. Buying a house is a big deal and I am so scared of taking such a big step, but when you no longer feel safe in your own home you have to do it. We have started looking at houses and cutting down our spending even further, we really want to pay off the medical bills we have before moving, but it may not happen. I get anxious at the thought of adding more debt to my already huge pile, but this seems to be my only choice right now. Wish us luck with house hunting! We will be back to our regular posting schedule now that we are up and running again!

The Hardest Gift I Ever Made!

This Christmas is super hard for us, we have almost no money to spend on Christmas gifts for each other. Jason and I decided we would make each other gifts instead. It's funny that we thought of this because neither of us are very artistic, but we're going with it! I decided for part of his gift I would list 365 reasons why I love him. Sounds easy right? Well apparently it's not. I needed 365 DIFFERENT reasons of why I love this guy. I easily made it up to 100 with no problems and then all of the ones I tried using were pretty much the same, so I had to get creative. I was literally texting everyone who knows us asking them why they love Jason hoping that it would help me get my list to be longer. Unfortunately, most of them love him for the same reasons-shout of to Taylor for saying his smell so I could add something! Now here we are three days away from Christmas and I still don't have anything more to write. I searched for other lists people have done and realized most of them totally cheated and listed the same thing several times just phrased a little differently. Those sneaky people trying to pull a fast one over on us. I refuse to cave to such a low level as to list the same thing multiple times so I will continue to wrack my brain until I finally reach 365. I am glad to know I'm not the only person who has trouble with coming up with this many reasons, because when Jason heard what I was doing he said "That's easy! I could do 1,000 for you!". We shall see on Christmas if it's true that he was able to come up with that many reasons and if he was and they are all different I will be very impressed. I applaud anyone who makes their significant other a gift every year without wanting to murder them. This process has been long, hard, and emotional. Although it has been the hardest thing I've ever made, it's kind of the coolest. I feel like when you're with someone for a long time you sometimes forget all the little reasons you fell in love to began with. This has served as a nice reminder that I fell in love with a really amazing guy. So, at least if nothing else I have that to run with. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and have an easier time listing reasons you love someone if you ever try to do so.

Our Four Gift Christmas

Before I get started, if you haven't already go check out of Youtube video "What I got my kids for Christmas 2017" to see their entire lot of Christmas gifts this year. If you follow me on any social media site, you already know every year I have an overflowing Christmas tree that flows from our dining room into our living room. After buying all those toys last year and then buying storage for those toys, I decided we were done. I no longer wanted to spend days upon days getting upset about where we would put everything when Christmas day was done. This year we decided to adopt the four gift Christmas method, I'm not sure if that's what it's called but we're going with it. We did one want, one need, one thing to wear, and one thing to read. The want is their Santa gift, this gift could be just about any price and it is the big sought after gift they've mostly wanted all year. This varies depending on the child, but for the most part their gifts ranged around $20. Their need gift was kept the same across the board because they all needed the same thing-a tooth brush-I know it sounds lame, but when you're on a budget as tight as we are week to week you need to cut costs where you can. We tried to make their need gift as exciting as possible, but with tooth brushes it is a little hard. Hopefully we somewhat succeed in this. As for the one thing to wear, we barely need clothes. When our kids need clothes we buy them, so there wasn't a huge need for us to purchase all new clothes for them. If they didn't need clothes we got them something else instead that they did need. The one thing to read was the most exciting part for me, my kids-with the exception of Tyson-LOVE reading. We were able to find a lot of good deals on books and I bought up as many as I could. This was the least stressful our Christmas shopping has ever been and I'm so happy about that. Instead of trying to get the best deals on various things my time has been spent at home with my kids, playing, crafting, eating, watching movies-whatever they want. I have been told by a few people that my kids will be disappointed on Christmas day from only getting four gifts, but I don't think that's true. We have talked to our kids about spending less and they looked under the tree today which doesn't even include Santa gifts. When they looked under there I heard Estella say "Wow! We are getting a lot on a budget! There's already a lot under here!" I am so glad they feel that way it just goes to show it's all about expectations and how you raise them. I have a feeling, our four gift Christmas is going to be the best one yet.

Why we celebrate Hanukkah

For those of you who do not know this, Jason and I are not Jewish. With that being said, we celebrate Hanukkah. Not because we want to be disrespectful, but because of Jason's first wife. She was Jewish until the day she passed away. His kids used to go over to her parents every year and celebrate with them, but after we petitioned for me to be allowed to adopt them they stopped all contact with the kids. It was honestly more heartbreaking for us than anything, especially considering I was just doing what their daughter had asked. That's a whole other story though! The point is when we heard they didn't want them for Hanukkah this year we told the kids we would celebrate it! Now, how do two Christian people celebrate something like this? We googled it. Seriously I was up until around 2 am trying to figure out what is socially acceptable to do for Hanukkah and it turns out it's a lot like Christmas. By that I mean, no two traditions were the same, but they all had the same intent. Since this is our first year celebrating we wanted to make sure all nine children knew the history behind this holiday, much like Christmas we were able to find several Hanukkah books targeted at children. We have been reading one everyday and enjoying the knowledge we are gain. Even though only half of our nine children are part Jewish we felt it was important to celebrate as a family, but didn't want to get gifts every single night. We decided to just have eight nines of family nights and to incorporate what their mom had always done-bake a different cookie every single night. My intent when marrying Jason was not to replace their mom and I don't want to take away any of the few memories they have with her so it was important to me to know what her traditions were. She never once bought her kids gifts for Hanukkah, instead she had no phone nights where she spent the time instead with her children doing crafts, playing games, watching family movies, or doing anything else her children wanted to do. We adopted that tradition and the family favorite tradition of having a party on the last night. This may be my first year doing this, but I wanted to do it right. This is a very special holiday especially for our four children who think of it as one of the only things they have left of their mom. Overtime some of the traditions may change, but I know they will remember how hard their dad and I worked to make sure they had these memories. To all of my Jewish followers, happy Hanukkah.

Thank you Jimmy Kimmel!

Jimmy Kimmel, you may never seen this blog post, but I want to thank you. Thank you for speaking up for all the parents like myself who are worrying if their kids insurance will be cut off. My daughter Brooke was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes two years ago and her coverage has been under CHIP since then. When we got the news that Brooke could very well lose her coverage we were devastated, were and still are wondering how we will pay for the medication that she must have in order to survive. I know first hand how hard it is to see your kid go through so many different surgeries, injections, and medical tests, but Jimmy your son Billy was born for a reason. I think it's safe to say you already realized this, but you are in such an amazing position where you are able to advocate for the thousands of children who are affected by this terrible decision. I am so thankful that you have used your position to do good. You realize that you are able to afford health care, but know many are not. This is a hard thing to grasp and I'm glad you speak so openly about this. I also know you have received a lot of backlash from people telling you to stay out of it, I am so proud of the fact you ignore them and continue to speak out about this pressing issue. The people hating on you have been very lucky and clearly have never had to choose between paying their bills or paying for a life saving medication for their child. Thank you Jimmy from the bottom of my heart for doing what you do. I pray that one day we live in a country where I don't have to make this decision and because of people like you, that dream may one day be a reality. Please continue to speak out, give updates on Billy, and be the amazing advocate for affordable health care that you are.