a blended life

This month has been an incredible whirlwind of decisions, issues, money problems, decisions, more money problems and frankly, really fantastic Florida weather. I've decided that I'm decidedly bad at summarizing and have a tendency to either 1) leave out really important information and 2) go on and on about menial stuff. So I'm doing a top ten list tonight in hopes of capturing the essence of my month without doing either of those things. These aren't in order, by the way. That would take too long to decide. 10) Leah won 2nd place in the school spelling bee. Out of 250 kids. This school is serious about competition and doesn't give everyone trophies and accolades. There are clear winners and losers, and believe me, there were quite a few kids in tears afterward. She's quite relieved to not be in 10th place but a tad sad at not having won first. She's proud and so are we for how brave she was to get up on stage and spell hard words. I don't believe she ...

I realized a few things about myself lately. 1) I blog when I'm really tired, 2) I don't make any sense when I'm tired and 3) I'm always tired. I feel a health update coming on..... *Health update: I feel GREAT. My back doesn't hurt (read: I can get out of bed without screeching in pain), I am not nearly as fatigued as I was, I don't have random illnesses that I can't fight off, and my huge bloated body is finally returning to its normal, chunky state. I started to feel better on Christmas Day at 5 o'clock. I know that sounds like a tv movie kind of thing to say, but it's true and I'm not complaining. It was just in time to get ready for our last minute trip to Utah. I thought the girls would be excited to go and would want to spend a week with their dad. However, the whole thing was met with resistance and tears and anxiety. Especially once they learned that they would be spending most of the time with their dad and not with Gra...