Time to update!

You know - I always intend to get on here more often to update, but although life is ALWAYS busy it's just not always exciting enough to talk about (which is ok - we've had enough excitement to last awhile).

Lexi had her spacers put in last week which was Step #1 of getting her braces on and has survived them just fine. So far she's taking the rule about not chewing gum to heart! She was suppose to go back today for bonding (whatever that is), but it was rescheduled to the 22nd b/c Dr. Unterman was going to be out of the office (I see a trend starting with this constant rescheduling that's been happening, but I'll take that over putting her through the stress of Dr. Carly any day!!) This news will not going over well with her dad who has been moved to Georgia with his job. He is expecting her to come and stay down there for six weeks over the summer - good luck to him with that happening! We do NOT think that's a good idea for many reasons and if anything, she MIGHT be able to go for just a handful of weeks. She's also too busy! Obviously we're in the middle of getting these braces on and I'll be damned if she's going to miss an appt. for that, she's joined 4-H so she has those meetings to go to and the fair to prepare for, and we're getting goats that she wants to be the caretaker of and the Billy Goat will be coming soon from what I hear (baby goats won't arrive until the fall). So like I said....she's too busy! I'm sure the news of her ortho appt. being rescheduled will cause him to put another nasty message about me on his Facebook page. I made an attempt a few weeks ago to come to an agreement with him about the $12,000+ back child support he owes me. I explained to him that at the rate he's paying it back to me that he'll still be paying on it when Lexi is in her 20's so I suggested he increase the amount he's paying each month. I guess that was a bad idea! He became extremely ticked off and then put on Facebook that he wanted to tie bricks to me and push my fat a** over a ledge. THAT'S the kind of intelligence I'm working with here people! LOL So if he still wants to be paying me money in 10+ years then so be it!

This week has been a busy one - Kiegan has four trips to Blm. which thankfully my mom has offered to help out. We also have a SUPER busy Saturday coming up! A friend of mine, Shannon Vincent, has taken it upon herself to have some art classes in her garage/house to somewhat make up for the fact that the kids are losing out on art class beginning next school year. So Saturday morning is her first class about tye dye and I have Lexi & Kiegan going to that at 9:00. Then at 10:30 is Maddie's first Kindermusik class which I'm SUPER excited about! I know Patrick has a baseball game at 2 or 2:30 that afternoon and we also have a wedding & reception for Jake Dronenberg & Brianne Harris at 4:00. It'll be nice to have nothing to do on Sunday! Hopefully I can get my weekly Walmart trip out of the way tomorrow (Friday) night, but that means I have to get my list made during the day tomorrow.

I have all of my stuff in place from the grant and I LOVE IT ALL! The outdoor play area looks awesome thanks to Travis' help. We still have more to do to it, but I'm loving it so far! My days have really slowed down now that summer has hit b/c I lose a handful of kids whose parents are teachers. Sure the slower days are nice, but it's not so nice on the checkbook! It'd be nice if I could find some families that ONLY needed summer care for their children. I had a high school student contact me about co-op'ing in the afternoons next school year. I told her that I would love to have her out here, but I'm not sure how it will work. The afternoon's are slow b/c we have quiet time from 1:00-3:00 so there's two hours I'd be paying her for doing nothing - can't exactly justify that! So we will see.... Then I was contacted earlier this week by a college student who's taking some summer child care courses and needed to observe a home daycare for four hours so she was out here for a couple of hours yesterday and today. Very nice girl! She wants to be a 3rd grade teacher. :o)

Oh and we have a new member of the family: Doc! Doc is a German Shepard mix who is about two years old and has one ice-blue eye. We adopted him from an animal rescue who even offered us $50 for taking him, but we just gave that back and instead they used it to get Doc fixed which was fine with us! Doc is an AWESOME dog and Travis even admitted tonight that he loves him which is so funny to me, but I'm glad! Travis is building him a new dog house that will hopefully be done soon. He has a TON of energy and we're working on him with his manners b/c he likes to jump on people. One of us takes him on walks around the perimeter of the yard almost every evening and we even let him off his leash to play fetch with him which he is SO GOOD AT! Travis has even put him in the back of his truck to take him on rides to check the field. He said he's teaching him to be a good farm dog and Doc does great - never once has he tried to jump out! He also doesn't even attempt to chase cars that go by, but we're not so sure how he'll get along with Bruiser. He tested good with big & small dogs, but he's so excited when he sees another dog that I think it's overwhelming and it makes us nervous with Bruiser. So Bruiser only goes out when Doc is on his leash!

That's my latest update for now - I'm glad tomorrow's Friday! Oh - I forgot to mention that Maddie had Fifth's Disease last week which is just a super awesome all-over body rash and fever. She was COVERED in red spots! Thankfully they're not itchy and I kept my daycare open except for the one day that I took her to the doctor, but all of my families but two were scared of us and the one family that still came was hit with it too. It is VERY contagious, but it's nothing very serious (except to pregnant women b/c it's known to cause miscarriages). So she's over that now. I think I've got some pictures of her rash and some before/after pics of my daycare grant items that I'll put in a separate posting.