A Little Bit of Fun with a Whole lot of Not-So-Fun

** I'm just going to preface this with saying- I'm not trying to complain, only update for those who have asked, so if you want to skip the negatives, just look at the photos at the bottom. Also, on another note- I am only sharing the things which I feel comfortable complaining about to others, not in a private conversation, so just know there are many more problems we are really struggling with on top of all this... these just seem to be the bitter icing on the nasty cake.. So yeah-... again, feel free to skip to the pictures. I'm writing this all down because it's therapeutic for me and because, again, I have been asked for updates even though we are lacking in anything exciting! 

The beginning of this year has been quite stressful in our house. We've been going through the usual rounds of sniffles and colds like everyone else.

 Last month we took Ginny and Hayden to meet their new doctor for a check-up and ended up talking about Hayden's problems with constipation. We left the office after an x-ray and four hours later with instructions to give our high-anxiety, incredibly strong and strong-willed 5 and half year old enemas and suppositories twice a day for an entire week. This was pretty darn hard. He fought us almost the entire way, even with all the treats and incentives and calming practices we tried. At the end of the week, we went back to the doctor and had another x-ray done. It had cleaned out about half of what was backed up, so then he decided to put him on quadruple the dose of Miralax that a kid his size should be needing. We will continue to do this for the next two weeks, and hopefully it will finish clearing him out so he can not be so afraid to use the toilet. I did a detailed post on his problem a while back (which is no incomplete), which you can find here, or in a nutshell, this is his problem (which I posted on facebook): Severe constipation since he was about 1. We've done oral medications for 3 years. It took 2 years of BEGGING to get a Dr. even listen to us and agree that there was a problem. We thought the oral medications worked, but they only worked a tiny bit. Basically, if you imagine your bowels to be the size of a honeydew melon or large cantelope, on an x-ray it should be relatively open and black. His open/black spot was the size of a quarter. There is so much backed up in there, it very well could be 5yrs old. We are far beyond oral medicines and don't even suggest more fiber to me or I might scream. The poor kid hasn't been able to tell when he has to poop and has been having accidents in his undies on a daily basis. Because the last dr. told us the oral medicines cleared him out (w/out actually confirming w/ x-ray) we thought him not potty-training was a behavior problem until this week he started telling me he couldn't actually feel WHEN he needs to go.


Sometime during all this I hit Dirk with the car and he was in quite a lot of pain for quite a few days. It was a total accident and I felt terrible about it. Don't worry, it wasn't as exciting and horrible looking as you're playing it out in your head, so I'll just leave out the details and continue to let you imagine it in the crazy way that you are.

After all this was said and done, we found lice on Ginny's head. This is the first time we had lice and naturally cleaned every single item and surface in our home within 24 hrs. I also had lice but the boys were okay. It is REALLY hard to check for lice with my super long and thick hair!

When the lice fiasco seemed to be winding down and we hadn't seen any more nits in a few days, Dirk and Ginny got really sick. Then Hayden a few days after.

During all this we were broke. What little money we had went toward buying $50 worth of enemas and suppositories for Hayden and $30 of lice shampoo (which didn't work).

We are supposed to get a monthly allotment of money from the GI-Bill to help us pay for our housing. It didn't come... and still hasn't come, because they decided to change the way they do paperwork, causing way more work for everyone, and obviously causing a huge back up in their system. We also did not receive the money they were supposed to refund us from the school.  Since we are paying for his school with scholarships and grants, part of the GI-Bill gets refunded to us each semester and we use that for big expenses, such as paying for new brakes on our car. We still have yet to pay our rent for February and are quickly getting behind on all our bills.

So our brakes on our car are so incredibly gone... thankfully it's only the front brakes and we still have the back. They squeak soooo loud all the time (not just when we're braking anymore) and everyone stares at us, and I'm getting pretty nervous about driving with them. We need more done than just the pads so we can't just do a quick, inexpensive fix and really need that money.

My eyes could also REALLY use the money we are waiting on. My contacts were recalled back in November but I can still wear them for short periods of time, but lately even that gives me headaches. I get headaches when I'm not wearing them, and my only glasses are the five years old and the wrong Rx (Hayden broke my good glasses right before we moved here, and I have yet to replace them). So basically I have horrible headaches ALL the time.

On top of all that, Hayden's anxiety seems to be at an all-time high and is really affecting all of us and we've had the stress of deciding whether or not to be "one of those parents" who puts their kids on medication just because we can't handle him any longer.  My depression is at an all-time high since I had to stop my medicine cold turkey when we moved here (no insurance), and to top it all off, I found more lice in Ginny's hair yesterday, just when we thought we were done!

So there's my update! Not very exciting, I know. We did have a few nice moments in all that... and by a few, I really, truly mean a few.

We had a nice warm sunny day where Hayden and I spent most of the afternoon enjoying the sunshine and finished the day off with 'smores before dinner in the backyard. This was last week. Then just last night and this morning we got snow so we've had a fun day of playing in the snow! And the one Sunday we've all made it to church in the last month or so, Ginny looked pretty darn cute, but of course refused to let me take a cute picture.

And that's about it. Now you know why I prefaced all this with the post about our wonderful Christmas blessings, which is just below this post.

building with the new castle blocks from Christmas

Riding his new scooter. He was super excited to get to ride it home from school one day and hopefully will get to do that more when the weather warms up. 

Building a "Smurf" bridge. Hayden got really in to the movie "Smurfs" for a couple of weeks and was always pretending they were there with us.

On one of Ginny's sick days she woke up at 4am and refused to go back to sleep or be by herself on the couch so I got up with her that morning. She refused to take a nap in the afternoon and finally passed out on the chair while watching a movie at about 5:00pm! Poor little girl.

'Smores in the backyard

Last night I pulled Hayden out of bed at midnight to go play in the snow with me. He had been praying for snow all winter and was very depressed we hadn't had any stay on the ground yet. Last winter in Montana spoiled him! I carried him out of bed and put his boots on him while he was still mostly asleep. I told him I had a surprise for him and he says, "this had better be good!"  I brought him outside to the snow where he just stood there for about 10-15 seconds in silence before he woke up enough to get excited. He's still a little dazed here. 

Finally a reaction to the snow. He was so tired so I asked if he wanted to go back to bed or play with me a little. Of course he perked right up and decided to play. 

The snow was wet and heavy- perfect packing snow. The night was so quiet and peaceful with huge snowflakes falling all around us as we were the only people outside. 

15 minutes late and we had ourselves a midnight snowman! We quickly went inside, got some warm chocolate milk and went back to bed. He loved our special little midnight snow date!

Ginny checking out the snow, waiting for Hayden to get home from school

On Mondays and Wednesdays Hayden gets dropped off after school by our friends, so today they joined us for a little fun in the last of the snow before it all melted!

... and Gabe just had to taste the snow!

Holly got busy making a snowman of her own!

Hayden helped Holly finish her snowman on the left and his already melting midnight snowman on the right.