Long overdue

I'm sorry to have been absent for so long! Things have been hectic busy and just way way overwhelming for a little bit here but thankfully now they are getting back on track and MUCH more managable. I accidentally allowed myself to become sidetracked by this little thing called life and wouldn't ya know...it just totally derailed all of my wonderful plans and schedules despite how tightly I tried to cling to them. Since I last posted we have survived not getting done all that we wanted to do for Christmas....but that's okay, the real meaning of Christmas was well celebrated by our family anyway. I have also battled a raging migraine that landed me in a doctors office and had the Lord not been so kind to relieve me of that headache I would most likely still be in the hospital now. No, I am not being melodramatic.....I happen to have a couple of different medical conditions that make such things as migraine headaches VERY difficult for me to deal with and I have been hospitalized repeatedly for them....so I am extra extra thankful that the Lord has been so good to me!! (sorry for sounding kind of snippy...it's not you, I just have had it up to my ears with nosy and very unkind comments about how can a "headache" possibly be that bad). So, today I am STILL working on Christmas packages to send back home to my family and friends there and I am still working on the things for friends and family here too.....I'm hoping to be finished sometime before Valentine's day...hahahhaha....sigh.

Okay, all sarcasm and kidding aside now. Things are doing a lot better for me now. I'm finally feeling semi human again, though I am very very tired and I seem to wear out much more easily than normal. I'm glad to not have such bad chest pains now and to not have to be taking any of the medicine for the headache either (those two things kind of hold hands a bit). I'm even beginning to get caught up with some of the housework and stuff.....I've even made 4 loaves of bread today and done most of the laundry while the kids worked on catching up on school work! The kids are really getting excited about just digging back into the books on a more regular schedule and being able to focus on their studying a bit more with fewer other things as distractions......sometimes distractions are fun, but even my kids have limits to what they can tolerate in that department. It's really nice to try to just relax and focus on getting settled back into some kind of "normal" routine without all the extra stuff going on.

Troy is done (for now) with the major overtime he was working. We were very very thankful for the extra income and it was right on time for lots of things (like getting heating oil) but he was just physically exhausted (we both were) and worn out with trying to keep all of our other normal stuff going with the extra hours going to work. That poor man was only getting about 3 hours of sleep a night for all those weeks that he worked overtime, I was seriously beginning to worry about him driving! He couldn't keep a train of thought for very long even during a conversation he would just kind of ....drift....a ...little....slower. I'm so glad that he can get some rest now and get back on track. Troy was offered some more work through one of the sister companies of the company that he is working for ....it's good and bad at the same time, but in the long run if it works out well it will be a great benefit for him as far as getting him back into the A&P field with all of his currencies and no extra schooling at all. I'll be talking about that more later sometime.

Miss Fred has been really proving herself around here lately!! (like I had any doubt) She has really been growing....I can't believe she is going to be 14 next month!! She can bake her own bread, cook a really great meal, clean the house, do the ironing, she is a straight A student who VOLUNTARILY does all of her schoolwork and is always always asking what can she do to help around here more!! She is NOT perfect, but some days I can almost convince myself that she is fairly close to it. Bless her little gizzard she is even learning to play her keyboard and her fiddle with just books to teach herself with since my silly self knows nothing about either instrument....she just hangs in there and keeps going until it sounds right (how many of us grown folks have that kind of gumption?). Since she has finished a full years math course her daddy has given his consent for her to do two other extra curricular from home activities that she has been interested in for quite awhile now. She will be starting her own blog very very soon! She is really excited and so am I. She is trying to decide what to name it.....I suggested "Fred says"....she laughs and says "we'll see"....I told her that isn't a very good name for a blog. She will also be starting some sort of online boutique type store/blog .....that was her and her daddy's idea for her to sell some of the modest clothing that she has found that needed minor repair work so she bought it and fixed it just because she could and it was cheap and now she wants to sell those items, plus some of the other things that she makes or has bought and used and wants to re-sell. I guess she wants kind of an online thrift store/junk shop/yard sale..... yup, that sounds like my Fred. I guess she didn't want to be the only one of the kids not making any money either since the boys will both be working down the road from us soon.

Anyways.....see, we've been busy even without all of my medical weird wonky stuff that goes on sometimes life is busy here. I will try to be more diligent in keeping this current and more interesting (and yes jess...more recipes). See ya!