DATES Prom

The DATES Gang (Disabled Adolescents Together Expanding Socially) and Miss Dolly (center of back row)

Jarrett and Aunt Shell

Dancing the night away

Bubbles!

My handsome teenager all dressed up!

Spring Renewal

This week I finished packing up some prom dresses to donate to the Bankbridge Development Center. The daughter of a woman whose blog I follow goes there and every year she blogs about their prom and going to try on gowns with her daughter. The school collects gown donations and students can try them on and choose what they like. I have no daughters and I doubt my nieces when they get old enough will want any of the ones I have so off they go!!!  Not only did I end up sending about 6 dresses(some donated by my brothers girlfriend) but gloves, purses, jewelry and hair clips  as well as a pair of shoes should be arriving in New Jersey today.  I was a little hard to part with my first prom dress. It's a bit like Molly Ringwalds in Pretty in Pink and was worn with lace fingerless gloves and I loved it!

I've brought home some boxes from work to work on making our closet more manageable. While Mikey insists since I have more clothes in there it's my fault but I believe all the cars and stuff in there aren't exactly helping the situation.

Max needs to have surgery next week. He needs to have his tubes removed and the doctor is going to check out what's going in his right ear.  A month ago he had blood coming out of the right ear. We had to find a new ENT doctor since now all he has is his medical assistance and the other one doesn't take that. The new doctor gave him antibiotics and ear drops and yesterday was his follow up appointment.  He has dried blood crusted on the tube in the right ear and we need to find out what is going on in there. Not to mention, when he had the original surgery we were told the tubes would fallout on their own in about 6 months.  It's almost a year later and the tubes are still firmly in place.  Fingers crossed for next Thursday.

Catching Up

So yes, it has been awhile since I have blogged. What's been going on? LIFE. Family conflicts, babies, work, babies, kids growing, Jarrett got an award for excelling at doing math equations in Spanish (and he hates math!), first grade, eighth grade, did I mention babies? Three little girls.

 Makayla Rae was born April 17. My sister's first baby! Our little miracle baby that spent several days in the NICU (and spent them as BabyGirl Berggren until they could decide what to call her).

 Gabrielle Evalynn was born July 8. My stepsister's first baby too! Another miracle baby! Becky was told she probably would never have a baby.And yet here she is.

 Kayden Riley was born July 25. She couldn't hold out one more day and share her birthday with me. Alyssa is a big sister now! Alyssa turned 2 in November.

                                           Three little turkeys on Thanksgiving.


And speaking of babies...Makayla will be a big sister in May and Brielle will also be a big sister in August!


Max is in first grade now. He's still a Beyblade fanatic.Currently,he has no top front teeth. He'll be 7 soon. He can't wait to play soccer in the fall again.

Jarrett is now in eighth grade. We have to go to a meeting about high school scheduling on Thursday.  He goes to high school next year!!! He'll be 14 in October. He's also excited to join the drama club next year.

Makayla is crawling like a little fiend, pulling herself up to walk around the furniture. Brielle is scooting all over and just got two teeth on the bottom. Kayden smiles and giggles at everything.

Certain other situations, well, that's a story for another day

And People Are Crazy....

This is my truck. I think the orange renders it invisible.

First of all I must say that Mom is not going to die tomorrow. She is at the beginning stages of emphysema, she still needs some tests done to determine the best course of action. She is using her nicotine patches and has basically quit smoking. She wants to see her grand kids grow up. She wants to be in the stands when Jarrett graduates so she can yell "That's my Baby!" with the rest of us.

Secondly, why is it that no one can read, even if it's neon pink and right in your face? It was windy the other day, so we busted out the Please Use Other Door sign, which is printed on neon pink paper and still, nearly everyone used that door. My personal favorite was after we had moved the trash can in front of the door, people still used that door. When you go to exit and the door hits a trash can perhaps it's not the best thing to squeeze out of that door anyway. Just maybe it's there for a reason. A man went to leave and opened the door and..surprise! it hit the trash can. So naturally he squeezed thru and with a "well, there's your problem" expression on his face proceeded to use the door to push the trash can out of the way by basically beating the door up against the trash can in order to move it. One of our town employees happened to be coming in to the store and soon showed him the error of his ways, pointing out the bright pink sign and moving the trash can back where it was . The door is already cracked. One of these times the wind it going to catch it and slam it up against the side of the building and shatter it . Maybe then people will understand. Maybe not. I drive a very large black and orange truck and no one seems to be able to see me. People have pulled out in front of me more times than I can count and nearly backed in to me just as many times.

Merry Knishmas!

This has been an eventful and painful year. So much has happened. Tommy, Uncle Mike, and Dorothy died. Mrs. Knab died. Mrs. Givens died. Pop had his appendix out. Very little work for Mikey because of rain. Jarrett lost his glasses at camp. God bless his counselor because she checked every child left to see if they had his glasses. Matt's car has given him hell this year. Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Frank McCourt,Brittany Murphy and Kim Peek (he was the inspiration for Rainman) also died this year. Michelle has had a tough time this year, losing Tommy and having to raise the boys alone and dealing with everything that goes with is just hard. The truly hardest part of this year didn't really hit until Mom saw a pulmonologist and had her follow-up visit for her test results. Mom has emphesyma and he wants her on the lung transplant list. We went thru this with Dad, knowing there is limited time left and yet not knowing how much. Don't get me wrong good things happened this year too: middle school is going great for Jarrett, Max started pre-k, Alyssa was born. I have my family and for the most part we will be together for Christmas and that's all we need.

Little Pitchers Need Earplugs

For awhile now, Max has been visiting us in our room during the wee hours annoucing "I heard a sound in my room!" The other night he tried this right after I put him to bed. Not even 2 minutes later, our door opens and there's Max. Back to bed we go. Sometimes in the night, he just climbs in the bed, lays down and starts snoring. A couple nights ago, Mikey woke up at about 2 am to discover small, loudly snoring boy on my side of the bed. (I have been told by several doctors that he has rather large tonsils). My personal favorite was when I came in from putting Jarrett on the bus and Max's door opened and he announced "I heard a sound!" to which I responded "It was Jarrett's bus!". Sometimes he has moment of honesty and says "I waked up!" but not too often.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We shared our first Thanksgiving with Alyssa today. Everyone ate a lot and we watched Home Alone together and passed the baby around. Max and Aunt Shell went into Jarrett's room to find his holiday decorations and the computer was on. Shell said Happy Thanksgiving, Dad when she shut it down. Mikey made sausage and cranberry stuffing and it was a bigger hit than his oyster stuffing from last year. The oyster stuffing was ok but it made 5 tons of the stuff! He also made an apple pie. We taught Max to play Uno, a great family tradition. He also ran around singing Aunt Shell's least favorite song. My Dad used to sing Lynrd Skynrd's That Smell to her...with a twist. Here is Dad's version..OOh that smell, Smells like Michelle! OOh that smell, can't you smell Michelle! When Max was a little younger and had a dirty diaper, we would sing smells like Maxwell. Well, he sings smells like Aunt Shell, which she is so thrilled about. Off to bed, Mikey wants to go shopping in the morning 'cause he's crazy.