Thought of the day

I am going to take this moment to just talk about myself. I finally reached my 75lb mark after being plateaued for about two months. I am excited about that accomplishment, especially since that means I only have 37.8 more pounds to loose until I reach my goal weight. With that said I have really started to evaluate why everything in my life seems to plateau at one point or another. I guess there comes a time when things I used to put thought into just start to blend into daily life. I have found that is not always a good thing. Everything in life needs maintenance. If you aren't willing to maintain it then you will end up getting what you put into it. Life is not easy. It's not easy to constantly maintain everything, but is it easier to let it all go to hell? A weight loss comparison that I heard the other day goes like this "It's hard to loose weight, it's hard to maintain your weight, it's hard to be over weight. Choose your hard." I really like that. If I'm going to spend time thinking about how hard something is I sure as hell want some results when I'm done with it. I feel like this can go for just about anything in my life. It's hard to do a lot of things, but if I choose not to do it, isn't the outcome just as hard? Well those are my thoughts for the day...

"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."  George Eliot

Silver Lake Adventures....

We took the family to Silver Lake over the weekend. We are so blessed to have the cottage available for us to use. My friend Jess and 3 out of her 4 kids came along. It was a ton of fun, even with Isabelle being sick. She was a super trooper. We climbed the side of a dune, took Jessica's Jeep out on the dunes, got fried in the sun, roasted marshmallows, swam, read, and loved every minute. I wish vacations lasted longer, I never want to come home.

Life seems like it gets crazier and crazier. Whoever said the fostering children is an amazing experience never did it! Sure the children are great....it's the parents that are the problem. They don't show for visits or cancel, they drop dirty, they work crap jobs, live in motels, and the state says maybe we will give them another chance. So three months later they do everything the same and the state says maybe we will give them another chance. When one parent starts dropping clean, but doesn't even show up to court the state says we will give unsupervised visits. After 4 visits when that parent drops dirty again the state says, maybe they just need another chance....REALLY??? so they put that parent back on supervised visits, but they want us to supervise. We finally put our foot down and say no we aren't going to do that. So after two supervised visits the state worker says that parents looks like they are doing fine we will give them their unsupervised visits back. I just don't get it. The goal of foster care is reunification. I know that, but at some point they need to assess the situation and see if reunification is really the best thing for the child. I feel like no one is really looking after the child's best interest, just the courts best interest in trying to do reunification at any cost. I'm really trying to just give it to GOD, I have a very hard time doing that. So that is why I am ranting to you about it. If I don't I think my head might explode.

Sick....

Isabelle has been sick for a week now. Last Friday she started not feeling well, by Saturday she spiked a temp and almost passed out at rib fest. It had been a long day and she had only munched all day long, so I figured her almost passing out episode was due to the combination of heat, not feeling well, and not eating enough. Sunday her temp hit 103 and by Monday I took her to the doctor. They said it was viral, I swear they always say it is viral. By Thursday she still had a high temp, so I took her back to the doctor and demanded that they figure out what was wrong. After doing a chest x-ray the doc said that she had pneumonia. Poor thing is coughing and hacking like crazy. Now that she has been on antibiotics for 2 days she is starting to feel better, I hope her recovery goes more smoothly than her diagnosis.

Our plans to go to Michigan Adventure have been cancelled, but we are still going to the lake to just chill. Hopefully some good chill time will do her some good. I would love to see a happy HEALTHY child by the time school starts on August 24th. Guess we will see.....


"Sick" By Shel Silverstein

'I cannot go to school today,'
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more-that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut-my eyes are blue-
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke-
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is-what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is...Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play! '

Long Lost Brother......

My long lost brother came into town yesterday. Kinda crazy, overwhelming, exciting, weird, and sad all at the same time. This is only the second time in my life that I have had the opportunity to meet him. My mom had Will as a teen and placed him up for adoption in California. About 10 or more years ago he hired a PI to find his biological parents. That is when I first found out that he even existed. So weird! I mean I had spent most of my life wishing that I had an older sibling and then over night one just appeared. Who is this guy? What does he look like? Why did he find us? We had so many questions and no answers at all. After Will found us he stopped contact for a couple years. He now has told me that it was all very overwhelming. It's kind of like having a box in front of you. You really want to know what is in the box so you peek under the lid. Instead of just getting to see whats under there the whole box explodes in your face!

 About eight years ago Will and his wife came to town because their daughter was sick and having a procedure done near by. That was the first time that we met. He was essentially a complete stranger, but he fit right in. It's amazing how even though you are raised across the country from someone they still can act exactly like you. He was only here for a day or two during that visit. When he left eight years ago he continued to keep minimal contact with my mother and no contact with us kids. Mom e-mails him every now and then with updates on our lives, sometimes she will get a response, sometimes not. So you can imagine what a surprise it was to find out that he was coming to visit us, for no reason other than to visit. He contacted my mom a week or so ago and said he was trying to do some soul searching.  He feels like there is a black hole in his life where his biological family should be. Will said he would be coming alone, living his wife and four kids back in Pasadena, CA. He wanted to come here and spend some one on one time with us, possibly meet his dad, and explore Kalamazoo.

Will arrived on Tuesday night and checked into the hotel where my sister Ana works. Wednesday I met up with him for lunch at Food Dance. We talked for hours, strolled around downtown, went to the KIA (Kalamazoo Institute of Art), and grabbed some coffee. He is so easy to talk to and such an amazing and accomplished person. He has all the same talents and positive traits as the rest of my family. The difference is he went to college, graduated with a bachelors in fine art, and continued on a successful path. Will has done set design and art directing for films (not just small films might I add). Some movies that he has worked on were Lemony Snicket, Hancock, Grinch who Stole Christmas, and many more. About two years ago he got out of the film industry and focused on the preschool that his wife had been running. That same year they purchased a second preschool and got that up and running. They now have two successful schools with a total of 196 students ages 2-5 years. On top of running the schools they have their own four children (Keagan-9, Addison-8, Weylin-5, Imogen-3). With all this going on Will said he just needed to take some time away and focus on himself.

He is leaving today. I am grateful that I had this opportunity to once again meet and spend time with my brother, even if it was only for a couple days. I just hope that this time he doesn't close the lid all the way. I would like to continue to keep contact open between us. I can't help but feel that God sent him here for a reason, I'm not sure what that reason is right now, but I don't want to give up before I find out. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of him, but I stole this one off of his wife's FB...lol.