Communication

Oh my! My sinuses are EVIL! I thought I was better over the weekend and I took my last antibiotic on Sunday, but this morning I woke up and all of that pressure and pain had shifted over to the other side! Pain in my eye, my teeth, my jaw, my nose, and one killer headache! If you're suffering from sinus pain, let me say, Musinex D is a miracle drug! It kept me going through the day even though I felt like going back to bed and covering up my head!

Although I did alot of sitting in my chair today, I did manage to do one load of laundry, change the sheets on my bed, pay bills, pick Landon up from school, take him to karate, go to the grocery store, and cook supper! Then, to my surprise my darling children worked together and helped me pick up the toys from today, clean up the kitchen and get everything ready for school tomorrow. Bedtime was somewhat easy too. Ella fell asleep quicker than she has in a while and Landon fell asleep on the couch! I know that my prayers for help and strength is what is getting me through. The power of prayer is amazing and God hears you even when you're simply asking for help cleaning your house!

I got really chatty this evening and had two good, long phone conversations with my two best friends. I don't do that often enough. I don't know about you, but with texts, email, and social media, I don't think we TALK enough anymore. That's true conversation...true communication. It's hard to really express your feelings through typing messages. I like having those special girls I can talk to about anything!

One of my conversations tonight was about being a step-parent. Let me be the first to tell you, that was an extremely hard transition for me to make. I thought I had it all figured out when we were dating, but it was way different when we got married. It was hard for me to find my place...to figure out if I was a mother figure, a friend figure, or kind of like an aunt. I didn't always agree with the way her mother parented and that was hard. Now that I have children I regret alot of things I did when we first got married. Then I went through a really rough patch when I couldn't stop thinking about my husband being married to HER. She is so completely different than me and at the time I really didn't like her. Not for any particular reason, just because. It was so weird for me. I asked him questions I didn't need to know the answers to. I imagined things I never needed to think about. All of that made me resent her for things she had no control over. I was mean to her. I did things out of spite. I was in a really bad place. Over time, and some maturing, I have realized many things that brought me out of that terrible spot and I'm so thankful now for the relationship I am able to have with my step-daughter's mother. The best explantion is this: Alan married young, they grew up, they grew apart. They were not happy. He was not speaking her love language and she did what she had to do to make herself happy. It was also hard for a while because we have joint custody because of Alan's schedule. That means we had her every day that Alan was ever off. To me, that was not fair to Landon. There was no one on one time with him. He was just a baby. I felt like as a girl, she needed to be settled, have a HOME and I felt like it should be with her mother. After Ella was born Alan decided we needed to change the way things were done. Of course Ashlyn is getting older and that makes a difference too, but our relationship with the ex is so great that we are able to get her whenever we need her, for special events and holidays and then every other weekend (Alan's weekends). If that doesn't work for someone, it's fine, we move on. No fussing, no fighting...Ash pretty much comes and goes back and forth as she pleases. Everyone is much happier. Ashlyn is even much healthier because of it. The way she was swished around back and forth before made her a very uncomfortable child. It was hard. She's so much better adjusted and we all get along so much better. She's even getting to where she is like a caregiver for the little kids, where as before she acted like they had cooties! She is such a good kid. She makes good grades, she's never in trouble, she's talented and smart. She is so extremely sweet... but she is growing up way too fast!!!

Well, there's my deep thoughts for tonight. Guess I better go to bed. Miss Ella and I will probably run a few errands tomorrow, unless I wake up feeling like I did this morning!

Until tomorrow...

Terra