new blog

This blog will remain open for awhile, but will not have any new updates.  I have a new blog that is open to invited readers only.  If you want to continue reading, send me an email and I will get you added to the list and the new address.  You will have to sign in with a user name/password from now on in order to read it. 

going private

This blog is going private due to personal reasons.  If you send me an email to vathielen@q.com along with your name, I will add you to the list.  I plan to do this in the next 2 weeks. 

Jayden's leg x-rays

Jayden went in for a physical on Tuesday because he needed his last round of shots before Kindergarten.  The appointment took a good 1 1/2 hours by the time we got out of there.  Our new family doctor is very thorough and went through his entire medical history with me. 

If you recall, back in May of 2009, Jayden had his Mic-Key button removed.  While in surgery, the doctor measured the length of his legs because he had noticed quite the size difference.  I posted about that visit which you can read here and what the outcome and possibilities were.  You can also see a picture of his legs and the size difference along with the drawing from the doctor as he tried to explain what was happening.  We ended up being told to just watch his legs and make sure they stay the same length.

Over the last few years, Jayden has always had one leg that is wider or fatter than the other leg.  We've never noticed the length being different.  Until Tuesday.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing when our new family doctor pointed it out.  He had him laying on the exam table, shook him at the hips to loosen him up and pulled down on his legs. We got him as straight and relaxed as we could and then compared both legs.  It was clear that his kneecaps weren't lining up.  In fact, it looked like there was between 1/4 and 1/2 inch difference between the two.

Our doctor called down to Avera Children's and spoke with the surgeon who did the surgery.  Luckily he was actually there because he has retired, but happened to be on call that day.  He suggested we take x-rays of his legs to get the exact measurements of each leg from the hip down to the heel.  I asked if they had talked about how big of a difference would be concerning, but they didn't.  He said the surgeon suggested after the x-rays to consult him again if there is a difference and from there they would likely refer us on to Shriner's Hospital in Minneapolis. I guess there is a large team of providers that work together on this stuff.  Our doctor mentioned looking for a pediatric orthopedist in Sioux Falls and comparing options at that point.

So today we took Jayden in to the clinic and had the x-rays done.  We probably won't hear from the doctor until Monday sometime.  We're praying that there isn't a big difference in his legs.  However, we have noticed he shows a slight limp when he walks now that we hadn't really noticed in the past.

emotions

It's been a whirl wind of emotions lately.  I quickly became attached to the puppies in all their furriness and cuteness.  We kept them for 5 weeks and then took them back to the humane society to be spayed or neutered last Thursday.  5 of the 6 were adopted the next day.  Ninja is still there with mama.  I kind of felt what I imagine empty nest to feel like.  Crazy I know, especially since they were puppies.  But it's true.  I missed seeing them play in the yard, the sounds they make and their playful demeanor's in general.

Our neighbors adopted Kohl and kept her name.  I can see her bobbing around in the yard from time to time and they walk by our house everyday, so I can see her then too.  So cute!

Shaylee turned 14 yesterday.  Can you believe that?  My gosh, it seems like just yesterday she was born.  Seriously where does the time go?

foster pups

A big part of our life is fostering dogs from the Brookings Regional Humane Society until they can find a forever home.  We have adopted two dogs and one cat from there.  It brings joy to our family to have these animals in our home.  Our newest foster situation has been a momma dog and her six puppies.  We have had them for almost a month now.  They were so tiny when we got them and have grown so much.  Tomorrow they will go in for their first round of shots.

This is Kohl.  The kids named her.  She's got yummy food on her nose.

 Hershey, as in Hershey Kisses is one of my favorites.  She is so squishy, lovable, and snugly!

 Ninja is a sneak.  He likes to sneak up behind you and try to get in the back of your pants or onto your back.  He's kind of feisty.

 This one is Phin.  He does his own thing.

 Tiko is a ham.  He has really found his voice.  He loves frolicking in the yard.

 And Tootsie, as in Tootsie Roll, what can I say about her?  She's a real sweetie who will surely make somebody happy.

Our neighbors have put a claim on Kohl, or at least she is their favorite and I'm pretty sure they are going to adopt her.  It will be fun if they do so we can see one of them grow up.  :)  In one more week they will be spayed or neutered and shortly after will be available for adoption.  

lack of blogging

I popped onto my blog several times in July with the idea of possibly putting down an update, then I got side tracked and lazy and just didn't.  Towards the end of the month, I thought to myself, why start now, let's just wait until August!  And here we are!  Stay tuned for updates.  I promise!  ;)

tidbits

• Mike and I rode 10.4 miles on our bikes last night.  Loved it.  Except for the fact that my butt felt like it got beat with a cement 2 x 4.  Bicycle butt...ain't it great?
• Jayden needs a haircut badly.  It's scheduled for tomorrow morning.
• Devin has not been lost at the pool anymore.  Joseph, Dalton, and Devin all go to the club during the week.  They love it there.  Lots to do.
• Joseph got himself into a bit of trouble and earned "kitchen duty" for a week.  Today has been a week.
• Ever since our first encounter with the earwig, we have now found them in our house on occassion and I react like it's a poisonous snake every time.  Yuck!
• My sister is home from Florida, although I haven't got to see her yet.  She is in Fargo.  We will be going to the lake on the 4th to see her and my nieces.  I'm so excited to see them.
• I bought some shorts and capris the other day in my now 5 sizes smaller size and realize they are still too big. 
• I no longer have to shop in the Plus Size clothes.  THAT feels awesome.  Not to mention, there is a much bigger selection when you are wearing normal sizes.  :)
• I have a 3 day weekend, then I work 2 days, then I have a 5 day weekend. 
• Shaylee and Shawndra played ball on Wednesday night.  I thought the heat was going to be bad, but there was a really nice breeze that made the evening really enjoyable.  I believe they each won one and lost one.

weight loss

I promised and now I will tell.  I have been working really hard to lose weight, but the last 4 months were really tough.  It was up and down every week.  One week I would lose 2 pounds, then next week I would gain 2 pounds.  I flirted with the same 5 pounds for 4 months!  And it wasn't because I had his a plateau, rather I was sabotaging myself.

I have had an addiction to food, specifically sweets and desserts for as long as I can remember.  When someone says they have a sweet tooth, I have sweet teeth.  Forget one tooth, it's my whole mouth.  So that makes weight loss very difficult for me.  I also have other health issues that make it 3x more difficult than a normal person to lose.  But back to the sweets.  There isn't anything that is too sweet.  I could easily eat half a cake pan of cake in one sitting if I wanted to.  Not that I did.  But I could.  Cookie dough is another favorite.  Anyhow, back to weight loss.

I have been eating healthy, focusing on my Good Health Guidelines and exercising.  I drink lots of water and eats lots of fruits and veggies.  But I also allow myself to have the occasional sweets, in moderation of course.  Now I find myself getting fuller faster and taking much smaller portion sizes.  Even my own kids are asking questions about what is good for them and what is not.

So as of today, I am very proud to say that I have lost a total of 35 pounds!  I am down at least 3 sizes in jeans/Capri's and down 1-2 sizes in t-shirts.  Even my swimsuit from last year (which I only wore 2 times) is 3 sizes bigger.  I feel great.  My self-esteem is much more positive and I don't hate shopping anymore!  I used to buy clothes that fit...not so much on if they were cute, but if I was lucky enough to find clothes that fit.  Now when I go shopping, I can try on many clothes and look in the mirror and buy clothes that I like that make me feel good, or clothes that I don't like, even if they fit!  What a feeling!

I still have a long ways to go, but man oh man, I'm on a roll and loving this!  I love being active and knowing that I'm fueling my body with healthy foods.  :)

earwig

The nasty, disgusting bug that pinched Shawndra last night, while sitting INSIDE on the couch.  I had never seen one of these, but after quite the conversation on Facebook, I learned it is an earwig.

And what a disgusting bug it is.  Two pincher things on the butt.  They're fairly fast.  Well since discovering this yucky creature, Mike has informed me that they are on our driveway and in our mailboxes too.  So completely grossed out.



biking

I have really kicked up my exercising in the last two weeks.  I'm back to feeling like I want to work out.  Even the days where I'm really tired, I head out, and I feel so good.  My new love is my bike.  It used to be the devil in disguise, but now I'm fully in love with it.  Maybe not the sore butt when I'm riding it, but the workout it's giving me and the desire to continue.

I have been riding 6 miles every night.  Tonight, I went 7.5 miles.  Maybe it doesn't sound like much, but it's enough to make my legs feel like Jell-o, my heart race and my breathing to increase.  I just love it.

My weight loss has been great.  I've been working on losing weight for 9 months now, fairly consistently.  I mean I've always "tried" to lose weight, but never got off the couch, but that's a whole nother story.  Sometime this week, I will share how much weight I have lost.  I still have a long ways to go, but I've come so far! 

I love biking!  Who would have thought!

Jayden says

After supper, Mike was looking at the radar and mentioned that we are in a tornado watch until 10pm.  Jayden says, "what?  a tomato?" 

skunk

Last night we took the dogs running down a gravel road, which we do quite frequently.  It's always fun to watch them run and jump around in the ditch, especially Stewie because he hops like a rabbit in the weeds so you see his head pop up with every jump and that's it.  Stewie happened to be chasing something in the weeds headed towards a field, which he does sometimes.  He also chases birds, but never gets far from us.  Anyhow, last night we were watching Stewie run and bounce around and Bob was running on the road when all of a sudden he took off.  I was so busy watching Stewie when suddenly Mike screamed, "oh God!" and I looked and here was a skunk bouncing along right in front of Bob.  It didn't matter how hard we screamed, Bob wasn't coming immediately to us.  What was probably 15 seconds felt like minutes trying to get him back to the car.  We finally got Bob in the car, smelling normal, then had to get Stewie in.  Stewie can be a bit more challenging because he sees things and wants them more than he wants to get into the car.  Luckily we got Stewie in the car, both dogs smelling normal while the skunk still hobbled along.  Mike thought he smelled a slight whiff of skunk, but I didn't, and the dogs didn't smell like it.  But wow, did we get lucky!!!!

sunburn

I'm sunburned.  My sunburn is sunburned.  My first sunburn came while wearing sunscreen, but my second sunburn came from not wearing sunscreen.  Lesson learned.  Wear sunscreen and reapply often.

times have changed

Times are so different for today's teenagers than they were for me when I was growing up.  Cell phones were just coming out towards the end of high school and  I didn't get mine until I think the end of my senior year.  Even then, it was a huge bag phone that stayed in my truck!  However, today, a majority of all teenagers have cell phones, including my two girls.  They have been more of a convenience for us and beneficial when trying to find them or need to relay a quick message.

I always say as long as they are living under my roof that I will check their phones whenever I want to, which isn't too often, or whenever I feel something isn't right.  Today happened to be one of those days.  I had been noticing one of my girls has been spending a lot of time on her phone and was told by my other daughter the same thing.  Since we were at the lake today I asked Mike to go down and take the phone from her because she needed to watch two of her cousins on the playground for a few minutes and to also give me a chance to look through it and figure out what was going on.

The first thing I hate to see when I finally decide to go through it is an empty inbox.  All messages deleted.  However in this case, the sent folder was full.  And I wasn't totally impressed with what I saw.  Some messages said she was walking around in her bikini, or that her hair was wet and down to the middle of her back to make it pretty, the I love you too text.  Needless to say, I kept the phone until we got home so I could do some further checking on who this kid was.

I got onto her facebook account and seen this boy had friend requested her and that they had no mutual friends.  I went onto our phone account and seen that she had been texting him all day today and until 1am last night, along with several hour long conversations.  Then I found out he lives in Florida.  So I was really confused how she met him until she told me that they had met playing a video game, that doesn't even have to be online to play! 

After a long and encouraging conversation,  she understood what was going on was wrong.  I told her she is too young to be friending boys that live that far away that she has never met in person.  There is more to life than sitting on a phone all day having a virtual conversation with someone she hasn't met.  Or even if she has met them, there is no reason to be texting all day long.

As we got to talking, I learned that she is having troubles with friends here because certain girls don't like her, or she's not in a certain sport, or she doesn't hang with certain people.  I remember those days...the days of being a teenager and being friends one minute and in fights the next.  It doesn't make it any easier.  She knows that I am here for her and will help her any way I can and she knows and understands that she needs to make an attempt to get together with her friends and have real conversations and moments in life to remember.

I also blocked this boy on facebook, deleted him from her phone and sent him a text message asking him not to call or text anymore because they are too young and live to far away to be on the phone all day.  My daughter is ok with how things happened tonight.

I hope she is able to get through this rough spot with her friends and start hanging with them more.  At this age, friends are so important.  I was going to keep her phone for awhile because of this, but I decided she had learned her lesson based on what we talked about and she fully understood why it was wrong that I gave it back to her.  When she asked me why I gave it back I told her I wanted her to have access to her friends that are local so she doesn't feel excluded from them.  After all, times have changed from when we were younger!

She knows I am watching her usage online and continuing to watch her facebook, so even if I don't get to see what the text messages say, I can at least see who or where they are being sent and at what times.  So for now, it is what it is.

Devin left at the pool

On Tuesday I went to the Boys and Girls Club to pick up Joseph, Dalton, and Devin.  When I got there, it seemed like mass chaos going on.  The girl working the front desk kept paging for the kids into a walkie talkie instead of over the pa system.  Lots of parents were coming in.  They paged the 3 kids and I seen Dalton right away.  Then shortly later, Joseph came.  He said he thought Devin was still at the pool and would be coming on the second bus which was running late.  All the buses are supposed to be back by 4:30 and it was nearing 5pm at that point.  I asked the girl to page for Devin again.  Still didn't find her.

Finally after waiting for 30 minutes, the second bus comes in.  Now let me remind you, at this point we aren't sure if she's at the BGC or still at the pool, so they page for her one or two more times.  As I watch the kids get off the bus, I keep an eye out for Devin.  The last kids come in and I now realize Devin did not get off the bus, so she has to be at the BGC yet.  I am extremely annoyed at this point because I have been waiting for them to find her so we can go.  Jayden, Joseph and Dalton were in the car, which was also running.  I walk back up to the desk and tell her that Devin did not get off the bus so she has to be there.  She talks into the walkie talkie one more time saying, "Devin did not get off the bus, so HE has to be here.".  I was furious!  I belted out, "she is a girl, not a boy!!".  She corrected herself into the walkie.

Again, I stand around and wait.  There are probably 20 parents standing around waiting for their kids.  Two different staff members came from the office area and apologized to everyone who was waiting.  I managed to make eye contact with one of them, so she came over and asked who I was waiting for.  I told her I was waiting for Devin.  She said, "OK, come with me".  I knew at that point it wasn't good.

We went through the doors and she started telling me that all the staff at the BGC were currently sweeping the entire facility looking for her, they were checking bathrooms and outside as well, and they have a staff member at the pool looking for her.  I realized at this point, Devin was lost.  I asked her if Devin was lost and she said no.  So again, I said, "well do you know where she is, because if you don't know where she is, then she's lost".  She explained that they knew she went to the pool, but that she didn't come back from the pool.  The staff at the pool called and the bus was authorized to return back to the club.  However they left one staff at the pool to look for Devin and the pool staff.  She proceeded to ask me if I knew if there was anyone at the pool that she might have left with.  Are you kidding me?!  I mentioned maybe her biological mother if she was there, but she lives out of town, so I doubt that would happen, and plus, we have orders for them not to release her (or the other kids) to their mother.  She was quiet.

I am now pissed.  Real panic and worry haven't gotten the best of me, but was creeping in.  I remember asking her if they lose kids often.  I was unimpressed to say the least.  As we were talking, after I had been there 40 minutes, another staff member came up on the phone and said they had found her that she was still at the pool and she was fine.  A few apologies later, I said I needed to leave to go get her.

I got to the car and called Mike because I was livid.  As I get to the pool, I see 2 BGC staff members sitting with her.  I told Devin to get in the car while I talked to them.  They said they found her swimming in the pool, so she wasn't scared and that she hadn't heard the pages that it was time to go.  I asked them at what point did they know that Devin was the one missing.  I was shocked at their reply.  They said they knew she was the one who was missing about the time the first bus was leaving.  Well, when I had gotten to the BGC, Joseph and Dalton were already there and the bus had left, so that meant they knew she was missing when I walked in the door.  The staff at the pool said they received a call that I was at the BGC waiting, while they were at the pool looking for her.  So imagine my dismay when I realized that the entire time I stood at the BGC, remember it was about 30 minutes, they knew she was missing and didn't tell me. 

They knew she was the one missing.  They knew I was there to pick her up.  They knew I was her step-mother.  And they never told me.  Each time I asked for her, they never told me she was at the pool and lost.  I was so angry.

We got home, we made a plan how things were going to work out for the pool the next day.  We asked Devin to make sure she tries to listen for the pages and we asked Joseph and Dalton to look out for her as well when it was time to go. 

Later that afternoon, I got a phone call from the BGC.  Two people were on the line and they had it on speaker phone.  They called to apologize and to ask me if I had any concerns.  I told them how upset I was that I was standing there asking for Devin and the entire staff knew she was missing at that very moment.  She said I had every right to be mad and that was a big mistake on their part.  They had a meeting and talked about what happened and what they can do differently in the future if this should ever happen again.  They thanked me for being open and so willing to talk about it. 

I still cannot believe the whole situation happened.  It was almost like they were going to try to cover up that they had lost her, but I came to pick her up before she was located.  Who knows.  I still get irritated when I think about it.

outsider update

I made my thoughts known the other day and now tonight I'm happy to report that things have changed and everybody is happy.  We are still outsiders and there will always be ways we can see that, but after stepping up for what was wrong and requesting it made right, it was.  :)