Bad Wind Storm

Wednesday night while the boys were at church there was an awful wind storm. Chuck and I were on our laptops at the kitchen table when around 8:20pm the power went out. The wind was really howling and shaking our home! I didn't want to go get the boys but I went out to get them right away. I was sure the power went out at the church too. While I was heading down there I saw way we had no power. There were 10 telephone poles all broken in half like toothpicks all in a row into the road!!! I had to drive over the lines!! YIKES!!

Got the boys and yup, no power at the church either, and we head back the same way so I could show the boys the downed lines and we come up to a house just past the downed poles on the other side of the road that had a HUGE tree on top of it!! Man, things are bad out!

Got home and got our generator out and hooked up. I opened the stove and turned it on for the night to keep us warm.

The next day I started up the generator so we could have power for the tv and computers. Gotta have those. Oh, and school was canceled, thank god! We all went to lunch today and I got to take some pictures of what it looks like around here!

Here is the downed tree by the downed lines. I took all these pictures with my phone through my windshield so they aren't the best.


Here is one of the phone poles that was down. There are 10 of these all in a row down the road.


Here is tree down in town.


So, here it is Friday and we still have no power. They are just now finishing up down the road with the phone poles. I hope we have electric soon running off a generator sucks as it can't handle the whole house. I am heating the house with the stove and the boys have to sleep in the living room as it's just to cold in their rooms.

But, Chuck got a roofing job and some inside work too from this storm!! YA!!!! No, he won't be on the roof :)

Update and stuff

I know, I know, it's been a while since I have written anything. Guess I have been busy or just didn't want to complain all the time on here! LOL! Let's see, Joe had a swim meet on Saturday at the University of Akron and the pool was HUGE! 16 lanes! Had to get up at 5:30am to be there by 8:00am. Thank goodness Chuck just sold a cord of wood so I had gas and money to eat with. Joe has been working on his 200 free and he got disqualified by not touching the pool edge when he turned. He turned too early and was at least a foot away. I felt SO bad for him!! He took it really well though. He was really upset but didn't throw a fit. He did well with his other events and placed really high in the relay. He went home with a friend after the meet so I drove home by myself. CJ went to stay with a friend too so Chuck and I had the house to ourselves that night. All we did was watch TV I was SO tired! Went to be at 8pm LOL!

Then on Sunday Chuck and I went shopping. Nice to have food in the house again. That took about 4 hours. I can understand how Kitty feels about hating to shop!! Gosh, if I could, I would shop for the whole month too. We do about 2 weeks at a time. Chuck is doing much better so he wasn't too bad but then we went got to Lowes he rode in those electric carts LOL!

Chuck is walking around the house without crutches but not really walking more like hobbling. He can't bend at the ankle normally yet I guess. When he is outside he wears his air cast but not always with crutches.

In a Funk

Meant to write a long time ago. I have a video of CJ's gymnastics meet that I wanted you all to see but it takes HOURS to upload!! I will have to let it run over night some time. He did really well though.

Nothing much has gone on this week. Chuck is walking around the house without crutches. When he goes out he wears the air cast and uses his crutches.

I called about getting state aid cash and found out that I can get $556 a month if we work 55 hours a week. We would be making about $2.50 a hour. I guess that is one way to try and keep people of cash assistance! Come next week we'll have about $50 and that's it. It's been scary. I hope we can find some way to bring in something to keep gas in my truck. We have both been depressed about our money situation this month. Nothing we can do though and I'm sure we'll be fine even if we lose everything, we'll still be okay. Thank God, I own my truck and the house we live in.

We've been having problems with Joe and that hasn't been helping. He is SO lazy! He got a D on his book report and thinks that is fine because he'll still pull off a B in the class. ARG!! He just does only what he has too or less. He's also very defiant, mouthy and angry. We have him in counseling at the church and we both go too. I hope it helps. I'm so stressed out!! Most days I just want to cry.

Well, hopefully I'll get that video uploaded and you all can see what CJ can do!

Day for Doctors

I kept Joe home today as he could barely breath and his ears hurt. I told him to go back to bed. I took him to the doctors at 11:30am and no ear infection, just a really bad head and chest cold. I'm glad about that. I hate when his ears are infected. So, came back home for a bit and then back to the school to get CJ and head off to Cleveland for his neurology appointment. The doctor wants him to try and go off the headache med's and see if his headaches come back. If they do, then he is to go back on them. So, we will try that here soon. Last time we tried he had awful headaches.

We have been approved for the state medical card, all of us, so it was nice that all the medicine and doctor appointments were paid for. CJ is on expensive med's for ADD that we pay $146 a month for. The doctor gave us a 90 day script for it a while back and I couldn't get it as it's $450 script!! So she gave me a few 30 day ones. Anyway, I took that 90 day script and filled it today. That was nice. I have enough med's now to last all school year. I don't know how long we'll be on state medicare but it will be nice.

I got Chuck's sleeping med's today too. The doctor gave him some to help him sleep. He'll go days with no sleep or just some here and there. The doctor thinks that once he is up and moving more again all day it will get better. I hope so cuz he keeps me up!!

It's been a year!

Well, a year ago today I went to the APL and picked up Sandy!!! She has been with us for a whole year! Man, has it been that long? I remember the very long potty training! It was horrible!! Come to find out she had a bladder infection and that is why she could only hold her pee for 10 minutes! Man, what a pain! Once that was fixed it was much better.

We got SLAMMED with snow today but we had school anyway. Come to find out we were the ONLY school to have school in this area! They got out 1 hour early. Mr. Lyon canceled for music today and Church canceled too so we, for once, have a nice quiet evening at home! We watched some tv, played dice and just relaxed.

I had to shovel at least 5 times today. Must have gotten over 18" of snow! Sandy drives me nuts and I'll have to video tape her. She LOVES getting snow thrown in her face from the shovel. When you are shoveling she will actually get mad if your NOT throwing snow in her face. She will bark at you until you throw the snow right in her face. LOL!! She is a nut! She was outside most of the day. She LOVES the snow!


Here is my "Baby Peter" sleeping on our couch. He's just SO cute!!

New Week

Yesterday we had our friends over for lunch. They came at 1:20 and we sat down to lasagna, corn, rolls, pasta salad, and yummy cake! It was a great lunch! Then us adults played a dice game called "Can't Stop" and I won all three times!! That never happens! The three girls watched the boys play video games. Joe played his violin and piano, CJ mostly just lay down all day as he still wasn't feeling too well.

Today, I did some work on my blogs. I wrote some articles, one of which took me all morning and then my computer froze up and crashed to a blue screen and I lost it all!! The program I use to write them in doesn't save, which sucks! But, it only took me 20 minutes to write it up again. Get this, I usually make between 0-.10 a day on adsense but today I made .96 so far! LOL!! Well, it's something anyway! I started another blog today so I'm up to 5 blogs. 3 have posts that go till the end of Feb. the other 2 don't have any yet. Just getting them set up.

Chuck has a doctor appointment tomorrow at 8:30am which means we all leave here at 6:45am, drop the boys off at school and drive the hour and a half down to the doctors office. Chuck said the past 10 days have been the best and he has seen the most improvement. :)

Joe's Swim Meet

Took Joe to his swim meet yesterday. At least this one was here in Ashtabula. He was really looking forward to seeing what his time would be on his 200 Free and he was doing really good and then the coach started yelling "Go, go, go" which means he is on his last lap and to really push it. When he got to the end he jumped out only to find out that he had another lap to go and because he got out of the water he was disqualified. He cried! He was so upset. He said he lost track too and doesn't blame the coach too much. I felt so bad and so did everyone there! I think he'll be doing the 200 at the next one of the 7th. This next meet, if you place in the top 25 then you go on to the next one and that will be the last one of the year. Then they have a couple months off and they start back up in the summer but will only have one meet this is just to stay in shape. Some of those practices are from 6-7am!! YIKES! Like I want to get up that early during summer vacation! SIGH!!

Today we have friends coming over for lunch. I'm making the birthday dinner. That is what she wanted really bad anyway she said, LOL! I've known Chris since 2nd grade. Her husband and mine like to hunt together. There is no football games today, thank God, so the TV won't be blaring. I HATE having the TV on when we have people over but Chuck likes it that way. His Dad always did that so it's what he knows I guess. I think it's just plain rude! She has 3 girls so my house will be full of noise today, I'm sure!

I'm not going to church today because I didn't get the lasagna made yesterday. Came home late from the meet and I made pizza and we watched TV till bed. So, I have to make the lasagna this morning and through the cake together.

BTW, Candy, your kitchen looks FABULOUS!!!! Man, I wish I had your kitchen!! I remember what it did look like and this one is just GORGEOUS!!!!! So worth every penny!!

Frustrating!

Chuck's brother Dave has been busting his butt trying to get out the big order Chuck got for wood all week. He's new at this and isnt' very fast. He didn't get it all done but they were running out of material so yesterday the dropped off what they had done and were going to work on the rest of the order next week. Well, when they dropped it off the company said, hey this will do for now we'll call you when we get low again. We lost $3,600.00 because of that. They have done that before when Chuck took in less then what they asked for. They will be fine for about 6 weeks so that just totally screwed us. We are behind in everything and this was going to help us not lose our stuff. Chuck was so mad and I'm just frustrated.

CJ is home sick today. Yesterday he had a stomache ache and a headache and his back hurts. He didn't go to gymnastics last night, he went right to bed with his computer after school and stayed there all night. This morning I got him up and he was still sick so I just kept him home. I sure hope he doesn't have the flu which seems to be going around at the school.

Another Wednesday

Not much really to say. Just thought I'd check in. Nothing special is going on or has. Kids are doing there same old stuff and I'm driving them here and there. Chuck and his brother Dave are trying very hard to get an order done up by tomorrow so that we can get some money in. I got my money from the APL so that was nice. Got to pay my cell phone bill and some other stuff. We haven't heard yet if we all qualify for Medical from the state yet. I hope we all do, that would help out so much! We did get help with food stamps right away so we are at least eating!

Chuck and I saw a counselor today about Joe. We are worried about him and his anger and mouthy-ness. She thinks he may just have a form of ADD but not the hyper kind. So, we filled out a paper and we are having him and one of his teachers fill one out too. He has told me that he has a VERY hard time paying attention in class and he is extremely forgetful to the point of crying and thinking badly about himself for it. So, once the papers are filled out we will go from there. Joe will be seeing the counselor too, and I really hope it helps because he hasn't been doing very well emotionally, poor kid! But if this were to help I bet he would feel much better. CJ did, he could finally focus and he realized that he really wasn't dumb that he really was smart he just had a hard time with focusing. We should know more next week.

Weekend Stuff

CJ came home about 5:30pm today. Said he had a great time and wished he could go again next weekend! LOL! He'll have to wait a year!

Joe came home around 2pm. He stayed the night with his friend Harding. He did well at his swim meet yesterday. He didn't sleep much so I bet he'll sleep in tomorrow. No school since it's Martin Luther King Jr. day.

I didn't do much today. I worked on my blogs and then I made two double batches of cookies. I made peanut butter chocolate chip and just peanut butter. Joe doesn't like chocolate so I usually end up making both kinds. House smells really good though!

OH, our water came on at 7:50am this morning!! YEAH!!! We spent about $3o in gas to run the turbo heater for 2 days! I can't believe it took that long to get our water back! I must remember to turn on the faucet when it goes below 20 degrees! I had a PILE of dishes to do and it took me over 40 minutes to get them all done too. Now I am doing them again but at least when I go to bed my house will be clean and the toilet will be flushed!! LOL!!

The neighbor came by and plowed our driveway. Kevin is so nice, he does ours every time it needs it. We used to do his for about 3 years so now he is doing ours.

Well, I think that is about it. I don't really go anywhere and I really don't do much but work on my blogs so not much to chat about.