Lately in Windom (March 2019)

It's like somehow Wayfair knows that this would appeal to me...

It's fun having a big brother who can READ!

This kid! Gosh, I love him and his little tiny voice and teeny tiny little fingers.

These two leave me in stitches - figuratively, although surprisingly not literally...::knock on wood::

It's hard to contain the excitement of this kid getting to go to school! He only goes once a week on Tuesday late afternoons, but he takes his "pagpack" every day to daycare in anticipation. It is so flippin' adorable!

I just really can't handle how adorable he is!

I've been so torn with how I feel about our fence. The guys did an excellent job - truly - but it's hard to have cut our backyard SO much shorter than it used to at least appear to be. We had a 10ft easement on the back that we could only have built on if we had gone to a public hearing and had signatures from everyone in our neighborhood. I wasn't really feeling up to the challenge at the time, if I'm being honest. But this view? Gorgeous!

There's a whole blog post surrounding this particular picture from Ryan's birthday celebration with Daddy. Let's just say that some days I'm beyond overwhelmed.

Sometimes it gets a little weird in our house...

I think most people see me all perky and happy and chatty and assume that I'm just killin' it over here. The reality is, I wake up every morning at 5am to start my day and look and feel like this. This life right now is hard. And honestly, you don't even see how dark the circles are here. I'm weary. I'm tired. I tend to wake up puffy from the mixture of allergies, poor sleep, sinus issues, and tears that come in waves. It doesn't seem to take long to "fix" it all for the day ahead with a little makeup, fixing up my hair and having some coffee and water, but it starts here. I'd like to call it "caregiver" face: The face of someone who shoulders all the responsibility for all the people and things and seldom has time for themselves. Someone who considers sleep a luxury and can never get enough of it.

This little guy has been, by FAR, my most clingy child. He was the one who I had to sit with in the church nursery with every week for about 4 months because his separation anxiety was THAT bad. Sometimes it's really sweet, but not always.

I adore this sweater on this guy. And his glasses! He looks so handsome, and SO studious!

The day of his 3rd birthday, he actually fell asleep in my arms in the chair in the living room. I wasted his entire nap time just snuggling him ♥

One of my very favorite soups ever! My friend Mandy brought it over when Kendrick was born, and I've made it multiple times each winter since then. It's called Country Chicken Chowder, and I LOVE it!!

Sometimes I get a little wild and crazy and take them all out somewhere by myself. Don't let this picture fool you - it is NOT easy.

That little card right there absolutely makes me giggle every single time we press the button. It sings, "Cake, cake, cake let there be cake, cake, cake, it's your birthday, it's time to celebrate. You're amazing and lots of fun, we celebrate with icing and candles on top. Cake, cake, cake, let there be cake, cake, cake it's your birthday it's time to celebrate". I've got to locate the video of it playing.

This is the face of THREE!!

"Cheese!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I wouldn't say it was really a "nice" day, per se, but we all needed some fresh air, so we got out there!

ENT Appointment Day in Mankato! The boys and I had breakfast at Perkins, then went over to our appointments. We didn't get to visit Daddy for too long after that, but we stopped for a short bit.

After our short visit with Daddy, we went over to go sign the lease for Mark's new facility!





Taking two littles to the Dr. is always a fun time.

Seriously. Some days it's all I can do make it home with all the kids and fall into my bed for a few minutes. And in the midst of that complete, sheer exhaustion...

Let's just say that the last half of March was not my favorite by a LONG shot.

It ended up taking out all the carpet in the lower level main area as well as all of Kinsley's bedroom.
I spent HOURS getting the carpet vacc'd (thanks a TON to Jill, Jared and their boys for helping stabilize the landscaping and loaning me their wet/dry vac to get all that water up), tearing it out, and hauling it to the dump. So.much.work.

This big three year old was too old to be in the nursery, so he finally got to start going to Sunday School with his big brothers!

Roxy has been a favorite for years with my boys! She is in the nursery during the Sunday School hour for the little kiddos.

This also meant that it was time to begin having all 3 of my boys in the service together with me. Church is EXHAUSTING much of the time anymore.

Sometimes it's just a freaking hot mess around here! We're getting ready to leave the house to go for a walk to the church parking lot to ride bikes on a "warm" day. I ask if Ryan needs to try the potty before.
He says no. We get there. The church is even open, and he walks over to the corner and pees his pants.
Fortunately, I happened to have an extra pair of sissy's pants lol Let's not even talk about his nose right now.

Every single day I thank Jesus for this sweet little girl. He knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he brought her into our lives. I remember so vividly sitting at the traffic light after shopping with Kendrick to wait to drive to HyVee to pick up milk and a pregnancy test. I remember saying out loud to the Lord, "if this is what I think it is, I will accept it as good, but could you PLEASE make it a girl this time." And yet...as the line darkened, heavy, sad tears rolled down my face. Because I knew things were about to get about tenfold more complicated, and I did not feel strong enough.

I don't even want to begin to think about how much work this was.

One thing many of you don't know about me is that I play piano. In fact, I used to be pretty good back in the day. I LOVE playing. It calms me tremendously. This is the piano that my dad bought my Mom when they were first married. I need to get it tuned badly and fixed up a bit (a few sticky keys), but I really, truly miss playing.

This kid had a short tummy bug and had to stay home from school and daycare this particular day. He was feeling really well, but it's a requirement for him to stay home (while I worked from home), so we opted to go out for a walk over my lunch break.

This girl is so freaking sassy I can't hardly stand it lol

I bought these a year ago on my trip to Vancouver in May 2018. It's hard for me to believe that a year has gone so quickly and that they fit her this year!

This kid! We're out for a walk, Kinsley starts splashing in a puddle and i want to make sure she doesn't fall in, so I go tend to her, then turn around and find that he took his pants off because he peed in them lol

After getting all the carpet torn out, which built my biceps pretty good (haha), I picked out some new flooring! I decided to go with vinyl planks that look like hardwood. I had to prep the floor still, but decided to put a little down to see how it would look! I'm a BIG fan!!

Landscaping in progress! This was a BIG project!

Finally, after almost a whole year of holding onto this giant bouncy horse we picked up on city clean up last year, we parted ways. We haven't missed it even a tiny bit yet, but we have a WHOLE lot of space left now!

This is the face of a tremendously happy man who got some wings! He always orders the same thing (a small order of regular wings with mild sauce and ranch), and has ever since I've known him.

So thankful for our moving crew, getting Mark from his old facility to his new one in just a few hours' time.

God's promises really are good.

Sometimes I just feel pretty and like I've got my stuff together, and on those mornings, I feel like a selfie is in order.

We're going to have a cement pad poured back here so we can just stop dealing with all this stupid paver junk.
I cannot wait!!

This little lady is going to be SO TALL when she gets older. It slays me!

2017 Family Video :: July to September

This was a really tough one for me, and I had to break the last half of the year into two parts because there was just SO MUCH to cover. I used to be able to do one video of this length for the entire year, but well...instead of 1 or 2 kids, we have 4, and life is just a lot more complicated, so...here truly begins the documentation of the actual decline...in scrapbook and video form.

This was a hard section for me. It took me about a year to be able to even process all that has happened. You'll notice SIGNIFICANTLY less Mark in these than in the previous years' videos, and that's on account of the FTD. There is one short clip of him laying in bed in a dark room, and well...for these three months, that's the vast majority of what he did.

This video also highlights the sharp decline of my Mama, and that is also hard. August and September are the only two months of this video that I was able to see her, because we spent so much of July and early August waiting for Kinsley to come.

It's long: 35 minutes long. If you have the time, I think you might enjoy it, but in fair warning it's very long. Since I actually do these for myself and my family, I'm not apologizing for that ;)

Overwhelmed with Complacency

I'm sure part of it is the never-ending weather, but it dawned on me as I was putting the kids to bed tonight that we didn't talk to Mark at ALL today; not even once. If I'm being honest, I don't want to sometimes. Seeing him and talking to him sometimes drives home to me just how much he isn't anymore. I try to love what's left, but some days that's easier than others. If I could have the weary, exhausted just-got-home-from-work-and-we-didn't-sleep-great-because #kids husband from even just a few years ago before he got sick, I'd take that forever.

But this man that we went to visit last night? It's not him. And this other man, I am struggling more and more to want to see him. I still feel the depths of love for him, but last night he was tired and worn and could barely take off his cpap mask at 6pm to join us to celebrate our soon-to-be 3 year old with cupcakes and take a picture.

In fairness, it's not like I could give him any sort of warning that we were coming. I had intended to, but by the time I got to St. James (about halfway) and was going to try, his phone was off. And when we got to town, since I had devised this whole plan with about 45 minutes to prepare, we had to stop to pick up supper and cake (although I had presents and a card already). And, well, hitting the grocery store with 4 small children in tow who are hungry and cranky and angry because I hadn't charged their tablets, but the toddler broke the charger in the van the last time we went, so we couldn't charge them in the van on the way...not really the way I had hoped to spend my Friday night. This, after hearing them whine incessantly the ENTIRE way up about how they couldn't play their tablets (which, by the way, can we SERIOUSLY be done with winter soon? SERIOUSLY?!)

I literally had to physically pull Mark out of bed for it, and bribe him with hickory smoked turkey sticks and fried chicken (we hadn't eaten yet, afterall) just to get him to sit still for a picture with cupcakes and the family, and then another in the chair, since he's more comfortable there. It was 6pm.

It made me wonder: What's the point? I know he loves his kids and he misses us, but it's so hard, especially with this weather. I feel like I'm torn in a thousand different directions, and then I go out of my way to try to make it a special night for my little guy, and to also appease Mark, who called the day prior telling me he missed me and the kids and when were we coming next. But then, I can't make it there early enough to make a difference on a weeknight, as he's half ready for bed, but then we get ice and slush and snow and now high winds on the weekend, so I try, and I step it up and go for it, and it's a hot mess.

In fairness, it was better than the last time I did the same thing: This time we didn't get locked out of his apartment without my coat, which had the apartment keys in it AND the keys to the van while simultaneously having all 4 of my over-tired children roaming the halls of the assisted living facility at bedtime for the residents. This time I just chased around the toddlers who couldn't sit still (no high chairs or booster seats, after all) with brightly-colored cupcakes that got all over all the places both on their bodies and the (thankfully hard-surface) furniture.

I scarfed down the midwest grocery store sushi I had picked up as a "treat" for myself in short spurts an hour into our visit, after picking up what felt like significantly more chicken bones than I had purchased from the deli, because apparently all bets are off when my kids are anywhere but home.

I'm considering it a #win because they all stayed in the apartment until I had all the things packed up and them all in their jammies and I didn't have to chase anyone down the hallway or worry about them running out in traffic.

I still haven't accepted that I can't handle all the kids AND him. I still haven't accepted that my 5 and 7 year olds aren't as mature as I'd like them to be, and that they won't follow directions as well as I'd like them to.

I go through these phases where I have help and more help and more help and then life gets busy and it falls away, and the enormity of my responsibilities overwhelms me and I just can't process it all.

I am surrounded on all sides by the man he was: I see it in my kids in some of their facial expressions. I see it in photos in "junk" piles throughout the house. I hear it in songs; even the ones that he may or may not have ever heard, but that speak to me. And when I feel like I've grieved the loss enough, another wave sweeps me off my feet again. I feel like I'm making "progress" through this grief struggle, however, as I don't stay there as long. But this winter? It's making me feel significantly more complacent than a year or even two years ago. I know it's part of the healing process to remind myself of what life was like before it all, but a bigger part of me wants to just leave it there and not be reminded of what the "now" is. I want to stay in that place where the memories were good, and not like they were last night.

Last night was just a whole huge pile of "my hands are too full and I'm in way over my head, and I feel like I'm inconveniencing the one person I've been moving heaven and earth for by bringing his own children to visit him just like he asked for."

Last night was rubbing a Vanicream/Aquaphor mixture all over Mark's dry arms and elbows and back and feet, because he doesn't realize that he should do something beyond just itch it. Last night was me clipping his toenails because he doesn't realize that that's something he should be doing, and then accidentally clipping the one toenail too short because the kids distracted me and it bleeding, and having to make the questionable judgement call (considering we had toddlers on the loose with cupcakes and fried chicken) to leave the kids in the apartment and run down the hallway to ask the aides if they happened to have a band aid or two for his poor toe. Because apparently I'm not at #expert level yet with 4 little kids to have them on hand in my purse. Last night was cleaning yet another #2 accident for my 5.5 year old while the 18 month old is grabbing the toilet plunger from the corner and trying to plunge the toilet water.

I look around at my family, and it's just hard some days. I know the weather is a major contributing factor, but I'm just weary, and it makes me feel complacent. It's hard to remember what it feels like to smile from deep down within my soul.


I vividly remember a walk Mark and I took when we had just the older two. It was about 30 minutes before sunset, also known as "golden hour", and we were walking down the road just before the horse ranch we live near, the boys in the double stroller, and Mark and I holding hands, and we both just looked at each other, and I remember vividly saying, "I don't know what we did to deserve a life this good. I just don't feel like I've been that great a person that I deserve it." And I remember Mark looking at me and saying that he felt the same way.

Of course, the answer to that is that we didn't deserve that life, nor do we deserve the one we have now: I think it's equally as unfair to have an excellent life as it is to have a deplorable one. But still, it'd be nice to be back to a place where I feel as complete as I did at that point. The hardest part for me to accept in all of this is that I probably won't feel that way again. Even if I were to remarry 10 years down the road, there will still always be an enormous piece of me that is missing, and that poor soul wouldn't be able to ever have my whole heart. It's hard to envision the divide that has taken place separating my entire life. There will always and forevermore be a "before FTD" and "after FTD" marker in my life that I can't merge together. But while the "after FTD" certainly does still contain a lot of joy, happiness and progress, it is all most definitely at the expense of a vast array of grief, a whole lot of settling for "less than" and a whole lot of exhaustion.