Swimming in chaos

I'm trying to keep my head above water, but sometimes I can feel myself about to be pulled under, overwhelmed by the wave that is my life. When I find myself feeling overwhelmed, I try to remind myself that many people live this way too and manage. That I, we, are very lucky for all we do have. I have to admit sometimes that is enough to push it back for a short period, but many times it's not much comfort. I have this cycle where I feel completely overwhelmed then after a meltdown, or a period of depression, I will psych myself up that things are going to be ok and that I can figure all this out. However, no matter how much I keep trudging through I find myself at the beginning of the cycle once again. I have so many "irons in the fire" as they say that I never really seem to get very far without giving up some thing like sleep or down time. I'm still trying to get through this schooling. I've bought a 4 month extension and I'm afraid I'll have to buy another one before I'm actually done. I'm trying to lose weight-still-which has been it's own cycle in itself. I have 4 kids. 3 teens with busy social lives & sports that has me doing a lot of running, spending a bunch of money, and trying to keep up on them & what's going on. I have a 2 yr old who is with me 24/7 who has speech delays. So besides the usual 2 yr old stuff we also have weekly speech appts, monthly counselor sessions, and a monthly play date to help his social growth. I can't seem to find time for losing weight, schooling, my kids, cleaning house, yard work, dogs, paying the bills, marriage time, and some free time. Now basketball season is coming in & the holidays and it's going to get crazier. My husband, god love him, has so many things of his own to do so I'm still left with most of this. My husband has work, lately he's been working tons of OT, and when he's not working he's got a list of home & car repairs to take care of, and of course try to spend sometime with the 4 kids and me and get his own free time. If I manage to get my weight loss workouts in then I don't get as much school time or cleaning in. If I work on school more then my workouts get skipped and my 2 yr old is more on his own & not getting what he needs from me. My teens help out quite a bit. They feed the animals, take care of the trash daily, help wash dishes, sweeping, laundry, babysitting the 2 yr old, cleaning their own bathroom & taking care of their own rooms and such. Even if I do figure out a somewhat decent schedule to get through all of it something always gets in the way. Appts, unexpected practices/games, holidays, a cranky 2 yr old going through changes, husband's schedule changing, issues with kids that have to be dealt with, unexpected changes in the schedule of visitation with their father and so on. We need me to work b/c right now we can only survive with what we have b/c of hubby's OT, without it we'd have to give up cell phones, cable and any thing fun at all for the family. Some where something has to give, but I can't decide what it should be: more income? weight loss? being involved with my kids? clean dishes & clothes? the kids give up their sports? what little couple married time we have? my relax time? none of that sounds like something I can or should give up. Well off to go swimming in the chaos again.

Life Changes: My goal

I started Life Changes journals a few years ago when I was trying to lose weight. I haven't stopped trying to lose weight, but I have stopped writing my life changes journals. Today I decided to start them up again. When I was writing those I seemed to stick to my goals more.

My goal right now is to walk 10,000 steps a day. Whether I work out or not I know if I walk 10,000 steps a day I'll be heading to a weight loss. In the course of a normal day without exercising and without trying to get in my steps I might only walk 2,000 steps. This is how I know getting 10,000/day in will get me in the right direction. I'm having a hard time getting up in the morning to exercise regularly right now. That's why I decided to just focus on the steps first. When I get that down then I'll add another goal.

Sports are my life

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EditThe soccer momby Richelle Fair on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 9:26am
You know that's the one sport my family doesn't have! no I'm not the soccer mom, but isn't that a common title for us stay-at-home moms with kids in sports? At least it's the only term I've ever heard for the mom of sports kids. I'm just a sports mom, too many different sports in our family to be called just one thing. We have cheerleading, basketball, football, cross country, baseball & track. I love that my kids are active and involved in sports. I love watching them play and participate. I love the pictures on my wall and talking to the other parents at the sports. What I don't love is how it seems to have taken over my life. I don't love the choking feeling of being ruled by practices, games, and the money they all need. As much as I love it all I hate that sometimes I feel trapped by the same sports. We rarely have anytime anymore that all 6 of us are even in the house together let alone spending any time together. There is some sporting thing going on every day of the week. Usually 2 or 3 a day really. I find myself getting so frustrated with the constant in and out of the house. The money that is spent on it, to the point where that is all of our "extra" money.This year Travis is coaching football so I've lost him 3 nights a week too on top of his OT. One night my oldest came home and asked me what was for dinner tomorrow night. I told him I didn't know yet. He then proceeded to tell me that I should fix spaghetti b/c it would be good for him for the race on Saturday. I told him no I wasn't fixing spaghetti just for that. He got a little upset saying his coach told him he should eat that. At that point I lost it. It was at the end of a busy week because of all these sports and I had just had enough. I started yelling that sports has taken over my life enough as it is. It dictates my days, weeks, free time and money and that it was not about to start dictating what I made for dinner! The truth was I could have fixed spaghetti, we had everything we needed for it, I was just in a bull head moment. I didn't want dinner to become all about the sports too. We all ready eat dinner all at separate times so figuring out what's for dinner is tough enough. Later, of course, I felt bad. Here's a typical week of sports for us:



Monday-CC 4:30-5:30, FB 6-8

Tuesday-CC-4:30-5:30, FB 6-8

Wed-4:30-5:30, Cheer 7-8:30

Thurs-4:30-5:30, FB 6-8, Cheer 8-9:15

Fri-4:30-5:30

Sat-Cc 9 or 10 am, FB 1 or 3 or 4pm

Sun-baseball practice



When basketball season starts, is the worst time around here. Then we have the boys with BB practice 5 nights a week-at different times, plus my daughter's cheer goes up to 3-4 times a week. Cheerleading is also at a different time b/c everyone is waiting for the gym. We even have two basketball gyms, but one is for the girls and one for the boys. Add in 1-2 games for both highschool and middle school and basketball is the most spoken word out of my mouth for months!



I know this is the point where people have told me to have the kids cut back on their sports. Obviously that's the answer to my problems over it, but it also takes away the joy I get from it. I don't want to take it away from the kids. Cheerleading is the only sport my daughter plays, it's the most expensive and does last almost an entire year minus 2 or 3 weeks, but it's her only sport. Tyler runs cross country, track, and plays basketball. Which one should he give up? My son Daniel plays football, basketball, and baseball. Again which one does he give up? He's a natural at football and baseball. This is his last year for football b/c our school doesn't have it, this is little league. Once it's gone though he's going to replace it with cross country, which would free up an extra practice 2 or 3 nights a week and a game each saturday. It would if my husband and I weren't going to volunteer to help out the football team even after Daniel is done. We want the school to add football to their programs and the only way to do that is to make the little league a success and they need volunteers to do that. We want to see football at our school at least by the time Bryan can play. Basketball is not Daniel's strong sport, but he loves it so much. He smiles the whole time he's on the floor, how can I take that away? Plus I know how important my sports were to me when I was a kid and they only have a few more years left. These are the reasons why I suffer through it all. After Daniel graduates highschool (in 6 short years) things will be slower and I know I'm going to miss watching my kids doing all of this. Sometimes right now though that seems VERY far away lol



I don't want the kids to give up their sports, sometimes though I just need to yell about it! lol

Great Weekend!

I have many things to be grateful for this Monday!



* a great weekend overall!
* My boys doing great at their sports this weekend and having fun doing it! Tyler ran 23:53 this weekend, he's shaved almost 2 minutes off his running time in the past few weeks! I know that isn't easy and I'm proud of him for working hard and achieving it! Daniel is playing much better football these past 2 weeks and you can see the joy and pride on his face now when he comes off the field. He has made a touchdown in each of the last two games. This Saturday he caught lobbed balls that are hard to catch, 1 turned into a touchdown and 1 he made while surrounded by the other team & he had to jump to catch it! His tackles have been great! BTW, the other team was the trojans, so you can imagine the jokes that come out of those games. Especially when the announcer says things like "No. 19 Daniel Montgomery brought down by a pack of trojans" LOL
* Great time with my parents visiting yesterday.
* My husband was able to fix my mom's truck without any hiccups and saved her a bunch of money.
* That my little man didn't turn into Oscar the Grouch yesterday when he had to go all day without a nap & that he slept through the night last night even though he fell asleep at 7pm yesterday evening!

Waste away Wednesday

That's what I should call this day b/c to be honest I just don't have much I can claim that I have accomplished lol



Honestly I don't feel like getting much done today either lol I should probably cook dinner, wash a few dishes and vacuum at the least.



My brain has been so busy the last two days with nonstop thinking about how to work a little from home. LOTS and LOTS of internet searches, a lot of time and way too much reading! I have turned up a few possible leads for part time pay, but I'm waiting to hear what they thought of my application. This has become a big issue for me lately. Once again school has started along with the sports and we are broke week after week. With lunches, school fees, paying to get in and watch my kids at their sports, driving to the sports, sending money for them to eat on away games and so on, it's eating up all of our extra money and extra time. I'm going to school to get a certificate in Medical Transcription, but that is more and more looking like it maybe awhile before i can use it for a job if ever. I started the schooling b/c a relative of my step-mom's married a woman who worked as a Medical Transcriptionist. She had been doing it for 8 yrs and needed more workers, so that was a possibility of a job. Not anymore though since they are all ready divorced less than a year later. The other problem I'm running into is that everywhere you look companies want you to have 2 yrs experience as a transcriptionist. Now my question is if that's all anyone wants how are you supposed to ever get experience doing it? So I'm looking for an internship, but we all know that is not going to pay well or have great hours. I'll take it though, but I've heard those are few and hard to find. I've considered day care again, but I keep talking myself out of it. For several reasons like how would I run the kids everywhere, Bryan's speech appts that I still have to sit in on and now my daughter will be getting braces in Nov. That means more dental visits on a regular basis and we have to drive an hour to the dentist just to get it covered by insurance. So it would not be a good fit. A friend of mine has been selling her craft stuff on Etsy.com so I'm looking into doing that with the crafts that I make as christmas gifts. I know I won't have an income but if I could get some extra money here and there that would help some. I've applied to get Bryan into early head start preschool. He's 3rd inline on the waiting list for a slot. IF he gets in then I'm going to start applying to some call center jobs that I can do from home, definitely not my first choice but I'm pretty limited on what i can do.



Keep your fingers crossed that my hubby can get on at the factory where my dad works here soon. If he does that will mean like a $12,000/yr raise in our income. My brother is getting to go work there again which is wonderful for his family. Kind of funny though b/c he's spent the last 2 yrs taking online courses for becoming a web designer or something that he do from home, and now he's getting a job where he'll make to much to probably ever use his degree.



Just have to keep my chin up and have faith that something will work out.

More future concerns

I forgot about the job that might be coming up for hubby. Sometime this Fall/winter there may come a job opportunity for my husband. One that if he was to get the job would be near impossible not to take it. The difference in pay from now to that job is about 18,000/yr. Yeah pretty hard to turn that kind of money down when we have kids heading to college in a few short years and need a larger house. That's more than I could make if I go to work. The down side is that he'll have to work M-F 2nd shift for possibly the next 10 yrs or more. It could be a little less but it will be many years of 2nd shift before he has a chance to move to 1st. It's just the way the company works. It means he'd only see the older kids every other weekend except when school's out and that's a lot to give up. It also means in 3 yrs when Bryan goes to school full time he'd only get to see him on the weekends too. I probably wouldn't go to work if he took this job because I'll have to be free to do all the running for the kids. That is until Bryan would go to school then I could work. At that point we'd be in good shape for helping the kids with college with both of us working and that's important to us. Being together as a family is important too. I know many families who manage with one or more members working second shift. Neither one of us is thrilled at the idea of that, but it's too good of an opportunity for us to pass up really. The reason I'm so sure this job opportunity will come up is that it's for the same place my father works for. He has worked there for 31 yrs so they'll make sure his application gets seen by the review board and with my husbands knowledge and history he's pretty much a sure thing to get offered the job if they have openings. We want to make sure that we're ready for this kind of job before we get to the interview process. As I said though it's very hard to see how we could turn it down. There is the possibility that he'll be laid off once before being a permanent part of the company. That is a little scary, but we plan to save for that possibility and he'll have unemployment until he finds another job if that happens. Usually though once you've been laid off you'll be rehired later when they need more workers and then you're usually set in the company for life if you want. For my husband to make that kind of money where he's at he'd have to become a manager of some sort, which he doesn't want to do, or be there for 10-15 yrs. I hate the idea of us all being separated though. During the weekdays it would be me, hubby & Bryan, week nights all of us but hubby, one weekend the three of us again, the next all 6 of us. I just have to remember that families all of over the world have to do things like this and no matter what our situation could always be worse.

Wondering what will the future bring.....

I've been attending school online since last October, I'm more than halfway done now. Now that it's closer to the time when I will be looking for a job and life is going to take a big change. It has my mind thinking and thinking even though it's still months away and I have no idea who I'm going to work for or what I'm facing. I really wish I could turn it off, but I don't do well with the unknown. I'm such a planner. It's not helping that getting a job is supposed to give you more money right? except that as soon as I start working we will lose our reduced lunch for the kids taking a $150/mo out of my potential income. I'll be self-employed so I'll have to take at least 10% out to save for my taxes at the end of the year. We may lose the kids having the medical card, we will definitely lose it for Bryan which means we have to add him to our insurance. That can only be done in the fall so I either have to do it this fall before i'm working and hope I get a job soon or wait until next fall and he'll have no insurance until next fall if I get a job. That is going to cost us another $150/mo out of my potential income. I may have to put Bryan in full time care, even though I'm working from home. This kind of job I have only so much time to get my work done and return it so I need to be sure I can get it done on time and I can't guarantee that with him home. So there's more cost in the fees & gas. Plus I'm having issues with the whole working from home but sending him to day care! Isn't that the point of working from home? I'm going to try to just send him to a part time preschool to modify the time away from home, gas and fees, but that will only work if I can work when he is home. So with all of this it seems as if I'll be working for no extra money at all. I've been wondering if it's worth it. Working again is going to add a lot of stress to my life specifically. I'll have to work 20-30 hrs a week plus run to appts and practices and games and clean and try to have some fun with my family. I know tons of people do this every day, that's what I keep telling myself that they do it and manage just fine. I just have a hard time seeing it b/c without working I have a hard time getting it all done. There are literally nights that from 3:30 to 9 or 10 I've done nothing but run this kid or that kid. I can't count on Travis b/c his work he has to pull a lot of overtime and it's not always planned. There are many times where he texts me to let me know he has to stay over and he doesn't know for how long. Where he'll work a 12- 15 hr day or more sometimes. I also keep reminding myself that as I get better at my job I'll make more an hour so eventually I'll be bringing home the extra income. I need to work b/c in 3 short years I'll have the first one going off to college, the year after that another one in college, 2 yrs later another one. We will really need my income during that time to help the kids with college. We want to move to a bigger house but we can't do that without some money saved for a down payment. Somehow I've got to put this to the back burner, concentrate on what I can do today and believe that it will all work out when the time comes.