Has anyone noticed...

the increase of door to door salesmen, lately? Well, I HAVE and I am ready to punch the next one square in the face!

This is not without reason, mind you. A couple of weeks ago I had one guy claiming to work for a carpet cleaning service, who wanted to clean one area for free so we'd recommend him to friends. At the time, I was excited because my family room carpet was in great need of being cleaned, and what's better than FREE?

So, about 20 minutes later the man shows up...with other people & boxes. 20 minutes later...the man is putting together a kirby vacuum & carpet cleaner. This man was selling a friggin' vacuum! No ordinary vacuum, mind you, a $2500.00 vacuum!! Of course we could make payments of $25 or $50/ month payments if we wanted to (for the next 5 years). Two and a half hours later this man was still in my house! His entire sales pitch was to vacuum up dirt, and ask me 'how I could let my children live in this kind of filth', 'don't you care about your children & their health?' 'You must NOT care about your children', etc. After two hours, I started agreeing with him, 'I must not care.' 'If caring equals paying a bunch of money that I don't have...I guess I don't', etc. Once we passed the hour & a half point, I didn't really care what I had to say...I was gonna get my carpet cleaned! By the end, the guy realizes I'm not buying his crap, and he says 'well, if you're not gonna buy the vacuum, can you give me some of the dinner you made for your family?' I was so desperate to get this guy OUT OF MY HOUSE...I DID it! I made up a plate of food for this guy - just to get him out!

Oh, and I forgot to mention the best part of this story...while I am putting up with the guy that would never shut up & leave my house - my dad was sending suicide texts to me & my brothers. Yes, in the middle of all of this, I am running in & out of the room, so that I can deal with my verbally abusive & CRAZY father, my brothers who are freaking out, and my husband & myself!! It was truly a HELL of a night!

Seriously, the whole sales tactic of manipulating a person into buying the thing one is selling, makes me CRAZY! I had a home security system guy try to sell me security alarms & crap in the same way: 'you must not care about your children's safety', 'Are you just going to wait for something bad to happen before you protect yourself?'. I was LITERALLY answering 'YES' to all of his questions. 'You must not care about your children's safety' (yeah I guess I don't...seriously??) Thankfully, the guy gave up a lot quicker than the first guy.

I get that it's a tough economy, and you gotta do what you gotta do, but seriously - it'd be more effective just hitting your head against a wall!

A sad blog

I was talking to my mom today. I told her that I'd love to have my aunt Diane come out for a visit in the fall with her (my mom), just for fun. We spent a couple of days with her in Iowa when we were there a month ago, and it was so fun! She LOVES the kids, and they love her.

A little background on my Aunt: she no longer has kids of her own. She & her husband had a son named Dustin. He was the joy of their life! They were also pregnant, but lost their other baby boy just short of him being born. It was such a terrible time. They were great parents. Eventually, they were at peace with things, knowing that they had Dustin was such a comfort.

Dustin was 7 years old when they were driving on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in the midwest. The 3 of them were all together, and had no idea there was a tornado warning in effect. The tornado ran right into them & destroyed the van and their life as they knew it. Dustin was killed in that terrible storm. It was the worst thing I have ever experienced. I won't go into further details, because they are truly what nightmares are made of for any parent. Dustin would have just graduated from High School in June.

All of that background, is to preface this conversation that my mom was relaying to me. She was telling me that in her last conversation with my Aunt Diane, she was crying and talking about how fun it was to be with my kids. She then went on to say how desperately she wished she could have kids of her own to experience that with. As soon as my mom said that I burst into tears...my heart aches for my aunt. I SO wish that she could have that. It's these types of things that I just don't understand. I don't understand WHY. Why this happened, where God is in all of it, and just how deeply unfair it is.

It also makes me want to be there for her even more, for her to know how important she is to me & my kids. I'm just so damn far away! I hate these parts of living so far away.

So, I cry, and I pray. I don't know what else to do.

Wow, wow, wow

It has been WAY too long! It's summer & we have been busy.

Quick update stuff:

I took a major road trip with the kids to Iowa & MN for a visit with my family. It consists of 2 days of driving each way. It. was. a. lot! I was so happy to have fit it in, because I was able to see my family, and many of my great friends from way-back!

On the way there we almost ran out of gas in the middle of Wyoming at 11pm. SCARY! Thankfully, we avoided all of the deer along the way too...there are SO many! At one point, late at night, I turned on my brights & instantly saw 5 deer right on the side of the road by my car! I about had a heart attack! The more midwest you get, the more deer there are too (or so it seems). My mom was known as the 'deer hunter' with her car for a period of years. Seriously, she hit SO many deer! Thankfully, that gift was NOT passed down. Phew!

On the way home, I missed one of my very best friend's birth of her first baby. It was so sad. I was only 5 hours away too. I cried on & off for a few hours, then got over it since there was NOTHING I could do about it. I was kicking myself that I didn't drive all night, but then reality set in that it's better that we took our time & are still alive. :-)

The baby is beautiful! We went home to hug Aaron & then we all set off for the hospital!

We took a while to recover from our big trip, and have YET to clean out the car from it...yikes!

It's wonderful to be home, we all really missed Aaron, and I'm happy to report that he was a miserable mess while we were gone too ;-). Is it terrible that it makes me happy that he had such a hard time? Oh well. He did some fun things though, so don't feel too bad for him.

Aaron taught summer school this summer (hence the not coming with us part). We tried to remind him that he was doing it for Mickey! We are saving the money he made, and funding our Disneyland trip with it in December...yay!! Thankfully, he is done now, and we can do a few fun things in the area!

We all went to greenbluff to pick raspberries too! I then made tons of jam that is so super delicious! Love it!

My brother & his girlfriend came for a visit, which was fun! We enjoyed getting to know her and just spend time with them. We had some adventures along the way as well! We attempted to float down the river. I say attempted, because it was a LOT of work! The floating part was GREAT! It just took so darn long to get ready for the floating, that we ended up skipping a step (parking a car at the end destination). We thought that we could just float a bit & then make our way back to the starting point...easy, right?!

Wrong! We LOVED the floating part. We even bought an inflatable boat for the kids to be in! But between the current, the mossy (slippery) rocks, and not wearing shoes...we were kind of screwed. We tried to walk back on the dry rocks on the sides of the river, but they were BLAZING hot & we burned our feet! I finally ended up pulling the kids in the boat back up to the starting point along the edge of the river...grabbing rocks & pulling us up, finding another rock & pulling us up. Between the current & trying to find the right kind of rocks, it was a bit of an adventure! An hour or so later, I finally made it back, but BOY were my arms & shoulders tired! No workout required after THAT! We DO want to try it again, but the 2 tips I have learned are: wear shoes (not flip flops), and have a car at both the beginning & the end points! It would have been heavenly if we'd have done that! Really!!

Anyways, wow...I'm tired just thinking about all of that, but I'm back, and will hopefully be a little more consistent in the blogging now :-)