My Christmas shopping is all done!!! YAY!

I have one home-made gift to finish! YAY!

The twelve days of Christmas started today and we got it all taken care of!

I don't think we have ever been so on top of Christmas!

Bring it on!

a Non-Existence

It's been three years since we started our journey here in our little town.

Three years.

Three years!!!

We've lived in a LOT of different places, and let me tell you that after two years I had already made best friends for life.

So what the heck?

I know I say it a lot on here, but you have no idea what it's like!

Also, I had a few run-ins this week with people from my ward, and they were not good ones.

I feel just as new today as I did when we moved here.

and I'm lonely for a friend.

This week the checker at the store tried to talk to Will and got a sad frowny face from him. She started laughing and said "He has a grumpy face just like his mom!!" and then she said it over and over LOUDLY, telling the other checkers and shoppers. Sounds dumb, but I've always tried to be super happy and upbeat when I go in there. Definitely not grumpy. It's dumb, but yeah, it wasn't the right time to say it to me because I'm already feeling uber sensitive about having no friends. It hurt my feelings.

Then there was the facebook incident which shall remain detail-less.

Then there was the cleaning the church fiasco in which Trevor and I were supposed to head the Saturday cleaning, except no one told us and we got a text at 9:30 Friday night asking what time we were meeting the next morning. The problem was that we had already booked ourselves to go to Logan's robotic competition all day Saturday!!! So Trevor called the Bishop who told us "it's been in the bulletin". Gee thanks. Then Trevor called and left a message with the guy in charge, since he didn't answer, and I texted the person back who had texted us in the first place. This is a lady in the ward who I think might possibly be nice and a person to get close to. So I thought I'd be honest and real with her because I've always thought that being real helps to endear people to you. I said something about how we've already promised to go to this thing in the morning, and I feel like a loser because I didn't know we were in charge and how we've been late for church and missed the bulletin, so we had no idea, and how I was sorry to leave her in the lurch, but we called the guy in charge to let him know. And here's the response I got back: "Can I get his number?" (referring to the guy in charge). Nothing else. No joke. a one line response, completely ignoring anything else I said.

I know it doesn't sound like much, but can you understand just a little bit what it's like to live in the emotionless, friendless world that I live in here?

And then there was today's incident which was really just me being sensitive, but I asked a girl if she would be willing to trade babysitting with me while I went to a photo shoot next week. I told her that I could trade her pictures, or cards or anything photo related. She messaged me back telling me she didn't want anything I had to trade, but I could donate money to the school. But you guys, THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE TRADE!!!! I DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY!!! And her not wanting anything I have to offer is exactly what is wrong with the people here. No one wants anything I have to offer. Not my friendship, not my service, not my photos... nothing!

It's like I don't exist.

Did I ever tell you...

I can't remember if I ever told you all about Logan's other doctor appointment. I took him to our family doc to have his ears assessed. This was two days after the ear pain incident.

If I already told this story, just skip this post. I honestly can't remember and my brain has left the building for the month. It's on vacation.

So the doc looked in both his ears and scraped and cleaned all the wax out that she could.  Logan said his ears have never felt cleaner. Gross. The right ear had a ton of wax, while the left ear had just a bit, but not much. The left ear is the one with hearing loss.

The right ear was swollen and red, while the left ear was not swollen, but maybe just a hint of red. The left ear drum had a white spot on it, the right ear had no spot.

The spot could be a number of things,  but more than likely an old scar from an old illness, which scars cause hearing loss.

I know someone out there is reading this and laughing because I am butchering the explanation of this. Sorry. Lol. This visit was like two weeks ago, and remember that my brain went on vacation, so.....

We received a referral to an ENT and a round of antibiotics. Meanwhile Logan is using an Audio Trainer at school. This is basically a personal microphone system that his teacher wears while she is teaching, and he wears ear buds set up to receive the signal from her mic. It is helping so much already! It's so much easier to concentrate when you can hear what's going on.

This story is just beginning, I'm sure. More on this later.

Glasses

Sooooo, are you still waiting for that post on Logan? Oh yeah, okay. Sorry.

Last week we had parent teacher conferences. Sami got all A's. Phoebe got two B's and the rest A's. Both of their teachers were awesome and spoke highly of them. It was great.

Logan's conference went as expected.  It was good. We went in and had a talk about his missing homework and blah blah about how he scores so high on the placement tests and she doesn't see what we see about dyslexia . And then Trevor went on and on about what dyslexia is. How it affects him; how having dyslexia does not mean you are stupid. Blah blah. It was great. She was dumbfounded in a good way. I really wanted Trevor to explain better than I could to her about what we see and what it means.

And we had gone to the eye doctor earlier in the day for dyslexia screening. The funny thing is that when I made the appointment, I had asked for dyslexia screening, but when we got there and were in the room with the doctor, he told me they didn't do dyslexia screening. Lol. Okay then. Why am I here, right? But in the end we ordered a pair of glasses for Logan.

So funny thing on this journey to find out if Logan is dyslexic, we have so far found out that he is deaf and blind, but still have no idea about the dyslexia.  Haha!

A million things to do on a Tuesday

I noticed it has been a while, and I don't have time right now. So until I do, enjoy this post from the end of November that I forgot to publish.

When I have so much to do that it starts to get tangled in a knot in my head, I make a list. This morning's list was long:

Paint stucco: today!
Paint table and chairs for craft show
Find a desk or build a desk for craft show
Finish set for craft show
Photos for craft show
Build a child size bench: stain rustic
Batting and stars
Order card samples
Print and bind card catalog
Laundry
Change sheets
Christmas gifts
Finish photo shoots #1-4
Clean the house

Normally the list is like this: finish photo shoot and clean the house.

This time of the year is not my favorite. We over book ourselves and turn into a frenzied mess. If you noticed above, I'm doing a craft show this year. The circumstances of how it came about make me want to kick and scream, but it's truly not relevant for you to know the details. As I have said before, I wish people would think about how their actions or words affect others.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of being generous in thought and mind with everyone who enters my life. It's important to me that everyone is given as much as I can give. A lot of the time this backfires. This is the part I've been thinking on. If my intentions are good, and I've sacrificed more than I should have, then why does it belly flop?

I think I have expectations to be appreciated, given that I have sacrificed so much to help people out. I know I'm talking around the issue here, but I just can't be specific... just try to follow....

Anyway, I really do feel sad after I serve someone. I don't think it's normal, and I don't know how to change my thinking. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I end up making the recipient feel angry or upset with me because I didn't meet their expectations fully or quickly. But the truth is that the recipient had completely unrealistic expectations of me, given that I was the one choosing to serve them, even though they felt that they "deserved" my service.

Did you follow all of that? Meh. It was probably not followable. Sorry.

So yeah. My problem. It seems stupid, but I cry a lot about it.

And hey you! Yeah, you! You probably think I'm talking about you, right? Well you are probably wrong. Or maybe you are right. This does happen over and over and over. Lol

Anyway, as I said before, it's something I feel very emotional about and yes cry about. I love helping and serving. Love it. But not when it's expected and complained about.

The end.