Its Been A Long Time

Well, It has been a long time since I have written anything. Sometimes I think that you have to take a time out and live life in order to get the big picture of what to write about, gets things from a little different perspective. Besides the fact that my son hogs my laptop all the time and I have a hard time using it while he is at school :)
Since I last wrote a lot has happened. It is Christmas time and lots of shopping and present wrapping has been going on.
I still do not have any mice that I have caught and recently got rid of my red healer, Trixie so I now have no animals to keep the mice away. They did manage however to eat the peanut butter off of the traps without getting caught so I think I am going to set more now that I have no animals to worry about and one of my cousins suggested I use some dog food and tie it to the mouse trap so that they can't just drag it away so I suspect I will give this a whirl.
My gas problem in my vehicle appears definitely taken care of so no more worries there other than it is a pain in the butt to have to continue to lock my gas cap which is a royal pain in the butt. Hopefully by Spring we can feel confident in putting the old one back on and see how that goes.
My daughter has her first boyfriend! She wasn't going to tell me as she didn't feel that this was a big deal. I discovered this on Monday of last week as I looked in her backpack only to discover a homemade card that read, "I hope you have a Merry Christmas Hunter this is for you" and there was one of Darein stuffed tiger animals. I asked her who it was for, thinking it was something they were doing with school. She just gave me the look and roller her eyes. I asked her if it was her boyfriend not really believing that but just trying to get out of her who it was. She said, "yes". I thought this was pretty cute and told her that we could get him a real present if she wanted but she said it didn't really matter, it was no big deal. Evidently he had asked her out the Thursday before and on that Friday she had a dance. I asked her if she danced with him but she said no, he wasn't there. She only has one class with him, Art and now that her IEP has taken place she is being pulled out of that class for another class so she has no classes now with him. She doesn't want to talk about it and when I tried to pry over the next few days she stayed tight lipped. I finally had to make a deal with her that I would ask no more questions if she promised to let me know when they break up. She said that she would and then proceeded to roll her eyes as she does quite often :) She went to meet with her new orthodontist earlier this month and they will be working with her plastic surgery team in St. Louis to find out when Darein will be ready for her braces. As of now, she doesn't need to go back until June which will be nice.
Things are the same with Damein as he still stays in his room most of the time and only comes out to eat and go to the bathroom and to ask if he can go somewhere with friends, typical teenager I guess. He got home this evening from our family Christmas event, went to his room and came out 30 minutes later and asked if he could go to a friend's house to hang out. He didn't know what they were going to do and then before he left he grabs his airsoft gun so I am assuming they are going to play airsoft out in this cold nasty rainy weather at 10:00 at night.
Shane is still working as hard as ever and as Christmas draws nearer and he works more and more the stress on our relationship is a bit rough. However, all of our Christmas shopping is done except for 1 gift and a few other small things for the kids which is pretty early for us as we usually end up going shopping on Christmas Eve.
I won $400 at the casino though earlier this month so that helped tremendously with our shopping this year and took quite a bit of stress off. I don't gamble very much at all but absolutely love it and that was the most that I have ever won! I have been having troubles with my stomach lately though and it appears that it is my gallbladder. I finally went to the doctor, had my ultrasound and found out it was negative Friday so I will now wait until next week to see when I get to go for a hida scan so that it will hopefully show that it is my gallbladder and I can get it removed. I am hoping to get it done this month as after the holidays things pick up tremendously around our house. I have a feeling it will be January before I get in though which is fine as long as it is early in the month.
Darein goes January 4th to meet her GI specialist from Kansas City who does outpatient clinics here in Springfield. I am assuming that will bring more tests to make sure nothing is going on with her tummy and will have some advice as far as her GERD goes. In February we go to Kansas City and meet her urology surgeon so we can set up surgery for her kidney reflux and will also head to Rolla to visit with MU S&T college and see what Damein thinks of it.
Always glad to get things done and see things progressing forward but sometimes can seem a little overwhelming. I am very grateful that my husband's job allows for me to be able to stay home with our daughter. We aren't wealthy and we definitely have to watch our pennies but we have enough to pay our main bills and enough play money to be able to do things and just have to fill in the rest with medical bills as they will always be there and always too numerous to be able to keep up with. Definitely worth the sacrifice and at a time when our economy is in such a bad state I am thankful things are well.
In case I don't get a chance to write again before the holidays, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I wish you all good health, happiness, love and friendship in your life.