I been at 189 followers for a very long time... anyone reading but not following?? Do me a favor and follow.. I would love to see 190 followers and maybe someday 200 followers. I imagine I maybe getting boring since I don't have a lot of drama in my life right now. I guess that's a good thing.

9 days until Izzy's birthday!! I got her new address and have decided with sending flowers but haven't decided on the dollar amount or what florist in the area yet. I only have a few days to decide because I would like it ordered and paid for by Friday. I am looking at fruit baskets on the florists website. Women answer this would you rather have pretty flowers or stuff you could eat and it's not candy? She has mentioned she saves the dead flowers so she must like them.

Desisions. Desisions to make.

need a little advice

if you would pop over to my private blog you will see what the advice needed is. Thanks.

Questions and answers

It's been quite a long time since I have done a post with Questions from readers and answers from me. So if anyone is dying to know anything about me or what is going on in my life go for it. It can be adoption reunion related or some other topic that your intrested in learning more about. Don't be shy. Ask away!!

back to school

On Monday, Stephen went back to school. He officially is an 8th grader now. There is something about him starting the last final year of middle school that makes the four years of high school seem around the corner.

Going back to school can be hard on everyone on several different issues. I think for us change of routine is hard on not only Stephen but my husband and me. We have already just got done changing our routine with my husband entering the working work force outside of home. I always want to include outside of the home cause people even me (who me) under estimate the amount of work stay at home parents do. I still say my husband was getting lazy but that's another topic. Love him anyways.

We are used to having dinner around my workout routines and being flexible with bedtime. It's not that we allow him to stay up until all hours of the night. We just had a later bedtime so it gave us wiggle room with eating. I am still working on moving dinner earlier times. It's almost 7 pm and dinner is delayed cause I got busy making some zuchinni bread. Hope it tastes yummy.

Had to take a break from writing this post so the bread was yummy and about 200 calories. It's my sister's recipe. I love that she made me a cookbook.

It can be a little expensive going back to school. My son has to wear uniforms so that is an added expensive to back to school time. His Dad finally sent child support on his own and sent 210.00 which is almost a whole months worth so it couldn't have been better timing. My husband and I were pretty impressed that he followeed through with sending in a payment all on his own. I never picked a fight with him when I learned about the job but did wait a week and ask if he was sending payment and kept on him (nicely) when it didn't come in. So maybe being nice instead of a bitch paid off.

With each new season and new change I stress about when I will get my workouts in and will I be able to incluse Stephen in those visits to the Y or find time for our new passion bike riding or god forbid I make Stephen walk. I know this sounds bad but often times I want to be at the Y for about 2 hours or more. I have started this new workout routine where it wants me to do 20 mins of cardio at least and tells me what workouts to do.

I find myself wanting to do more than 20 minutes of cardio and pretty slow learning the workouts and how the machines work. However, at the same time, it's important to me that we eat together as a family and I don't rely on my husband for all the cooking. So it sure can be a juggling act to juggle work, school, homework, workouts, family time and cooking and cleaning.

I am sure we will settle into our new routine in no time. I am already settling into doing a little more of the housework. I try to pick things up as I go and been doing dishes and laundy. Which is stuff I might have taken for granted.

Edited: To post that my son's Dad is back at his normal job driving for the schools so we should be back to our normal routine of child support coming out on it's own and being sent to me.

Also, my husband is making a decent amount more money that he did in the past so I see the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to struggling to pay for things. I am even considering paying someone to come clean my house to give it a good scrubbing. Not sure if I will make it a semi normal thing or just sort of reset it back to a nice condition. Not that we are horders or anything. Cluttered and not spotless. Yes. No hording here.

Izzy wrote me that guess who got a fitbit? So buying her a fitbit is for sure off the table for her birthday. I thought about copying a cookbook my sister made for myself and my little sister but it would be time consuming and expensive to print it all up. So maybe I will hold off on that.

So my only option is a simple birthday card with or without a small gift card if I can afford it. Or flowers from a florist in her area.

I am leaning more towards the flowers.

I realized that I probably jumped the gun worrying about if I would ask to see Izzy or not. She isn't even coming until almost the end of October so I have plenty of time to think about it.

What I don't have a lot of time to figure out what to do for her birthday. It may just be a birthday card because I don't have a lot of money to spare. Truth is that I have none but I have never not given her a gift. So I do wonder how that would go.

Right now I am waiting to see that she gets moved to their new house they plan on moving to soon. I am leaning towards calling a local floriest in her area and see if for 20 or 30 bucks they can arrange a nice bouquet of flowers for her. My other thing I have thought about but not sure I can afford it is to send him a fitbit. She had expressed some interest in wanting one. My husband didn't think it was a nice thing to give someone as in implying "they have a problem" I see his point but considering she is trying to workout and all I thought she might enjoy it. Who knows maybe the fitbit could be a christmas gift.

So I guess at this point I am leaning between just sending a birthday card or sending flowers. I have sent flowers to her for her birthday up until she moved away. Well, since reunion that is.

We reunited via facebook shortly after her 18th birthday and met shortly after her 19th birthday. It's hard to believe that she is going to be 22 years old soon.