Recap of Year 33.

The one thing I can say about my life is that is never ever dull. A brief recap of this year began with the office at ACON closing in Richmond and moving to Floroida(ironic). I was given the opportunity to work from home on a conditional basis. Two weeks after I started working at the house, we moved to the Honeytree at West End.

Halloween was fun, the kids had a blast. Then thanksgiving came with a lot sadness, Lina was getting sicker and we all felt helpless. She spent her last days where she wanted to be, with my dad in the home in GA. She watched part of her last FL/FSU game with me on the phone. It was a last decent day she had.

On December 2, after a three year battle with cancer, my brave step mother passed on. Those days are blur to me, and I miss her every day. She always had a level head and was calm and rational. Out of all the sadness came a stronger relationship with my step sister Jaime. I love her like she is my blood sister.

Christmas was bittersweet without Lina, but I worked really hard to make it special for the kids. We upheld all our family traditions and create a few new ones.

In January, our lives were turned upside down when our neighbor knocked on our door at 1:30 on 1/27 to tell us her apartment was on fire. I grabbed the dogs and the laptops and Joe grabbed the cats and we were out the door. We sat for what felt like an hour and watched the firemen put the fire out.

No one was hurt and the fire was started by my neighbor improper use of a cigarette. But we had renter insurance, so we moved into another apartment at Honeytree and started rebuilding our lives. The most important thing was that we were all safe and the animals were all safe.

After replacing a lot of our stuff, we celebrated Logan 16th birthday. It was hard to believe he was this old and the year had been tough because he continually refuse to make any effort in school. At that time he was bringing home 6 Fs on his report card.

I traveled to Florida, to spend time with my dad and to help him go through Lina things. This was so taxing to my heart. We took dad shopping and help him buy things that would not hurt him so much. I really wished I could do more for my dad, but grief is a personal journey. I hope he knows I am there for him. Jaime and I went to Downtown Disney and had a blast. I almost felt 16 again.

The sadness and stress of the years events kinda plagued us, so with our tax money I decided this family needed more fun. The kids are growing fast and Logan will be an adult in 2 years. So I bought season tickets for Kings Dominion. We started to go as much as possible as a family. The kids just seem to have a blast.

Taylor turned 11 soon after that and she had her first slumber party. She had a great time. My little girl is starting to turn into a little preteen. On her birthday, I took off and went to KD to celebrate.

May began with rushing Taylor to the hospital. She had pain in her side. After much debate, they decided it was her appendix. They took her appendix out on Cinco De Mayo. So we spent almost 3 days in the hospital and was released and within a week she was sick again with a high fever. We spent another night in the hospital. She ended up having a kidney infection.

It was that time that I realized I might have a gluten intolerance. For years I have been sick on and off. Randomly I would get sick and I would lose everything I ate or drank. I could not lose weight and was fighting insomnia. Within a week after giving up gluten, I dropped 4 inches. And soon after I dropped 10 pounds. My vomiting episodes stopped and my insomnia began to subside. Now a lot of the time, I feel like I am 23 again.

Taylor graduated from the 5th grade and is now heading to middle school. Joey passed and is heading to the 6th grade. Logan failed 6 out of 7 classes and will be repeating the 10th grade. It broke my heart but I just had to let him fail. I hope he learns his lesson.

Mother and Father day came and went. Both were nice but sad because they were the first one without Lina. Fathers day fell on Lina and Dad's anniversary. It hurt my heart to know he hurt so much.

At the beginning of this month, my baby turned 7. During that day, he tried to shave his face. He is now called Razorface.

Now I am the end of my 33rd year with bittersweet feelings, but the one thing I am thankful for is that I get to spend each year and each birthday with my husband. He is my partner in and life and he makes the day to day trials so much easier to bare. I know he did anything in his power to make this day special even though I am sad he has to work today.

I feel so surrounded with love and feel lucky because even when bad things happen there seems to be someone looking out for me.

So here hoping next year will bring loads of family fun and happiness, the end of the recession, new career opportunities, and financial opportunity that will lead to a new house and the end of apartment life.

The Incredible Fainting Taylor

So my precious daughter, who I mistakenly thought had

more sense than the boys, has shown me the error of my ways. Sitting there with books all the time and getting perfect scores on her state exams has seriously confuse my husband and I.

So we took the whole family to Kings Dominion on Sunday for Joey's birthday celebration. It has slowly become a tradition due to the fact we have season passes and it is 20 miles away. I have the trip down to a science and the cost is really lower than going to Putt Putt, Bowling, or the movies.

Well we always go after lunchtime because I am too cheap to eat at the park. I make everyone eat lunch before we walk out the door.

You know I generally have a policy that I do not look directly at the child because if I make eye contact, they want something.

So I did not pay attention to what the children ate or drank at lunch. I was already annoyed that no one was running out the door to go have family fun time. When we first started going the kids were up at 8am and so excited. Now I have yell at them to get up before noon.

So off we went to the park, off course we cannot leave the house and have a good time unless I am completely annoyed before we leave.

So we get there and we bypassed the park photographers(because I am too cheap to pay for that either). For anyone who visits KD, stay right because they only have one photographer on that side.

We head to SpongeBob 3D. It is new favorite ride and it is in air conditioning. Joey got to decide the order of the rides, so we headed to White Canyon River after SpongeBob. The line was long but the ride was closed the last time we went so we waited. It is a water ride so we thought we could it would be worth it.

Taylor was quiet while we waited. But she is normally silent, because she is secretly a ninja. Right when we getting close to the front of the line, she told me that she was seeing colors and her lips were gray.

Before I knew it she was on the ground. She had fainted but her eyes were open. So we thought she was just exaggerating. Joe picked her up and tried to get her oriented. She seemed to understand what was going on. So we got on the ride. She was conscious but she was kept trying to lay down. We were hoping that the ride would help her and cool her down quickly. Well we got drenched and she seemed a little better.

We got off the ride and we had to help her get to a place to sit down. Joe looked at her lips and they were gray. So we realized quickly it was not the heat, it was probably dehydration. So Joey and I ran to the closest place to get a drink.

Of course when you are freaked out and in a hurry, the dumbest people seem to be in front of you. Four college age girls spent 15 minutes trying to decide if they wanted to buy one souvenir cup because obviously this is not a purchase that anyone should make a snap decision about. I wanted to hire another teenage girl to punch these four girls in the face.

I digress, so I finally get the drinks which had no ice because they were out and made it over to the table where Joe had Taylor and was trying to keep her stable because she was still pale as a ghost. I gave her the drink and she drank and drank and drank.

Her color quickly came back.

I started asking her questions. I wanted to know exactly what she had drank since she woke up. Apparently she woke up and ate cereal with milk.

I asked my daughter if she drank anything with her lunch.

NOPE, nothing. And she preceded to look at me like I was nuts. I could not wrap my head around eating lunch and not having anything to drink with it. Not to mention she had a sandwich.

It was about 3:30 when she fainted. And she had half a cup of milk since 9am.

So apparently I will have to remind my daughter to drink fluids before we head out into the world. There is a possibility we will have to give her instructions on how to come out of the rain in the future.

So Joey and Taylor make a great pair. The razor face boy and the incredible fainting ninja.

Signs for my Children: For Logan

I sat the empty box by the door to taken to the trash by the teenager. Of course it sat there and sat there. So I finally made the child a sign.

It actually worked, he took it out.

Joey "razorface" Rupp's 7th Birthday

So today was my little man's 7th birthday. As I write this, I have memories of the day I had him. 7 years ago at this time (9:32 pm) I was pushing and crying. Well mostly crying and he was born at 9:40 pm.....tear. It is hard to believe time goes by so fast.

He told me last week that he was going to be a grown up. Well I am usually and expert at decoding Joey and can detect when the wheels are turning in his head. I must be slipping because I had no idea what was coming next.

I went to lay down for the my lunch break and Joe fell asleep on the couch. About 45 minutes, I awake to the birthday boy with ace band-aid and a towel. In my haze, I realized the child was bleeding. I asked my little baby boy why he was bleeding and he told me that he feel off his bed. Considering I split my eye open when I was 9 after I feel off my bed, it made sense.

I got up and walked to the living room where he was sitting and realized that the child was actually bleeding pretty bad. I started to examine and question. True to his nature, he stuck with his story. At that time, Logan walked out of the bathroom with his razor and his shaving cream. It was obvious he was lying. I asked my son of 7 years...."Son, did you try to shave."

He shook his head with fury. "son, did you try to shave?"

He was sticking to his story but he was looking guilty. Finally I negotiation no punishment in exchange for the truth. He bowed his head and admitted he thought he was old enough to shave.

Joey told me he had hair on his chin and needed to shave like daddy. And of course my heart melted, like it always does when it comes to Joey.

I told him if it was a good idea when we were asleep, it would be a good idea when we were awake.

Joey's little face bleed for at least 5 hours before it stopped.

We continued to enjoy his birthday and took him to Gamestop where he picked out Pokemon game. Then we made our usual trek to Skatenation for a round of laser tag. Joey played for the first time without us lying about his age. I know we were teaching him to lie but it would be horrible to leave him out. Now I know why he is completely okay with lying to us. But that is another blog. However, I am still shocked when Joey lies to me. Sometimes I am not the brightest.

We ended the night with dinner at Jason's Deli. Joey picked it because it has Glue-TON free food. He is such a sweetie. Of course the rest of the night he was mad because everyone called him razor face.

Then on the way home we reminisced about all the dumb things our kids have done over the years. There has been many.

Logan tried to break into a snack machine in the teacher's lounge with a plastic fork when he was in 4th grade. No words, just shook my head. Logan cut the dog's hair. He shoved an action figure down the toilet. He got suspended when his girlfriend gave him a stolen item from a school sale. He bit someone in first grade because the kid was picking his nose.

Taylor list is short. When she was two she drank rubbing alcohol twice. We were beginning to think she was going to be in AA. Then 6 months ago, she left her DS on the playground. Which I did not know she even took it out of the house. I really think the paint pealed from the ceiling that day from my yelling.

Who knows what the future will hold with Joey. Attempting to shave is up there at the top. Honestly, I am just glad he did not try to shave his neck. Now all the razors have gone up until we can trust Joey's decision making skills.

Joey is mad I am blogging about this and I informed him....."don't do stupid stuff."