Just Simply Holly

My daughter was so bummed out when she didn’t make the basketball team this year, but she didn’t totally give up on sports completely. She decided she’d try out for the track team, which I think was a good idea seeing how she’s always loved to run. To say it’s been a challenge for her is an understatement though. I get to school early to pick her up from practice so that I can watch her and offer tips. She cruises around the track like it’s nothing more than a brisk walk in the park. But she puts so much into it that when practice is over, she has nothing left.

By the time we get home she’s ready to take a shower and eat dinner and anything after that is pretty much a moot point. Trying to get homework finished or get her to bring her dirty clothes and/or dishes out of her room often turns into an argument. Thankfully she gets most of her homework done during her study hall period at the end of the school day and we’ve found that it’s easier to just let her fall asleep after dinner then get her up early in the morning to finish up her homework from the day before.

Yesterday was supposed to be their first track meet and she was a big old bucket of nerves yesterday morning. But the weather turned ugly in the early afternoon and the rain and winds came in, so they postponed the track meet until Saturday. After watching the news this morning I’m thinking they didn’t look at the weather forecast very well because they’re calling for colder temps and heavier rain for Saturday. Not my idea of a fun time at all! I’m hoping they postpone again because I really don’t want to sit outdoors in the cold and rain all day!

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Yes, the weekend is over, and we’re starting a whole new week. As I said yesterday, I cannot believe how quickly this past weekend went by! The weather here in NW Ohio was wonderful over the weekend and is going tobe even nicer today as they are calling for a high temperature this afternoon of 70 degrees! According to the news this morning, the last time we hit 70 or above here in my area was in October. I’m definitely ready for weather like this!

My daughter was a riot this morning. When I woke up around 5:00 AM, she was already up and going. I stopped and talked with her for a little while before she finished getting things around for school and asked her what she was doing up so early. She said that she kept having dreams all night that her room kept filling up with HDMI switches and cords….LOL! When I asked her how she even know what those were, she said that she had heard her grandparents talking about needing them for their new TV.

Poor kid, she’s just like me with having strange dreams. She wakes me up in the middle of the night at least a couple of times a week because she’s had bad or strange dreams that have woken her up. I think it’s because she always eats before she goes to bed, so I’m trying to work with her at to what are good things to eat before going to bed in the hopes of stopping her strange dreams!

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Yes, I do realize that my youngest is a couple of months from actually being a teen, but she’s close enough in my book…LOL! I had some time to talk to my husband over the weekend and we got to reminiscing about the silly things that the kids would do when they were little and how much we miss those days. They used to giggle and laugh over the silliest of things and their favorite activities were things like playing follow the leader, riding bike and just running around being goofy.

Now that they are teens, their favorite activities are arguing and more arguing! And rather than have a bathroom filled with bath tub toys and pull ups, I instead have a bathroom that is filled with make up, hair gel and acne treatment solutions. I know that I can’t make them be little forever, but it sure would be nice if I could have a little bit of their childhood personalities left over in their teens!

I have no doubt the next few years will go quickly though. It doesn’t seem like it’s been 15 and almost 13 years since they were born! I before I know it, they’ll both be graduating from High School, hopefully anyway! I don’t want the time to go by fast, I want them to do their best to enjoy what childhood years they have left! So, I’ll just deal with the arguing and hair gel and acne treatment solutions, because there are much worse things I could be dealing with!

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Modern technology is great and has some awesome benefits! But imagine my surprise when a message popped up that I had an email from my daughters cell phone knowing that my daughter is home. And imagine even how much more surprised I was when I read this:

Sorry bout this but baby fell asleep on me and i dont want 2 wake her. Can u bring me a glass of white milk please?

She sent me a message from her room because she didn’t want to wake the puppy up LMAO! I think that tops the cake of the most lazy things I’ve heard of…LOL!

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After you read this, you will realize that I am a VERY boring person…LOL! Today was the kids’ last day of school until March 31, they officially started spring break. Well, techincally my daughter started it yesterday because she was off school sick today. And before you ask, I forgot to call the doctor today, but tonight she doesn’t have a sore throat, so I’m pretty sure it’s just a bad cold and nothing more. We’ll see how she’s doing in the morning though, if the sore throat has returned, then I will call her doctor.

So, back to my spring break plans. Since we have so many pets, going away just is not going to happen, period. It would cost too much to kennel the dogs, even if it were only for a couple of days, and hiring someone to come into the house to check on them, let them out and feed them isn’t a possibility because of the fact that at least one of the older dogs likes to chew up things that shouldn’t be allowed. So since I know that getting out of Dodge isn’t an option, I’ve decided maybe the kids and I could do some around the house projects and get a few things taken care of that I’ve been on my husband to do for a while now. The kids aren’t the best at helping with housework, but the love to help me with projects. I don’t know what the difference is, but I’m not going to complain!

One of the smaller projects I have in mind is painting the back bathroom and getting the opaque tiles for the ceiling that will allow the light to come through from the light fixtures that are already up there. Replacing those isn’t something that I care to take on by myself, I’m not good with wiring things most of the time…LOL! But if I can get those tiles, we’ll be good to go without having to spend money replacing the actual fixtures!

Since we’re finally at the stage where using the wood burner daily is necessary, I’m going to move the desks and furniture around out here in the family room so that we have better access to the sliding glass door. That’s the main door that I take Sage outside through and right now my desk is in front of it, and it’s not the easiest thing to try and hold her and open the door, then squeeze through behind my desk….LOL! But since we don’t have to worry about the wood burner running 24/7, I now can put one of the desks over by it without having to worry that it’s too warm and/or too dry for a computer to be near. I also think that I’m going to take the one recliner back out to the living room and bring the small couch/loveseat back out here. I wish this room were just a little larger or that I hadn’t of agreed to take the GINORMOUS corner entertainment center from my sister. With having no choice but putting the TV in a corner, I only have 2 options of where I can put it since the other two corners are taken up by the wood burner and the sliding glass door.

So, there are just a few of my boring Spring Break plans. I know the kids were looking forward to the Florida trip that we had been planning, but that simply wasn’t in the cards. But I’m also not planning on the whole week being work filled, I’d like to take the kids to the zoo one day and I HAVE to take my daughter to the mall as well, she’s got some Build a Bear cash that’s been burning a hole in her pocket since Christmas…LOL! And since neither my son or husband like going to the mall, it’s a girls day out kind of thing for she and I to enjoy!

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Good morning and happy first day of spring! Spring has arrived on this chilly, frost covered morning in NW Ohio and although today is supposed to be a decent day (sunny and in the low 40’s), it’s not going to last. In true NW Ohio fashion, we are expecting a fairly significant snowfall over the kids spring break from school, which starts this afternoon.

As you’ll see from the image below, our weather over the next 10 days really isn’t going to be that bad. But the two days that are in the red box (Friday and Saturday) they are calling for snow, not just a little bit, but anywhere from 6 to 9 inches of SNOW!

I’m just so over this winter, and ready just to pack up and move somewhere that it doesn’t snow! This image shows the top 10 snow records for the Toledo area, with this year coming in at #10 with 50.4 inches of snow BEFORE the snow that is expected tomorrow.

Now, if my math is correct, if we get 6 inches of snow with this storm, that will tie us with the #7 record, if we get 6.5 inches of snow, we’ll tie with #6 and if we end up getting even more, well, you can figure the rest out yourself because I know you’re smart!!

So, I guess today and tomorrow I’ll spend my time making sure I’m stocked up on the essentials so that we’re prepared for any of those “just in case” situations that come with bad weather scenarios. At least I won’t have to worry about getting grumpy boy and brat gurl up and moving in the mornings after today! They both start their spring break at the end of the school day today. Well, grumpy boy does, brat gurl is home sick today with a lowgrade fever and a VERY sore throat. I’m just watching the time so that when her doctors office opens I can call and get her in today and make sure she doesn’t have strep throat.

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Good grief, mornings like this morning annoy the heck out of me! As you know, I’m a parent of one teenager and another that is just a couple months away from being a teenager. Neither one of them have ever been morning people, but as they get older, getting them up and ready for school on time is getting more and more difficult! First they just won’t wake up, then when they do finally wake up and get moving, they’re grumpy and mouthy! And then, when they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off at the last minute trying to get ready so that they don’t miss the bus, they’re yelling at me like it’s my fault.

It’s mornings like this that make me wish I had a few of the funny t-shirts that I’ve seen at RoadKillTshirts.com! For instance, I would love to have this one when the kids are being grumpy and mouthy!

Rather than arguing with them I’d simply point to my shirt, smile and walk away…LOL! And I found this T-Shirt that has a saying that my husband says often…LOL

I can’t tell you how many times over the years he’s looked at me and said that, it was really cool finding it on a T-Shirt, I’m considering purchasing it for him for Fathers Day LOL!

Thankfully, they’re up and gone to school, so I have a little time to myself! I’m going to do some more baking today. I made a batch of peanut butter cookies last night and plan on making a few more kinds of cookies over the next day or two! But that’s a completely different post…LOL! Have a great day, hope you’re not hung over this morning from drinking too much green beer yesterday!

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OK, so lets talk about weather, shall we. Last week, as you know, we received two significant snow storms where I live. In one we ended up with basically 9 inches of snow, and in the second one we received an additional 4-5 inches of snow, giving us a grand total of over a foot of snow in a matter of a couple of days. I don’t mind snow, I’d much rather have it than ice, and last weeks snow was beautiful, as you seen from the photos I shared!

Saturday through Monday we had much warmer than normal temperatures and by Monday afternoon all of our snow was completely gone. Monday afternoon it started raining and between the melted snow and the rains, we were at risk for some fairly significant flooding! Late Monday evening our decent temperatures plummeted and we ended up with cold temps and ice by Tuesday, but it wasn’t bad enough to delay/close schools OR keep voters away from the polls, which is a VERY good thing!

But by 3:00 yesterday afternoon it was raining pretty good again, but it was a rain/sleet mixture that was making the roads slick and slushy. When my husband got out of work at 4:00 he told me that the drive home would be very slow going, which was a total understatement. A drive that normally takes about 45 minutes ended up taking him more than two hours. By this time it was no longer raining, what was coming from the sky was straight ice!

With all of the events that were being cancelled for last night, I went to bed feeling sure that schools would at least be delayed today, if not closed. I woke up this morning around 6:00 AM to the phone ringing, it was an automated message from my daughters school letting us know that her school was closed for today. Closed at 6:00, NOT delayed, just closed! The roads were horrible and many counties in the area were under snow advisories, with two of the advisories actually being level 3, meaning you were not allowed on the roads at all!

By 8:00 AM not a single school in the area was open today. Now, I actually do not mind snow days, the kids and I generally have a pretty good time when they are off school and try to find fun ways to occupy our time. But this morning, these kids already have me at my wits end! They’re arguing and fighting with each other and when they’re not doing that, they’re getting the dogs all worked up to the point that the dogs are running around and jumping and making stuff fall off the tables and shelves. I swear that when I see another saying Branson homes for sale, I’m going to click on it and find myself somehwere FAR FAR away from here to live if these kids don’t STOP SOON!

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The kids and I had a TOTALLY awesome day! My hubby got called into work this morning and worked until 10:30 tonight, so it was just me, the kids and the dogs today. We had an amazing day with almost no arguments! The kids decided that they wanted to get some fresh air and since it was sunny they went outside. I looked out the slider door to see where they were at and managed to catch them on the trampoline jumping and laughing, so I decided to try and sneak some pictures of them. I was able to snap a few pictures before they caught me, once they seen what I was doing it became a “free for all” to see who could do the coolest “trick” for me to take a picture of. In

After the first set of photos were taken we came inside to upload them to the computer and see how they turned out. Some of them were awesome, some managed to capture the funniest captions on the kids’ faces and some made us laugh until we were crying. After looking through the first set of pictures, the kids wanted to go back out so that I could take some more, they wanted to do cooler tricks and make funnier faces. They ended up going in and out of the house several times and in all I ended up taking over 100 pictures of them, most of them being “action” shots where they were in mid air or doing a flip or something.

When they had had enough of the cold weather (although it was sunny, it was only 35 degrees tops today), they came in and we made some hot cocoa and looked through all of the pictures again. We made some dinner, did the dishes and chilled out for the rest of the evening.

Out of the middle of nowhere I lost my internet connection, I still was connected to the network betwee the 3 computers, but I had no internet. The other three computers all had internet, but not mine. I tried restarting my computer thinking tat would help, but it didn’t. I tried to do a system restore on the computer to back it up a day, but for some reason it wouldn’t do the restore. I tried restarting the modem, that didn’t work. By the time my husband got home from work I was almost in freak out stage. I had no idea what was going on or what to do about it, and I’ve never not been able to diagnose and/or fix computer problems.

Finally we got the bright idea to just plug my computer directly into the modem and amazingly, for the first time in a few hours, I had an internet connection. That was good news, but it was also bad news because it meant that our ever so faithful router was probably taking a dump on us, and right now we just cannot afford to replace it. So hubby got to “tinkering” with things (since that’s what he’s best at). After playing the “Old Switcheroo” with some of the wires and powering the router off for a while, we seem to have the problem fixed. But the reality is that we’re going to have to replace our router ASAP! It’s OLD, and by old I mean that it is easily 6 years old, and I’m not exactly sure what the life span of a wired router is.

I did make use of my time without internet, in between freaking out and yelling…LOL! I took some of the pictures of the kids that I shot today and put them to music. So, for your viewing pleasure……

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I try not to talk about my kids on here, first because they say that I embarass them and second, well, I just don’t. But sometimes I just get so damn frustrated as a parent of one teen and one “almost” teen, and the best way to get rid of frustration is to talk about it. And since I’m home alone today with no one but the dogs to talk to, that leaves me no one to talk to but YOU! Aren’t you the lucky one!!!! I promise this won’t be painful or very long though.

My biggest frustrations stem from dealing with my oldest child who has been diagnosed with ADHD and Bi Polar Disorder. He is 15 years old and some days can be the funniest most loving kid in the world, but on others he is nothing more than an argumentive boy filled with rage. I know and I’ve been told that he is basically a “typical” kid for his age and that many of the things he is doing and going through are just a stage and will pass. But when I keep getting reports of poor and failing grades, cutting class, refusing to dress for gym class and just blatent disrespect for the rules, it makes me feel like somewhere along the line I’ve done something seriously wrong as his parent.

Here at home or biggest problem(s) with him are unwillingness to do chores that he’s asked to do (or doing them AFTER a huge argument), mouthiness and foul language and just an overall bad attitude. But none of these are constant things, one day he’ll do great, the next day it feels like thw worst of the worst. It can even change on an hourly basis. I know part of it has to do with his mental health issues, but I’m also totally unwilling to allow him to use the mental health stuff as a cop out and feel that he needs to learn some sort of self control. I don’t have any close friends who are going through anything like this nor can I turn to my family for various reasons. So I’m coming to you and hoping that you can offer me some ideas and/or suggestions. He does currently take medications for ADHD and the Bi Polar and I also have him back in counselling, but there has to be something else I can do because these things just don’t feel like they are “enough”.

See, I told you it wouldn’t be too long, and I hope it wasn’t painful and I honestly thank you if you actually read through that! If you have any suggestions or ideas feel free to leave me a comment or you can contact me privately at holly (at) justsimplyholly (dot) com.

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