March 1, 2012

I am amazed at how busy I have become and how I have ignored writing on the blog.  It certainly isn't because there has been anything to write about. 

The kids are now nearly 11 years old.  Only 1 more month.  In March we plan to visit Olga and Vasyl in Huntsville, AL for a weekend.  We are all looking very forward to it.  We have skyped with them a couple of times and that was a lot of fun. 

Last night, Simon went to bed at 8:30 which is his normal time.  At 2:42am I woke to noise in his room.  I find out he's been awake since 1:33am and he was playing on my Kindle.  That is a big no-no.  And he knew better.  After checking my emails this morning, I find that he had ordered a very inappropriate video and a game from Amazon.  So that didn't make me happy at all.  He is wired.  Not the least bit sleepy and up jumping around. 

We have been adjusting his meds (Respirdal) because of him being diagnosed with Central Sleep Apnea in December.  He had a sleep study done and it was positive for this type of sleep apnea.  After reading about it, I became very concerned.  As well did the doctor (Dr. Amin in Cinci).  He wants to start the non-invasive testing first to see what we may be able to find out.  He had an EKG which has to be re-done.  Apparently the leads were backwards and the test was non-conclusive.  So Dr. Batsel-Thomas ordered another one for April 3 when we see Dr. Amin again.  The other thing is to start decreasing his Respirdal to see if that changes anything.  So we are in the middle of decreasing it now. 

Feb 28, 2012 with behavior therapist that is coming to our home.

Appt went well.  He seems very goal oriented.  Mike as him if there were any questions for him and he said “no, not anything else”. And he went to the garage.  So for the next ½ hour I was hearing all of the information from Mark and Mike didn’t.  I told him that I thought he really needed to be there regardless if there are any questions or not.  He just needs to hear what the therapist is saying.  That is why he is so out of touch with things.

Feb 29, 2012

Ms Brown called me to let me know that somehow Simon wet his pants into the floor.  But his pants weren’t very wet.  They confirmed it was urine.  I went to pick him up and he was extremely defensive.  Swore up and down that wasn’t him that made the puddle in the floor.  After much time went by and talking to Ms Rita, I believe that he pulled the front of his pants down and urinated on the floor.   

Later he was still very defensive and was acting very odd.  I tried to talk to him and let him know that if something was bothering him, to please know he could talk to me about anything.  He was still very defensive.  Over the course of 1 hour, he was in the bathroom 3-4 times for long periods of time.  He said he had diarrhea.  But I didn’t really believe him.  There was no odor.  About an hour later, he came out and sat on the couch and was acting very odd again.  Then I saw a green something on his neck.  I asked to see what it was and he pulled his neckline up to cover it and said it was nothing.  Then I asked again to see it.  After multiple times of telling him to show what it was to me, he did.  In the end he had drawn on his entire body with green and orange Crayola markers.  I had him remove his pants down to his underpants.  He was covered on the front and back down to his ankles.  There was very little untouched.  I asked him why and he couldn’t ever give me an answer.  He drew people, wrote “Abbey” on several places and lots of crosshatched lines, etc.  I was trying to understand what motivated him to do this.  Never could get an answer. 

He went to bed on time (8:30) after taking meds at 7:30.  His Respirdal has been decreasing by ½ mg at a time.  Originally he was on 1 mg in the am and 2 mg in pm.  Then it was decreased to 1.5 mg in pm, then 1 mg in pm.  Now it’s down to ½ mg in pm.  After seeing some changes in his sleeping, I decided that instead of decreasing to ½ in pm I would make It ½ in am and keep the 1 in the pm.  Just rearrange the times it is taken.  We’ll see how it works.

In Feb 2011 we applied for the "Michelle P Waiver" through KY.  Lots of paperwork, but was hoping it would be worth it in the end.  During the early summer we started to get denial letters.  After appealing it multiple times we were given a hearing in which we had to get an attorney to help us.  So $1000 later we are at a hearing.  Before the hearing even began, the state side said they didn't understand why we were all hear.  I told them about the denial letters we were getting.  Then he said "you were approved in Feb 2011.  The letters are for a specific service.  And all you need is to have the nurse do the evaluation and get it approved"  I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  Finally in December we were given a KY medical card for the kids as a secondary insurance. 

Walgreens nightmare.....again

This is the second time I have ordered a huge number of photos (400+)and had Walgreens print them because I didn't think far enough ahead to order from CM. And for the second time I have had terrible printing, mixed photos of glossy and matte, heads cut off (and yes, I did send them in with heads). The colors were so muted. I knew there was lime green and bright reds, but they all looked like they were washed out. I had a 5x7 and a 4x6 of the same photo and they were completely different in colors. So this morning I returned them and the manager was super nice. They agreed that the pictures were terrible and they needed to be redone. So they knocked $5 off and are reprinting. They told me they would call me in a couple of hours when they are done.

Well, 2 hours went by and I called to see where they stood. Of course there had been a shift change. The machine has stopped working and someone was coming in the morning to fix it. 108 out of 467 are done. So still no pictures. Retreat is this coming weekend and I need pictures. I am determined to be organized this time to actually get some projects caught up. That would be both scout albums, both school albums and our Christmas album. If I get done early, I will work on the digital albums I have to complete to have by Christmas.

Upcoming retreats

I have a retreat coming up Nov 13-15. This one is going to be a full house. But if you would like to join me in Dec (18-20), let me know. I still have some openings. Cost is $75 for 2 nights and 3 days. Meals are $15 for 2 dinners and 2 lunches or you can do your own thing for meals. This is the weekend before Christmas, but last year we found this to be a great date. I was able to finish up some things and wrap all of my Christmas presents without having to sneak around to make sure no one could see. It was great.

Here's the stash

I spent all day yesterday and last night working on getting the fabrics folded and organized. I kept bringing up fabric that was on a shelf and then kept finding bags and bags. I didn't think it would ever end. The good part was that the bags actually had a lot of coordinating fabrics which meant there was a purpose behind them. At any rate they needed to be folded and "filed". Below is one of the last stacks I brought up to finish. The bad part was that I was starting to run low on the plastic fabric folders. Which by the way I love those things. Yes, I could use cardboard, but I have issues with "acid free". And considering that I have no clue how long this fabric will be on the folders, I would be taking a huge risk at the acid eating up my fabric. Chances are some of this won't be used until I am long gone and Sydnee is rooting through my stuff.

Now here is the finished result of nearly everything folded. Some of it was also in chairs. So this certainly isn't all of it. I also took little squares of paper and wrote the yardage on it. Pinned it to the flap and now I know how much I have.

Now to decide on how to organize it in the drawers. I was getting tired so I didn't get to put it in the light/medium/dark order yet. Hey, but it's all there. I decided to place in color family. But if I had a bunch that was from the same series and I wanted to use it in the same project, I went ahead and bundled them together. And then I also did that with the Chrismas fabrics.

This drawer is the Christmas, series and whimsical kid prints.

So in the end the stash is done. Now on with the closet. Mike finally moved nearly 12 boxes of trains from the closet that I was in to begin with. But slowly he had moved my stuff out one box at a time. Of course I wasn't sure how to do it since I didn't have any more shelves that would fit in there. So I pulled out my wire cubicles and put them together to see what would work. Yep, it worked. I had some fabric to make clothes out of, interfacings, temptex, some quilt projects already bagged up and ready to start, etc. Well a perfect fit. Those plastic bins we keep projects in a lot fit perfect in a cubicle. Actually you can stack 4 of them just right.

My problem will be that I have a ton more of these at the office. Mike has decided that he wants me to close my office in Jtown. So remember this, I have 6 - 5 ft tables, 6 highback office chairs on wheels, more quilt projects, a huge desk, a storage cabinet, set of shelves, file cabinet, a folding cutting table, and 2 book cases there. So where is all of that going to go? And the lighting is terrible in this room at home, so he has more work to do before I can use it full time. But for now, at least this part is recognized. Now on to getting other junk out of the floor. I have managed to throw out one large black garbage bag and donate 2 boxes full. So that is a start.

I will try to catch up some here. In September I was at 2 retreats and then on another one in October at Butler State Park. I have another one coming on Nov 13. My groups have grown a lot this year. More on that later. In September I managed to work on 2 quilts and nearly finish them. As of today I did finish adding borders to a Christmas design.

I had found a large house that would have worked perfectly for a retreat house. But after a few weeks the sold sign went up on it and it wasn't me. Simon keeps telling me that I need to wait until after Christmas because he wrote a letter to Santa telling him how bad I wanted the house. So he firmly believes that Santa is the one who bought it. So onward with new plans. I have been talking to some builders to see about building what we want from scratch.

August Retreat

Friday we headed out to Pieceful Haven for a scrapbooking retreat. We had a pretty good group of ladies once again. Welcome to our new Cincinnati and Shelbyville ladies! We had a ton of food again. I will post some recipes in a separate post. The food was pretty good. We had Chicken Marsala on Fri and Pork loin, squash casserole, and green beans. Thanks Ann for the casserole. It was really yummy.

Ange made an adorable 8x8 album for a family member that went by "Brown Bear, Brown Bear". It was adorable. Now I will have to consider making one like it. Stephanie and Wendy were working on ABC albums for their children. They too were really neat. I plan to do that too.

I left a couple of hours early to see my mother in law in the hospital. She later passed away when I left to pick up the kids. She is no longer in pain. She has had a rough 5-10 years.

Scrapbook pages

What a great weekend it was. I didn't get much done of course because I left my pictures at home for some goofy reason. And I left my scanner power cord at home, so I couldn't scan the photos I did have to work on. Oh well, I brought some quilts to be cut out. So I did a couple of them. Other than that I talked, ate and slept.

Here are a few pictures of the group who attended. Everyone met someone they didn't know previously or found out they knew someone in common. We call these weekends our therapy time. We can really get to know someone deeper when you spend that much time together.

Here are some page ideas. Some of the photos turned out a bit yellow. I think it was the lighting in the room. But of course I didn't realize it until I got home.

This one is using the new "Discover Palette". Trish B cut out letters from the Cricut and added the flower accent by cutting out a picture of a flower she had taken. What a great idea!

Here is another page using the new boy papers. They blend right in with the Discover palette.

This is another page by Trish B. She added another flower accent using a photo of a flower.

This page was using the leaf punch. She also used the picture of a large leaf and small ones. Perfect addition to this page.

Way to go Valerie T. She finished her third childs baby book. Beautiful pages.

This is using some of the Christmas papers. It doesn't take much when you use the mixed packs.