We've had a busy few weeks!

My mother-in-law asked us to move in with her to help her pay her bills so that she didn't lose her house. Her house was paid off a few years ago, but she ran a mortgage back up again with excessive gambling and obsessive shopping, so we told her we'd help her out and rent out our home for extra income to help with her bills.

For weeks, we cleaned roach droppings out of cabinets, scrubbed floors that hadn't been cleaned properly in years upon years, and cleaned out the pantry and cabinets, throwing away 4 huge trash receptacles of food that had expired over a year ago, or were half-eaten and put back in the cabinets.

She made it so difficult for us to live there, even though she was the one who asked us to help her. For years, she had her kitchen table piled up with papers and "stuff". Yet a few days after we moved in the table finally was all cleaned off, and from that point on she couldn't handle one thing being on the table (except the fake fruit thing in the middle of the table??), even if it just was a cup the children hadn't finished with yet. We kept pointing out her own mess to her, but she just couldn't see it. In 4 weeks she couldn't make sure to have bedrooms cleaned out for the children and was too exhausted to clean, but could go out dancing for hours at night with her live-in-on-the-weekend boyfriend. She kept accusing Kayla and Kevin of things that they hadn't done, and really hurt their feelings a few times. My children deserve better than that. No, I'm not gossiping, just explaining the situation. It was really crazy there.

So finally a few days ago, we had enough of the drama and decided to just move back into our home and let her deal with her own problems. So we've had two moves within the span of a month, and we're trying to organize all of our stuff back into our house. It's gonna take a few more days and some more hard work, but the children and I are very glad to be back in our own home.

This is the picture that I emailed Mike at work to let him know that Kyliava was finally going to be a big sister! I made the shirt with puff-paint and (im)patiently waited for it to dry so I could slip it over her head, take the picture, and surprise him. When he got home two-and-a-half hours later, I asked him if he got the picture I sent. He said yes. I asked him if he noticed anything about the picture. He said, "Yeah, it said Big Sister on the shirt". I looked at him. Then he let out a big "OHHHH!". It took him over 2.5 hours to figure it out! I had a good laugh over that one and will remember that moment for a very long time.

And I hate to say, that is not the end of the story. Kyliava will not get to be a big sister. On Thursday, January 22 God took the baby from us, I was exactly 6 weeks along. The baby's due date was right between Kayla's birthday (Sept 5) and Kyliava's birthday (Sept 26). We were so excited that we were going to have another baby, and the disappointment and sadness that we now feel is immeasurable.

What I've Learned From Moving...

(Kyliava in her new Disney Princess Bed. Yes, it was in the living room that day because I had just put it together!)

Now on to what I have learned from moving!
I have learned that Kyliava doesn't need 45 dresses in every size hanging in the closet. Kevin-Michael doesn't need 30 Polo shirts, although that boy sure does love clothes!! We have all been living for 2 weeks with the same 5 outfits, we just do laundry a bit more! So maybe we do have WAY too many clothes. But it's one of those things you just don't realize in your every day life. We still don't have our nice dressers at the new house, and most of our clothes are still at the old house, but once it's all set up I'm going to take a hard look at what we have. Most of our stuff is still at the old house, and we've been living without it this long, so how much of it do we really need?