Butterfly's cast

Friday Dec 6 - Butterfly left as usual for the weekend, her step-mother picked her up again at 1:15pm.

Saturday Dec 7 - 12:45pm My ex-husband called to tell me Butterfly "might have hurt her ankle, she fell while rollerskating".

1pm - We decide to meet halfway so I can take her to urgent care, she can't stop crying to talk to me so I think it's serious.

2pm - On the way to the urgent care; I learn that she was playing dodge-ball on roller-skates, her 1st time without the use of her "skate mate" helper (like a walker), and that there was no one watching her. She fell and tried to get up a few times, a stranger came and was helping her, then her step mother came over, after they got her off the rink and trying to get her ice she finally saw her father come over.

At Children's urgent care they give her Ibuprofen, do x-rays and wrap her ankle. I'm told her ankle is most likely broken, she can't put any weight on it and I need to call Monday for a follow-up.

Monday Dec 9 - I call and they fit her in that morning. Dr B takes the wrap off and puts her in a boot, tries to get her to use crutches and says she's fine. I question him until he looks at the x-rays, he decides no weight and has a CT scan scheduled.

Thursday Dec 12 - CT scan.

Monday Dec 16 - 4:30 pm I'm told the results are in, Dr B can't see us but she needs surgery tomorrow and we go through the surgery prep questions.

Tuesday Dec 17 - We are moved to Dr K's surgery schedule.
We are finally told that she broke her growth plate and needs a screw placed to re-align the bones.



She got through surgery like a champ and immediatly wanted a bacon cheeseburger.
Her cast is a glow-in-the-dark wrap with a rainbow-camo swirl!! Awesome!!
This girl is one tough Cookie and I couldn't be more proud of how well she is doing!!

Monday Dec 23 - Follow-up appointment with x-rays, made sure things inside the cast are right.
No weight on the leg. Come back in 6 weeks (end of January) to take cast off and put boot back on.

Another New Year Begins with grocery shopping

Today:
We woke up a little later than usual at 9am. Part of the reason was because we were all up until midnight last night looking for Tweetle's "kindle" (InnoTab) that he got for Christmas. We started looking at 8 (with plans to let them play for a bit then a late bedtime of 9pm), that boy had us looking EVERYWHERE!

So we got up and had our coffee and such. Then we all got dressed and the kids packed to stay the night with Grandma, then we had breakfast and gathered everything for the day.

Daddy stayed home to work on his album!!! (The studio that we moved to be closer to had a fire so he is recording it in the basement of our new home a house built in 1950! Oh, and he has a new job too).

The kids and I went to the Farmers Market. Yes, we drove through snow to get to a Farmers Market that they hold inside the local mall in the colder months!!
I can't begin to describe to you the crazy time we had with Butterfly in a wheelchair trying to get through... lets just say 2+ hours later we spent under $20 at 4 vendors to buy 2 blocks of cheese $12, 1 tub of cheese curds $5, 1 tiny brick of beeswax $1, 3 maple suckers $0.75, and 1 cup of Choc.cherry coffee $2. Meanwhile the story of her cast was told and re-told...

Then we went to pick up my mom and we went to Costco where I spent $37 on Org cane sugar 11.lbs-$10, Org Flour 10.lbs-$8, cans of org diced tomatoes 8(14.5oz)-$6, and 5.lb bags of org frozen corn $6+ and green beans $6+.

We made a "quick stop" at Trader Joe's that turned out to be really long when my mom had to bring the girls in for the potty after Tweetle and I had walked into the packed store alone...
I spent $22 on 2 packs of cheese sticks $4 each, org Avocados $3+, Org Red onions $3+, and (1.lb org fair trade) Coffee $7.

Across the street to Whole Foods. I spent $24 on half&half $6, milk $4, beef stock $0 (they gave it to me since they were out of the one i wanted), org Chili Powder $4, org sour cream $3, 2 doz eggs $6, and corn tortillas $2.

I ran into Pet People for a 6.lb bag of the GF cat food we need so the cat doesn't throw up all the time... $20... but it lasts both cats almost a month and the 13th bag will be free!!

Then I dropped off the kids with my mom at her house, got them settled and everything and left.

I stopped at Walmart (I really. really. don't like going to Walmart, especially on the weekend, especially when there's a predicted snow storm) to see if I could get things cheaper there.
I spent $32 on 12 double rolls of Toilet Paper $6, Washing soda $3, Citric acid $3, Yeast $4, Fish food $4+, Natural lunch meat $6, a cheap can opener $2, and a splurge on a rope light $2+.

I ended my shopping day at Raisin Rack to get 13 gallons refilled with purified H2O $5, and also bought org sprouted bread $4+, and org sprouted tortillas $3 for a total of $12.

It took all day but I only spent $167, $123 on food (Local food stamps is $123.50/wk per family of 4).
$124 was left from my $150 weekly grocery budget after going in on a deal with some local friends for Chocolate chips and vanilla beans.
I had saved $40 from last week for the trip to Costco, and the last $3 was our "treats" of suckers and coffee at the Farmers Market that came from my ever decreasing "fun budget".

This is more than enough food for the 5 of us for more than a week with the meat from the freezer. This includes Daddy taking lunch with him to work everyday and us eating made-from-scratch meals at home for almost every meal.

finding our "normal" for school days

Honestly that's impossible, but I'm really looking forward to this year and I want to start off with trying to make myself keep track, relish and enjoy it more.
We are starting our second year in My Fathers World curriculum, in 2nd grade for Butterfly (Adventures in US History) as well as Kindergarten for Ladybug.
Before you get upset, understand that the child has not stopped asking for "real school like -Butterfly- does" in almost a year! I am fully planning on not doing all of it and repeating it next year (and maybe the year after) until she really truly gets it and I feel is completely ready to move on.

So our day starts with COFFEE! for Daddy & Mommy anyway...
We really start with Breakfast & making Daddy's lunch and getting dressed.
School begins with K work, and as we are only 3 days in that is Creation and colors and a few letters. Butterfly is trying to do her own thing but is very interested in the activities for K, it's much more fun then the torture, I mean, multiple curriculums I/we tried with her.
We then have snack and stretching or recess.
While at the table we start Art then Maps for 2nd and then begin History. At some point Tweedle has started playing and soon Ladybug joins him while Butterfly and I try to finish school before lunch. Some days she finishes while they take a nap, then everyday she has quiet reading.

At this point I am still unpacking from our recent move during this time, but I hope to make this quiet time more useful soon as I would like to work on projects and get my sewing machine set up so I can do that during this time too.
After they wake up, they usually snack and play and we do chores and then get ready for dinner.
We are schooling year-round, so I'm not currently worried about how many days we get in each week since school around here doesn't start for another 3 weeks... wait only 3 weeks!! Time for me to get working on our notification letter!!

Boys are different than girls!

Yes, we ALL know that!
Seriously though, I had a baby girl met Hubby and loved 8yr old Doodle and had another baby girl.
Now we have Tweedle who is ALL BOY!
He just turned 2. He finally has enough words that I can usually understand the points and grunts between. He has this amazing ability to copy every new physical skill of his older sisters' within a week of them learning it!
Now, the weather is getting warmer, he has learned how to remove his clothes, and more importantly he has learned that "pee" is "wet".
Mind blowing!!
Now he has to remove his clothes on a regular basis and see if he can pee. He sometimes tries to put it in the potty, or down the drain in the bath or shower. He tries!
Mostly he tries and decides he down and walks away in time to get it on things it should not be on: blankets, cabinets, the fridge, the island, the trashcan, walls, and of course the floor... only sometimes the floor in the bathroom!
Potty habits are already nothing like I ever dealt with when the girls started!
As I write this he has undressed himself several times, asked me to help him pee, tried, mostly gotten himself re-dressed, then decided to start all over again.
He's really cute, good thing!

Past the 1 year mark!

Supposedly now, my chances of survival skyrocket...
I guess if I was listening to the doctors and only doing what they said, I might feel differently.
I don't.
I haven't.
See almost a year ago, just after my Anniversary and just before Mother's Day, I was in the Hospital having a double mastectomy to get rid of ALL my breast tissue from having stage 2, triple-negative Breast Cancer. Nothing was celebrated the way I wanted, but then our lives had been turned upside down the beginning of April when a lumpectomy (surgery to remove a lump) revealed cancer.
I already told you how I felt then.
I believe I already told you that the morning after my surgery, I was scared and confused but to hurt to be outraged, I was taken to have a bone scan and a liver scan without my permission. The surgeon had given us a choice of while I was in the hospital, or coming back a few weeks later.
We had agreed on waiting a few weeks.
The thoughts being many, but lets do one major crazy to my body at a time!!
So then imagine!
Before my husband could come back the next morning, being woken from a drug & pain induced sleep to be asked, "Ready now?" by someone you've never seen that doesn't answer any questions and apparently only knows the words "ready now?", "down", and "yes?" in English!!
Where are you taking me?? - "down, yes?"
Where's my husband? Why isn't he here? Where are we going?   -  "yes, down, yes?"
See?? It was scary!!
It was not a fun ride. It was bumpy and painful and scary. I got a shot that made me feel like my blood was freezing. Rode back to my room, got more pain meds. Slept. Twice more this happened, same guy, same wake up, same bumpy, painful, scary ride. Once to lay on a frozen metal bed covered by a thin sheet, to be jostled through a ring that made me hot and sweaty over and over. The other time to be on a plastic bed and have what looked like a large trailer come down at me like it was going to smash me into a paper doll.
No answers to my questions.
Then I got to go back to my room and my husband was there waiting for me. When he asked where I was, they had answered him so he told me and then the nurse explained it...
The kids came to visit me later that day. I cried when they left.
The next morning as I was getting ready to leave, the surgeon called. He apologized for not coming in to see me but he had come down with a flu or something...
He told me that all the test results came back clean.
He said if he had to put a number on it, well my chance of it coming back would be around 2-3%.
He, of course, reminded me that my chances would be cut in half with Chemo.

Yes, I would go from 2-3% down to 1-1.5%!! Great!!
Except that in the same Drs offices I had read that every woman walking this Earth has a 3-5% chance of getting Breast Cancer.
So he just told me my chances are safer than that woman down there, crossing the street, or that one in her car, or... well, you get my point.
Meanwhile, from those who have been through Chemo... they have to live a year after Chemo without a relapse before they get news like that. Many don't. Many have to do it again. Many eventually die from Chemo killing all the good in their body and something "minor" turns into something major and they "die from complications"... I think they die from Chemo.
You won't change my mind.

All that to say, that for those of you who know about me but still hold tighter to the medical field, I am still here!
I have reached the **magic** 1 year mark.
More importantly for me, I had my final (and another final accidental) surgery to remove the torture tissue expanders and replace them with my final size, silicone "foobies".
I am happy to be done, but still accepting where we had to stop for my final size.
Time to recover, recoup, and restart!!

2 months and my birthday...

so it's been about 2 months since my last post...
I started getting antsy about being done and so I had 3 fills where we did 75cc on the left and 50, 50, & 25cc on the right. I have been in so much pain the last 3 1/2 weeks since the last one, I think it was too much too quick :(
Let me start over...
I had my 29th Birthday last week!! Yay!!
Except not, and it's not the "oh I'm getting older" problem, it's the "I really thought I would be done by now and I would have a reason to celebrate my last 20's birthday..."
I'm tired of asking friends for help like playdates, and, well, playdates is really the only thing I have asked for. It is still so hard somedays for me to get the kids out of the house because it still hurts so badly physically.
I have a few friends (one that has been amazing and came for 2 visits for a week each time from another state, "we love you A!!"), that said maybe this is God's way of showing you how to ask and accept help. Ok, then why has almost everyone within an hour of me practically forgotten about me?
Hubby has started a new job, one that seriously landed in his lap and hard as we tried to walk away from the amazing offer, they just kept upping the offer until we could no longer say no (on a time resraint, they needed him to start the following week!). He now works there Mon-Thurs leaving at 8am and coming home usually around 11pm. Our Studio project is also gaining momentum and he has been doing 10-14 hour days all weekend except sunday, we go to church as a family so he usually does 6-8 hour days so he can spend a little time with us...
Our goal is still for him to be able to go full time in the studio in the next year and with the way buisness is picking up, it looks like the dream could become a reality!
My parents have been huge supporters, they have their own lives and jobs. My dad works full time and is also what some would call a part time preacher/teacher as well as my personal researcher when he isn't researching and learning for himself or someone else. My mom works 2 almost full-time jobs outside her home but regularly goes into overtime working from home, while also learning and creating her own program and being in buisness for herself, and a Bible school teacher... this is ignoring her being my ear to vent to and most importantly our regular sitter for our kids, and at times our transportation when I hurt too much to drive, and our on-call "helper".

We are still Homeschooling. Butterfly is almost half-way done with 1st grade, beaming about her first "report card" and still chugging along getting 6-10 days done each week even though we regularly only do school 4 days a week!
Ladybug and Tweedle are learning and enjoying the many crafts and science experiments, as well as Ladybug learning her letters! We are planning to start Ladybug in Kindergarten (with a plan to do the lightwork one year and then full work the following year) when Butterfly starts 2nd!
It's been months since Doodle has come to visit, he got braces and is doing well in school even taking some advanced classes. We really enjoyed seeing him last weekend.

Oh and we got a new 2 month old puppy a few weeks ago... housebreaking is still rough but life is starting to feel normal with only 1 animal in the house.

I am falling behind. I am in a lot of pain. I am coming on my self-imposed deadlines with little to no progress to show for it... I'm starting to fight my depression again.. I'm struggling with seeing the next step, much less the way out.

The phone call was 6 1/2 months before my birthday... things moved quickly and we had a plan and things would be hard for 4-5 months then I was supposed to have weeks or months of normalacy between the harsh reminders that I am becoming a survivor... 3 months between surgeries is long enough to recover, have some "normal" time then do prep to get us through the next one.

I am trying to look forward even with the emergency surgery that has set me back, even with our current insuarance issues ( that should be cleared up next month?) and even through the daily pain.
I am trying to create vertical space in my home on a penny budget, so that we can have a home for everything so that I can find order in my home and that alone should help releave some stress.
We have joined a homeschool group and will start attending weekly group meetings in a few months.
I hope to find a few moms to understand and support/help me find a way to feel some control over this crazy time.
Homeschooling, with 2 toddlers, with Hubby working 10-14hrs/day - 7 days/week, trying to re-organize the house, all while becoming a breast cancer survivor... I know it can be done, I've heard of others who have done more.. I CAN do this, I just struggle with making and sticking to a plan.

Getting back to normal

A quick update, it's been 6 weeks since my urgent surgery from my Left lump popping open...
The skin on that side looks so much healthier now, it looks like the Right side, except that it is still shaped like a football not yet a baseball :(

I had another fill yesterday. We only put 50cc in so I'm up to 200cc on the Left and still 325cc on the Right. I was a teensy bit sore but nothing that a little ibuprofen couldn't handle. I think most of the soreness had more to do with picking up the littles... they are about 30 and 40 lbs now!

Speaking of which I need to get everyone in for well checks next month. This month has been rough, with Hubby's paychecks being smaller after they take out time for him going with me to appointments. So dumb!! We are struggling again right now, but God has seen us through everything else so we just have to keep trusting He will get us through this too.

Today I'm taking the kids on our typical grocery shopping trip... but it's the first typical one in MONTHS!!! I'm so excited to be able to try it by myself again!!
We need to get regular groceries and things but also specific things for this weekend.
My parents are treating us with a trip to Cedar Point!! I can't wait to go on some real roller coasters with Butterfly this year :) Ladybug will love going on the kiddie coasters and I'm sure Tweetle will enjoy the little rides too. I really hope that Doodle has fun this time, he says he wants to go but he did not enjoy himself when we went 2 years ago. I hope this time is different.
They are buying Fast Passes so we can skip the lines to ride on coasters, meaning I actually get to ride on coasters this year!! With Hubby!! Yea!!!

So life is starting to find a new normal. Hubby is actually getting some clients into the studio and is starting to make a little money from that. I am doing a whole house overhaul!!
Rooms are being rearranged, cleaned, organized and set up for more funcionality. We are purging a LOT! I want to have a garage/yard sale and the rest will be donated. We need to get stuff out of here but I hope to make enough on some things to get some extra money into the shoe and clothing fund for the kids. They ALL need new shoes!

I think that's it for now, if you didn't catch it yes, I'm cleaning and moving things... I'm doing more around the house!!! Somedays it's really hard and I don't get much done but most days I feel very accomplished at being able to see the progress I'm making.
It's nice to finally be able to do and not need to delegate and wait for everything anymore.