Snowboarding!!

Okay, how cool is this!?! Part of the curriculum for school here in Vermont is to learn a winter sport. Amazing! So kiddos from Kindergarten thru 3rd grade do indoor stuff (Gavin is taking gymnastics & surprised himself by loving it!) and the kids fourth grade & up get to go to the mountain for some winter fun! They get the choice of skating, skiiing or snowboarding... one guess which one my little dude picked. ;)

So Monday was their first day. Matt, though he's never snowboarded a day in his life either, signed up to chaperone, so he got to go too. I on the other hand, had to stay at home and bite my nails for 6 hours until they were home safe & sound. But he did great! And they had a ton of fun!

Of course, true to form, Mark thought he needed to be perfect at it right off the bat & needed some reassurance that practice makes perfect. But I have a feeling he'll be teaching his momma some tricks in no time. ;) Three more Mondays my baby boy will be up on the mountain-top while his mom takes care of kids with severe head traumas from skiing accidents....... Think I'll have any nails left by February?? :S

My New Vocabulary

As you can imagine, moving to a whole different part of the country means learning a whole new world of slang & terminology. I thought it was weird moving from St.Louis to Kansas City & getting used to "pop" instead of "soda" or "69 Highway" instead of "Highway 69." That was nothing! Since being here I've had more than a few moments where I'm sure I looked like a complete idiot not knowing what in the world the other person was talking about. Here is a list of some of my favorites:

#1: "Jimmies." Nope, not Jimmy Walker. Would you believe this is what they call sprinkles?? We went to the local ice cream shop a few times and stared at the menu a few times before I got up the nerve to ask, "Okay, who's Jimmy & why is he 50 cents!?" lol

#2: This brings me to #2. "Creamy" has always been a descriptive term to me. (i.e. "Mmm. This soup is so creamy...") Well here "creamy" is a noun. It's what they call soft serve ice cream!

#3: A "Johnny." Seriously, I have no idea where this one comes from. And this is where the "Stacia ends up looking like an idiot" part comes in. I had a patient ask me for a new "johnny." I was clueless. I'm a nurse & had to ask my patient what a "johnny" was. Apparently it's a hospital gown. My bad.

#4: It's not just called "trash" around here. Nope, it's "rubbish." I thought they just said that in England? I guess they do in New England too!

#5: A "Flatlander" equals any person who is from anywhere else but the north east corner of the country. Being from KS/MO, guess what they call me! lol




#6: Had someone ask me if there was a "bubbler" nearby. No idea what the heck they were talking about. Found out later it was a drinking fountain. Again, my bad.

#7: "Wicked" has absolutely nothing to do with witches or general evilness. In fact, it's a word New Englanders use for "really really." Okay, lots of people know this one, especially thanks to SNL skits. But seriously they use it all the time! I caught Mark using it in conversation the other day & it took everything in Matt & me not to snicker. It was pretty "wicked" funny. ;)

#8: the "package store" makes me think something along the lines of a UPS store or something like it. Wrong again! For some reason it's the term for the corner liquor store. Who knew.




#9: "Massholes." Learned this one pretty quick. From a self-proclaimed "Masshole" during hospital orientation. Seriously, people from Massachussets tend to be pretty cranky & negative as a whole, and what's funnier is they seem to be proud of it! lol I've also learned that they have major issues with road rage. Consider yourself forewarned.

#10: A frappe has nothing to do with the fancy coffee drink you'd get from Starbucks or even McDonalds. A "frappe" is actually a milkshake. A milkshake is just milk with flavored syrup. Then there's a coffee milk, and a float... it's all very complicated.

#11: A "grinder" to me sounds like some sort of tool. Like a meat grinder or a coffee grinder. But a "grinder" is a sub sandwich. Why, I have no idea.

#12: This is what I would picture when you say "carriage." But here, a "carriage" is actually your regular run-of-the-mill shopping cart. Sadly, not as fancy.



In Vermont they don't tend to have too terribly heavy of an accent, maybe a long "o" once in a while. But as I head over to New Hampshire (or New Hampster as Natalie likes to call it) the accents get thicker, and as I head to work it's even more Boston-esque. There's really no such thing as an "R." As Natalie gets older I start to worry a little bit more of the lack of "r" in some of her pronunciations, but I think it'll go unnoticed around here! lol

Oh wow it's been a long time since I've posted. Sorry!! I guess time just escapes me as of late. I've been busy with work and I haven't had much to report on the home front.

One thing I can update on: my new job! OMG I can not tell you all how much happier I am! As soon as I walked on the unit for my first day, I sighed a sigh of relief: I'm home! :) The PICU here has two faces really. It definitely can have the intense super sick PICU admits that you can conjure up in your imagination. But most of the time it's more of a step down unit. By that I mean kids that are too sick to be on the floor, but not intubated & on death's door kind of sick. So I've been able to ease into this new world of pediatric nursing. I'm having so much fun! :) I actually told Matt on the phone, during my drive home after day #2 of 3, that I couldn't wait to come back to work tomorrow! I haven't felt like that in ages! :) So, in a nutshell, I think I'm going to like it there. I have so much to learn, but I'm really excited to start a whole new chapter in my career. And lesson learned: whatever I do in the future, I just can't step away from caring for kiddos. It's in my blood I think.

Other than that, I don't have much to share. It's been consistently cold here, but nothing big deal. The boys still walk to school every morning, and they're so used to the cold now that even in the single digits I have to beg them to put on gloves & a hat! lol I hear you guys in the midwest had some super warm days lately... followed quickly by tornado warnings... I gotta tell ya, I wasn't envious! ;) Mark starts winter sports with school next week and he'll get to go snowboarding for the next four weeks. He's SUPER excited. Matt will probably chaperone. I SO wish I could go too just to take pictures of that one lol. So I'll be sure to update on that. Plus, the boys are finally taking skating lessons. They're getting better & better every time!

After Matt's accident the truck has been in the shop for the last couple of weeks. In exchange he ended up with a crappy Kia. (No offense meant to any Kia owners out there... we're just not fans). So going through boxes has been crazy slow because he doesn't have the truck bed to work with to haul back & forth. But slowly but surely we're getting there. The bane of my existence lately has been the huge stack of boxes of old files from our former mortgage company. Law mandates that you hold onto customer files for a number of years post closing, so we had a ton stored in our basement & totally could have gotten rid of them a couple of years ago had we been able to get to them. But now we have to shred file after file after file.... ugh. It's rediculous. My living room looks like it snowed in there. But we'll get it all done. In the mean time I'm taking up Dory's mantra:
Just keep swimming... just keep swimming...

Icy Fun

Happy New Year everybody!! Sorry it's taken me a while to post. I had 10 days off of work and we took that time to spend together as a family. Honestly, we did a lot of laying around & being lazy, but we all needed it. We were also able to get through a lot of the boxes and hook up with an auction company here in town. So we've already eliminated the equivalent of at least one storage container if not two. So that feels a LOT better. Once we're done with all of that, we'll focus on the house again. (But the storage costs us a lot of money, so priorities got shifted there for a bit!) But in the mean time, my house here has been taken over by boxes & tools & persian rugs... sigh. It's okay. It's all just temporary. I think I'm past my little freak out. (Hey, I think I've earned a little panic attack now & then, don't you? lol)

Anyway, during our time of laziness we played a lot of board games, the kids put together thousands of lego pieces (I'm still amazed at my boys' building prowess), played some new video games, and we watched a few new movies (mock me if you must, but I do love me some Harry Potter! lol) We also found out another piece of cuteness that this town has to offer: an ice rink! Now, I've posted before about the nice indoor skating rink that the town next door has. It's great fun. But whereas some of you midwesterners may see the constant cold of a northeast winter as a lemon, Vermonters see lemonade! As it turns out, every year the rec department floods the green space of the local park in time for the freeze and creates this massive ice rink! We happened upon it this past week & the kids took advantage of learning to play hockey with what seemed like every little boy in town.

*********The rink ************ Gavin figuring out his skates*****

*******Mark playing goalie***** ****Natalie & her new pal Griffin****

Okay, so our Kansas-ness has shown a little and I'm sad to say that I have failed my children in the skating-lesson department. I'm thinking we'll fix that soon. But they still had fun anyway! And it looks like Natalie made a new boyfriend! ;) lol Seriously, this town is so darn cute I can't hardly stand it! ;)

And on the other side of the winter fun, there's some not so good parts that we have to deal with. We're no strangers to driving in the snow & ice from growing up in St. Louis & spending the last decade in KC, but no one's perfect & sometimes that tricky black ice will sneak up on you. While I was at work, Matt & the kids were driving home from shopping and hit a patch of it on the highway. :( They spun out, hit a milemarker & ended up sliding into the median.

Whoops. But their guardian angel was looking out for them all because the mile marker hit perfectly center between the doors so that neither of the windows were broken and it absorbed that impact on the frame. The hill was pretty steep too & they could've easily rolled, but everyone was completely fine. And with another stroke of luck, this happened to all occur in the one little patch of cell-phone-hell & Matt couldn't call for help, but someone witnessed the whole thing & came to help, so a good samaritan pulled them out pretty quickly. With the exception of Matt's back seizing again and the kids being a little freaked out, everyone is totally fine. Thanking God for that!!! Looks like we need two new doors & a new running board, but no big deal. Poor little three-year-old Natalie has had the hardest time with it though I think. I called Matt on my way home from work the other day like I always do and she immediately started yelling "I WANT TO TALK TO MOOOOMMM!!!!" All she wanted to tell me was, "Mommy, make sure you dwive caefully... don't go in the ditch ok??" Sweet baby. :')

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We certainly did. Although it was quiet, it was a nice couple of days to spend together as a family. Plus I now have three kids who are quite spoiled! lol

Christmas 2011 - Online Slideshow Maker

As you can see, the kids are pretty happy! lol Santa brought each of the boys a huge Lego Harry Potter set, and as of this morning... December 26th for cryin' out loud... they are both completely done! OMG! Natalie's having a lot of fun with her baby dolls & "sale-ing" us all of our stuff with her cash register. Pretty cute. And yes, I did get all of the boxes in the house cleaned up just enough that I could breathe for the holiday season lol. All in all we had a pretty great day. And plus, a perfect Vermont White Christmas to boot! :)

Hope you all enjoyed your holiday too!

My PTSD

Before I type this out, please understand that I fully realize that I'm being an idiot. I completely understand that there are much much MUCH bigger things in this world that people worry about on a daily basis than our (former) problems. But hey, I call this blog my "diary" for a reason, so forgive me while I vent my feelings for a moment. ;)

Over the last 20 months I've been swallowing issue after issue. Problem after problem. Drama upon drama. Just handling it as it comes because I had to to survive it. To be the strong one for my kids and help my little family through it all. People would ask me all the time how in the world I was able to take it all, and I would just laugh & say "We're fine! It's just stuff. We'll get through it all & be stronger in the end." And I truly felt that at the time. Hell I still do, and I was right for the most part. We are fine. It was just stuff... Four of us are stronger because of it...

So why the hell am I falling apart now??

On one side of it, I am so blissfully happy. That part of our life is over. We are living in this beautiful place & I really do love it here. It feels more like "home" than anything else ever has. I have my perfect little family and because of that have more to be thankful for than many people in the whole wide world. But now that I don't have to "deal" with it all day after day I find myself completely freaking out at the littlest things and I fully know in the back of my brain that #1 it's all of that stress just now coming out & #2 that I really am being ridiculous.

We have been through entirely too much in our thirteen years together. More than most couples go through in their entire lives. The tragic & traumatic loss of my husband's father, the transition & ultimate loss of our family business, the loss of four pregnancies, a year & a half of fertility treatments to have our daughter, and then the whole losing our house to natural disaster- insurance being a PITA- robbed four times- moving across the country to escape fiasco. After all of that (and that's just a brief sweep over the stressful craptacularness that we've had to deal with) we have always come out of it with our heads held high & kept on going. So what the hell is my problem now? I think it's because now I have the breathing room to stop & think about it. I'm finally allowing myself to grasp what's behind us. It's like I realize now how much we have completely lost control over in our life & I am desperate to grab ahold of control over something & I can't.

It first was coming out in little spurts here & there. Freaking out over a mess in the kids' room. Getting thoroughly upset when the papers would pile up on the kitchen counter. New shower curtain in the bathroom caused this weird claustrophobia that I never knew I had & I freaked... Little panic attacks here & there that I could get over & move on.

But now? Now we have our stuff back from Kansas after all this time... & I have completely lost my mind. It's gone. Bye bye. See ya. Admit me to the looney bin & throw away the key.

It took three trucks *and* two u-haul trailers behind them to bring all of our stuff. (*vomit*) So much of it was either severely water damaged from the house (and they still gave it back to us so we could relive the awfulness of it. Awesome.) or it got irreparably damaged in the 1500 mile trek.

The rest was in 750 boxes of fun for us to go through. 750!!!! (Again, dry-heaving). It was unloaded in a matter of a few hours & we managed to fill three storage units and *still* had to bring 20 boxes or so back to our tiny rental house. (Commence panic attack!!) I felt like I couldn't breathe! Stuff was everywhere & I couldn't even so much as cook dinner because I couldn't get to my stove or my sink! AAAHHHH! Calgon take me away! So Mathew to the rescue starts to open the boxes and start to go through them. I feel a little better now because from the very first box we opened we could tell that we didn't have near as much junk as it would seem. In one huge box there was two cereal bowls and a saucer. That's it. (Plus a half of a trash bag full of paper). Oy. So even if we didn't get rid of a single thing (which we totally will) we still could downsize a ton just by consolidating the boxes. But we have to actually do that & doing that equals a huge mess in our already tiny house. Matt has gone through 100 boxes so far (I say Matt because I haven't been able to even go near them yet without my heart beating out of my chest) and has eliminated at least 40 of just those. But that means a) we have all of that trash to swim through with all of the paper to recycle and all of the broken down boxes and b) we have to store all of the boxes to keep until we can get through enough of a storage unit to start to reorganize it. So my reaction? I simply want to crawl into a corner until it all goes away all by itself. I don't want to deal with it anymore! Can't I just wake up one morning and it's all already done for me?!? No of course not. I know I need to suck it up and just deal with it. Just power through it all like I've always been able to do and get over it. It's just hard!!!

But I do know that we're in the home stretch. We just need to get through all of our crap & get rid of a lot of it and wait until we can move into our beautiful home & just live a normal life again. Once we can do that we'll be beyond perfect, I just know it. Now, if my heart could just tell my brain that so I stop freaking out I'll be all set...

One Step Closer...

As I type this message, our belongings are traveling somewhere across the United States toward Vermont! After 6 months notice of our move and a LOT of fighting with the insurance company to give us our damn stuff back, we're finally getting our wish! HALLELUJAH! I haven't the slightest idea what we're going to do with it all until we get to move into our house, but we'll figure it out! lol

Thing is, we've got a LOT of crap. A LOT. We had a 5,000 sq foot house prior to our farm home that was destroyed (only 2800 sq feet give or take), so a lot of stuff stored from that. Plus we had an office that we closed down, so a lot of stuff from that too. It wasn't that big of a deal living there at the time. A little cluttered, but not awful & a lot of the stuff was stored in the basement that we rarely looked at. But cramming it all into trucks has proved to be a bit overwhelming. We have THREE trucks coming with our stuff!

Oh. My. Gawd. I think I may be sick.

It's a little comforting to know that they were extra careful with how they packed our boxes (assuming from the few possessions we were initially given back so that we could function). The boxes were only packed 1/3 to 1/2 full and stuffed with paper, so I'm certain that we can pare down the amount by condensing some boxes right there. But rest assured, we are going to sell and/or donate probably 1/2 that crap. (Plus I have no idea if they are tossing or giving back the stuff that was irreparably destroyed. I think it's coming too, so there goes those things). We most definitely weren't hoarders. But we did collect a lot of things over the years & weren't great about getting rid of what we no longer needed. If we've learned anything at all from this whole ordeal, it is that we don't need near the "stuff" we thought we needed just two years ago. We've learned to live without & function just fine.

So tomorrow we will meet the movers at the storage unit & sigh a tiny sigh of relief. One step closer. One more step toward having this whole nightmare over with. I don't think I'll feel like it's really done until we're able to move into the house, be able to actually have all of our furniture & use our belongings again, let our kids have their own rooms again & have our whole life back. We're getting there, and we're about a billion times better than we were. But I just don't feel whole yet.

One step closer.

But hey, as of tomorrow, we will have a couch again! WooHoo! ;)