La Vie en Pinard

Welcome to our blog. Mostly you will see posts from Vikki but occasionally Jim will post and so will Stephen.

Enjoy catching up with us.

Friday, February 3, 2012

New Year - New Life - Millionaire

What a year 2011 turned out to be. I look back over the blog from last year and I realized I haven't posted in almost a year. Shame on me but when I thought about catching everyone up on what has happened and why I hadn't posted I realized I didn't have enough room to type it all up. With that being said I will try to summarize 2011 briefly and then maybe you will understand.

My last post was in March so lets begin in April:

April 2011 - Jim and I were working on "Once Upon a Mattress" during this month and for two more months we would be focusing on this show. 30+ teenage cast members as well as another 15 backstage teens and lots of parents. This is a recipe for chaos and it was but it was a blast and the show was a smashing success.

May 2011 - More "Once Upon a Mattress" rehearsals every Saturday, set building on Saturday, rehearsal on Tuesday and trying (though sometimes not very successfully) to get Stephen finished with 4th grade before 2012.

June 2011 - Mattress goes up. It was a HIT!!! After that we rested for about a day because Stephen's 10th (double digit) birthday was approaching quickly.

July 2011 - Stephen's birthday party happened on July 17 (or around there)I don't remember the exact date. Thirty + people in the yard for a pool party. Two weeks later I had an extensive oral surgery process begun. On July 28th they removed all of my upper teeth. My teeth were soft, brittle and falling out due to an infection in the gums. I healed ok from it but I bruised all the way down to my chest.




August 2011 - Round 2 of the surgery process happened August 7th. Let me just say that if someone tells you they want to remove or reshape your Tores RUN FAR AWAY!!! The Tores is the little bony thing that is in your palate and apparently they didn't think mine was shaped correctly to support the rest of the work they had to do so they did a reshaping/removal procedure, they do this with a hammer and chisel. NO I AM NOT KIDDING! I was sedated but no amount of sedation, unless it is a general anesthetic, will stop you from feeling them hammer and chisel your mouth. Thanks to the love and support of my incredible husband, son and Mom, I got through it and began to heal.

September 2011 - Still focused on the healing process. Began helping some dear friends through a very rough patch. I believe that God only gives us what we can handle but I also feel He pushed me in September. I guess He didn't though because I did handle it. Did I forget to mention we STILL homeschool! Through it all, much to Stephen's dismay, school goes on!

October 2011 - We MOVED!!! With Dad's death and Mom's health declining we realized that she couldn't be alone anymore. I was having to come to her house in the morning, get her dressed, go back home, come back and fix her dinner, go back home fix dinner, come back and get her undressed and then do it all again tomorrow! SHEESH!! I would clean my house so I had time to clean hers. I would do my grocery shopping so I could take her, I would shovel our driveway only so I could get out to come shovel hers. It didn't take me long to realize I needed one home to care for. Her house is 2900 square feet on almost an acre and ours was 1000 square feet on a city lot - DO THE MATH. We moved. We actually moved our things out of our house on October 17th. The garages and out buildings here at Mom's were packed but we did it. LOVE YOU TIM, NANCY, CHRIS, JULIE, DON, SHARON, CHRISTIAN, ASHLEY and anyone else I forgot. We couldn't have done it without you.

November 2011 - On November 17th I put the final box away in the house. I cleaned the house and thought I can sit down now. NOPE!!! While I had been doing all the work of putting away and organizing Mom had been chomping at the bit to put up Christmas (Did I mention it hadn't even been Thanksgiving yet?). I had no sooner put the vacuum cleaner away until she began dragging out boxes for Christmas. This is NOT an exaggeration either. I can honestly say I love my Mom dearly but she can be difficult sometimes. This comes from living in constant and chronic pain for many years. I smiled and we put up Christmas. God really protected my health through all of this because I actually didn't have any problems with the CFS. It has been amazing.

December 2011 - Christmas came and went with no drama or upheaval this year. Since the past two Christmases STUNK in a huge way this one was relatively quiet. It went on forever that day though because it seemed to happen in shifts but it was fine. It was nice to just have some time with family. It was nice to see Stephen excited and see Mom and Jim both a little relaxed and Stephen laughing. It is still a hard day because it was only the second one without Papa and we realized on Christmas Day in 2009 he wasn't going to make it. It will always tarnish Christmas some but that is why God gave us Stephen, so that we could remember, even when it hurts, that life continues on.

January 2012 - Well here we are. It was been a strange winter weather wise. No real snow accumulation, which for Michigan is strange. Warmer temperatures, many days I am just in a sweat shirt. Yet I am freezing. Why you may ask? Well, I have discovered an incredible diet plan. I do NOT recommend that you try it but it has worked wonders for me. If you wonder what it is you haven't read the entire blog so let me sum it up for you - HAVE ALL YOUR TEETH PULLED, HAVE YOUR MOUTH RESHAPED WITH A HAMMER AND CHISEL THEN MOVE IN WITH YOUR MOTHER. Like I said great diet plan I do NOT recommend it. With that being said I started at a little over 300 pounds (It is hard for me to write that publicly but I determined to never be there again and if I am not going back I have nothing to be ashamed of now) and as of today I am at 214. You can do your own math. I am VERY proud of myself and feel better than I have in years. Now I am on the weight watcher program and loving it. I still am not finished with the dental process but it is coming to an end soon. I can eat quite a few things now and most of them are not low fat - mashed potatoes, potato soup, pasta etc. Now I am beginning to retrain myself to eat healthy because I will NEVER be there again.

February 2012 - Who knows what this year will bring. I used to believe I could handle anything life threw at me. While there were times this past year I doubted it, when I look around I realized that I did survive.

A friend of mine and I were talking the other day. We talked about everything that had happened to both of us in the past year and while some was good and some was HORRIBLE we both realized that God had blessed us with husbands who loves us, children we love and who love us, intact marriages, parents, that while aging are still reasonably healthy, our health (we are still breathing) and many other basic things, like food, shelter, clothes and so on.

I guess I may not be rich in material things but when I look back on 2011 I realize how rich I am inside!

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