Why didn't you tell me???

REALLY PEOPLE????

REALLY????

I was just looking at my new blog layout (I am quite impressed that I finally figured out how to do it!) when I came across this description at the top of my page.


"Hi, My name is Stephanie.  I am a wife and a Stay-at-home."

A Stay-at-home what????  Of course it was meant to say stay-at-home mom but since it just said stay-at-home, it really could be interpreted as anything.


So when strangers read my blog they are left to speculate just exactly I stay-at-home to do.

They probably think things like this:

"Maybe she is a stay-at-home ventriloquist."

"Maybe she is a stay-at-home video game tester."

"Maybe she is a stay-at-home under-water basket weaver."


Although all of those occupations would be awesome and I would love to be talented enough to be a ventriloquist, I feel like it would be dishonest to let people presume that I was capable of being that awesome.


I have already taken it upon myself and corrected this typo but for future reference, someone should have pointed that out.


I understand why my overwhelming awesomeness might intimidate you from correcting me but when it comes to matters of grammar I would very much appreciate positive criticism.


That is all I really have to say.


Except for this:  Under-water basket weaver was the most creative occupation I could come up with but I fully intended to come up with something funnier.  Something like a stay-at-home elephant hoof filer,  or a stay-at-home  Kangaroo pouch zipper maker... I hope you weren't too disappointed by the lack of creativity given to the assumed occupations. I also hope that you will take this as my solemn vow to apply more creativity when posting comical blogs. As always, Thank you very much for reading this!

Simple is always better!

"Simple is always better!"

"Less is more!"

I have decided that my house needs a COMPLETE over haul!!!  A simplification if you will.

Because of my ADD, I have a VERY hard time organizing.  I always start off well and with the best intentions. I buy folders, tubs, baskets and a label maker, but the actual planning and buying of supplies is FAR more fun than the actual organizing!!!  

I mean really, who wants to alphabetize the movie collection? Yes it would be easier to find a movie but  do you know how long it takes to alphabetize 600+ movies???  

I don't either since I never finished but I can tell you that what little I did do took a VERY long time!  So for now, they aren't in order....but you know what??? It really isn't the end of the world.

How about my Pez collection?? (For those of you that don't know, I L-O-V-E  love Pez dispensers!! I have quite the collection, well over 150 I would say.  They aren't wrapped or anything because what fun would they be if we didn't eat the pez?!?!?! ) It is just a fun cheap thing to collect that the whole family enjoys. Yes, it would be nice if they were more organized and in groups (e.i. Disney characters, pixar characters, Winnie the pooh and friends, etc...)  but who really has the time to sit down and separate them all and then stand them all back up on the cabinet tops??  Certainly not me!! LOL!  
 Don't even get me started on the kids toys! Once again, with the best of intentions I bought a toy rack thing that has little bins on it.  I then separated all the toys into different buckets.  I photographed the toys that went in each bucket and taped the picture to the bucket. The pictures were for the kids, so they could see exactly what went into each bin and it would help keep everything more organized.  Right?!?!?  
It worked for a little while, or anytime I would clean up the toys by myself but eventually it just got to be too time consuming.  So I just started throwing the toys in bins just get them off the floor.  
But my solution now is to just simplify...get rid of junk...de-clutter...spring clean...whatever you wanna call it.


I wanna call it...
GETTING SIM-TASTIC!

I want to get my house simtastic...simply fantastic.  or fantastically simple...either way, it is exactly what I want.  
I want to be in the world and not of the world and the perfect way to get there is to start making my life simtastic!

 So, out with the old and (hopefully) in with nothing new! 

I love you all! Thank you for taking the time to read about my boring life!  I promise to try harder to lighten the mood more often, so long as you promise to keep coming back and leaving positive and supportive comments!

Happy Friday!  YEAH for the weekend!  Please tell me, how will you make your life simtastic this weekend????

Poop and Roses (Not for the easily squeemish!!)

* Disclaimer- this post contains content that to some may be disgusting, gross or some other form of those words*

*This post is also guaranteed to be hilarious! So enter at your own risk and weigh you humor vs grossness ratio to decided if this post is for you or not*

Have you made up your mind yet?

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Are you sure?  You are??

Okay, then here we go...

Poop...

Yeah that's right, this is a blog post about poop.

All kinds of poop!  baby poop, sick poop, dog poop, poop in diapers, poop in toilets, poop outside, poop on the carpet inside, and the worst of all...poop on me!

Since we are all adults, I am sure you guys can handle the word poop, but if not feel free to giggle every time you read it ...after all, it's not like we can see you right now and you can always pretend like you were a mature adult while reading this and we will never know any different!

BUT...for those of you that might be offended or grossed out by the word "Poop" we shall call it roses.

So let me start by saying, my husband has been deployed for roughly 4 months now, and I have had to deal with more roses in those 4 months than in the entire 5 years I have been a mother!!!! 

And like I said before, it is all different kinds of roses.  Baby roses, sick roses,  dog roses, roses in diapers, roses in toilets, roses outside, roses inside on the carpet and worst of all...roses on me.

Well, about a week after my husband deployed the roses started...My adorable 2 year old immediately started having lots of roses.  And not just normal roses. But roses of a strange color, texture, and smell.  So I took Konner to the Dr. and told him all about the horrible roses that he had been having for 3 weeks. The Dr. was a little concerned it had lasted so long so he wanted me to collect a sample for him.

YEP...that's right...HE WANTED A SAMPLE!!

So he sent me home with 3 little tubes full of some sort of mystery liquid and told me to "extract a sample from the diaper and put enough in the bottles to raise this mystery fluid up to the line."  Sounds easy...gross...but easy, RIGHT?!?!?  So we get home and Konner gives me his first roses (isn't he sweet! He gave his mommy roses...I wish they had been real ones!)

Here is where things start to get tricky (and sticky)...The roses that Konner were having at the time were practically liquid...and he was having said roses in a disposable diaper...which pretty much immediately absorbed all the liquid roses!  Also, the tubes were in a little complicated.

You know those little bottles of bubbles like for weddings that have the wand attached to the lid and you just pop it off??? Well that is what these little tubes were like, only instead of a bubble wand it had a spork like thing on the end. Yes, a SPORK like thing.  (which in my opinion just made things harder because the spork like prongs would get caught on the disposable diaper and tear it and I was given specific instructions to make sure that none of the diaper got into the sample...all those little wet bead like things that come out of disposable diapers couldn't get in there...yet the tool they gave me ripped open the diaper exposing thousands of them!) What was a mother to do???  I called the lab and explained the situation.  They said come in and we will give you something else to help with it.  So I drive the kids the 30 minutes to the base clinic where they give me this plastic bowl like contraption.  I am supposed to take it home, set it inside the toilet (it had a bowl in the middle and then plastic wing type things that rested on the edge of the toilet between the actual bowl and the seat). So I am supposed to set it in the toilet, then when Konner starts acting like he is going to give me some roses, hold him on the toilet over this bowl thing and then extract it from the bowl and put it in the tubes. It sounds like a great plan and it completely eliminated the whole disposable diaper/gel bead things issue.

Well, let me tell you. That was a lot easier said than done!

First off,  the roses that Konner was having were completely unpredictable.  It was as if someone had fed him some level 10 spicy curry...he literally had no control over when or where he gave me these roses.  So trying to figure out when he was going to go was hard enough but then I had to constantly be close enough to bathroom to be able to get him in the bathroom, get his pants and diaper off and get him on the toilet, HOPEFULLY without getting roses everywhere.

This is where things get gross and we get into the worst roses of all...roses on me.

So Ashlynn, Konner and I were playing in his bedroom (which is directly across the hall from the bathroom. We spent about 3 hours playing in his room waiting for him to give me some roses.  So, we are playing and I see Konner get this look on his face...it was a weird look but I knew what it meant...it was that look of when you are sick to your stomach and you don't think you make it to the bathroom or you are afraid to do it because you are afraid these roses have thorns and might hurt you...

So, I quickly grab him and turn towards the bathroom. While walking (well, running!) towards the bathroom I took his pants off.  We get into the bathroom and I turn him towards me to check the diaper. (I wanted to make sure there weren't already roses in it before I ripped it off and flung it everywhere) I looked and there weren't any roses. So I stand him up in front of me facing him towards the toilet and start to undo the diaper.  As soon I get the diaper off Konner starts giving me the roses...

I was completely unprepared for what happened next.

Imagine if you will, a bottle of ranch.  You know how when you get down to the very bottom of it, you turn it upside down and shake it to get the last bit out? Now picture how it comes out, There is a big blob that comes out of the middle straight down on the plate, then the rest kinda splatters all around it, and the bottle makes a sort of farting sound. (Which my daughter thinks is hilarious!)

Well, that is EXACTLY how Konner gave me the roses...right onto my lap...onto my legs because I had shorts on, on my shorts and the bottom of my shirt.  It also splattered around me onto the wall, cabinets, door, tub and floor.  I did manage to get some of it into the bowl for the samples but I am fairly confident that he got more OUT of the toilet than in the toilet!

I did manage to get the samples together and fill the containers up to the line and put some in an empty urine sample cup.  

I couldn't take the samples to the clinic until the following morning because by this time they were already closed.  So I go read the directions in the paperwork the lab guy gave me. And there it is, "What to do if you can not deliver specimen immediately"  and do you know what the answer was???

KEEP IN FREEZER UNTIL YOU CAN GET THE SPECIMEN BACK TO THE LAB!!!

So, they want me to take these rose samples, and put them in my freezer?  What, just set them on the shelf between the ice cream and frozen veggies???

It took me a good 10 minutes to get up the courage to actually place the tubes of roses in the freezer, where we store our food!  Then for the rest of the day, I would periodically open the freezer and see the roses sitting on the shelf in my freezer like some sort of rose Popsicles and think about how gross it was.  But, there was something wrong with my baby and this was the only way to find out what it is, so I suck it up, and deal with it.

Well, it turned out that Konner had an INTESTINAL PARASITE!! Most likely from something he ate.  Probably some sort of produce that wasn't cleaned well enough.  He needed antibiotics for 2 weeks and he was better. 

Well, I thought that all my rose troubles were over...but boy was I wrong!

We have a dog named Zoey.  Zoey is an 11 month old lab mix and she is a little ball of energy.  Since the hubby is deployed, I am on rose duty. Meaning I have to pick up all the roses from the backyard so that when the kiddo's go outside to play they don't get into the roses.

Now, most people would be worried that their kids would step in the roses because they didn't see it.  Yes, I would be worried about that too, but there is something far worse that I worry about.

 My kids seem to be attracted to the piles of roses outside!  It's like they are some sort of child magnet, or maybe some sort of children's crack that my kids are hooked on...I dunno what it is about the roses that my kids find so interesting but they sure do love it.  Maybe it's because I freak out when they get near it and they get a kick out of it. I dunno...

My son loves to walk up to them, call out to mama, and then squat down pointing at it...trying to touch it but not actually touching it...hovering his little fingers about a centimeter above the roses! 

Then Ashlynn will encourage him to come look at the roses.  One day they both were sitting on the ground facing each other holding their hands out.  When I asked what they were doing my daughter said "We are sitting at a camp fire, warming our hands".  I just thought they were pretending at first but after a minute I walked over to them to see what they were doing and boy was I surprised when their "campfire" was actually a pile of dog roses!!!

So, with the hubby gone I have to go outside every day or two with a walmart sack and a little shovel and collect all the roses. The winter has made it a little easier because the kids don't go outside as often so I don't have to do it as often. It is nice to not do it every day but it is worse because when I do do it there is a weeks worth of roses everywhere!  Plus, once again my kids fascination with the roses lures them to want to help me and inevitably one or both of them ends up some how touching the roses!!  Then it takes 20 minutes to get both kids in the house, into the bathroom and go through the hand washing process.  

  I would never have imagined that washing their hands would be such an ordeal.  While I'm washing Konner's hands, Ashlynn is splashing water everywhere, standing on the toilet pulling stuff out of the medicine cabinet that she isn't supposed to have or pumping the foaming hand soap all over everything BUT her hands!  Then when I am washing Ashlynn's hands Konner is doing the same things! He has also been known to grab stuff and try and stick it in the toilet! Then once his hand goes in the toilet I have to wash them again and we start all over... Oh well, this post isn't supposed to be about hand washing...it's about roses!

So, we are back to Zoey's roses now.  Zoey isn't exactly fully house trained yet.  She will whine to go out when we are home but if we are gone she will go in the house or while we are sleeping she will go in the house.  She has selected 2 favorite places to leave her roses.  Place #1- Ashlynn's closet...I am not sure why she has selected either place but this one is particularly odd because she has to go all the way downstairs and into her room and into her closet to get there!  Place #2- Konner room...but not just anywhere in his room...in one particular spot about a foot in front of his closet and always on the left side!  So of course when there are roses on the floor in his room Konner's fascination kicks in!!!  He runs over to it, squats down while calling my name and hovers his little fingers over it while yelling "Bad dog! Bad dog! Bad dog!"

Then I pick it up with toilet paper and try to flush it down the toilet! Most of the time it ends up being to big or too much and clogs up the toilet so I have to plunge it out!  VERY FRUSTRATING!!!

Okay, so to finish up, I would just like to say that I am so sick of roses!  These stories are the comical ones but we have had lots of other rose incidents too! Like when Konner had his parasite he would give me roses in the middle of the night, in his bed, and they would leak...even through two diapers, or one overnight diaper and a cloth diaper cover, and I would have to change his sheets at 3 a.m.  It would take just long enough for him to fully wake up so it would be a struggle to get him back down!!  Ashlynn had some sort of a stomach virus that led to accidents in her bed and pants as well and she spent 2 days in pull ups!  A few weeks ago we spent 3 days with all of us have very uncomfortable roses and throwing up!  It has been very interesting!

I love being a mother and it makes me sad when my kids are sick and we have to deal with roses but I would have to say if I never saw another rose again it wouldn't bother me at all!  I know that is an impossible hope but one can dream right?!?!?

  

  

 

    

A new chapter

Today is a new day.   I am starting a new chapter in my life.  There have been some things that have been holding me back and I am finally able to face them.  I am reaching out and getting the help I need and the help my children need.  I am putting my children first and we are going to be happy again.  I know that my depression isn't going to go away but I am going to get to a better place. 

Please pray for me and my kids. Pray that we can stay strong, that we can get better and happier.  Pray that we will overcome the trials in our life right now and that everything will work out in the end.

I love you all and appreciate your support more than you could ever imagine!  Thank you so much for loving me and my children and I promise that when we are in a better place and are emotionally able to, we WILL make it up to you!

Storms a brewin'

I don't really have a whole lot to say today.  We didn't go to church because Konner is sick.  He threw up last night and I thought maybe it was because he was crying in his sleep and choked.  However, around 4am he threw up again and this morning he has had a low grade fever (between 100-101).  I feel like I need to describe how I am feeling right now.

I feel like I have fallen to the end of my rope.  I have tied a knot and am hanging on for dear life because I am not ready to give up, but there's a storm coming. The wind is starting to blow and I don't know how much longer I can hold on to the rope as it thrashes me back and forth.

Does that make sense to anyone? Do you understand the feeling that I am trying to depict?

I am about to go over to a friends house to talk out some of these feelings. I have been praying for a reprieve, a rest place from all of this mess and I keep feeling this pull towards this particular friend.  I don't know if she is going to help me by teaching me something, or just by being supportive and holding me up. Whatever it is meant to happen will work out.  All I know is, I haven't felt the spirit this strong prompting me in a long time.  So I am going to listen to it and hope for the best...because having hope is about all I have left.

Still not alone :-)

I am starting to realize that sometimes the things that to anyone else may seem like normal house hold duties, to me, can be completely overwhelming.  Things that I , as a stay at home mom and house wife, should be able to handle alone, I struggle with.  I find myself getting overwhelmed and then depressed and ultimately questioning my self worth.  Coming to this realization and being able to consciously recognize when I get to this point has really been a blessing. It has allowed me to stop, breath, look at the situation from the outside of the box and then address the issue.

So for example, lets say one day I wake up and walk into my living room only to realize that it is a  disaster! I am not talking about your normal, everyday, run of the mill, we have kids disaster but a literal disaster. Trash, clothes, toys, couch cushions everywhere (and while this doesn't happen very often, my children are capable of making this sizable of a mess in a fairly short amount of unsupervised time...like 5 minutes!) It may be that the kids were unsupervised for a few minutes and made this mess, or maybe I was sick and these messes accumulated over several days time, or maybe we were just super busy running in and out of the house and trying to squeeze in a little housework here and there.  It doesn't matter how the house got this state. All that matters is, it is in this state and now I have to address the issue.

So I walk into the living room and can immediately see a dozen ways my children could get hurt. My mind then plays out all these scenarios in graphic details. They all have the same ending...someone gets hurt, I have to call 911, the paramedics see the state of my house (which in reality isn't as bad I think it is) and calls CPS on me and they come and take my kids away from.  No matter what I try to do to shake this thought out of my head, I can't. I honestly just can't shake that thought.  So, once I have allowed myself to emotionally  beat me to a pulp, I react in 1 of 2 ways.

Reaction #1- This is the far less used reaction.  In this reaction, I walk in to the room and think to my self "What is wrong with me? How can I let this happen? I have to do something about it"  Then I letter my ADD kick in and I hyper-focus on the living room. So instead of just picking up the living room and maybe vacuuming, I will deep clean it. I'm talking remove all the couch cushions and clean out ever crack and nook, organize everything on the computer desk right down  to the paper clips by color, alphabetize the cd-roms, etc...  While normally, say every couple of months, cleaning like this wouldn't be a big deal and it would probably be helpful.  But in this case it is quite the opposite because no sooner than I finish this cleaning and I am feeling great, the kids run through and make some sort of a minor mess which in my mind is a complete disaster again! Then  I have lost my patience and I take it out on the kids by screaming at them or by taking their toys away so they can't make any messes. To me that just isn't fair. I can't punish my kids for making a mess before they even make the mess. You know what I mean?

Reactions #2- This isn't so much of a reaction as a cop out.  I walk int the room. Think "What is wrong with me? How could I let this happen?"  "I don't deserve my kids" "Maybe I should just leave it and then someone can call CPS on me or my husband will divorce me.  Maybe I deserve this, maybe I deserve to be miserable all the time.  So I let myself mentally and emotionally abuse myself to the point where I think maybe it would just be easier on my kids and family if I just killed myself.  Then my kids could live their lives without having to deal my depression, anxiety and anger.  Kyle could raise them and everyone else would be happier.  Now, I have never actually contemplated suicide, I have never thought about how or when I would do it, but I have that about thinking about it...Does that make sense? I have thought, maybe if I could just do it, then everyone else would be so much better off.

Now, I know I don't really want to kill myself. I know that I love my kids and that I am a good mother. (Or at least I am capable of being a good mother). I know that my husband loves me and doesn't want me to go off myself.  I know that Jesus loves me and through his tender Mercy and the atonement I can have faith enough to try and heal and move on. But there are days when I feel like trying to find that faith is just too much work. Days when scripture study or prayer seem more like a chore than a blessing, I have a hard time feeling the spirit like I used to. When I first joined the church I could constantly feel the spirit, anytime I opened my scriptures, said a prayer, was in Sacrament meeting, did a service project, but now I feel like my depression is serving as a sort of filter for the spirit and it just isn't getting through like it should.

ANYWAY,

I am a firm believer that Heavenly Father answers prayers through people.Meaning when I prayed the night before and asked for relief from this stress and struggle, Heavenly Father put it in her heart to help me. Yes I asked her to come over but she didn't have to yes. She didn't have to help me clean, she didn't have to help with my kids, she didn't have to tell me that I was a good mom and a good wife, she didn't have to do any of it but she did. And it was AMAZING!  She listened to me talk almost all day about the stresses I am dealing with from my husbands deployment, from the dog I didn't really ever want,from a misunderstanding between a friend.  She didn't have to, but she did.  She came over and was nothing but encouraging and supportive! I never felt judged or put down by words or actions. It was an intense release to be able to  let go and be so honest with someone and know that they weren't judging me for it. 

So yes ,in this crazy roller coaster ride of emotions that make up my depression I am going to have highs and lows. Some of the lows will be lower than I ever thought possible but in the end it will all work out because I have friends like her.  I have people in my life that are willing to understand and support me without passing judgement and that feels amazing!

So even though, for the last two days my depression has gotten the most of me, it hasn't gotten the best of me.  I am still holding on and I will continue to fight to stay above the negative intrusive thoughts and I will be taking it one day at a time from here on out.

Anxiety

To be anxious or not? There really is no question.

When I was first diagnosed with depression, I was also diagnosed with a moderate anxiety disorder.  When I think of people with anxiety disorders I think of people that have panic attacks, so just like I did with the depression, I assumed that because I wasn't having panic attacks then I must not be having anxiety anymore...and just like the depression...this was a false belief.  Normally I would think that realizing I still have depression and an anxiety disorder would make me feel worse but in all actuality, it has made me feel better.  Being able to identify what are symptoms of a sickness and not just me being a "freak " has brought me  comfort and peace of mind.  A burden has been relieved now that I know that I am not a "freak" and that there are others out there like me. 

My eyes were opened to the fact that I still have anxiety the last couple of days.  Let me start by saying that the friend in this situation is in no way at fault for the way I am feeling. I am actually kinda grateful that things went the way they did because I was able to see just exactly where my anxiety lies and how I am handling it (or rather, not handling it). I know that this friend will be reading this and I just want to reassure you that I love you and you are not at fault in this!  It has all worked out for the best and I am grateful that it did.

Anyway, so I have a friend, lets just call her, Anna.  So Anna and I met through church and we have been hanging out alot for the past few months.  She has the most amazing children and I love them like my own. 

Anyway, on Saturday she said something to me along the lines of "we need to talk, things are going to need to change because I am starting to go to school again".   This is where the anxiety kicked in.

Between the anxiety and the depressive symptoms the last 2 days have been something of a nightmare.

After she told me we needed to talk, she said she was having quiet time with her kids so she would email me later.  In kicks the anxiety.  Fidgeting, pacing, checking my email every 2 minutes and picking at my cuticles.  Picking at my cuticles seems to be my worst nervous habit that comes from anxiety.  Sometimes I don't even realize I am doing it until I am hurt and bleeding.  Then the anxiety feeds into the ADD and I can't concentrate on anything.  For example, I have been trying to write this for an hour and a half now.

Anna hasn't talked to me yet. She sent me a text message yesterday apologizing for not getting back to me, she has just been busy. Which is to be expected. She has 2 small children, a calling, church, and family time on the Sabbath.  So she was in no way wrong for not getting back to me, I was just allowing myself to get overly anxious and nervous about it.

I found that my anxiety had me being short tempered with my children, which in turn made me feel bad, which fed into the depression and negative thinking that I was a bad parent, which fed into I am not a good person or Mormon, I don't deserve the children Heavenly Father entrusted me with.  When I finally realized that I had allowed a simple "We need to talk" into this huge mess I began to realize that maybe I wasn't as mentally sound as I had thought.  Rationally thinking I know that a friend wanting to talk to me does not equal I am a horrible person and I don't deserve my children. I know that that isn't true. I know that it is silly to think that but at the same time I realize my brain doesn't always think the same as me. Does that make sense?  My brain misfires and I get the wrong message, many times I am able to catch the misfire and self correct myself but other times I don't catch it until it is too late and I have already done emotional or physical damage to myself.  I will pick at my cuticles or fingernails or toenails.

So last night after a day of anxiety, frustration and negative thinking, I finally decided to try and let it go.  The problem? I couldn't...I couldn't physically remove it from my mind.  It was eating away at me.  So I sent Anna a text message asking if she was still up around 10pm.  She didn't answer. So I decided to say my prayers and go to bed. I laid in bed tossing and turning for 2 hours. I finally got up, had a snack and read for a little bit in an attempt to slow my brain and get to sleep. Eventually sleep came around 1:30. 

This morning around 7:30 she texted me back saying she was sorry but she was already in bed last night when I texted her.  I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to let this get to me all day again.  But that has been alot easier said than done. I have been trying to stay busy and keep my mind somewhere else.  I was doing a fairly well until I noticed that I was getting short tempered again.  I had to put the kids in Ashlynn's room with a movie and I am watching a little tv trying to relax.

Anyway, in conclusion I have realized that I really am not as in control as I thought and I am going to do some more research on better ways to handle it all. Thanks for reading and I appreciate all your positive comments and support!

:-(

This is a flower that Kyle gave me on Ashlynn's 4th birthday. I posted it because I feel like every blog should have a picture!

So, it has been a very interesting morning in my house.  We once again didn't make it to church. All though I started out this morning bright and early at 6:15 with a shower it just didn't seem to want to work out.  I took a shower, got out, ate breakfast, got dressed and watched the news for about 15 minutes until it was time to get the kids up.  At 7 I got the kids up and it was not a pretty picture. Neither kid was happy that I was waking them up at the crack of dawn. There was much whining and fussing for the 10 minutes it took me to get them to the breakfast table.  Breakfast was a disaster in itself. I scrambled some eggs for the kids, put them at the table and went to blow dry my hair. 5 minutes later I returned to no Ashlynn and scrambled eggs all over my dining room.  I went in search for Ashlynn and found her back in bed.  I gently woke her up and told her we had to get ready for church to which she responded by screaming "NO I'M TOO TIRED" and tried to smack me.   I calmly told her she could sleep for 10 more minutes while I got Konner ready but then it was her turn to get ready.  After I got Konner dressed I went back to get Ashlynn, only she wasn't in her bed.  I spent 5 minutes looking around for her calling her name before I began to panic. I eventually found her sleeping on the couch in the storage room in the basement!  When I picked her up she proceeded to throw a full blown tantrum.  Kicking, screaming and hitting.  I told her she needed to calm down and we were going to get ready for church.  I sat her on her bed to get her dress and when I turned around she was gone.  I chased her up the stairs and she ran into my bedroom, grabbed the toothpaste off the counter in my bathroom and squirted it all over the toilet lid.  REALLY?  What was supposed to be simply getting dresses had turned into a nightmare, and it was only getting worse. Eventually I just broke down and cried. I gave up and decided that we just weren't going to make it to church today.

I feel bad that we didn't go because I have a calling. When things like this happen I have no control over it nor do I have time to find a sub for my primary class.  I hate feeling like I am burdening someone else with what is my duty.  I have been thinking about it and praying about it for a while but I think it is time to ask the Bishop to be released from my calling, atleast until Kyle gets home.  I would prefer to not have a calling then too though. With trying to decide whether or not I should go to the temple I feel like I need to be in Sunday School and Relief Society.  I love my calling and I love the girls in my class but I feel like this is more than I can handle right now. Please don't judge me for not wanting my calling right now. I know that it is a blessing and that I am lucky to have those girls in my life but right now I have so much on my plate I don't think that I am doing right by the girls by half heartedly fufilling my calling. 

I was feeling really upset and depressed about not making it church today. I was angry at myself for not being able to make it to church but thanks to my friend Mynnette, I am feeling much better.  I know that Heavenly Father knows what is in my heart. He knows that I wanted to be at church this morning but my family comes first and home was where I needed to be today.  I know that Heavenly Father isn't judging me for my physical placement on Sunday morning. I am still honoring the Sabbath, I am giving my kids a scripture lesson today as well as doing a service project at the nursing home across the street (if after a nap Ashlynn's behavior has improved).  I have said my prayers this morning and spent some time in the scriptures and I am sure I will get another hour in later while the kids nap.  I am so grateful that I have a loving Heavenly Father that understands exactly how I am feeling and where I am coming from. I am so grateful that I have such great friends and support here.  Being alone is hard but I know that this too shall pass and I am actually finding myself able to be optomistic about what will happen next.  Yes this chapter in my life has kinda sucked, we have had illness after illness, stress and anxiety, sick animals and broken cars but I know that once this passes the new season will arrive and hopefully it is like Spring. New beginnings. New life. Renewal of my Spiritual health. 

I know it is a struggle but even though I am at the end of my rope, I have tied a knot and I am hanging on for dear life.  Things will get better, things will change and  I will be happy again. 

A little more about being depressed (but not unhappy)

I am not sure why it turned my picture sideways?!?!?!

Anyway, I wanted to talk about how my depression relates to my spirituality and faith.  I am by no means a writer so I hope I am able to express what I need to. Please bear with me! I think this will help me with recognizing where my weaknesses are and make me better able to enrich my spiritual life. So here goes.

Sometimes my depression effects how I interpret the Spirit. That means that I have to consciously recognize what is the spirit and what is my depression. For example, one on my New Years Resolutions is to prepare for the temple.   Once I set it in my mind and heart that I was going all hell began to break lose in my life. My depression makes me think that all the bad things that happen are deserved because I have committed some sins and am not worthy to go to the temple.  Where as my conscious mind knows that it is one of two things: Satan attacking my weaknesses because he doesn't want me to be happy or to go to the temple, or less likely just a big coincidence that those things happened at the same time as my plan to go to the temple.  That is just the most recent example but it also applies to anytime I receive personal revelation.  I sometimes think that my prayers aren't answered when in reality it is just my depression convincing me that I am not worthy of blessings or answers so I don't make an effort to look for them.

 Depression sometimes makes me feel unworthy of the Sacrament. Let me be more specific here. Depression can manifest itself in things other than sadness like anxiety or anger. Mine shows itself in both ways.  I get anxiety over the fact that I might do something wrong and sin so I get angry at myself, or I get angry at someone else and it makes me feel terrible on the inside, so I convince myself that I am not worthy to receive the sacrament because I am doing something I shouldn't...even though sometimes it isn't that I am doing it but that I might do it.  Kinda like premeditated sin. Does that make sense? Sometimes if I am having a marital issue that is causing me to feel angry or upset I don't take the sacrament either.  I just feel uncomfortable taking the sacrament when my mind is in a bad place.

 Some of my depression stems from my ADD. Like for instance, I may start cleaning the kitchen and come across a toy, so I take the toy to the playroom.  The playroom is a disaster so I start picking up in there only to find a shoe.  I take the shoe to Ashlynn's bedroom closet and see her room is a disaster, so I start cleaning her room, and so on and so on, until eventually I hit the end of the day and I have started cleaning 7 rooms but I didn't finish cleaning any of them.  This causes me to feel unsatisfied with myself and my depression makes me start to think things like "I am a terrible mother/wife".  It has the same effect on my faith.  If I sit down to study my scriptures and 10 minutes later my mind is wondering, I feel like a failure.  So I try to force myself to refocus and it eventually becomes a burden instead of a blessing. When I kneel in prayer and 3 minutes after I started I can start to feel the ADD throwing ideas around in the back of my head, at first it is muffled and I try to get past it but it slowly creeps up until I feel like I have lost all concentration on my prayer.  Then I feel depressed because I can never truly pray for more than 2-3 minutes without having to apologize to Heavenly Father for drifting thoughts.  Then I start to break myself down with bad thought like "How could Jesus love me if I can't even say a proper prayer?" or "Why would Heavenly Father love me if I can't study his scriptures intently?" "How will I ever be able to enjoy the blessings of the temple if I can't even pay attention for 10 minutes of prayer, much less 3 hours in the temple?"

Depression and anxiety often interfere with my sleep as well, but seeing as how I have to get up for church in 6 1/2 hours I should probably try to go to sleep again.  Thank you so much for reading this and leaving supportive comments. I am still trying to figure out exactly what I want to with this blog and how I want to use it as a form of therapy and I appreciate your support while I struggle with this. Thank you for bearing with me and my horrible writing. I am hoping to get the hang of things soon!  I love you all and appreciate your support!