Blended Bliss

Sorry it has been so long since my last post but as you can imagine our house has been super busy. Two kids in baseball, one kid working, 4 in dance and getting ready for a recital, and the end of the school year.

So what has been going on in our blended house? Well we have now had 2 kids suspended from school for 3 days for fighting. First it was Brennan cause this kid kept calling him names and now Emerson for starting a fight with a kid who was calling him names. I'll tell you what is up with these boys and name calling turn punching. As I have tried to explain to them people are going to call them names from now til the day they day and they can't fight everyone that calls them a name. But I guess boys will be boys. I hope they learn their lesson. I in no way am ok with them fighting but I am sick of kids calling them names but I sure wish they would not fight in school. Emerson's fight got him 4 stiches in the lip. He might be done fighting I'm sure he won't want to get stiches again. My two little fighters. What am I going to do with them?

Well, I will be sure to post soon. We have all the kids this weekend so I'm sure there will be some action going on that I will need to vent about.

I wish the sickness would go away!

I haven't been on blogging much lately due to Sami being sick for 3 weeks. She started out with a fever and cough. I took her to the doctor and she had an ear infection and pneumonia. I had to take her to the hospital for tests but we did get to come home on meds and breathing treatments. Great! She starts to get a little better then she starts throwing up and diarrhea. I let this go on for 3 or 4 days and I take her back to the doctor. Doctor does a urine test to see if she is dehydrated which she was only a little bit so we get to go home and push fluids. She really hadn't eaten in 3 weeks and looks like she's lost about 5lbs. I feel so bad for her. Every time we think she is feeling better something happens and she gets sick again. So here we are 3 1/2 weeks later and she is still complaining her tummy hurts and she is still isn't eating a whole lot but she is eating. Hopefully she is on her way to being 100%. Lord knows I'm ready for her not to sick anymore.

My Son Hates Me

Why does my 12 year old son hate me? Am I that terrible of mom? Where did I go wrong? All these questions and hundreds more crossed my mind this past weekend as my son had a huge fit in the car. For whatever reason he has been angry since his dad and I split up about 9 years ago. Then we moved 150 miles away from his dad 6 years ago and I'm sure that did not help. I remarried and he inheritated 3 step siblings. Not easy for any child to handle. Well as he gets older he gets more mad. He is in counsling but not sure how much that is working. He has decided that he want to go live with his dad on a fulltime basis. Oh how sad that makes me. However, the more I think about it the more I think maybe it is for the best. They are very close and he seems to think that weekend dad and fulltime dad are the same. They are not. Dad is now going to have to have rules and bedtimes and I can't wait to see how he reacts to that.

I have figured out that my son doesn't hate me, I'm not a terrible mom, and I've done nothing wrong. It's just the time in my sons life where he needs to be with his dad more. Boys need their dads when they get that age and I want my son to have his dad and be able to spend time with him. However, not seeing my son everyday is going to be the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

How do us moms compare to a boys dad? We don't we just love them and know that they are always a mommas boy.

More Money?

Well I went to sign the younger girls up for cheering on Saturday, which cost us $55, and find out that the Ex owes $53 from last years cheering. And if its not paid by Tuesday then she can't learn the material for Saturday's tryouts. I mean come on....when is it going to end? The weekend before I paid $50 for baseball for the two boys.

The ex gets $900 a month in child support plus we pay for 95% of all extras. Including monthly payment for my stepsons instrument, my other stepsons guitar lessons, every time they need shoes or winter coats. We will be the one to buy my stepsons baseball shoes and glove. Every year we have to buy it. I'm just fed up. I know that he has to support his kids but let me make that perfectly clear....WE DO.

So the whole reason I am posting about this tonight is my good ole husband gets mad at me becasue I told my step daughter to put the note in her bookbag for her mom about the money and that they needed by Tuesday in order for her to practice. Well guess what?? She didnt put it in her bookbag. So I tell my hubby ane he tells me to deal with it. I don't think so. What I say around here to his kids don't matter so why should I be responsible for this? He said it was my fault I should have made sure she put it in her bookbag. Come on I tell an almost 10 year old and they can't follow thru. NOT MY FAULT!

He just ticks me off!! He just thinks that we can hand out money like it grows on trees. It's not in the budget this week. Why doesnt he understand that she is just as responsible for those kids as he is? He thinks because I don't work outside the home and that he is the one that brings home the money then he has all the say. Well I pay the bills and I know that it's not in our budget. His ex just leaves it unpaid so that he will feel guilty and pay it. He'd rather make me mad then fight her and make her mad. IT'S BULL!!

Well I guess I'm done ranting tonight. Just another bump in the road of a blended journey.

Every Other Weekend

Well it's another Friday here in our house. What does that mean? It means that we have all 7 kids here and it is loud and noisey and full of fun. This is a rare weekend where we really don't have much planned. The kids will probably have a friend or two or three spend the night at least one of the nights. Hey what's a few more once you have 7? !

This weekend the girls, Bailee and Maddie, and I are going to work on cleaning their room. We need to go thru their clothes and give away clothes that don't fit or they don't wear. Danny is going to hook up a stereo and speakers in the boys room. FUN!!

I need to clean up the basement and go thru some old pictures. Brittany's 16th birthday party is next weekend and my sister wants to make a slideshow and needs some older pictures. So I get to figure out how to scan the pictures onto my computer. That should be interesting.

As of right now it seems like this weekend is going to be a calm weekend just hanging out and getting things done around the house. Hopefully this is how the weekend goes and there are no surprises. Who am I kidding? There are always surprises. Someone is mad, ususally me cause kids can't clean up after themselves or heaven forbid they get off a game system. Oh I'm not going to go off on my tangent about the game system, well at least not in this post. I'll save that for a differen post.

Happy Friday the 13th! Have a good weekend!

Streching a Dollar

Well as you can imagine with 7 kids our grocery bill is out of control. So a few weeks ago I decided that since we only have one income we need to start saving where we can. Now I obviously can't change much about our living expenses other then telling the kids 1000 times a day to turn off the lights so I decided that I am going to become a coupon crazed momma. I had seen briefly on some talk show about the coupon mom who can go into a store and get over $100 in groceries for $30 and I figure if she can do so can I. I clipped coupons before here and there but never saved more then a few bucks in one trip. So I just typed coupons in my search engine and 100s of sites pop up. So I just start researching and boy did I learn alot. It is amazing how many sites there are about coupons and how to save the most money. I am addicted to finding coupons and saving money. There are moms out there that are saving more then half off their grocery bill. So my goal is by summer to have my grocery bill cut in half.

What I've Learned To Get the Most Savings: I learned to print coupons from the internet. There are a ton of great sites. I found out that I can use more then 1 coupon for an item. I never knew that. How great is that?! On www.couponmom.com you can find the weekly ads for stores in your area and compare shop to get the most out of the store sales and coupons you have. The greatest thing I learned is that you can get coupons on ebay. I got over 400 coupons for $6 and over 300 of those coupons are food and drink coupons. Just search "100 coupons" on ebay and over 29 pages came up. I got 100 coupons for $1.50 free shipping. I can't wait to get all my coupons in the mail this week.

My Latest Grocery Trip: Now since I'm new to the coupon craze this is my first trip to the store where I used a bunch of coupons. I went to Kroger and saved $128 in coupons and my Kroger Plus card, on my receipt it said that was a 40% savings.

I may not get up in the morning and put on a suit. I may not collect a paycheck from a boss that I can deposit in the bank on Friday. But I do have a full-time job, I am a mom of 7 who is the accouantant of The Camp-Robins House, and I have to make that check that my husband does collect go as far as possible.

How We Got Blended

How we became the Camp Robins Clan. My best friend, Kristal, worked for Danny and kept telling me that I should go out with him. I kept telling her no I was already dating someone; but she wouldn't give up and finally I was single again. She called me to tell me that Danny got run over by his own car. Once she told me he was fine I was cracking up but I wanted to see if he really was fine so she gave me his email address and I sent him an email asking him about getting run over by his own car. What a story!!! He emailed me back to tell me he was really fine and we started emailing each other. Now just so you know that I wasn't a complete weirdo I had met Danny once before while I was dating the previous guy at the bar one night while out with Kristal. So he did know me when I emailed him, well sort of. During our emailing I asked him what kind of music he liked, see Kristal, her hubby, and I were going to see Brooks and Dunn and I had an extra ticket and was going to invite him. Well his response was "anything but country" well that was not good. This concert was 5 different country artists and lasted like 6 hours. When I told him why I was asking he said the only way he would go was if he could pay. Well hell yes. The date for the concert was July 6th. Then came Kristal July 4th party and Danny came, this was the first time I'd seen him since starting to email him. We talked at the party and a bunch of us made plans for the next night to go to dinner. Then came the day of the concert. I have to give him huge kudos for hating country he took like a pro. The next day we went to a Columbus Crew game and a Columbus Clippers game. Now all this was in July of 2001 and we have been together ever since.