Gotta have family

My sister, Alycia, surely this pic could land her a new career as a spokeswoman!

Me and my Uncle Jeff!!

Ooey, gooey marshmallow hands!

Roasting up some marshmallows!

My nephew, Seb, My Uncle Bernard, My Dad and My Uncle Jeff! <3>

With the passing of my Pop, as sad as it was, it offered the family the chance to get together and reconnect like we haven't been able to do in a very long time! It was really nice to see my Uncle Jeff again who I haven't seen in YEARS! He came out from Arizona. Sunday night, after a long weekend of calling hours, funeral, reception etc.... we all gathered at my parents house for a bonfire! What a great way to bring relaxation and closure to a sorrowful weekend! It's exactly the way Pop would have wanted it! A great time was had by all and lots of memories to last us for a while! <3

Graduations Galore!

My sweet girl and her "step" brother, Ron's son Cameron both recently added "preschool graduate" to their lists of qualifications! They both did an amazing job! I'm so proud of them both!

Pop Brown

In recent news...my Grandpa recently passed away. Pop lived to ripe old age of 83. It's bittersweet. He was always such an active guy...always up on a roof or tinkinering with something trying to fix it. We all swore he would outlive us all! A few years ago, he came down with Alzheimer's and went downhill pretty fast. We were all taking turns watching him and caring for him, but when he started to wander off...we decided the best thing to do was admit him to the Alzheimer's unit of a local nursing home. I can't however help, feeling an intense amount of relief knowing that he is finally whole again and with my Gram again!

http://poststar.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/article_63b44888-7e76-11df-856d-001cc4c002e0.html

Where has the time gone??

Hello, Ladies! As I sit here, going over preparations in my mind to be sure I have everything done that I need to for the end of the school year, I am finding myself so overwhelmed and stressed...not because of end of the year school stuff...I've done all that before, but because Ayva is finishing preschool! Tomorrow is her last day of classes and her graduation is this Saturday night! HER LAST PRESCHOOL CLASS EVER!!! Meaning, she won't ever be in preschool again...where has the time gone? I just can't believe it! I know everyone says their kids grow up so fast, and if you blink, you miss it...but seriously, at the risk of sounding totally cliche...Ayva has grown up soo fast!! She's had her dance recital, field trips, now her graduation and she'll be in Kindergarten before you know it. She has really blossomed into such an entertaining, beautiful, full of personality and too-big-for-her-own-good, little girl! I am so proud of her, but I've been so emotional about it all, I don't know if I can handle the stress!! I started sobbing uncontrollably the other day because I hit a little tree stump, which came out of NOWHERE by the way, and thought I broke our brand new lawn mower...but it turned out I didn't. LOL I'm an emotional mess! Ayva has a cap and gown to wear for her ceremony, complete with a tassel, Ladies...I really don't know if I'm going to make it!

Ayva got a magnet for each of her teachers that says...The music of love plays loudly in the laughter of a child~ M.A. Radmacher

A friendship quilt

I'm sure through my various blogs and comments, you've all heard about my friend, Mandy. I met her my freshman year of college...despite the fact that I was totally absorbed with my boyfriend and going home every weekend. I'm not good at making friends anyway, so the way that Mandy and I became friends was pretty funny. My boyfriend came to stay with me one weekend, and we were planning to go out. I really wanted some other company besides him...(things usually didn't end well when he was drinking!) So I saw Mandy in the hallway, and just on a whim, asked her if she wanted to go out with us. She said yes, and the rest is history! We were inseparable from that night on. We roomed together the following year, and the year after that! We lost a few roommates along the way...it turns out, we are the only two that can stand living with each other, lol! Mandy is my very BEST friend, and we have been through so much together! A week before I was supposed to get married, her father(also an AWESOME person) and Mandy, called me up from Florida where they were vacationing. They asked me what I was doing, and then asked if I wanted to come to Florida! Well, needless to say, I was on a plane, headed south by 6 o'clock the next morning (did I mention I quit my job to go?!)!! The week that I spent in Florida holds some of my very fondest memories, and I have a beautiful scrap book that Mandy made for me of the whole vacation!! When we got home, we were preparing for my wedding, and I introduced her to my cousin...and again, the rest is history. They are now approaching their second anniversary and have a beautiful little girl.

Mandy means the absolute world to me...she is so much fun, so creative and inspirational and someone I know I can always count on! As a wedding gift, she made me a quilt, completely by hand and it was so beautiful and meaningful. It sits on my bed, right now. When I was pregnant with my daughter, Mandy taught me how to quilt and I made a quilt for Ayva, before she was born! I feel like we share such a deep bond of friendship, and even though our busy lives have brought us in different directions and we live at opposite ends of the state...when we do get together, it's like we never even missed a day! Mandy will be coming to stay with me next Saturday night, and I am sooooo excited!! We are going to hopefully have a fire Saturday night, and then get up in the morning to make the guys breakfast, since its Fathers' Day!!

This is Me, Mandy, my Cousin Chad, and My Cousin Brad...What a family, huh?
This is Mandy and I getting ready at her Bachelorette Party!

This, coincidentally, is Mandy and I at MY bachelorette party! Yes...that is a lime in my mouth!

This is the Quilt that Mandy made for me!

This is the Quilt that I made for Ayva!

The Rogue Ballerina

Hi girls!! I have finally uploaded Ayva's dance recital video to youtube for your viewing pleasure! If you go to the vidoe bar on my blog, Ayva's video should appear as a choice...she's the cute little blonde in the purple tutu! Otherwise, you can go to Youtube, and type in "The Rogue Ballerina!". LOL...I may be a LITTLE biased but I think it is well worth the 8 minutes to watch it! I am soooo proud of her, such a little star in the making!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMbmoNjGgdc

Rainbows

During the course of this...well, course...I have often looked back through my blogs, and I think I can see some sort of progression...a rainbow out of a dark sky. I think I started off somewhat cynical and bitter about the things that happened to me in the past, I needed for some reason...you can call it venting...to air all my dirty laundry. But somewhere along this journey, I "met" some very wonderful people, who have supported me, been a shoulder to lean on, offered advice, a "listening"ear and helped me continue on my journey in the "right" direction! I have come to feel very close to my "blogging sisters"...and am more sure than ever, that everything in my life led me to Ron, then to this Master's program and then to all of you!! I mean it when I say, this is the "best damn class assignment I have ever had!" This has been such a wonderful journey so far and I hope it is the start of a long-standing "friendship" with all of you! My sister had a pen-pal from Canada, that she gained correspondance with in elementary school and this past winter, they finally got together and met...so I definitely think there is hope for us...LOL. Keep it real, sisters and here's to hopefully more than just a few more weeks of chatting!

Change is good!

I have to admit, in the three years that I've been with Ron...I've tried to do a LOT of changing. Not because he needed or wanted me to, but because I wanted me to. I was in such a horrible relationship and was miserable for so long, I didn't like the person I turned into. I am a very shy person and will tolerate just about anything before I really speak my mind. Not terrible qualities I guess, but I think they've really taken their toll on me. During the course of my past relationship, I took a lot of crap and lost touch with a lot of my friends. Now I find myself out of my comfort zone, in a town where I don't know a lot of people. I've really been craving some female companionship lately. Some girls that I could hang out with, have some girls nights, go out dancing, etc. It's very hard for me because I'm very shy, so I don't usually put myself out there to form new friendships. That is why I've really been putting forth an effort to change. I really have been trying to let my guard down more and more. I really need to stop worrying what other people think, and stop worrying about looking stupid. Just recently, I began taking a zumba class with a co-worker of mine. It's definitely fun, it takes care of my need for exercise and my craving to dance all in one!! And I think it's a great way to start meeting some local ladies!! (LOL, that sounded a little predatory!?) Anyway, throwing caution to the wind and letting go of my inhibitions a little feels good. I don't need to go through life being shy and missing out on opportunities and I definitely don't need to let people walk all over me either! As Ayva prepares to enter Kindergarten, I think I might join the PTA...a great way to meet some local mommies!

The Secret Life...

This was not how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to be smarter than this…ready to go out and grab life by the horns. I considered myself to be a pretty intelligent girl: straight A’s in school, head of the cheerleading squad, class president, prom queen…nobody would ever have guessed the secret misery that I lived…but I guess I didn’t fully believe it either.
Mr. Wrong and I started dating in high school. I was a sophomore, and he had graduated a couple years prior, so he was four years my senior. Of course, I thought I was way cool to be dating an older guy. He got along really well with all my friends, and despite the initial shock of the age difference, which I may or may not have shaved a few years off, my parents really seemed to like him. Yep…he was a real charmer. He had a promising job, in which he was sent to seminars and training and received licenses for. He attended one semester of college, coincidentally at the same college that I later earned my bachelors degree from, but he “had to drop out” because he “became very ill” and was hospitalized during the week of final exams and was not able to make them up, thus nullifying a whole semester of classes, only I think his “illness” was over partying and drug-induced. But for what I knew at the time, he seemed to have really big plans for his future and I really thought he would be going places.
As I graduated high school and set off for college, we continued dating, and yes, we partied and had lots of good times, as college students will do. The thing is, as the years went by, his “partying” became more and more heavy and frequent and I began to see a habit of him “partying” by himself! I shrugged this off. We were both still young, and I thought as soon as we were married and started a family, he would sober up and grow up. He was raised by his grandparents and did not have the best situation growing up, and seemed adamant to be the parent that his never were….perhaps another red-flag in hindsight!
We truly had the “fairy tale” wedding. I mean, it LOOKED like a fairy tale…my father dressed as a king, the bridesmaids had fairy wings, the groomsmen dressed as knights, and we even had a ring bearer dressed as a dragon! The wedding did not go off without a hitch! He broke his promise to me that he would not get drunk with his friends at the wedding. I cried in the bathroom and then drove my drunken groom home so he could pass out.
About 9 months later, my beautiful daughter was born! She was the epitome of everything that was perfect! For as long as I could remember, I wanted to get married and start a family. And here I was…I made it! So why did I have this sinking feeling in my gut? I began getting suspicious of his every move. He always had to run out and get “something”. And simple ten-minute trips to the store for milk were taking well over an hour. He said he “ran into people” and was just talking, often not coming back with what he went to get in the first place. And shamefully, I started sifting through his closet and bags and started finding drug paraphernalia, and empty liquor bottles. Instead of confronting him, I simply disposed of everything I found like he wouldn’t even notice. I began giving him a hard time about his drinking, the drinking he let me see anyway.
When my daughter was about 11 months old, everything blew up. I was fulfilling a long-term sub position as a Kindergarten teacher, when I received a phone call from my husband’s Aunt WHILE I was at school. There was a lot of concerned talk, ranting, something about stolen jewelry, his uncle, blaming each other, and my husband taking off in the vehicle drunk. That was it, I packed a bag for myself and my daughter went to my sister’s house and notified him that I would not be coming home until he checked himself into rehab and got some help.
Well, with the help of his Aunt, that is exactly what he did. He completed a 28-day stay in an inpatient rehabilitation center, and when he got out, he started attending local AA meetings. Hmmm, maybe people can change after all, or so the naïve-me thought. Well, he started skipping meetings, and acting like his usual shady self again. The fighting got worse, the drinking became more frequent and the abuse started. The last and final straw was on Christmas Eve when I was loading my daughter into the car to go to my sister’s house to make “Reindeer Food” and a police car pulled into my driveway and informed me that I needed to come to the station for questioning! Are you kidding me!? So off I went, with my 1 ½ year old daughter on Christmas Eve to the police station. They questioned me about his involvement with a “prescription drug ring”, and the presence of my car at a residence they had been watching. Of course, I had no idea, but believe me, I was the LAST person in the world that was going to defend him at that point. When I was free to leave, I confronted him, told him he needed to look for a new place. Of course he dragged his feet looking for a new place, and I was nice enough to let him stay for the time being, but held my ground that we were over.
On my birthday, March 16th, I went out with my sister right around the corner from my apartment. He stayed home with my daughter. He assured me that this was OK and he had never to my knowledge hurt her or put her in any danger, and I really believed that he never would. Well, I guess he couldn’t stand the thought of me being out and “single” without him, because he called the bar several times asking when I was coming home, saying our daughter was having trouble falling asleep. Finally, he actually came to the bar and made me leave! After the short ride back to our apartment, I went to get my daughter out of the car and he pushed me down into the snow bank a couple times and grabbed my arm. Luckily, and by some miracle, the police pulled into the driveway and I asked to press charges. I got my daughter and went up stairs, all the while, trying to frantically call anyone who would pick up the phone at that hour of night! I later found out from the police report that he was driving with our daughter in the car and had a .36 BAC…4 times the legal limit!! Needless to say, he was slapped with a restraining order, and endangering the welfare of a child. He was out of my apartment and I NEVER looked back! (Except for the occasional “if I only knew then what I know now!”)
I met my boyfriend a couple months later and the rest is history! He is amazing in every way, and despite everything I went through, I trust him with my whole heart. I guess it’s true that we all make mistakes, have momentary lapses in judgment, and maybe, love really is blind…but I know this girl emerged much “smarter” and will never make that mistake again! Throughout my previous relationship, there were so many doubts, so many things that I didn’t let even my closet friends and family know, and keeping those secrets was shameful and debilitating to who I am as a person. I don’t even know what I was thinking! I used to be really angry and bitter about the things he did to me, and I used to try to salvage his relationship with his daughter, thinking I owed it to her to keep her father in her life, but holding onto all that resentment and trying to arrange HIS relationship with his daughter was just exhausting! I made a New Year’s Resolution this year to just let it all go, not to let him get to me, and just focus on my daughter and the wonderful road I have ahead of me…and it seems to be working for me!

Family Outing Long Overdue!

Did you know that the small town of Granville, New York is the colored slate capital of the world?? A little known fact about the beautiful little town that I grew up in and have lived in my whole life...up until 3-years ago! When I met Ron, there were fireworks bursting all over the place, and I guess you could say that it was love-at-first-sight!! We became close very quickly, and I "officially" moved in with him about 3 months into dating! Yikes...I know it sounds like a leap of faith, but we just celebrated our 3-year anniversary May 18th, and we couldn't be happier and stronger!! Anyway, I now live in Queensbury, New york...only about a 40 minute drive to Granville, plus I teach in Granville, so I drive there EVERYDAY!! That being said, however, I feel like I rarely get to see my family anymore! Life is just sooo busy and takes over!

Luckily, this Memorial Day Weekend, we were actually able to coordinate and have a good family picnic on a beautiful day!! It couldn't have been more perfect! We went fishing, and swimming and paddle-boating...by the way...it is much easier to paddle down-stream than up...lol...who would have thought!! It was a much needed day to sit back and enjoy some quality time with my family, and Ron fit right in...they all love him and it only reinforces what I already know...he is an amazingly great guy!!

I hope all my "blog buddies" had a great Memorial Day weekend as well, packed with tons of family time and memories!!