Giving up my home 3 years ago in our bankruptcy was the hardest thing I have had to do in a very, very long time. It was also probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make in my entire life.

After living my whole life in a permanent state of instability and chaos, I had finally found “home” and was very happy where we were. We had a beautiful home on a half-acre, my oldest son had many friends, and things were pretty good. The decision to give that up and become “renters” nearly killed me.

Leaving “home” was when I started declining. It was a combination of things: a new baby, 4 kids, losing our business, the bankruptcy, then losing my home and cars. It was so tough on me that I struggled for a very long time. I played the blame game and had a very long pity party. I took the brunt of the blame, and it took a while to come out of it.

Last Friday, we signed a contract on a brand new home. This coming August we will be homeowners again. It was a very scary decision to make but once we found our dream house for the perfect price all that anxiety and fear went out the window.

It felt – incredible.

We have just about every gadget imaginable in our house. Three laptops, two xbox consoles, a PS3, 2 nintendo DS’s, an iPad, an iTouch, an iPod, two smart phones, and a wii.

I am starting to see a little divide here, and it isn’t feeling very good. I think we need a time out from technology and more time for the wonderful little things life has to offer.

Before all these gadgets there were family game nights, tree climbing, bike riding, pillow fights, chases and all sorts of fun stuff. I think we’ve fallen into a rut. We do have time together as a family frequently with cuddling, movies, chatting, etc. We eat dinner together at night as a family, and we are still all very close.

I don’t think it is quite enough though. The kids spend a lot of time playing with their friends, and things flow pretty smooth. The problem here is in our house we don’t know or tolerate boredom well, so we all tend to lean on the electronics we have for amusement.

I’ve had enough!

By the time a child is seven or eight years old, I strongly believe they should actively know and practice manners and respect. Not only with their parents, but their siblings, friends, teachers and pretty much everyone in their life.

I also believe it is a long and hard process teaching children these critical and important expectations. With that said, my 15-year-old and 7-year-old sons are both are expected to use their manners and show respect. We don’t sway from those expectations, and punishments are handed out in line with the offense.

Moving on to my 5-year-old daughter. She is an emotional little creature.  Of course, she’s a girl! She gets extremely grumpy when she is hungry too, which makes dealing with her and teaching her manners and respect when she’s in the middle of an emotional meltdown very difficult. Frequently I wait until the situation diffuses and explain to her how to handle it differently next time. It has been hard to recognize how to handle boys and girls differently, but slowly I have figured it out.

Now, we have this problem in the house where the older kids demand and expect please, thank you and respect from their siblings. My 15-year-old will refuse to do anything for my 7-year-old without a “please,” knowing that is what is expected. My 7-year-old now does the same with my 5-year-old daughter.

The problem with this is my 7-year-old doesn’t use his manners as he should, and then gets nasty with my daughter when she doesn’t. It’s creating this huge unorganized chaotic mess. Oy!

My husband and I have had a rough time lately. There has been so much miscommunication, arguing and frustration.

I finally snapped.

I pretty much told him everything that was bothering me and I am not so sure I was very nice about it. I let out a lot of built-up emotions and resentment, and pretty much tore him to pieces.

It is not a moment I am proud of.

The biggest issue with my husband is after something painful happens, he likes to move on and pretend as if nothing has happened and everything is perfectly okay. The problem is it’s not okay, I am not okay. So rather than walk around with all this crap weighing me down, I just let him have it.

He argued like always with his comments of “oh, I am such a bad husband,” which set me off even more. I frequently tell him that this isn’t about “him” as a “husband,” it’s about us and about our issues, and about me and the things that are happening with me. He still continues with his defense: “you just make me feel like a horrible person.” It infuriates me.

My marriage has been plagued with problems from the day we said I do, and who knows, maybe even before then. I’ve talked a little about it and while I don’t particularly enjoy airing my dirty laundry, I am hurting emotionally, so I think it’s time to write about it.

Ever since our wedding day we have had problems. He was a “wanderer” so to speak. Every 6 months or so he would get a wandering eye. He swears up and down that he did not cheat, but he had many emotional affairs of the heart, said some unthinkable and very painful things about me to those he was talking to and had a serious porn addiction. He would also meet with girls for lunch or dinner without telling me. I could continue, and probably go on blogging for days about it, but I will stop with that.

For the better part of 7 years I always had to stay on my toes waiting for the next blow. The question was never, “will it happen?”  It was always,”when will it happen?”

I could chart it pretty much to the month. I spent hours on the phone with my mother, my best friend and my brother in tears trying to understand what was so wrong with me that I could not keep my husband’s attention. He was famous for his screw-ups during my pregnancies as well. That made it hurt even more.

I’ve been fighting to get SSDI for over 2 years. Everyone who has ever had any experience with the process knows how impossible it is. It is very hard, challenging both mentally and emotionally, and very stressful.

I had to apply under the terms of my long term disability plan, so I was going to go all the way no matter what. I knew I had to. I don’t like attorneys (not even by a stretch of the imagination) and really wanted to avoid them, so I did not retain an attorney until about 6 weeks prior to the hearing. I had been denied twice by the disability determination services and did basically everything on my own. I had no problem with it because I am a bit of a control nut.

I had talked to countless law firms about my case and no one wanted to help me. That was really frustrating too. Here I was with 2 solid years of medical history and two assessments outlining my very severe issues, yet I couldn’t find an attorney who would help me. I felt I was sure to lose. When an attorney accepted I was thrilled, and ended up hating him.

Anyway, enough rambling. I already blogged about what an a*hole my attorney is (pardon me, but I hate him) and vented about that, so now we have my hearing:

Well, our vacation started off a little crappy, but we did our best to make it better. Everything was going pretty smooth once we got over the $80 lost and all other crankiness previously griped about.

My husband was having a very hard time with the stress. I was a little taken back knowing I was the one who was being calm and collected, keeping things in order the best I could. When I finally explained to him that there was nothing we could do to change the things that had already happened he started to settle down some.

We bought tickets on Craigslist for Medieval Times and planned to go Sunday night. We were all very excited, we had gotten a great deal on the tickets. We took the kids to the little strip with shops and such and they got little henna tattoos, and then my husband bought me a cute dress and we went out for a date night later that night. It was nice, I really enjoyed it.

The most fun was watching how many people were totally drunk beyond drunk. I was laughing more at that than anything else! Then leaving, I got a chuckle out of the “cab lines” set up for those drunk people to safely get home. It was a pretty cool system, clearly showing they have a problem with people getting completely wasted there!

We all headed to the beach as a family on Thursday. I must say so far it has been very eventful, stressful and tiring – but fun!

First, traveling with four kids is hard. When I say hard, that’s putting it lightly. The baby has a sinus infection accompanied by a double ear infection. It has been very challenging. He’s back on antibiotics and is finally starting to feel better. It’s so terrible when he hurts because having no words means he has trouble expressing to us what is wrong. It is very hard for me, but we are doing our best.

When we got to the beach and into our first day, my husband was the cranky one, not me. Go figure. He doesn’t like when they kids get all fussy on vacation because he feels it should be a time for fun and relaxing. I wish I could get through to him that there is nothing relaxing about a vacation with four kids!

Anyway, last night we escaped for an hour to have an appetizer and a beer for happy hour. That was really nice. We also did a little event called MagiQuest, wow, how exhausting! This thing lasted an hour and a half, running around finding different things with a stupid wand. Taking a 2 ½ year old to something like that – not (and I repeat) NOT a good idea. Trust me.

By the time we got back to the condo we were all so wiped out that everyone crashed pretty hard. I will say it was probably the best night sleep I’ve had in a while. The kids were so exhausted we didn’t have anyone fussing, or creeping into our room, or waking us up at the crack of dawn. Ahhh.

My oldest son, 15, has a lot of friends. He has more female friends than male friends and he is very protective of those girls. In fact, he is very protective of all of his friends. He is very content with his home life and doesn’t really have a lot of gripes but the closer he gets to these other kids, the more upset he gets over their situations.

I’ve always made certain he understands that if anything were to escalate beyond what he feels he can handle emotionally that I will always be there to help him make the right decisions. I encourage him to be a good support for his friends within reason, as long as it does not impact his grades and his personal emotional well-being. With that said, he came to me last night with some grave concerns.

He was visibly shaken and upset, and he sat down with me for a heart to heart about a couple of friends he is worried about. While at a friend’s house last night, her parents began their usual verbal abuse towards their daughter. She is 15 and very sensitive (as is every 15 year old girl I’ve ever met) and she ran off.

Her older brother is physically aggressive towards her as well, frequently beating up on her. I worry about my son getting so angry in these situations because I am concerned he will get into a physical altercation. While he is a wonderful kid with a huge heart, he has a very violent streak when provoked.

Last night, he was provoked.

The past few months have been pretty difficult. In fact, the past couple of years have been pretty hard. However, over the past week or so, things have felt a little smoother around here. I don’t know if it is the Welbutrin, or just life getting a little better, but I feel pretty good.

My dad and step-mom have had a rough time for the past couple of years as well. I’m that person that worries about everyone else first and myself last. Knowing my dad and step-mom have been having such a tough time has been extremely stressful for me too. I talked to them both yesterday, and was delighted to hear how wonderfully they are doing now.

My step-mom, who was in pretty severe heart failure, has received a clean bill of health. Whew! Also, my dad has moved to a different real estate company where they are very good to him. His previous office was a very shady one (at best) and they were basically screwing him over. He’s a very hard working man and always has been, and he deserves respect and finally has it. Yay!

Hearing the joy in my dad’s voice last night really gave me a wonderful sense of peace. I no longer feel like I have to worry so much about them, and that feels great. My mom, however, is still over in Germany and isn’t doing too good herself. She is homesick and misses everyone, but she should be moving back sometime in the next year or so, which is exciting for everyone. It will be nice when she’s home.