Update on Life

I haven't blogged for about 3 years. Geez. Well A LOT has happened in those 3 years. 

-- separated from Kyle in 2012

-- divorce final in 2013

-- met Levi in 2013

-- married in 2014

-- new baby in 2014

-- husband incarcerated in 2014 until Sept 1 2016

Some would say I enjoy a chaotic life. I'm not going to sit here and explain myself, but no, I don't "enjoy" a chaotic life or stressful life. I've had things happen in my life that I wish hadn't happened. Sometimes I wish I could rewind life a little and change how things happened. Maybe Kyle and I wouldn't have gotten married..but we did...and maybe he wouldn't have decided he wasn't ready to settle and cheat..but he did. Maybe I would have walked away from Levi knowing what kind of history he had, and some of the choices he was making....but I didn't. I am giving the current situation an opportunity to get better. And if it doesn't work out..well it doesn't work out. But it is really hard to focus on a new marriage when he is locked up. I'm not proud of being a prison wife. And I'm sure not proud or happy of being a single mom right now...but it is what it is, and I can only work on me right now, and work on trying to be positive, even though everything seems to crumble beneath me all the time. 

Anyways, in a nutshell, that is life right now. And I am trying everyday to just keep the house clean, food on the table, and enjoying my kids and all of their little quirks. 

I will change the banner and instead of last names, I'm just going to stick with first names, since those will never change. 

2012 I am still here!

I used to be a good blogger..to document what was going on in my life. And now I wish I had documented more last year because I've forgotten a lot of things! LOL I guess that happens.. So my goal for this blog is to blog atleast once per week.

In a nutshell here is what 2011 entailed.

Breaking up, getting back together, getting a job, losing a job, Kyle starting wyotech, Kyle graduating from Wyotech, Wesley turned 2 (oh boy!), I turned 26 (yikes closer to 30), Easter was spent in Illinois, Christmas was spent in Illinois, no other traveling happened that year, House was finally paid off, Kyle sold Ranger, Kyle received Dodge Ram, 2 kittens joined our family, Turbo & Diesel, The End.

That pretty much sums the year up. The beginning of the year was the hardest for me ( I don't want to hash out details), but its over and done and now its 2012, and I hope for lots of positive changes.

For 2012 so far this is what has happened. Kyle turned 25, Wesley turned 3, Wesley is 100% potty trained,  I start weightloss journey & lose 20lbs so far, turbo & diesel leave family, road trip to california, we buy a camper, Kyle moves to Rawlins for new job, Kyle gets a dog, womens softball starts.

Now it is May 2012, and Kyle has finally landed a secure job in Rawlins (boo), but atleast he is working in his field! He has been there 2 weeks now, and really enjoys it. We didn't relocate there, but instead got him a camper to live in. Might have to figure something else out for the winter, but will deal with that later in the year.

I re-started my weight loss journey. I do want more children eventually, but I need to be in better shape for that to happen. You can follow along my journey over HERE. Progress has slowed for the last couple months, but with nice weather, I will be outside more, swimming, hiking, bike riding, camping, softball, tennis (hopefully soon).

Here is a slideshow of photos from the 2011. Photos from CA trip in another post.

Arizona Vacation

I feel like I'm really depriving this blog!! On June 23rd we headed south in our toyota rav. Day 1 we hit Albuquerque
 and stayed in a hotel. Day 2 we got in to Benson, AZ later in the afternoon. And yes we were already sick of driving. But this was only our 1st stop of 3 we had planned for our vacation.
My husband's sister, that he has never met, lives there. So since we were going to be in AZ already we though we would pack up a couple days early and make a stop.
Kyle has a lot of family in the Benson, Tucson area that he has never met. His biological dad that he last saw when he was 2, so of course we got to see him for a day. We met a cousin and his family in Tucson for another fun filled day. Kyles sister also has a 12mo old so Wesley had a playmate for the few days we were there.
The last day we were in Benson we headed to Tucson to meet Kyle's cousin, and family for a day at the pool. Afterward we went to dinner at an all you can eat buffet place. I forgot the name.

Sunday morning we headed north towards Sedona. A family from Phoenix had won my giveway for a free session and prints and we were going to meet in Phoenix but not having internet the entire time in Benson didn't help me get a map, and we ran into traffic because of an accident and then were totally lost trying to figure out where to go. My cellphone was acting up (it has been since I washed it), and so that was a no go. So off we went towards Sedona. We stopped @ in n out burger on the way out of phoenix, since there were a few off the highway.

The week was awesome! I couldn't of imagined a better, much less GORGEOUS place to relax. The family played tennis every morning. I did water aerobics one day, but preferred tennis the rest of the time. We swam, had lots of yummy home cooked meals, had family photos taken, lots of Euchre, a family baseball game, and of course drinks!

I wish we could have stayed a few more days, but it was on to the last part of our vacation. We drove east to visit Kyles other sister in Clovis, NM. Wesley got to play with his other cousin, Jasper, and we just relaxed.

By the end of the trip we were POOPED. We drove a total of 2650 miles and we were ready to be out of the car by the time our trip was over!!

Plus I took 749 photos and am still going through them. But for now here are a few of my favorites from the trip.

Wesley 16mo

As of July 10th Wesley is not 16th months old! He had an ear infection before vacation...and it continued while we were on vacation but finally after 2x the medicine after we got home he went back to the doc and was as good as new!

Wesley's favorite thing to do: CLIMB...

Stay tuned for more updates!! Its taking some time since I got back from vacation to get things updated!

All of these Summer nights...

I'm still in the process of writing my vacation blog, but until then I'll update you on what has been going on around here since we got back from vacation.

1) Kyle and I have both joined a co-ed softball team. We've had 1 practice and games start next Monday. I'm SUPER excited to be doing this. It was one of my goals to be part of a co-ed team this summer, and have fulfilled that!

2) While on vacation we played a TON of tennis, and so I told myself I wanted to keep playing when I got back. I signed up for tennis clinics twice a week and tomorrow is the last day of the clinic until the next session. I have made some new friends from the clinic and hope to get some numbers so we can start playing together!

3) The week we got home we enjoyed Jubilee days festivities. The carnival was in town, and we walked around there, have been going to the farmers market on fridays, enjoyed the chili cook off, parade, and street dances!

4) My birthday was on Sun July 25th, and Kyle and I went to see brooks & dunn in concert for frontier days the night before. We had a blast, even though we didn't get home until 2am!

5) We got a new dog, Lucky, the St Bernard, and hes been a wonderful pal for Wesley!

6) I've been meeting my friend 3 days a week @ the park for evening walks. Its a nice time to get out of the house and have some adult time.

Wesley playing in the ice cold pool on a warm day in Wyoming...

Thats all the new updates for now in the last 3 weeks since we've been home. This next week is the Albany County Fair, and we plan to go a few times and have fun!

Memorial Weekend

I know I'm wayyyyy behind on blogging but I wanted to catch you all up a little bit.

We had a FANTASTIC memorial weekend!

Saturday was pretty relaxing. Was in and out most of the day. Kyle installed our new clothes line, and worked on fixing the siding of our house. I just did laundry and played with Wesley outside. Nothing special but just a fun day at home.

Sunday was our anniversary. Kyle surprised me with some beautiful yellow roses (which didn't last long), and I made Kyle a video and surprised with with Brooks & Dunn tickets!

 We took a lunchtime bike ride to subway and back, Wesley went down for a nap and I did laundry and hung clothes on the new line. I did a workout while Wesley was napping also, and then we all went on another bike ride to the park after Wesley was up from his nap. We wanted to take him to see the ducks and feed them but the seagulls wanted the bread instead.
Instead of cooking we ordered togo from one of our favorite pubs in town. The Library. They have amazing sweet potato fries, and I had a breakfast sandwich, and kyle had Philly steak sandwich.
We relaxed and watched Avatar.

The next day we headed down to Fort Collins to visit my Dad. Grandma was in town visiting  and we wanted to see her before she went back to Illinois.

It was a gorgeous day down in CO. We had some grilled chicken for lunch with a bunch of fruit and veggies.
Since my Dad lives right on a lake and it was warm enough and we brought our suits, we took a little swim in the water!

The neighbors dog Cody decided to come take a swim with us too!

Wesley played on the porch for awhile to dry off.

Wesley was such a trooper. He didn't take his usual afternoon nap, but sure did take a great nap on the drive home and went to bed a bit early.

What a wonderful weekend we had!

Our anniversary is tomorrow. We have nothing special planned. No babysitter. Notta. Kinda sucks. I guess thats what happens when we have no friends or family around. 

My grandma is visiting from Illinois and staying down at dads an hour away. I don't even want to drive down there because I'm a little irritated with the situation. 

So this is going to be a pretty boring weekend. Its a little chilly and windy out today so probably won't be taking a bike ride. I have nothing else to do today besides clean. 

Well happy 1st anniversary to us I guess.

The weekends sure do fly by....

Mother's Day wasn't bad. I did absolutely nothing kept myself super busy! I slept in until 1030a maybe. I love sleeping in. But unfortunately I didn't really sleep in because Wesley wanted to wake me up and I'm definitely not a deep sleeper anymore. 

We were originally going to go out to brunch because I've really wanted eggs benedict! But that didn't happen. So I asked kyle if he wanted to make eggs benedict with me. He wanted to bbq. I wanted eggs benedict and it was my day so I told him he could bbq for dinner. We never ended up making eggs benedict. He went to bed (at 1p) after doing dishes and I just worked on my menu for the week.

*note to self - start menu planning fri night and decide what I want for the week. Sat figure out coupons, and ww points amount. Sunday after breakfast grocery shop.*

I ended up making eggs benedict for dinner. Wesley really liked it and this was my first time making it and it was wonderful!!!

If you've never made eggs benedict or if you've always wantef to, check out the super simple recipe from The Pioneer Woman.

Click the photo for the full recipe

Tomorrow starts my journey to weight loss. 

I will be posting all of my progress, recipes, food log, exercise I did, weigh ins, etc over at the blog so go check it out please and follow along

http://jencanloseit.blogspot.com

Plus starting May 15th myself and 4 other ladies are taking part of a weight loss challenge for a chance to win $10,000! Check out the blog for more info on the contest.

Well thats all the news for today!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Mothers Day!

And sorry for not posting the Swingin' to the sound Sunday post. I'm exhausted this week but will have it posted next Sunday!

Happy Mothers Day!!

Happy Mothers Day to all the wonderful Mommys in the world!!

We plan on going out to brunch...and I'm probably just going to grocery shop for next weeks meals, and clean since the hubs works nights and will probably be going to bed after brunch. But I want eggs benedict! Mmm... 

I'm still in the middle of deciding what I want to make this week because Monday is the day I start my diet lifestyle change. 

One thing that is going to help me is this new awesome cookbook I just got in the mail a few days ago.

Now I'm not always going to have every single ingredient they mention, but I'll sure try because it makes it super easy for me to not have to look up every single ingredient for recipes and figure that out. 

Oh and stay tuned!!! I'm going to have an awesome giveaway coming up VERY SOON!!!

And I've also recently become obsessed with BIG LOVE. 

Ever since my religion class, and having to write a 10 page paper on polygamy, I've been hooked. If you haven't even seen the show it really is dramatic. And utah is gorgeous too!! 

If you've seen the show tell me what you think about it?!

Time to get some sleep.

Wanna see a J-Lo booty??

Wesley has a j-lo booty! LOL. 

Want to see?? Hop on over to the All about Wesley blog. 

CLICK HERE

Managing time..work, school, play.

I've pretty much been a stay at home mom since Wesley was born. The summer after he was born I did work at the Help Desk on campus, but that only lasted a month or so. School started, and I was enrolled in 3 classes. I was still nursing, and I just couldn't manage my time and stay caught up on my homework. So I decided to stay enrolled in 1 class. I don't know how moms can do it. Work, school and take care of their kids without daycare. I sure can't do it. But now that Wesley is over 1 year, its gotten a bit easier. I only nurse before bedtime, which he is slowly starting to get over that. I'd give it another month and he will totally be weened. And because he is now going to be totally weened I'm ready to start working again. The photography business is going to take years to get clients, money to put into the business, and building my portfolio. So for now I need to work PT atleast.

Last week I had a job interview at the movie theatre. Tomorrow I have a job interview at the university police dept. If I had a choice between the 2 I would definitely take the police dept job. The perks are better pay. But the movie theatre perks are free movies, soda and popcorn. But I'd rather have the extra money to put towards our bills.

Wish me luck!! I hope I'm lucky enough and rock the interview so I get hired! But if not I hope I hear back from the theatre because having a job is definitely important!

I wish my husband made enough to where I could stay home all the time. But right now he doesn't. And I know he is trying to get into Wyotech for the Dec - Sept program and I would definitely have to work while he was in school. But I hate daycare. And I hope that I don't have to put Wesley in that. Atleast not for awhile.

Do any of you moms work, go to school or just stay home? How do you manage your time? I seem to dink around on the computer too much reading blogs, or blogging. If I limit myself to say 2 hrs a day, an hour in the morning, an hour at night, I just don't feel like its enough time.

Calf pain GO AWAY

My calf is killing me. Its keeping me awake. The muscle keeps tightening and staying that way. Its like a continuous Charlie Horse. I tried to massage it but it didn't help. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary today.

Stupid calf. GO AWAY PAIN.

Anyone else had this happen before? Going on 4 hours now.

New buttons!

I've been doing a lot of blogging over at my photography + design blog lately. Mainly because I have no idea what to blog about. I was having a blog block.

My giveaway just ended last night. It was for a free photo session with a $100 print credit, or for an 8x10 of one of my art prints. I ended up having 2 winners, one for the session and one for the art print. It was exciting to do this. My 1st ever giveaway. I've continued the "After Giveaway Sale" for those who didn't win or might be interested in my services or art prints!! Check it out. As soon as I get twice as many followers on either this blog or my photography blog I will hold another giveaway. Right now I have 13 on here. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pass my blog around. Here are both of my buttons and I will put them up in my sidebar as well.

In other news........The last week we've been trying to get our yard cleaned up for the rain that hit yesterday. We had a tree (the only tree in our yard) that was tore down last summer because it was dead. Now I want to plant a new tree and bushes in the yard to make it more lively.

I was out getting all leaves, sticks, needles, and dead grass raked up AND cleaning dog poop. The joys of home ownership (well sort of). We live in a mobile home. And the yard it part of the lot and we have to pay "lot rent." I hope someday we can own a "REAL" home and not a poorly built mobile home. But for now this is where we live and thats ok. We have a huge yard, 2 sheds for our stuff and a very nice porch/mudroom addition to the house.

Because we live in Wyoming our planting season is really short. I really want to make a little garden in our yard, but its hard to right now when our weather changes drastically all the time!

And here is Wesley. 13mo old now. Messy face, and not happy that he couldn't get over that gate. Maybe soon he will learn how to climb those stairs, which are tile and they are a bit bigger than an average step.

For the rest of the day I'm going to going to work on

• dishes,
• laundry,
• putting some boxes in the shed of Wesleys clothes that don't fit,
• taking a nice long walk with my friend with the dog and Wesley,
• and making Taco Salads for dinner. Yum!
• OH and making a menu for the next 2 weeks.
• And if I get time take all the recycling to the bins. (We are not fortunate enough in Laramie to get curb side pick up)

And I need to get my camera out and take some new photos. Maybe on our walk today I'll find something different to take a photo of. There isn't really alot of green yet (the grass is starting to sprout though).

Worries and woes

Sometimes I wish we had the perfect life. No worrying about whether or not we can afford to put gas in our car or food on the table, or pay our gas bill, electric, house payment, etc.

....

Sometimes I wish that school was easy and that I didn't have to study for a test, or spend week upon week writing a paper, or struggling with understanding what I'm learning.

....

Sometimes I wish marriage was easy and there wasn't any arguing, cursing, physical fights, food fights, breaking things, watching our 1 year old hear and see everything.

....

I wish life was stress free and that I didn't have to worry about any of these things. Sometimes I wish that God would make my life a little easier and help me figure out how to deal with these things. How to get my husband to stop using the F word constantly. And not just the F word but how to help him control his anger, especially his temper and lashing out physically.

My 1 year old son now says OW OW OW all the time. I wonder where he heard that from? Well...the truth...from ME. He would see and hear all the violence and anger from daddy...and mommy too. And all of these issues...money, school, work, debt....are all the cause of our frustrations. The pent up anger. We need to get it under control. And its hard....and this journey is not going to get easier. Its going to get HARDER.

So why can't my life be a little bit easier? Cut me some slack eh? Maybe something good will happen this week to ease some of this stress.

And you want to know something... We haven't had a family picture taken since Wesley was 3 months old. Not even with our camera. Its either me and wesley, or Kyle and Wesley or just Wesley. And I really want that.

Ok so to end this blog on a good note here is a picture.

An Apple a day keeps the doctor away

13 months old.

New post over on Wesley's blog.

Check it out HERE

I can't believe he is 13 months already!!! This time last year I was trying to sleep when he did, and plan my wedding at the same time AND getting ready to move out of our apartment.

Our date to a show

Last night was an official date night for Kyle and I! Since we got married May 30th 2009 we have been on only a couple dates.

1) Baseball game to see the cardinals play in denver,

2) A movie a few weeks ago to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D

and that is it!!

So I knew it was time to go on a date. I got tickets for what I originally thought was a poetry reading by shel silverstein. Well I was wrong because after finding out shel siverstein died in 1999, I did a bit of research and found that this was in fact a theatre production entitled "An adult evening with Shel Silverstein." See how I might have gotten that confused? We got all dressed up (and no I didn't get a picture I'm sorry), and went to the show. It was great!! Just our style of adult humor. We didn't really eat beforehand and ordered some appetizers and a couple drinks to tide us over. This little venue has tables and a server which I thought was great!!

I drank an oreo cookie martini. I'm not a big drinker but it sounded delicious, but it was a bit too strong for my taste. If it didn't have the vodka it would have been so much better. I should have opted out of that option! Oh well.

It didn't get over until after 10:15pm. The show itself was about an hour total so we spent more time waiting before the show, and then intermission than the actual show itself. But it was a lot of fun and I would definitely do it again!!

Here is the website if you are interested! Albanycountytheatre

After the show we were going to have dessert but just went to the bar for a couple drinks instead. I don't really like the bar but the bartender was really nice and gave us free shots! I tried this new shot called carrot cake. It had butter shots, baileys and hot damn and it was really good! So I can remember for next time!

And the we went home and I ate some dinner and went to bed.

Its April...so spring must be close!

I get so involved with my photography blog I neglect the household updates. We didn't really do anything for easter this year. We didn't even dye the eggs. *tear* They were all boiled and ready to go. I ended up sleeping in, so we didn't make it to church and I really wanted to go even though I don't know anyone at the church besides the pastor. I do plan on this week going to church. I need to. I have all of these adorable church outfits that are just collecting dust in the closet. Or maybe I'll find a new church to go to. Anyways I cooked a turkey with mashed potatoes, gravy and green bean casserole. No ham this year. I needed to use the turkey that had been in our freezer since before thanksgiving.

On another note..

We just have too much stuff in our house. And because spring in approaching soon I hope, I would really love to do some spring cleaning.

Each weekend I'm going to pick an area of the house to clean out and then freecycle the stuff, trash it, donate it or sell it.

"Salvage-it saturday + sunday. Sounds good 2 me. I need things to do. I was also thinking it would be awesome each weekend to find an awesome craft to make. I've already started my craft list so I can turn some of the crap I have into creativeness. I'm sure Wesley would have fun too if it involved something simple. That sounds like an awesome name for a blog. Ooo I should see if thats been taken and then start ANOTHER blog. LOL. I can barely keep up with 3 blogs plus the hundreds I'm subscribed to. If I'm lucky I get maybe 10-15 blog posts read per day. So no wonder I'm up until the wee hours of the night and then completely exhausted in the morning and don't get moving until after 10a.

So I better get the rest of this blog finished up. Tomorrow I want to try and get to the career fair at the union. I've been looking for a good part time job to help pay some of the bills that is still reasonable so we don't have to get daycare. I'm very opposed to that right now but if it came down to it I would find a nice small home daycare for wesley. Anywho the city of laramie is hosting and there are a bunch of jobs through the city, like at the rec center front desk, which would be a great job, plus that would give me incentive to exercise since I would already be there. Well I won't get my hopes up completely but I will apply and hope for the best!

Time to get some rest. Lots to do this week. Grandpa is coming up to visit. Kyle and I are going on a date. A possible playdate friday and maybe the park if its nice!

Don't have a photo today. They are still sitting on the memory card. Next time. But do check out www.colormyworldphoto.com for the new ones!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Another free digital greeting by Smilebox

Visit from "Grandma Kim"

The last week Wesley got to see his grandma. She flew in from California. Saturday I drove down to the harmony transfer station in fort collins to pick her up. From there we headed to Cheyenne to get Wesley's birthday cake, and then hopped on i-80 over to Laramie. 

Sunday was Wesleys first birthday party. It was a lot of fun. We didn't really do much. Just made some food, and had balloons for decorations. Wal-mart helium doesn't last that long. By then end of then night the balloons were already sinking and by morning they were all on the floor.

(Birthday pics here)

On Monday, Wesley had his 1 year doctors appointment. He had to get 2 shots this time; chicken pox & mmr. He only cried for a minute and then was all better. Went on a walk later that afternoon. 

Tuesday: I had a few overdue books from the library so we headed over to the University. It was a gorgeous day. Wesley loved walking around and following all of the people. Since it was spring break it was pretty quiet. I took some of Wesley's 1 year photos that day as well. Couldn't have asked for better weather! 

Wednesday: St. Pattys day.  We didn't do anything super special that day. I did wear green, and dressed Wesley up in a really adorable outfit I'd been waiting for him to wear. We headed to the park to play and to take his "official" 1 year photos. It was just a fun photoshoot. No posing, just real, in the moment shots. Those are my favorite, since I hate posing. 

Thursday we took a nice walk in the morning! Kyle was volunteering over at the territorial prison for a couple hours. Since we live just down the street from there, we walked down there and said hello. I always have my camera with me just so I can find something new to snap pics of. After Wesley's nap we headed to the rec center to swim! I love the pool. I plan on taking Wesley every week or two until our community pool opens up May 1 or June 1. Can't remember. And then of course to undine park this summer if the new water pad thing is built.

We ended up getting snow Thursday night. It was so gorgeous and then boom, snow. Of course! Thats Wyoming for ya. We had planned on going to Breckenridge for a mini vacation (friday & saturday) but I didn't really want to drive 5+ hours in the snow to get there, and the roads were icky, so we decided not to go. I know my mom wanted to leave saturday since the roads did clear up, but 1 day just didn't seem worth it. But it probably would have been. :( Bummer. Definitely next time!! So instead we did some shopping around town. Mom got me some sweet new walking shoes. I usually wear etnies, which had absolutely no support and kill my feet, so I'm thankful she wanted to get me some!! 

Kyle and I were going to see a movie, but never ended up going. So he went out for a couple drinks with a friend.

Saturday was just a fun relaxing day. Watched a movie in the morning, my sisters keeper, (very good!!), and then headed back to the rec center in the afternoon to swim. There were a lot of people there so it kept Wesley entertained. 

Sunday came and went. Drove mom back to the bus stop and said goodbye. I did have a few tears in my eyes when I left. I really love my mom, and am so thankful she came to visit and helped out with Wesley and cooking, and cleaning. Love you Mom. Thanks for everything!!!

Visited my dad for a little bit before I headed back to Laramie. He just lives in fort collins and didn't have any plans. Kyle and I ended up seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3D when we got back. Wesley hung out with our friend Stephanie for a couple hours while we had a little date. 

It was a very awesome week, but went by way too fast. I can't believe next week is April already!