Life in forward Motion (long post with no pictures)

It seems so odd to me that life can often feel so fast forward at times and then can stand still and you feel like the world has stopped spinning.  The last time I blogged we had just spent Christmas with our 2nd exchange student Karolina from Norway, and we were excited about the upcoming year with our new student Paulina from Germany.  Life for our family seemed to be looking bright and exciting with many new adventures coming our way.  And then we hit a road block and faced some problems with Karolina which made it impossible for her to remain in our home.  Both for the safety of our children, and for the moral compass in which we hold fast to, we had to say goodbye.  I was set on not allowing anymore students in my home until the exchange company we were involved in reminded me that we had already approved a student from Germany, and that it would seem unfair to not allow her to come to our home based on our experience with Karolina.  So, I hesitantly agreed and we welcomed Paulina to our home in August.  This experience seemed like it would me much better than the last, and we moved forward with smiles on our faces but a hesitation as to what the future would hold for this experience.  We quickly found that this student would be very selfish in her everyday life, and that it didn't matter what plans we had made as a family, if it didn't include what she wanted or expected she would see to it that everyone was miserable.  Add a new boyfriend and his family to the mix and we soon found that we as a family felt as miserable and unhappy as we were with the last student.  We soon found that she was telling the boyfriends and his family everything that we would talk about in privacy in our home and we soon felt violated.  Life as we knew it became very miserable.  After talking with the exchange company, we found that it was her goal to move out of our home and so Ray jumped on the opportunity to send her on her way and regain our families happiness.  It has been hard trying to regain normalcy after having students in our home since 2011, but we are getting there and loving our new found freedoms of not having to entertain a teenager every second of every day.  It is amazing to me to see just how happy my kids are to not have an exchange student in our home. It makes me feel guilty and selfish that I put them in this situation in the first place.  I now know that we should have stopped after our first student.  Elena was what we call a poster child for exchange companies and students.  She did everything perfect, from respecting our rules, to being apart of our family while here in America, and making every moment count.  We now look forward to Elena coming for a 1 month visit the end of July to the end of August, and will be sad to see her go.

Our lives however have not just stopped.  We have been busy with finishing the gutting and remodeling  of Rays mothers home in Idaho, along with continuous work on our home.  Ray finally made time to put in my new kitchen/dining room flooring and baseboards, I am almost done staining all of my kitchen and bathroom cabinets, I am about 3/4 of the way done with painting the main floor, and hallway up stairs, I finally finished Jake's room and have the lower half of Ellie's room to paint.  We also hope to have our basement remodel complete before the end of summer.  Our poor, poor yard will hopefully get some attention this summer as well because Ray has decided that he wants a deck off the dining room, and who wants to look at an ugly yard when sitting on a new deck?  It seems like we will never be finished with what we want to accomplish with this home of ours, but slowly I think I am seeing a little light at the end of our tunnel.

Ellie and Jake have both been doing quite well in school and it amazes me how big they are getting.  It seems like I blinked and they were big.  Ellie is just finishing up the 7th grade, and will officially be in Middle school next year.  Jake is just finishing up 4th grade, and will be on his last year as an elementary student next year.  My kids are both old enough now to be left home without adult supervision, and that it extremely weird to think about.  Ellie is almost officially a teenager, and with that comes that ever so lovely teenage attitude.  I find myself wondering on some days if she will survive to adulthood.  Jake is still a constant ball of energy and wears me out on most days between his constant need to be on the move and his need to always have some kind of sports ball in his hand and all the attention.  I am however grateful that he can now sleep through the entire night without night terrors or being woken up by the lovely dogs in our neighborhood.  I used to dream of the day that we would get a full nights sleep, but did not really know if it would ever happen.  Jake has made so many strides in his life, and although he still has many struggles, I can now look back and see just how much he has accomplished and am very thankful.  Both kids are taking piano and I love that they are now able to sit down and play little songs on the piano.  It makes my heart happy to have music in my home.

We had to re-home our little Shih-Tzu Maddi.  We were all very sad to see her go,  but with Jake's severe allergies it has been nice to see him sneezing a little less, and to have him not taking his allergy medication and inhaler as often as he was needing to take them.  It is hard to not have a pet in our family, but it is something that we can live without just knowing that Jake is healthier because of it.

I am hopeful that I will be able to keep up on my blogging, and am looking forward to making my blog into a book, although I know it is going to be quite costly being that I have 7 books that need printing by the end of this year.  It will be worth it though when we can sit as a family and look back at what has happened in our lives.