Forget Private... HELLO PUBLIC!

I am VERY happy to say....

After much debate (You don't even want to know how much talking this took!! Ugh..) it was decided that with added caution I can stay public.   

Basically it came down to not letting one bad apple spoil the entire apple cart experience!  

It also didn't hurt that everyone in this amazing community pulled together and put some VERY heart felt comments on each others blogs.  That went a VERY long way in helping me talk Alex around and in the end Jay actually helped me too.. I know shocking right?  He got a huge bear hug from me and his favorite brownies (I don't bake unless forced, so he knows how much this meant to me...) for his efforts.  

So what has been happening the last couple of weeks (other than all our debating that is)...  My son just started his Senior year in High School this morning.  I took a billion pictures to document it!  He did actually look at me for one or two...  :0)   My daughter has decided to try online school and doesn't start until next week, so she had to make faces at him this morning while laying around in her PJs.  That was also well documented with pictures... (He didn't find any of it amusing!)   Once he was out the door she went right back up to bed and has yet to surface and it's after 11am here.. Sigh.   Teenagers!    

We are down two puppies... They now live next door, so we see them all the time.  It was super hard to watch them go and we miss them, but not the mess they kept creating daily (hourly).  Plus we were having (sorry this might be TMI) doggie duty issues... Like the little guys kept eating the older dogs droppings.  Ick!  The vet said it was normal and they would out grow it and gave us some thoughts on helping the situation along... But then they started rolling in each others duty and that was my limit!!  I still buy them toys and take them over to play and see them and we have new friends that are super nice.  Jack was happy to see the puppies come and he was happy to see them go as well.  He has totally adapted back to being the one and only four legged critter in the house.  He does slip through the gate to the neighbors to play but he always has the option to come home and leave them behind.  

Our lives have always been pretty crazy busy so we never really made friends with our neighbors and now we feel super bad about that...  They reached out to us and opened that door to start the communication (after our kids kept them up all night too... plus our monster dog had eaten all her roses and they still liked us!!) and we are so VERY grateful.  

Let's see what else... 

I am still messing around with new recipes and cooking tools.. I just got a Wok last week for my birthday, so am trying to figure out what I am going to make in it first.  I was told to use peanut oil, but am trying to decide if another oil would be healthier...  My kids are scared, but they eat out more now then ever before since they are working.  So Alex is the only one that will need to suffer through my experiments.  :0)  I will more than likely cook two meals so he has a back up while we find out what works or doesn't.  He is a big guy after all and his go to solution for hunger is a frozen pizza, so I have to have healthy back up or the man will literally turn into a pizza.   

For the most part I have been able to avoid any real trouble the last few weeks... We did have a key situation last week that didn't end very well, but we have figured it out now.  The opposites attract thing doesn't always help when two people are so VERY different in keeping track of objects... My every place has its thing and every thing has its place just doesn't work for him.  But I have hung decorative key racks by EVERY door on the inside now, so no more problem... Until he loses all the keys hanging from said key racks anyway...  (Love you babe!!)  Other than that and the blogging topic we have had a really quiet few weeks here, which is very unusual...BUT SUPER NICE!!!

Anyway, so happy to be back!