Howdy Ya'all

Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!

Hope this finds everyone well. Its been busy as usual here. Not with just the kids but with work and life in general. Hopefully it slows down the next few weeks before schools back.

Im still looking for fellow bloggers and readers to send me recipes that i can share with my sister and to keep for myself. Im also looking for anyone to send me good summer reads. I read a book my sister left, and it was a good book but a very hard subject matter.

In other news my baby will be 4 soon! i cant believe it. it seems like the time has flown by! we have been trying to potty train since he was 2 but he was interested at first and would do it occasionally, then we sent him to a babysitter that unbeknownst to us was forcing him to sit on a regular potty with no potty seat till he would go because she didnt want to change diapers. Talk about a jekyll and hyde situation!! she was getting paid cash every friday, and having diapers provided for her, and claimed she would feed him becuase she would only have M and her same age son, because E and her daughter would be in school all day. Every day she was asking for us to provide food because she didnt have enough. She didnt have enough food? where was the money going that we paid her with? 110$ cash every week and she didnt have food? She also had her power shut off numerous times..and she knew my schedule was 730-430 m-f it never changed, so i would drop the kids at 715 and pick them up at 445 barring traffic or weather, and she also said that i wasnt getting them when i was supposed too, how is that, i couldnt clock out of work till 430 by the time i got to her house it was never later than 445 and if it was i called. so needless to say i had to quit my job because i couldnt find someone i could trust again and it had to be in the school district for E to get on the bus. We tried again to potty train M when he was 3 and he started doing it but then we found out we were getting our job transfer to the east coast.And that wasnt going to fly. because we would be driving cross country, and we wouldnt be able to stop every 15-45 min to go potty. We would be on the road for 10+ hrs a day in order to make it here in the short time that his work was allowing.
We started again this spring and it finally caught on. We were using the treat system of if he went pee pee he got 1 piece of candy or 3 chocolate chips. The hard part was getting him to poo in the potty it was like he was afraid to do that. Finally it worked! He has been able to do it. Ive been able to put undies on him and not have really any accidents, daddy is still unsure of that so if we go any long distances he wears a diaper. He is still wearing them at nite and nap time. But then because we have had visitors hes been in a diaper alot. Any suggestions on how to get it all the way with no diaper at either bed or naptime? Also we have yet to get him to go potty on a regular potty, here at home or in public, that is something we have yet to master. Our potty chair has a removeable top that you can place on the regular one but hes not into that. We got him to stand once but he didnt quite make it in, if you know what i mean. Hes by far been the hardest to get to do this. With R all i did was stick undies on him at 3 and never looked back we never had an accident. With E he would go sit on the potty on his own before each tubby and it took 2 days to poo train him. M by far has been the most mind boggling and stressful. Every one tells me that every kid is different and that not to compare but sheesh some days im ready to pull my hair out!

In other pepin family news im looking for new work. In washington i worked in medical records and i love love loved it. I hated to quit. We moved here in November and i got a part time nite job in december so 1 it would be a little extra income coming in and for 2 we wouldnt have to find and pay a sitter so we could pocket the money. Everything was fine for awhile. I was working lots of hours and doing training etc. In the spring my hours were getting less and less and i was close to finishing my pharmacy tech training. Even with me going to the training all i did was still cashier, but thats why they were pushing the training was because they needed me to do other things. Ive completed the training and here i am doing cashiering. I am supposed to be scheduled at least three days a week m-t- th and i am getting 1 day a week if im lucky. I got 12 hrs for the whole month of june and so far at least one day each week in july. Its just not helping anything. Ive tried to get a transfer to another store and that isnt working out. Ive said something to the pharmacist in charge and she has no answers. I finally said something to the store manager and she said that i would have to do the leg work for a transfer but if i found someone then i could go. Because the only other option is to quit. I cant fathom quitting without finding something else. which im desperatly trying to do, wether it be in the school district so i can have the same schedule as the kids or the hours that M would be in preschool if we could some how afford it. Things arent very good finace wise, the hubs is working tons of hours and giving up vacation days to go on road jobs just so we have extra money. The rent is affordable right now because it includes all utilities,which is great. but then we have car payments and food to buy and then of course lots of state taxes that we didnt have before. Plus we want to be able to go and do stuff. We had some set backs in early april and early may that werent planned that we havent been able to recover from. So im hoping our luck turns around on all avenues soon.

well im going to close this post out for now, please vote for us on top mommy blogs and also send those recipes and book suggestions this way! and i will be posting more now since things are winding down on this front! have a great monday!