Nachoridnary BOY

Unless you have a child with ADHD you will never understand the excessive amount of time, attention and patience a child with this diagnosis needs. Although Dwayne and I have 4 kids combined and one with mental and physical disabilities, they combined do not equal the time it takes to raise Aiden. He is exhausting to no end. So much in fact, I have just quit my job in order to better serve this child's needs. After being diagnosed with ADHD this year we decided to put Aiden on Ritalin. Aiden had been having huge behavior and school work issues since beginning the second grade. After only two weeks on the medication we received good reports from his teacher letting us know he was now able to settle down and pay attention in the classroom and started getting better grades on his assignments. The medication is taken twice at day. 6:30am and 11:30 am. The effects of the pill unfortunately wears off prior to me picking him up from the sitters at 6:00pm so the hours I see him, there is no difference. Homework and spelling has become the biggest battle sometimes taking over 2 hours a night to complete. This leaves me exhausted and frustrated and leaves me spending only 10 minutes a night with the other kids. To make things worse my work schedule combined with Dwayne's had left little consistency in Aiden's life which is one of the most important things a child with ADHD needs. It's sad that every day my kids have to ask who is picking them up from the sitters, what time, and where will they be eating. Sometimes I worked till 8, sometimes till 7, sometimes till 5, all depending on the day of the week.

 Dwayne's schedule is even worse since he works a late day shift combined with call outs, the ability for him to partake in the child rearing schedule has become obsolete. After months of consideration, it has been determined that the only way this family is going to stop the bounce around schedule is for one parent to be at home. The obvious choice is me since Dwayne loves his job and it is my kids that are home 90% of the time. Things at my work had become more and more stressful leaving me spent by the time I get home each night so actually quitting is a sigh of relief although with it comes the stress of a greatly reduced income. I have chosen to work part time for Uhaul as a reservation agent from home. The pay is less than half of what I made before (hourly) but with some serious cutbacks and Dwayne's ability to make additional income working overtime, I am ready to take on the challenge in order to get some consistency in our hectic and stressed out lives. I am hoping that I can provide additional attention to the three other kids while helping Aiden to be successful in school with a very regiment homework schedule. If it doesn't work, we will reevaluate and make more life evolving changes as needed.

Last September Dwayne received tickets for our family to visit Out of Africa Wildlife Zoo located near Camp Verde from his sister Jackie. It was like a pregnancy because it took 9 months for us to finally be able to all go minus Dwayne who was working. One child (not singling him/her out) decided they didn't want to go and ran away from home prior to the trip but that was short lived as eventually we were able to coax the child into the car and I assure you they had a wonderful time. The zoo was definitely much different from the World Wildlife Zoo or the Phoenix Zoo. What made this zoo special is it includes a bus tour right in with the animals which come right up to the bus. The kids all got to feed the giraffe right from the bus and aunt Jackie took it a step further using her skills to feed the giraffe right from her mouth. (see picture below) There was also a pretty cool show with tigers running and jumping in the water trying to get their "toys". It was hot but the kids didn't complain at all. Saige and Andrea even got to feed the tiger. I give Out of Africa Wildlife Zoo 3 thumbs up.

To Downsize or not to Downsize,That is the Question

With eyes of delusion we began our home hunting excursion in February with dreams of living in a home on the range with expansive mountain views, our own well, a large home, and acreage.  (well mostly this was Dwayne’s dream but I stick by his side during his illusions of grandeur)  As the housing market tightened our stress levels increased we found ourselves changing gears as home prices began to surge and the home supply dwindled.  We asked ourselves what do we really need verses what we wanted. 

1.    A less expensive home that isn’t upside down $75,000

2.   A place for Dwayne’s precious boat

3.   A pool

4.   A good neighborhood that people still have pride in ownership

5.   No HOA fees

6.   Location that is reasonable located between our families and ex’s

So we searched high and low.  And then we searched some more with all the searching leaving us irritable and drained.  We realized that with less price means less house.  Our Anthem home is about 1900 square feet and now we are looking at homes in the 1500 square feet range. I haven’t lived in anything that small in over 10 years.  Space wise, my first townhome on 43^rd and Northern was just 1100 square feet, then there was the house in El Mirage which was 1900 square feet, then the house in Waddell which was over 3500 square feet and now the Anthem home.  What I’ve learned is BIGGER is not better.  Bigger means working yourself do death to pay for a space you are never home to enjoy.  Bigger means your family is disconnected.  Bigger means more home to clean.  Bigger means you buy more stuff you don’t need.  Bigger just isn’t better, it’s a waste.  It took me about 10 years to realize this and now we are getting back to basics.  When I recall my years I spent growing up, the memories were not about how big my bedroom was (10x9 feet), it was about family vacations or playing in our backyard, swimming in our doe boy pool and riding my bike up and down our cul-de-sac street with all my friends.

This brings me back to our current situation, another offer on the board with hopes it will beat out the dozen other offers made on this modest 1547 square foot home on 39^th ave. and Union hills with a pool and a RV gate.  The home is a short sell which means we wait, and wait, then wait a bit more.  We are both utterly exhausted from the emotional roller coaster and just want it to be over so we can move on with our lives (literally).  

My Christmas Present 2011

Last Christmas Dwayne surprised me by buying us two Coldplay concert tickets which was a incredibly great gift in and of itself, only he took it one step further and bought the tickets for the Seattle, WA venue because he knew I always wanted to visit Seattle. So off we flew and landed in the middle of the grayest town on earth. There were a lot of cool things about Seattle and there were also many things I did not find appealing. Here is a summary of the good and bad.

Good:

 -Hotel Max- Our incredibly swanky hotel located smack dab in the middle of Seattle was the most artsy and unusual hotel I've ever stayed at. All the walls were painted black and all the room doors had painted strange pictures on them. The hotel had doormen and stained glass windows in the lobby. The room was small but stylish and the bed was wonderful.

 -The Monorail- Why oh why can't Phoenix's light rail be as wonderful as Seattle's Monorail? We used it the entire time to hop from place to place in a flash.

 -The Space Needle- Much more impressive than Phoenix's Compass Room, the Space Needle's 605 foot observation tower gave us fantastic views of the entire city. We had an lovely lunch in the rotating restaurant then headed up to the top to take a dozen pictures.

-The Coldplay Concert- After two lame intro bands, Coldplay finally took the stage around 9pm with the energy of Aiden. Chris Martin (married to Gweneth Paltrow)

had a lot of Vegas style entertainment including light up wrist bands that blinked in rhythm to the music and two thousand pounds of confetti but he did not sound as good as he does recorded. We had quite the surprise when Chris showed up about 20 feet from our seats to perform an encore complete with his piano.

-Starbucks- Every corner has a Starbucks. I'm not kidding. Besides Starbucks being started in Seattle, I think the main reason for so many Starbucks is to caffeinate to locals to keep them out of depression while they live in the grayist town in America. Good for me though as coffee is one of the great pleasures in my life.

-Art and Architecture- The city surrounds itself with art as it is required by Architects to spend a portion of their developments in art. -Ivars Seafood- kind of a chain, it's yummy white fish Cod and fried clams were quite the delight

 The Bad:

 -Homeless/vagrants,beggars & druggies- Every corner we were asked for money from junkies with cigarettes. Annoying. -The rain- I'm thinking that the locals don't even notice the non stop rain anymore as NO ONE in Seattle uses an umbrella as they wander the city street. Me however, did not care for the bleak, depressing weather which made it impossible for my hair to look good the entire trip.

 -Dirty City- Perhaps I'm just a too bit accustomed to the Anthem bubble where everything is shiny, clean and bright whereas Seattle is dirty, dingy and a bit smelly too. Granted we never went outside the downtown metropolis but even downtown Phoenix looked like Disneyland in comparison. Having not seen the sun for days on end may have also skewed my opinion of the downtown streets.

 And that pretty much sums up our trip to Seattle. I got rest, a luxury in my book. The best part of the trip was getting to spend three complete days with my wonderful husband which in the past several months has been a rarity. It was worth a million bucks to re-connect with the love of my life in our vacation in Seattle.
 

Meet Khar

From afar Khar looks like your typical Czechoslovakian Shepherd but what you may not notice at first glance is the big pup is a certified officer that ranks higher than Dwayne. Dwayne is now an officer K9 SWAT team officer. While its been a stressful transition week, Dwayne is quickly bonding and gaining a whole new understanding to the thorough training process. It is entertaining to hear Dwayne call out commands to Khar in Czechoslovakian language. As much as the kids are dying to have a pet dog, Khar is not a typical family dog and must be supervised around kids. The previous K9 officer had a family with kids and told us that Khar totally was a family dog for them and loved his kids who were really broke up when Khar was transferred to Dwayne. We are taking it slow and steady, today was the first day we let the kids in the backyard for 5 minutes with Khar while we made sure everybody was safe.

The Long Awaited Disneyland Trip

We had been promising to take the kids to Disneyland for the past 8 months. Finally, with the help of my sister in law, we were finally able to take the trip.

After last years excursion to California in Dwayne's truck, I found the mere thought of everyone being shoved into his vehicle, fighting, crying and complaining of such close quarters to be reason enough to go purchase a new, used car. 2 months of research with the help of Consumer Reports, I finally settled on the Honda Pilot. My old beat up Toyota Rav 4 had been paid off for years so I wasn't looking forward to having to make a payment again although it had almost 150,000 miles on it, my old Toyota was by far the most reliable car I've ever had but now we have a family of six which makes going anywhere impossible with everyone. Everyone loves the new car because it has 3 rows of seats that can keep the kids apart. My favorite thing is the leather interior and moon roof. I think Dwayne's favorite thing is the roominess, the 10,000 places to put stuff and the AWD.

We visited California Adventure Park on the first day and the biggest hits with the kids was the Grizzly River Run and Tower of Terror. The best part was the perfect 75 degree weather and there was practically no lines for any rides. We were even able to get on the rides faster because Brandon was using a wheelchair due to his MS. Seriously, the maximum we waited for a ride was 15 minutes.

The second day we spent in Disneyland only Dwayne didn't go with us the first 5 hours because he was working on homework for college. Even though we had to go without him the kids still loved every minute of it. At Disneyland Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, and Thunder Mountain were their favorites. We are already planning our next trip to Disneyland in 2015.