Yay! We’re back!

So where to begin? IN 2013 things were pretty decent in my life. I was 34, my daughter was 9 and my niece was 11. Everything seemed to be coming together nicely. We are now 39, 14 ( in 4 days) and 16 (in July). and life is better than ever. Don’t get me wrong we have our ups and downs, but we’ve had no major disasters…knock on wood!

Honestly not much has changed. I’m still running the daycare out of the house, but it has grown a lot. I have 30 kids that I care for on a weekly basis now and actually have a small waiting list of parents wanting to bring their kids to me. I makes life hectic at times but always full of laughing little insane monsters (I say that with love in my heart lol). My biggest challenges are the one year old twins and the 2 three year old girls that are 4 months apart they might as well be twins…They keep me on my toes.

Malachai is an 8th grader this year, she just got back from her D.C. trip. I can’t believe my little girl is 14 and will be a freshman in August. It makes me happy/sad. I’m happy because she has turned out to be this amazing young adult. I know she’s a teenager, but she is very mature for her age. She’s already planning to do college courses her junior and senior years. She is taking freshman math this year so she and a few classmates are a step ahead of everyone else.

My niece Harlie on the other hand has been bombing out on her freshman year. We’ve had all kinds of crazy issues…with technology and boys and school in general. We’ve been seeing her mom and sisters in secret fr a while, but it will be a year in July since we’ve met up. Not for the lack of mom and I trying to get her to meet us. So I figure all the crazy is direct result of her mom ignoring us and she is just lashing out however she can. She’s not had her cell phone or any computer access for almost 7 months now. She has so much potential but she doesn’t see it. She even quit sports. But even if she wanted to play she’s ineligible. I have 3 years to try to get through to her that she is a smart, beautiful, capable young woman that can do anything she sets her mind to do. Wish me luck….

Personal life is interesting to say the least. No there is nobody…at least in the physical sense. After what happened with Mark (Malachai’s Dad) and what my sister’s relationship search did to Harlie, I refused to date anyone. I won’t do that to Malachai. On the flip side, Matt, a friend from high school, has been wanting to meet up for the last 5 years. Well I went to high school with his sister… he was in Mark’s graduating class, so he’s 6 years younger than me. We used to hangout in my party days but strictly as friends seeing as I was with Mark. So that’s a maybe gonna…. don’t really know yet.

On another flip side lol, Mark and his second wife are getting a divorce. After she talked him into leaving the military she cheated on him in North Dakota (after the many times she cheated while he was on maneuvers or deployed)… she returned to the heroin life, wiped out their bank account and left him with the 3 kids. That was 3 years ago.  He moved the kids back to Ohio, stayed with is sister until he found a job and I watched the kids for him. The kids are adorable and so full of light and love. We had a great summer…and then she came to Ohio and wanted them back. Not that there was anything to me and Mark other than normal friends who have a daughter. hat’s the way she saw it though, she was taking them away from me.

Well they ended up getting back together and getting a place here in town. The kids were always begging to come over, especially Kaydence, their oldest. And I never minded…always said yes and had fun weekends together. Apparently she had enough of that, wanted to know why Malachai couldn’t just come over there. So she went for a little bit, but she said all she did was watch the younger ones and she didn’t want to do that. So then they moved.  They’ve been in their now town for about a year now and she is engaged to a new guy. Mind you she is still married to Mark.

So now he’s blowing up my phone lol. And not in a bad way. We talk mostly politics, conspiracy theories and end of the grid scenarios. Stuff we used to talk about… books, movies, etc. He’ll vent his frustrations and talk about the kids, ask my advice and help me win  battles with Malachai lol. The way co-parenting is supposed to be. And the best part about him and I texting is that Malachai will go through our messages. I loved it when she rolled her eyes and said her parents were so weird. I think it’s giving her some normalcy and it’s showing her that he’s here, without him invading her space.

Now here is where it connects to my personal life.. mom and dad are thinking of moving and leaving me the house. i am going to need a roommate. So we’ve alked about him and the kids moving in… there are enough bedrooms for us all to have our own. He said that sounds great. Mind you this is a late night 3am conversation..and my mind goes 20 steps ahead with ‘what ifs’. So then I said okay here’s an even crazier idea…we get married in name only, it wipes out your child support obligation and should cover the back pay owed. He asked what I got out of that and i said 3 kids lol. I am seriously having the empty nest blues. Malachai graduates in 4 years! But that is all a ‘what if’ scenario. The point is we are good and he has no intention of ditching out on the kids. He’s matured a lot over the past 5 years. So yeah lol… not much  going on in the personal life area.

I took a vacation last year too! My best friend and I went to New Orleans and attended the Anne Rice Vampire Ball and the New Orleans Witches Ball. We had an absolute amazing time. We did daytime stuff too. I think my favorite was the cemeteries. There is so much history to be seen. It was hard to fit it all into 4 days but I think we did pretty well. We did one major bar crawl our first night there. It has been a very long time since I have consumed that much alcohol! I think one of my favorite drinks was the purple slush from Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. I don’t remember what it was called but it was like drinking a slushie from sonic but it had a major kick. Oh I think one of the selling points to drinking in the French Quarter is that you can leave the bar with your drink… so by the time we finished one we were ordering another in a different bar.

The vampire ball was pretty cool. We got to be witnesses at a voodoo wedding and they also had a burlesque show on stage. The downside was that Anne Rice was on a book tour so we didn’t get to dance the night away with her. The witch’s ball on the other had was so eloquent but not so snooty that you felt out of place. It was a themed costume ball. The theme we had was “a night with Stella Mayfaire” which had us decked out in the best 1920s costumes we could find. It was held in a mansion in the garden district of New Orleans. They had tarot card readers and 2 live musical acts plus a dj. The best feature thought was the open bar lol. We had a lot of adult fun and met some really great people. We went to this shop, boutique du vampyre, on one of our daylight walks. It is this quaint little shop that deals in mainly local artists who make things from fangs to gothic jewlery to bat bags. While we were there we met an author and a few other vampires. The author was Wynter Wilkins. I love her book and am waiting for the second one to be published this year. She and her friend Rok are the king and queen of the Vampyre court of Liberty. We are actually going to go to their ball next year. Well not specifically the Vampyre court of Liberty’s ball, but the Vampyre court of Austin’s ball in Texas. Different vampire king and queen. But anyway it’s a new little world that we’ve discovered and really like being part of. I think I have found my darkside lmao! No seriously though they are an amazing group of people. All the courts put on balls throughout the year and the proceeds go to charity in their areas.

So in a nut shell you are all caught up…well the few that have actually read me before and know some of the history. I have a lot of possibles in the next 4 years. I’m not sure where I’ll end up. I might close the daycare and move to New Orleans lol… that would be fun for a while. I mean seriously I will be at the point of having no responsibilities…. except to help Malachai with college and all that but yanno I can do that from anywhere!