this is real life

Real life is thinking you might be able to purchase a trip to see grandparents and then getting gi-normous bills in the mail.

Real life sucks…

Hopefully I am cried out.  It's not like we are suffering. We have enough. We just want more.  We want to take a trip to Portland this summer. We haven't seen Svend's grandparents since Bergen was a baby…so 8 years.  We want our kids to meet them. We want them to see what we see in them. Last night we were given a treasure. We got to watch a video of Svend's other grandpa who passed away a few years ago.  Oh how I love them. I tell you what, I scored on the grandparents when I married into this family.  I cried watching Grandpa Frank talk about his life.  Maybe I just miss him because he was the one that was always okay with me being a Texan. I don't know.  We were able to spend all our years at BYU-I  seeing them each summer.  I am so grateful for that invaluable time we had to spend with them.  Now, we want to go see his other grandparents.

So, I've been pricing things. It's going to be $3k.  That's ballpark. That's 3-4days after flying there.  Driving will not cut off much and the time would be too much (4 days each way) and our sanity would probably be gone too.

So, can we do it….?  I did the math-which I really suck at but I have to do it to keep me sane… if we push ourselves, we can have $800 towards the trip by mid July.  Ugh.  I figured we'd put it on the CC and stop the CC (we have payment protection and we just moved…so they can stop payments for 3 months).  That will buy us time to pay it off… Svend is nervous but here's the deal. They are old.  They  keep having parts of their body break down.  We don't want to go to a funeral. we want to see them and talk with them and sit in their backyard and swing on their swing and live the slow life for a few days while we get words of advice from Grandpa.  So, it's a leap. It's an expensive leap. But nows the time…

So, we got an awesome student loan bill today for $1100. seriously?! And it's from Rosalind Franklin. Don't they have enough of our money? They have been the most aggressive when they should be the most understanding. Svend refuses to help them as an alumnus.  I pretty much agree. They got enough of our money.

I looked over one of our bills today… we've paid over $2000 toward it and only $250 has gone toward the actual loan. Oh I want to DIE!

Then there's our deposit…we never paid one…and need to really do that.

Everytime something like this has happened we've had something show up in the mail. Let me tell you, THERE IS NOTHING COMING IN THE MAIL!! We have a very depleted savings account. Yay….

I paid $120 to get Brooklyn's tooth fixed today. Didn't bat an eye…

I am just tired of real life.  What else is real life? Brooklyn unwinding an entire toilet paper roll into the toilet…and the pouring water all over both bathroom floors and entry way.  I did not react very well.

One thing I did do right was go into my bedroom  and pray.  1-0, right? At least I have that. I'll always have that. Another thing is my husband is with me on/in this.  I love him so much.

What else is real life? Pulling my 3 younger ones on a blanket thru the tile floors over and over again and watching their joy!  Seeing Bergen's face when he showed me the spider poster he won at school today.  Hearing Talia say she had a great day at school after sobbing about how horrible the kids are at her school yesterday.  Playing camping with Tabitha and she said "let's pretend I have a bra and need to change it since it's morning." I nearly laughed my rear off at that one! Only a 5 year old with an older sister would say something like that!

This life is REAL. It's REALLY hard. It has REAL choices. It has REAL consequences.  It has REAL moments…that we can choose to enjoy or sob through.  I'm grateful for this life we've chosen. I'm grateful it's hard sometimes so I can see the good when it comes…. We can make it. We will make it… and this will all be a memory right? Whether or not we endure well will decide how good of a memory it will be!