• Muscles, joint and body inflammation – causing joint, muscle and body pain
• Respiratory inflammation – causing allergies and breathing difficulties
• Arterial inflammation – causing heart health problems
• Digestive tract inflammation – causing bloating, cramps and burning
• Widespread body cell inflammation – causing overall fatigue

Although we haven’t tried it ourselves, we’ve read that by taking it on a daily basis that it could help your body to reduce inflammation that is caused by health problems, cleanse your body of daily toxins, and promote optimal health.

Nopalea contains rare and potent antioxidants that are scientifically proven to help your body reduce inflammation and you can try it out for yourself for free (32-ounce bottle) by calling 1-800-203-7063, you just pay $9.99 for shipping. All you have to do is drink 3-6 ounces each day until the bottle is empty and see if it works for you!  You even receive a Nopalea Challenge Form that you can fill out and track your progress.

I never really make a resolution, however I do always give myself some goals to meet throughout the year.  I don’t call them resolutions because I’m more likely to break them that way, but it’s basically the same thing.  Mine this year is to pay off our bills, minus my student loans and the mortgage because that’s just not going to happen.  At least not yet!  Last year we were able to get the car paid off and we were down to just a couple of credit cards.  This year I’m hoping to get rid of the remaining credit cards and pay off the loan for the furnace we had to replace this year!  This isn’t an easy thing to do since I’m no longer working, but I’m hoping with the help of this blog and starting up my Virtual Assistance business again we’ll be able to meet this goal.

So, what is your New Years resolution this year? Did you meet your resolution goal last year? If so, is this years the same as last year or are you trying something new?

On Sunday, December 18th, we arrived in the ER because Xavier wasn’t doing very well. We knew he was sick but we weren’t sure how bad or if it was just the last part of the upper respiratory infection from earlier this month.

We get called in and they check his vitals and of course, they can’t get the pulse ox to read correctly on him because he’s moving around. So they bring him to a bed and one of the nurses comes in and tries. They stuck it on his left foot, his right foot, and even tried to put it around his big toe! Umm, hello! He’s 6 months old; his big toe is still smaller than the damn sensor is! Anyway, they continue to try and get some good readings on him.

All while this is going on, for about 5 hours straight they are also trying to figure out what could be wrong with him. They try to get some snot out of his nose to run a test for RSV. The kid doesn’t have a cold; his nose isn’t runny at all! You’d know this if you read the answers to all the stupid fricken questions we’ve already answered! But now, they squirt saline into his nose and right down into this throat it goes! They try to suction. NOTHING! 20 minutes later they come back and want to swab his nose to get the test done. I tell them no, if he had RSV they would have gotten something out the first time, we know it’s not that!

They decide to put in an IV, which took forever because his little arms are so small and the veins are hard to find. They finally get that done and get some blood drawn. Apparently his white blood count is super high. Obviously still fighting an infection, which we already knew. By this point they’ve already given him a breathing treatment, because he retracts (from having chronic lung disease) and they’ve given him a steroid shot in hopes to help him out some. They already want to see an improvement. Mind you this is the same ER doctor that seen him 2 weeks ago. He should know that he retracts. He was born 8 weeks early; he’s going to have this problem along with some breathing issues until he’s at least 1! The retractions aren’t going to go away with one breathing treatment; otherwise they’d already be gone since we give him the treatments at home!

Anyway, they have him on oxygen to help him. Fine, whatever it takes. If that’s what you feel is the real reason or cause. If not, don’t just do it because your nurses can’t get the damn pulse ox sensor on his correctly and get a good reading!

The residents come in and ask us our feelings on him being admitted just for observation. We tell them no, we can do that at home. If you are only going to do what we can do at home (even keeping him on oxygen) then we’ll just take him home? They go back to the ER doctor and talk about stuff, baseball, football, and whatever sports they are in. Yes, they were talking about these things because Xavier’s room was right across from the doctor/nurses station and I could hear them talking!

At about 1AM they decide that they want to keep him, regardless of our feelings (unless we tell them no – because we can refuse). They want to monitor him and give him some antibiotics in hopes that it helps. An hour later, we’re still waiting to go into pediatrics and get him settled, where we will have to go over all the same BS we’ve gone over 4 hours ago.

Mind you this entire time we’ve got Thaddeus with us, who’s very tired and getting very restless. Maybe because we woke him up to bring Xavier in, maybe it’s because it’s 2AM, maybe because he’s hungry? Ahhh, who cares, not the hospital!

I finally start bitching up a storm in the room, loud enough for them to hear me. The doctor comes in and we tell them we want to leave. They obviously aren’t paying any attention to his vitals or anything, and they know the readings are incorrect, so they are keeping us around for the hell of it. I know this because the alarms are going off like crazy because they aren’t reading correctly and according to the sats, he’d be blue as could be and just about dead if they were. I told the resident ER doctor that they aren’t even paying a fucking attention and they don’t even look into the room when the alarms are going off so he’s obviously not in any serious condition. Yes, I yelled at him and swore at him. He deserved it! We tell them that all they are doing is the same thing we can do at home and we’ve got a 6-year-old who needs to get back to bed and Brandon had to go to work in a few hours.

We finally get to the pediatrics room and give them all the same information as earlier and then we go home for the rest of the early morning!

Disclaimer:  I’m not saying not to go to the ER, if you feel you need to go then go.  I’m just posting about our recent experience and why we feel so many people choose not to go!

Hopefully the fence isn’t damaged too much and will be easy to fix.  Regardless, I don’t think we’ll have to pay anything for it to get fixed since the tree isn’t ours, even though the root is now on our side of the fence.

You can tell just how dead the tree really was, just look at the fact that the roots don’t exist!  I’m surprised the tree didn’t come down a few months ago when we had some really big wind storms roll through the area.

About each book

i before e (except after c) The Young Readers Edition: Easy, Cool Ways to Remember Facts
By Susan Randol

Just like adults, kids need easy ways to recall stuff—especially now, when they don’t even have to remember a phone number because their cell phones remember it for them. This book is jammed with easy-to-use tricks for remembering lots of stuff—especially stuff they need to know for school. Kids will like learning fun ways to remember stuff and will love getting the good grades that follow.

I Wish I Knew That: Geography: Cool Stuff You Need to Know
By James Doyle

Explore the world’s continents, countries, and capital cities, and marvel at the planet’s most extraordinary physical features in a lighthearted mix of text, diagrams, maps, and amusing illustrations that will captivate children and encourage them to keep trekking.  Filled with hundreds of cool ways to remember the tallest, largest, longest, and most desolate, I Wish I Knew That: Geography is the perfect companion to help kids get a grip on the globe.

I Wish I Knew That: Cool Stuff You Need to Know
By Steve Martin, Mike Goldsmith, Ph.D., and Marianne Taylor

How would you feel if you knew hundreds of fascinating tidbits—on everything from art, literature, and history to geography, science, and math—from just one quick-and-easy read crammed with fun and cool stuff you shouldn’t have to wait to find out about? With I Wish I Knew That readers will speed through science, whiz through history, and take a dip into the classic Greek and Roman myths in no time at all.

Write (Or Is That “Right”?) Every Time: Cool Ways to Improve Your English
By Lottie Stride

Need a bit of grammar guidance? Want to spell like a champ? This lighthearted, informative guide makes it easy and fun for kids to conquer grammar, spelling, and punctuation challenges and put their struggles in the past tense. Write (Or Is That “Right “?) Every Time provides a fun-and-easy way to tackle tenses, sort out spelling slip-ups, put a full stop to punctuation problems, and conquer clauses.

Shop

You can purchase these four books any many other Reader’s Digest books from Amazon for $9.99 (price is based on these four books).

My Take On It

I knew that Thaddeus would still be a little to young for these books, but I definitely wanted to review them because they will not only help him with these subjects when he’s a little older, but they’re great refreshers for myself and my husband!

I’m not a fan of the I Wish I Knew That: Geography book because I’ve never been that into geography, but it really does have some great facts in it.  My favorite books from the four are the Write (Or Is That “Right”?) Every Time and i before e (except after c) because those are two areas that most people are always mixing up and I know I’m one of them.  I still find myself saying “i before e, except after c” when I’m tying certain words!

You can never stop learning and I can tell you that these books are not only great learning tools, but also the best for refreshing your mind on some of the simplest things and some of the hardest to remember.  For instance, take the order of operations when it comes to math.  In which order do you go when solving a math equation that is something like:

(8-3) x 2² + 6 ÷ 3 = X

You’ll probably remember being told by your math teacher to remember the phrase:

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

Which reminds us that the correct order is:

Parentheses Exponents Multiplication Division Addition Subtraction

I would definitely recommend these books to anyone who kids that are in 4th through 8th grade, they can also be help for older and younger kids, but I think these grades are more appropriate.  There’s even time to still get them for a Christmas present!

Disclosure: Items were received for the purpose of this review. All opinions are that of my own. No other monetary compensation took place.

Even if you think you have no need to be prepared, you should always have some emergency food put somewhere where you can either easily get to it or stored where you would go in the case of an emergency.  Better yet, have it in both places, just in case.  You never know when staying in your basement for cover just won’t be good enough, you may have to leave your home in an emergency and not have the time to run and find the food storage containers where your emergency kit is at.

Remember that you want foods that are not going to spoil after some time, you’ll need water, a flashlight, batteries, and much more.

My husband is a one ring man, although he does switch between two types of wedding rings depending on what he is doing and where we are. He has a fancy ring that I purchased for him and gave to him during our wedding vows and he only wears it for special occasions. We had to get him a basic wedding band to wear to work because at the time he worked in a shop and didn’t want to damage the fancy ring and he didn’t want to go without wearing one.

Had I known about tungsten rings when we were ring shopping for him, I definitely would have gotten one of the tungsten wedding bands for his every day wearing ring.  They are so nice looking and if you happen to have one of those hubbies that does wear more than one ring, you can get one that is not so wedding band looking.

So, what kind of man do you have?

As she got older she decided that she would get a vacation home down in Florida, where she would stay during the cold months of the year here in Michigan. For me, that’s just about 10 months of the year! Now days you can get Park City vacation homes or vacation homes just about anywhere, you just have to decide where you’d like your vacation home to be. Think about it, vacation homes can be very expensive and you’ll be spending a lot of time there in order to make it worth it.  It’s a home away from home after all.

For me, my ideal vacation home would be my Grandmothers place up north, it’s a beautiful home right on Lake Huron. It’s the perfect place to spend your summer months with family and friends. There’s enough room on the property to have lots of fun and games and you’ve got your own personal lake to swim in.

Couldn’t summer last a few months longer? What about getting an Indian summer?  Maybe a short winter this season? Work with me here mother nature, Michigan is tired of so much cold and snow and it lasting so long!  Or, maybe it’s just me. Yeah, it’s probably just me.  I mean, why else would all these people stick around in Michigan? It’s not for the jobs, so they must love the cold and snow.

Are you looking forward to the winter months and the snow (if you live where you get snow, if not shut up ).