For me it will be alot easier to just update one blog/journal...so surf over there if you want an update :)
http://andreadetroit.livejournal.com/

In my last entry I mentioned how things are different here. Of course there are going to be many differences when you move from the suburbs of a large metropolitan city (the "township" I lived in had over 95,000 people) to the country (where the closest town has under 4,000. The school where my kids go has a maximum of 300 kids and that's Jr. High and High School combined, between the 2 little towns that make up the school district there are less than 1000 people)

There are a few things that stand out in my mind and I wanted to share them. Even though I only moved(to Ohio) 2 hours South of where I grew up and lived most of my life(Michigan), there are many little things here that are strange to me in a quirky kind of way. For instance...everyone around here calls a vacuum and the act of vacuuming..."sweeper" or "sweeping"...funny I thought a sweeper was someone that was using a broom ;op Another thing is the exhaust fan in the bathroom is called a "sucker" by the locals. I guess because it sucks the stink or the steam out of the bathroom...lol... Lunch is referred to as "Dinner" here and Dinner is "Supper"...that took some getting used to. One more thing that comes to mind that isn't terribly different but I've noticed it none the less. Report cards here are called "grade cards". I've also noticed that since we are in the "bible belt" there aren't a lot of people who curse so that's something I have to try and eliminate...unfortunately I cuss like a sailor most of the time...not usually in public but I tend to be myself around Raven's teenage friends. They all seem to be good kids and I don't want to corrupt them with my foul mouth so I'm working on it :)

That's all for now.

And so it begins....

Didn't take me long to fall behind on my goal of posting once a week, but I will do my best to update whenever I can or if anything interesting is happening.
The title of this journal is about to become even more of a reality as the spring season is the start of fast pitch softball for Raven, her first scrimmage is today and her games start on the 30th of March and will continue probably until the end of the school year.

In another couple of weeks softball starts for Danielle and Maggie and then the fun REALLY begins :D I love watching them play and cheering them on, the running to and fro gets a little hair raising at times, but I do the best I can to make it to every game for all of them.

In addition to softball, Raven tried out for cheerleading last week and made JV for basketball season. She was disappointed to not make Varsity because she is going to be a junior next year, but there are so many girls returning who are seniors next year, and there are only 6 girls on each squad. I told her that she is still going to have a blast and that her senior year she'll be on varsity so just enjoy it and have fun.

They do things very differntly here. There is no dance/pom pon squad so the cheerleaders are basically both dance team and cheerleaders. Should be alot of fun, the whole town turns out for the basketball games and during warmups, the Pep Band (part of the marching band complete with uniforms)plays a bunch of tunes and the cheerleaders do dance routines to all the songs so it's quite the party atmosphere and that is what she thrives on.

Danielle is turning 13 on the 31st. Pity me...I will officially have 2 teenage daughters in the house. Lord, have Mercy on Me ;op

So we're all moved into our new house. We made the move the day after Christmas and I for one couldn't be happier. The kids had a week to get settled in before starting school. I was so nervous for them and really hoped they would have a good first day. The new school they go to is the one Jeff graduated from and all his siblings went to, some are even still there :D

The bus comes at 7:50am to pick them up, all 3 of them and then drops them off again about 3:15. So in walk 3 smiling children after day 1 at the new school. I'm anxious to find out how their day was. Little miss Raven says slowly...well....I hate to admit it....but .... I LOVE IT!!!! That was the best news I had heard in a long time. All 3 kids love it here and that makes me SO happy. I was praying that would be the case. It's a fresh start for everyone...but the kids have a real knack for making everyone around them miserable if they aren't happy.

All 3 kids have changed for the better since moving here. They are doing more to help around the house and their attitude has improved 100%. Even Maggie is listening and behaving. Things here couldn't be better. Well, I take that back...the only way they could be better is if I had an electric dryer so I didn't have to drag the multitude of laundry to dry every couple of days at the local laundry mat. However, it's a small price to pay and a little inconvenience that I will gladly deal with in exchange for spending every night with the man of my dreams. I'll have a dryer soon enough :D I'll keep you posted with anything new and exciting happening here in our little slice of heaven ...aka ...the middle of nowhere, Ohio

I'm sorry it's taken so long to update, although I don't know exactly who I'm apologizing too...I think I'm the only one reading this :D There has been alot of things going on since my last post so I'll try to be brief and get anyone who happens to be reading this up to speed.

When I last posted, I talked about going to Ohio to meet Jeff's family for Thanksgiving. Well it went amazingly well and everyone in his family are as wonderful as I expected them to be. Got to see the house for the first time and was blown away by how beautiful it is. The only thing that put a damper on Thanksgiving is the fact that for the first time in 15 years, I didn't spend it with Raven.

Monday before Thanksgiving I get a phone call from Colleen, Raven's counselor with the drug court program, stating that Raven had failed 2 saliva tests for marijuana. Passed all the urine tests but failed the saliva. So I confront her and try to find out what the hell is going on. She said she was hanging out with her friends and they were smoking pot, and she hit the joint, but didn't inhale it. GREAT...now my kid is in the same boat as former president Bill Clinton. I guess that explains how she passed the urine test but failed the saliva one. <> So, needless to say she got locked up on Wednesday right before Thanksgiving and had to stay in juvey for 2 weeks. She just got out this past Thursday, the 8th of December. I hope she did some serious soul searching while in there. This detention put me in a huge dilema because, now her "clean time" has to start all over again...where she was going to be done next week , is now starting from scratch at 10 weeks once againl. I can't stay here another 10 weeks. Jeff signed the lease for the house December 1st. He's moving in next weekend. The girls and I are moving in the week between Christmas and New Year. So I have been trying to decide and settle on an arangement with the court and it has been a total nightmare.

The only 2 options I have now are basically...
A- Take her to Ohio with me, pray the prosecuting judge will drop the charge to a misdemeanor and that when she turns 18 it can be exsponged from her record. OR
B- She goes to stay with Grammy & Papa (my ex's dad and step mom) for the last 8 weeks of the program with them taking her to court and drops and counseling. But they are already trying to con her into staying with them longer than just the 8 weeks. Telling her if she stays with them for good she can have a car and get home schooled...I don't know about option B at this point.

Anyway the pics I posted above are of the new house. I can't wait to move in. It's 5 bedroom, 3 upstairs and 2 downstairs in the finished basement. There is a big living room with a gas fireplace, very nice Kitchen and Dining room, Lots of windows, lots of yard..a pond...2 car attached heated garage. Master Suite with French doors leading out to our own deck on the back of the house, with a master bath w/ a whirlpool tub and a walk in closet. It is AMAZING! And for the money??? You just can't lose!!

The thought of being with Jeff everyday makes me the happiest woman alive and I can't wait to start our new life together. It will be so nice to not have to sit endlessly on the computer to spend time with him. Don't get me wrong I love the PC and gaming and it will be fun to game with him in the same room and not have to wear a headset to talk to each other :D I'll post more soon.

We found out on Thursday that the house we want to rent is ours!!! We can move in December 1st. Well, Jeff is going to move in December 1st, the girls and I will be there by the end of the month. We're just staying here long enough for Raven to finish drug court and that's it. We're going to go down for Thanksgiving, so we're going to go and look at it while we're there. I'm so excited about this house, the move and everything associated with it. I can't wait to spend every night and the rest of my life with Jeff. I can't wait to have a fresh start with my girls. None of them are doing well in school this year. I'm hoping this move will be good for all of us. I want to be a functional family for a change. I'm tired of all the chaos and fighting that goes on with these kids. It's going to be total culture shock for them to begin with. I hope they adjust with minimal difficulty. I'm nervous about a hundred things, the one thing I'm NOT worried about is my relationship with Jeff or my love for him and his love for us. I'm going to bring a disposable camera to take pictures of the new house and when I get them developed I'll post some.

Grrrrrrrrr..I haven't played my game all weekend and I can't get into my realm. You would think with all the money Blizzard has made off this game they could fix the problems with the servers. I'm going to log onto my Shaman and play her for a little while I guess, even though they need priests for the BWL raid, I'm kinda stuck though...the login server for Burning Blade isn't up. Ok...I'm going to go play for a while.

Tomorrow I start working out again, my asthma is finally starting to calm down. I've lost 40lbs so far, I still want to lose quite a bit more. I haven't worked out in about 2 months because my asthma was acting up so bad that I couldn't do anything. Now I'm going to have to start from scratch I think, building up my strength and the intensity of the workout from the beginning again. Wish me luck :)

It's been almost 4 years since I met Jeff. We had been playing online games together (Return To Castle Wolfenstein for the PC) for quite some time before he ever logged onto ventrilo (voice chat program, you wear a headset and talk, just like being on the phone, only better because it's free). I had always found him to be highly skilled, amusing and fun to play with.

I'll never forget how it affected me the first time I heard his voice. It was like an intense electrical impulse shot through every nerve in my body at once. I found myself alt+tabbing to minimize the game so I could see who's was speaking (a green light will light up by the name of whoever is taking in ventrilo.) His voice oozed confidence and intelligence and I was immediately attracted to him. He was witty, flirty and full of himself and every word that came out of his mouth was incredibly sexy.

After getting to know him through months of gaming I learned that he was in a relationship and living with his girlfriend. I of course was involved with someone as well, so for the next couple of years we had an easy friendship with a lot of flirting and teasing but nothing more than that. I had been living with the guy I was involved with for a while. He wasn't able to work or even live here legally because he was Canadian. We had been together for a couple of years so when he asked me to marry him, against my better judgment I accepted. I knew in order for him to be able to get a job here, he would need to be legal in the US and the only way to do that was to get him a fiancee visa. Things between us hadn't been very good for some time but I had hoped that once he got a job everything would get better. I was wrong, it never did get any better. In fact it only got worse. He and the girls disliked each other more and more with every passing day it seemed and I was constantly in the middle. I asked him for a divorce about a year after we got married and he got nasty about it and threatened to try and take half of my house (which I owned before we ever married and he hardly ever had a job to contribute to paying the mortgage either!) so I didn't push the issue and we grew further and further apart. It was more like a roommate who never paid any rent than a marriage.

Jeff and I continued to hang out and play together. We grew to be great friends over the years and confided things to each other about the relationships we were in. I considered him one of my best friends even though we had never truly even met each other. He heard my kids growing up and had even talked to them on the headset many times. I always thought he had a softspot for Maggie. He would hear her talking in the background and say, " Is that Maggie? Put her on." Maggie would say, " Hi Serpy (one of his character names)!" and he would say in the cutest little voice.." Hiiii Maggie!" He would tell her to be good for me and ask her about school or even which cartoon she was watching. One time I was playing my game with Jeff and Maggie came in with a friend and said, " Are you talking to Serpy?" and I said yes...She turned to her friend and said, "Serpy's my man!" LOL

In December of last year he came online and we started talking and playing our game as usual, at this point we were on to a different game ( World of Warcraft, which we are still playing together) I could tell that he was excited about something and couldn't wait to tell me. " I bought her a ring, I'm going to propose on New Years eve." he said. I wasn't prepared for that, or the sick feeling that came over me as the news of his impending engagement started to sink in. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach with steel toe boots. It didn't dawn on me till much later why the thought of him marrying someone else had such a profound effect on me. I tried to be happy for him and congratulated him and told him I wished them both the best. I didn't hear from him for at least a week after he told me that and then a week or so later he was gone for the holiday until after the 1st of the year. That whole weekend I was sick with the thought of him getting engaged and I couldn't even bring myself to play any games to try and cheer myself up. I kept asking myself, " Why are you so bothered by this? Who are you to say anything? You're married!" And the only answer I could muster to any of those things was , " Yes, I'm married- but not happily...And I don't want to see that happen to him too."

Things continued to get worse in my marriage, we hardly spoke to each other and I started sleeping on the couch and he never asked why or even seemed to care. We just kept up the chirade of being husband and wife, the whole time living pretty much separate lives. He had managed to get a decent job so at least he was helping me financially for a change.

At the beginning of the summer there were several times that Jeff logged on that I could tell he was in a bad mood or something was wrong. There were times, if we were alone he would tell me about how he and his fiancee weren't getting along very well and I would try to help him with advice or just giving him some time and let him vent. He in turn listened to what was going on in my life/marriage and gave me some great advice.

Then one day in the end of June, I'm at one of Maggie's softball games and I get a message on my cellphone from him though my MSN. " Get on ventrilo, I need to talk to you right now!" I've never gotten a message from him on my cell phone before first of all and it sounded really important. "I'm at a ball game? What's wrong?" I send back. My stomach is turning because being a mother, if you get an urgent sounding message like that you assume something is wrong right away. " I kicked her out..The engagement is off...It's over" It was probably really mean of me, but the biggest smile spread across my face when I read those words I can't even describe to you how excited I was at this new information. " Are you OK? You can call me if you need to talk!" and I proceeded to give him my cellphone number and he gave me his. I called him and talked to him for a few minutes to assure myself he was ok. He said he felt better than he had in a long time, like a weight had been lifted off him.

When he broke of his engagement something inside me just snapped and I finally said to myself, "If he can do it, why can't you?" I decided I wasn't going to stay in my loveless marriage any longer and told my husband I wanted a divorce and I meant it. We didn't have any kids in common so it was fairly easy and I filed the papers myself because neither of us could afford an attorney. It was pretty obvious that he wanted a divorce as much as I did because when I confronted him about it, the only thing he was worried about was his immigration status. Didn't care to try and work things out or anything so I knew he would not fight me and I was happy to finally be doing something right for a change.

Jeff and I continued to talk every day about every subject you can imagine. We found that we had so much in common that it was almost uncanny. Every favorite I have, I share with him. Be it my favorite cereal, shoes, perfume/cologne, animals, music and anything in between. Our hopes, our dreams EVERYTHING was the same. Each time the phone rang and I saw his number, the butterflies would start their fluttering in my stomach. With each day that passed my feelings for him grew. It got to the point that he was all I thought about day or night, all day every day. It's still the same today. I wake, eat, sleep and dream him. 24/7

It didn't take long before I realized that I was in love with him. In fact, I started to question if I had ever even been in love before now because I had NEVER felt this way about anyone in my life. I thought that love like this was a fairy tale but it's not. I've never said this about anyone else in my life but he IS my soulmate.

I have never cheated on anyone and never will, so as hard as it was to do the right thing ..We did. We waited until I had filed the divorce before we met in person. I used the money my dad gave me for my birthday for the filing fee, so on August 11th, the day after my birthday, I filed for divorce. That weekend Jeff and I finally met in person for the 1st time. Everything that we had been feeling for each other was confirmed in a big way. It was a wonderful 24 hours we spent together, he bought me a beautiful diamond bracelette and some really nice massage oil for my birthday. There were roses and candles all over the room. It was perfect in every way. We have been together every weekend since then except Labor Day weekend( he had his nephew's birthday party to go to so he stayed home that weekend.)

I had always thought of myself as a strong, independent, self sufficient woman. I had to be. The men in my life never lived up to their responsibilities as either a husband or a father. Now I find now that I'm tired of being the strong one. I love the fact that Jeff is 100% male and in control. He wants to be the one that I depend on to help me with whatever it is I need. He is the most intelligent, responsible, articulate, caring, considerate, thoughtful, romantic, amazing man I have ever met and I thank God everyday that he brought him into my life.
He is THE ONE! I found him! The one that you daydream about when you're growing up, or when you get older and start reading those corney romance novels and think...I wonder if I'll ever meet the man of MY dreams? The answer, for me at least is a resounding YES!!!! I have gladly done things for him that I would never even consider doing for anyone else. He is the one man on this planet that I would ever start over by having another child with (and we plan to in the next 2 years or so) There is nothing I want more than to feel his son grow inside me and to look into his tiny face with his father's beautiful blue eyes. The one I will spend the rest of my life, doing everything in my power, to make him the happiest man alive.
I have never before cried because I missed someone. Every weekend, even though I know he'll be back in 5 days, before the day is over on Sunday and sometimes throughout the week as well, I'm in tears because I can't stand being without him. I go to bed clutching his sweatshirt because it smells like him. I sometimes tease him and tell him he's turned me into a weepy female, which I don't want to be ...(THANKS ALOT JEFF! lol ) I don't mind so much because he wants to be the one to wipe my tears away... The one to put me back together again when I fall apart.
I could go on forever about how much I love him and how I am so looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him. This post is getting pretty long winded so I'm going to draw it to a close. I love you Jeff. I miss you. Can't wait to see you Friday. You're my love, my life, my reason, my knight in shining armor, my hero, my soulmate, my everything.