It is beautiful in the spring rain here at the campground
We are having a ball tromping around and getting all wet.
My stepmom died on May 10th and my birthfather back on March 4th.
Here are their obituaries:
Frank Boring Fitzgerald
Velma Morris Fitzgerald

I'm hoping to be done here by the end of the summer so that I can get my kids back into school this fall.  Need to have an estate auction, sell a vacant lot in Billings, sell this campground, some stuff was protected with a trust, other stuff I'll have to figure out navigate probate with.  It is a lot.  I'm still trying to wrap my brain around everything.  1/3 of the inheritance goes to my folks' friend Marcos from Costa Rica who they hosted here for 6 years & put through college at Rocky Mountain College.  So that's something I have to figure out how to divvy up too.

I have a great attorney helping fortunately.  Next week I meet with an accountant and the auction guy comes to tell me what I have to do to get ready.  I still don't have a realtor.  I've had several recommendations from neighbors who have their own property up for sale for their realtor.  Their stuff hasn't sold in a year... so how good are their realtors?  LOL.

So, anyone know a good realtor in Billings?
Want to buy a vacant city lot in Billings Montana? 
Want to buy a pretty 15 acre campground with a 3 bedroom 2 bath house, shower chalet and rented mobile home? 

Bathtime at the campground. 

My stepmom seemed to be settling in okay at the Assisted Living Center, so 6 weeks after my birthdad's funeral, I planned to take the kids home for a week to celebrate Easter & Dadda's birthday. 
On April 20th, I got up at 5am to get the cat here into boarding with the vet, get the kids into daycare and get my stepmom to her early doctor appointment.  Then afterwards I picked up the kids and headed back out to the campground to load up the van.  We were on the road by noon. After some tussle at the border about driving with a car I wasn't importing into Canada, I made it home 15 hours later. 

At home, I found my little 5 month old kitty had a bad cut on his back leg.  Who knows what he did to himself!  So I then spent the next 4 hours at the cat hospital. What a day!
At first they couldn't close the cut- it was too big and infected, so they had a wet to dry bandage on it that had to be changed daily by a vet.
After a few days, I found a vet who was willing to do a little surgery and get the wound closed.  Poor kitty!  He gets his stitches out tomorrow.

When I was home, we bought hubby a car- a cute little red 2007 VW Golf, so he could follow through on stuff with the cat and get to the grocery store, etc.

My minivan wasn't shifting very nicely and by the time I got back to Montana the transmission went out.  Yeah, this is the 2004 Chevy Venture I just bought in March to replace the 1996 Mazda MPV that burned up transmission getting here for my birthdad's funeral! I got a warranty on this one, but when my mechanic called the warranty company, they had never heard of me!
Yesterday when I went to the dealership I bought the van from, the financial guy was home sick.  So today I will be pestering them some more!

While I was in Edmonton, my stepmom declined a lot and had trouble taking her meds properly so I made the decision remotely to have the Assisted Living Center start medicating her. Thank goodness I'd gotten Power of Attorney.  She's had so many losses lately, this is yet another loss of independence that was really hard for her.  She also slipped with her walker and fell while I was gone, but only had bruises fortunately.

The hospital set her up with Homecare for the assisted living center, but their socialworker and nurse sucked.  So this week, I switched her to Hospice and they have been awesome.  She should have been on hospice from the start.
She has lost 100lbs since she went in the hospital in February.  100lbs in 70 days.  Right now she weighs 159lbs.  She is 5foot 2inches.
Pancreatic Cancer is a bitch.

She wants to come home to the campground to die so badly and I just can't make it happen.  Their residence is on the second level with the campground business stuff on the main floor.  I could modify mens and womens toilets on the main level into a standard shower/bath/toilet, but that takes a lot of time and money and she only has 3-6 months to live.  And then on top of that, it is 30 miles out of Billings, so getting 24 hour care would be a challenge.  I was scheduled for a hysterectomy in June, and I'm postponing that to be here, so there is no way I can do the physical lifting of my stepmom that would be required to care for her as she continues to decline.   I am still plugging along at the campground trying to get it ready to open for the summer according to my stepmom's wishes and plugging along on the legal stuff regarding my birthdad's death and getting stuff transferred to my stepmom's trust. 

We miss Dadda though, me most of all.  He's coming for a visit in June since he had scheduled some time off then to help for the hysterectomy I was supposed to have.

I'm planning on getting my 2 oldest kids back by the end of August to start school (Kindergarten and First grade.)  I'll close up the campground and then just come back 1 week a month with my youngest to do bills and my stepmom's doctor appointments over the fall/winter or until my stepmom passes.    I don't know what I'll do with her cat at that time.  She's 17 yrs old with a heart condition.  I don't think she'll do so well with my 9 yr old female and 6 month old male.  She's still pretty active so I hate to put her to sleep.  Guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

We are ready for spring, are you?

Hi.
So I'm here in Montana until my Stepmom dies.  30 miles out of Billings getting my Stepmom's campground ready to open in May.
I plan on traveling back & forth to Edmonton every few weeks for the kids to see Daddy. 
Today I bought a ladder to change the front outside light, but turns out the fixture itself is dead. Pooh.
This is one of the real disadvantages of being 30 miles outta town- I can't just run out & get a fixture. LOL.

Hi, my birthfather died, so I'm in billings mt in a hotel with 3 kids. Is this radiation risk real? If so, what do I need for shelter? I'm up to my eyeballs in appointments for decomposition cleanup and my stepmom is in hospital with pancreatic cancer, so I don't really have time to research. Thanks,
Meg

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366341/Japan-tsumani-earthquake-America-nuclear-accident-radiation-alert.html

US alert for japan radiation fallout

The kitty catching some sunrays before having to go get neutered.

I didn't wake up thinking today will be the day I explain the birds and the bees to my kids.  I thought it would be a year or two before I crossed that bridge. Today our little kitty was at the vet for his neuter surgery.

While trying to keep things simple, explaining what was happening to the kitty turned into a full out sex ed session for my 3, 4 and 5 year old kids.  Try keeping a straight face with....

• 5 yr old boy: "Why is he getting his neuters out?"
• 3 yr old boy: "WHAT? Cats have tentacles?!"
• 4 yr old girl: "I don't get what you are talking about, can you show us a picture on the computer?"
• 5 yr old boy: "Why in the world do we have testicles?  Isn't a penis enough?!"
• 3 yr old boy: "Mama! The vets are cutting his butt?"
• 5 yr old boy: "Oh, I was wondering what those lumps in my bladder were about."
• 5 yr old boy: "What do you mean that isn't my bladder?!  Where does my penis hold the pee?"
• 4 yr old girl: "Can't you just teach the kitty to keep his testicles to himself?"
• 3 yr old boy: "Only pets get neutered, right?"
• 5 yr old boy: "I thought only girls made babies.  I don't want to be involved in the babymaking."
• 4 yr old girl: "If you want to be a daddy someday, you gotta help make the baby.  Mommies do enough work as it is."

Afterward, my 5 year old went to our play room and made this block model of the kitty's head. He explained, "I'm sorry our kitty won't be feeling good when he gets home.  I hope this block kitty I made for him will make him feel better.  Attacking my blocks is one of the kitty's favourite things to do!"

How old were your kids when you had to first explain how babies were made?  Have you ever had to explain a spay or neuter to your child?  How did it go?

I love living in a city for the diversity here. The variety of accents is beautiful, I can't even think of all I've met here: Persian, Thai, Punjabi, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Filapino, several First Nation peoples, Somali, Ukrainian, Polish, French, Saskatchewan, Québécois, German.  When we first moved to Edmonton 4 years ago, I was not used to English in other accents and hearing other languages.  Early on, we rode public transit everywhere and I felt immersed in a new world of sound that I could only understand half of!  When my work permit finally came through, my first job was in a downtown daycare where 11 out of the 18 toddlers in my class didn't speak English at home.  City-living was a big cultural adjustment for me after being in Podunk Idaho for 10 years! The only language I was slightly familiar with was Spanish from Sesame Street, Dora, and high school Spanish class.

My husband was born here in Edmonton.  He went to french immersion schools, so when it was time for our oldest to start Kindergarten this year he went into French immersion. What I choose for my children has really been on my mind lately. WhoLiedToTheBlind recently had an interesting blog post about her experience in homeschool and how other homeschoolers she knew turned out.  I've been thinking long and hard about what classes and learning opportunities to introduce my children to other than standard education and what benefit they will get out of the experiences later. My son, when asked by his teacher why kids should go to a french immersion school, replied, "It helps you get better jobs when you are a grown-up."  I guess that's the end goal isn't it?  When they are five years old we aren't usually looking that far ahead. 

Every week, my son brings home one English book and one French book from the school library.  He doesn't speak much French at home other than to teach his 3 and 4 year old siblings how to count to 10 in french and some of the french colours.  But he does enjoy the French book story time, begging Daddy to read the french book every night at bedtime.

Here is Daddy reading to the kids from the "Un Champion" book. I love how his facial expressions turn french when he tries to speak french. Note the mini french shrug mouth at about 17 seconds in. (He does translate at the end of each page to English, I just stopped the video before the page was over.)

Do you have experience with a language other than English?  When did you start, how did you learn it and what have you done with your language skills as an adult?

The week before my kids came to live with me, their foster mother bought them all bedroom sets.  There were sheets, comforters, pictures to hang on the wall, everything in Princesses, Thomas Train and Cars.  The kids loved them.  I was a little disappointed because setting up the kids bedrooms is one of the fun things of parenthood and I had already spent a lot of effort decorating in a much more neutral way that I found really pleasant.  Brand names and big flashy prints are not really what I'm about.

It is not like the foster mother handed me new stuff in the package that I could take back. She opened it all and used it for three days and told the children they would have them at their new house.  I had seen these sets at Walmart and Zellers and I knew that they cost a lot. I appreciated that she was trying to help.  And the kids LOVED them.

But its been 16 months and you know what? I still feel a twinge of resentment when I tuck those kids into their beds at night.  In the process of being infertile and adopting children, I already feel like I was cheated out of so much of parenthood.  Baby showers, birth,  choosing their names, first cuddles, first steps, first words, etc. So you know what? I did it.  Yesterday I rearranged their bedrooms and washed their linens.  This gave me an excuse to go to my original decoration choices.  My daughter is in purple with some touches of pink are her favourite colours. My oldest son's bed is in orange which is his favourite colour. My youngest is in his favorite color- blue with a rocket on it.  I hung up the tie-dye hot pink picture with a black peace symbol on it that I had picked out for my daughter.  I displayed the space pictures I had picked out for my sons' room.

Surprisingly, there was not a single fuss or complaint.  They are happy as clams with their new room decor, playing happily in them yesterday and they slept like rocks last night.  Now maybe in a few days they will figure out that the coordinating sets aren't coming back and complain, we'll see.   Or maybe they will fuss when they see them in the garage sale this summer, who knows?

I honor and respect my children's memories and past, and when the kids are teenagers, it will be up to them to decorate their rooms.  But right now is my time to instill my values in them.  While I do show the kids disney movies and we watch Thomas Train and Dora and other Treehouse shows, we don't need to be bringing all this brand stuff into our bedrooms.  Let alone all that sensory overload of crazy patterns.  The jumble of colorful toys on shelves and in bins is PLENTY of colorful stimulation already.  This is our house and it should reflect our family's sense of serenity.