This post may be taken down depending how much I ramble

So there's a huge part of me that I may hint at every now and then but I don't usually openly admit. But it literally effects every single action I make, and it is something that I daily fight. But I don't really tell people because I don't think they will understand. I don't like the negative associations, and I am desperately struggling to not feel more like an outsider than I already do in my life.

When I was 16 years old after 6 months of going so absolutely crazy I was diagnosed as being Bipolar. And I mean that literally one day I woke up and my thoughts weren't my own anymore, I couldn't control my actions and even I knew there was something wrong. But who wants to admit that they feel like they're going crazy? I dropped off the softball team, refused to go on my choir trip, completely cut myself off from all of my friends, and the worst part was that then in secret I started hurting myself. Rex is the person who found out and forced me to tell my family. This led doctors to constant disagreeing of the proper treatment for me, and started the medication trialing (which is still going on today) The first adverse medication reaction I had was liver failure at 16 years old. (Try explaining why I missed all my friend's graduations my junior year because I was in the hospital, I didn't tell anyone what was going on)

It's been 10 years and I'm still not there. Multiple different medications, a few hospitalization for bad reactions. About a year ago I had a reaction to a new medication and had to go to the Emergency Room, to ensure my airway didn't close. The meds I was on when I was younger I had to stop anytime I became pregnant and nursing. While pregnant with Sydnee I miscarried her twin which I blame mostly on fetal toxic meds I was taking before I knew I was pregnant. I'm not pregnant now, but I can't afford how much the meds cost without insurance.

Wow, I was not going to start this blog all about my med frustrations. But like most chronic conditions I have good moments and bad moments. And since I got married I haven't been as good. But my version of bad means that I become cut off, I again refuse to talk to people, even people who are very nicely trying to be my friend. I convince myself that I don't fit in, that I don't really have friends in church, that in general I close myself off from everyone. I kick my husband out, and beyond my children I don't really allow myself to be close to anyone.

I'm pretty good at faking it, I'm bright and happy and my goofy self. I even half lie to my real friends and try to make my life sound as happy and calm as I think all their lives are.

How I'm doing is that I'm completely unbalanced, my liver tests have lately been getting worse. I haven't had insurance and haven't had any meds for months. I have been working 60 hours a week doing a job I worked hard to get a degree for, but not doing what I had planned. I'm half convinced that I am so broken from Rex that I will never be able to truly move on. And the plans I had with Ryan have all been completely smashed and I don't know how to fix them, or some days if I want to. It's bad and I don't know most days what the end of the day will bring.

I read obsessively all my friends blogs, and I wish I had all those lives, I wish I could run. I wish I could stay home and play with my kids, I wish I was included in all the fun play dates. I wish I had a large family and cousins that all got together and liked each other. I wish I could feel normal.

My children are amazing and I can truly say that they save my life everyday. They are every single reason I am functioning. Every single reason I'm still standing.

This is something I HATE admitting, I hate saying it out loud. I'm fairly convinced it will make me feel like more of an outcast when I run into people around town. But at the moment I've gotten so bad I can't keep pretending. This is supposed to be my honest blog, so here's my truth
K

Luau!

I was downloading pictures from Sydnee's end of the year Hawaiian party and I found a few old pictures from Valentines Day 2010. The kids and I had a movie night. We started this tradition a few years ago and anytime I ask what the kids want to do they want a movie night. Because it's not just any movie night, I take the kids out for ice cream and we get all our blankets and pillows to lay on the floor. We eat ice cream, snuggle and watch a movie and then we all sleep in Mommy's bed. It's one of those traditions that is simple but my kids love it and I hope to continue having special movie nights forever.

Sydnee's class learned about all 50 states this year. And it was a rush to see if they could make it to Hawai'i before the end of the school year. Well HOORAY they did it and they got to have a Luau, complete with games and fruit kabobs. I could not resist and had to go help (or play whichever way you look at it)

Cute little flamingo girl
Sydnee's cute little class. I brought my conch shell to show the class. And I was the complete hero, they were amazed! (I like that I'm cool with 7 year olds) They all tried to blow it and couldn't, I didn't want to break their hearts and admit that it took an entire weekend with my cousin KaMaili where we sat and spent hours learning how to blow the conch shell.

Apparently at some point during the year the class saw a picture of a guy with a messed up eye and now they all squint with one eye in goofy pictures, this really explains all of Sydnee's latest weird faces

I love my Lehua

Our goofy faces and Sydnee's weird eye

My beautiful flower (If you don't know Lehua is a Hawaiian flower) I think she really fits her name

Something good.... my newly seeded grass is coming in! I might just get a nice green lawn for my hibachi party! (Don't know what my hibachi party is??? Stay tuned cause it's coming soon)

K

How to... survive 1st grade

It's the last day of school. I may or may not have cried while dropping Sydnee off. Or I bawled my eyes out... She's done, in 2 hours I will pick her happy face up and she will no longer be my little 1st grader. So much has happened in the past year, and she has grown so much. Gone are her baby teeth, her curly hair, her need for me to get her dressed, to get her breakfast, I don't even have to supervise her homework or tell her to do it. She's responsible enough to do all these things on her own. I'm excited for summer, she has made me promise to let her have a lemonade stand. I'm excited to have her home, but I just want time to slow down, I want her to always be my baby girl. Going to stop typing now cause the crying thing is happening again....

I was sitting in the living room when I looked over and saw Beckham doing this to Daisy. I had no idea what in the world that child was doing. Until I realized he's training her like Hiccup!

I can't find a picture of Sydnee's first day of 1st grade. I know that I was working a million hours and I was getting ready for a wedding and I think my Mom took her to school the first day but I can't believe I didn't threaten my parents to make sure they took a picture! I've looked everywhere and I can't find one :(

But I have these pictures from her first day of preschool and Kindergarten

Preschool with Miss Katie

Kindergarten with Mrs. Cook (I love this teacher and I will commit high treason to make sure Beckham has her as a teacher in 2 years)

Last day of 1st grade with Mrs. Ormston (I think she really likes wearing pink leggings...)

I love you Punky! I'm so lucky to be your Mommy

Something good.... Kids and Mommys date night tonight with the Lewis'. I'm so excited I made Becks take a nap

K

Sassy Baby

Sometimes I see a random picture on my computer which sets off an instant need to look at all my pictures. Watch my kiddos growing, and remember the adorable moments. Just for fun I decided to post a few ones of Syd since there have been a lot of Becks pictures lately.

This is a picture from a really special day. And I may post about this day in the future, but for now it's my special day. But Sydnee was an angel.



This is when Sydnee's hair really started to curl, we were taking family pictures at Freestone park and I miss my snuggly, giggly little girl



Sydnee's "palm trees" in her hair and her cute pouty lip!

She's always been so happy and goofy

This is the picture which is truly my favorite memory. The moment when my baby became my little girl. We went to see Beauty and the Beast on stage when Sass was 4. Sydnee was riveted, she was absolutely mesmerized and cried at the end when the Beast died. Afterward with my junky (camera cause I forgot my nice one) I snapped this amazing unset up picture. It shows her little girl hopes and dreams and for me just makes me happy knowing that for a little while her world was magical and filled with roses and princesses and singing.

Something good.... I love my daughter, and her last day of school is this week. She's disappointed because she hasn't learned all of her subtraction. I love that she loves learning and school!

K

pouty face

I take my health for granted. I don't realize how awesome it is to have a working body until it's not working. And that SUCKS! It ruins everything! I have a busted shoulder. I actually don't exactly know what's wrong with it, only that it's not getting better!

Here's the lovely story in ALL it's detail, cause I think the events leading up to this are really important! (kinda)

I am a typical girl and dislike anything in the rodent genre. I've had some traumatic experiences with rats (seriously EWWW) getting into my room as a teenager and my parents not believing me even though I refused to even enter the basement for weeks. They later found out I was telling the truth!

Living in Colorado seems to mean that while I lose all the bugs from AZ, I pick up mice. Especially in my garage in the winter.

I CANNOT stand the thought of even going into my garage knowing there was a mouse. I actually bought traps, but I can't stand to go into the garage and actually set them up. Ryan promised multiple times to set them up.....

Moving along... it was a few days before Christmas and I was wrapping gifts late at night. Well I needed to hide them and Ryan was sleeping so for the first time in MONTHS I went into the garage to hide the gifts.

Then I heard it... A MONSTER, it was chasing me, coming to eat my face! So I ran, of course! And as I was running my foot missed the step and as I rolled to dramatically to save my life, I fell onto the landing with my arm outstretched on my lateral scapula.

At first I was sure I dislocated my shoulder, but later I convinced myself that it was just a few pulled muscles and put on a brace for a few days.

It seemed to get better, after a workout it would sometimes ache and sometimes after a long day I would have to sleep with it propped on a pillow. But it's become constant. The brace doesn't do much anymore, and I walk around most of the day with my right arm hanging dead. There's no comfortable position and it's killing me!

I guess I have to go get it checked out now... 5 months later


This pic is one I took with my phone when Becks was sad he didn't get crayons at the new Cheddar's restaurant. Love this face!

This is back at Christmas!! Can't believe it's still not better

Something good.... I did get my flowers planted this weekend! My yard is so pretty

K

Fun at the ZOO

Sydnee and Ryan Lewis used to be in the same preschool class. And at the end of the year we all got to go to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Gavin Lewis is in the same class now (Beckham isn't) But we went to the zoo at the end of the year anyway!

I look forward to days like this when I get to spend time with just Beckham. I always feel like he doesn't get as many Mommy/Beckham days as Sydnee has.

Look at this face, wouldn't you be excited to spend all day with him?


As you enter the Zoo there is the BEST part which is feeding the giraffes. This is actually in my mind the ONLY cool part about the Cheyenne Mt Zoo, I prefer Denver Zoo by far. Since there were a MILLION field trips all entering the zoo at the same moment and everyone rushed to feed the giraffes so we bypassed and decided to feed them last. But we had to stop and take pictures....

Nice timing Lisa...


There we go! Gavin, Beckham, Logan and Kayli (Krystal's kids)

Becks and Mommy! He's so awesome

There is a classic picture of Sydnee and Ryan when we came so we redid it with Beckham and Gavin. These 2 shots just show me how fast time is going

There are always peacocks walking around the zoo, Beckham thought it would like to play with his stick. This is quite an honor for the peacock, Beckham never willingly shares his swords (stick) he walked around with that in his hand all day

Mommy and Baby Tigers

My best girls! I love these girlie's. We have so much fun together and I always know I can count on them!

This is how Beckham speaks when he is saying something important. His finger comes up and he pronounces something. The other day his pronouncement was "People don't have guts, fish have guts!"

(You heard it here first)

Hip HipHop HipHopAnonymous (name that movie)

So this is the moment where with bated breath I sat back and waited for magic to happen. Beckham is really Harry Potter and he was going to release the gigantic snake and then we would soon receive our letter from Hogwarts....

:( nothing happened

The cool giraffe exhibit. This truly is the only reason to go to this Zoo. But you definitely do have to do this a some point in your life

Baby Morgan was there too, she wasn't exactly sure about the giraffes

Gavin (His shirt is totally a Phoenix Suns shirt, and Lisa disagreed and had no idea what I was talking about. But really any self respecting AZ born person would see a purple and orange shirt and assume Phoenix Suns, not Tommy Hilfinger)

Yes that giraffe is trying to lick me!

Beckham (I think we should take this home as a pet, I would name him Spot)

Those tongues are SERIOUS!

Beckham imitating them, but he wanted gummy snacks instead of lettuce leaves. Can't say I blame him

Me and Spot!

I think he had a lot of fun!

Something good... New restaurant Cheddar's in Colorado Springs, is yummy and cheap!

K

Jean Wilson Banks

My Great Grandfather Jean Wilson Banks passed away this weekend. There are a million things I could say and write about how I feel, memories I have, how amazing I thought this man was... But for some reason right now I don't really have the words. So I'm going to post his obituary with some of my comments intermingled...

Jean Wilson Banks, 93, passed away Saturday, May 14, 2011 in Richfield, UT. He was born September 20, 1917 in Yankton, South Dakota to Will Carlton and Rachel Everett Banks. At the age of six years his mother passed away, at which time he went to live with his paternal grandparents in Lynd, Minnesota. He graduated from Lynd High School.

Following graduation from high school he went to Washington state where he worked in the gold mines and at a saw mill for a short time. He then joined the Marine Corps in 1937. While in the Marine Corps he served on Guam and was later stationed with the Marine battalion serving in the Shanghai conflict in Shanghai, China.

Jean was then sent to Honolulu, Hawaii where he was stationed at Pearl Harbor and where he met and married his beautiful native Hawaiian maiden, Ella Kuikuiehu Keanini on November 1, 1941. She preceded him in death in November 2004, after 63 years of marriage.

How could he not fall in love with this gorgeous wahine?

While still newlyweds, Jean & Ella were living in the Navy housing at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 when the bombing of Pearl Harbor took place. My grandfather was awarded a Purple Heart from Pearl Harbor They had many interesting experience during this time. They spent the rest of WWII stationed in the Hawaiian Islands. Their four children were all born in Hawaii: Clayre (Dr. De N., deceased) Jones, Jeanne (Roger T) Ogden, Val (James P) Miller, Eugene Wilson (Evelyn) Banks. They have 28 grandchildren, 84 great-grandchildren (me) and 27 great-great-grandchildren (Sydnee and Beckham)

This is a picture of when Sydnee was only 2 weeks old. It's 5 generations.

Jean Wilson Banks

Clayre Elgin Kailianukamakaokalani Banks Jones

Clay LaMoyne Jones

Koren LaNette Iki Manu Jones Iannoli

Sydnee Lehua Iannoli

(Please ignore my just pregnant chubby face)

Jean remained in the Marine Corps until 1949 at which time he transferred to the Army Air Corps and then to the US Air Force where he was a special weapons instructor. He retired from the military in 1959. He spent several years following retirement working for the civil service at the Tooele Army Depot in Tooele, Utah and at the Poulsbo Torpedo Naval Station in Poulsbo, Washington, He and Ella then retired to Tolleson, Arizona (Oh don't we all LOVE Tolleson?)where they remained until Jean moved to Sigurd to stay with his daughter, Jeanne.

My Grandfather was frequently honored and invited to Pearl Harbor Memorials. It's always made me proud to know that my family contributed in fighting against to one of the most devastating attacks in US history. Beckham was born on December 7th and I am happy that we can share that day celebrating

For the longest time this is exactly how I would picture my Grandfather. He would hide out and set up some rockers and a TV in the BARN!

My Grandparents were together for 63 years. And it was heartbreaking when my Grandmother became sick. My Grandfather really missed her for the past 7 1/2 years.

I am proud of my heritage, of my family and the examples that they have been for me. I hope to be able to continue their example by raising a beautiful family and making sure my children know who they came from.

Aloha 'Oe Grandpa Banks! We love you

K