First Post!

So I have decided that I am too stressed out, and so, after receiving advice from a very trusted and reliable source (an article on Yahoo!) I am starting a blog. Oh boy! Usually I have no problem thinking of something interesting to write about, but at the moment I am having a bit of a brain issue. I guess a little bit of history would be a good idea, so here goes.

I am 24 years old, married, and I have three children. I'm not sure which of these three conditions contributes the most to my stress levels, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's probably the latter of the three. The marriage thing isn't bad, it's actually quite enjoyable. My husband, Charlie, and I don't have an anywhere near perfect marriage, but for the most part we get along very well. For the small part we fight like cats and dogs, but it's such a small part that I think it's not really worth mentioning, so I won't mention it. We've been married since April Fool's Day of 2006 (no joke), and I love him more now than I did when we first said "I do". I know, so cheesy, but it's true. I can honestly say he's my best friend, which apparently in this day and age is no small thing. It gets even worse, though: when answering the question of picking one person to be stranded on a island in the middle of nowhere with, my answer is Charlie. Pathetic.

The kid thing is a whole different story. And complicated. Not that I don't love it, because I do, 100% completely more or less. I guess I had just expected to get children the more conventional way. I know, now I have to explain the un-conventional way, so here goes. It's a long story, so bear with me.

It started the night I met Charlie. He was having a Get Out On Parole party at his mom's house after he got released on parole, and I somehow got tricked into going by my best friend. Some friend, right? I was 18. I got out of the car, walked to the house, and this guy (Charlie) comes running out and sees me. He stops dead in his tracks and his mouth drops open. Apparently I was pretty drop dead gorgeous before I gained my marriage weight. Picture those corny scenes from the movies, that's exactly what happened. I have witnesses. I walk right past him and through the front door, and this little kid comes running up to me, arms open wide, screaming "Mama, Mama, Mama!". Please don't ask me why I didn't turn around and run. I still don't know the answer to that question. So, naturally, I comment, "Um, someone's kid is calling me 'Mama'", and Charlie locates his voice long enough to claim the two year old child now hugging my legs. Okay. So later that night Charlie finds the nerve to ask me out and later mentions that he's going to marry me (once again, don't ask why I didn't run), and I agreed. To the dating part, the marrying didn't come until much later after he cleaned up and became a model citizen. Turns out the kid, Matthew, didn't have his mother in his life, which explained why he thought I was his mom, and me being a bleeding heart decided that as long as I was with his Daddy I may as well be Mama. It didn't help that every time I tried telling him my name he firmly refused to call me anything but Mama. And he was cute. A year later Charlie found Jesus and became a good kid, and I married him. He got sole custody of Matthew, and I was Mama for good.

One down, two to go. The acquiring of the second two kids isn't nearly as amusing as the first, provided you thought the first was amusing to begin with. In fact, there's nothing funny about it, sorry to say. In the beginning of 2009, almost three years after Charlie and I got married, my sister-in-law, Cassie, killed herself. I don't know why she killed herself, there was no BS note (since all suicide notes, in my opinion, are nothing but BS), but in doing so she left behind three children: an 8 year old girl named Jordyn, a 6 year old boy named Wesley, and a 9 month old baby boy named Riley. Riley's father stepped in to care for him, but the other two kids were a different story. Jordyn's father was in prison in another state and Wesley's father was a one-night-stand that had no interest in raising children, only fathering them. The night I heard about Cassie's death there was no doubt in my mind that Jordyn and Wesley would be moving in with us. There was no question, no need to talk it over. Charlie and I both knew. And that's what happened.

We moved Jordyn into the extra room we had, and Wesley, who is only two days older than Matthew, shares a room with Matthew. We didn't know who the fathers were right off, and that was a process all its own. Many hours were spent on the phone, Google, and Microsoft Word trying to draw up guardianship forms for the kids after learning the names of the fathers, and I am very proud to say that I didn't need an attorney for any of it until Missouri slapped me with some rule about requiring a lawyer for conservators. So our lawyer happily took all of the paperwork I had drawn up, filed it, and walked away with a nice paycheck practically free, although it was only a fraction of what we would have paid if he had needed to do all the serving and typing and whatnot that I had done for him.

So now we have three kids instead of just one. It's fun, yes, but so stressful. We have two pitbulls that we rescued, a male named Tuna and a female named Sasha. Sasha doesn't get along with Tuna, so she has to be kenneled when he's out and vice versa. We have about 50 chickens and 9 ducks, although it will only be 48 chickens when we have our next barbecue.

That's the story, in a nutshell. Now you'll understand what I mean when I say I have acquired children, or obtained them. There's a lot more to it, of course, but I'm happy with the above explanation for now. I hope you enjoyed reading about me, and I'll post more when I can think of something to post!