As I lay on the couch to write,  I find myself buried alive.  I'm not buried alive in work, stress or housework.  Okay, well I am but that's not what I'm referring to.  Right now, I'm buried alive in dogs. That's right, dogs. Bella and Maggie are determined to absorb all of my stress through the process of osmosis. Maggies laying across my legs and Bella is laying across my waist. They're sorta like a 125 lbs of weighted blanket.  I can understand why Lizze and the boys find comfort in this. 

I can't quite explain how it feels to send a child away for the good of the family. I keep thinking that I can make some profound statement that will help you understand, but I'm at a loss for words. My good friend Carol Young from the awesome website Why not Fathers is going through something very similar with his son Marc. Honestly, I don't know too many people that have had to do something like this. I think that I've known, on some level, that this was always going to happen. In reality, we really did make it work for a long time. Having said that, this was long overdue. I've said this before but I'll say it again. At this point, I'm still pretty numb because Gavin's been…

Elliott has taken his love of the game Bad Piggies a step further and is physically making his ideas come to via via paper, crayons, glue and a pair of safety scissors.  He was working together, with Emmett, to bring these things to life.  For the record, you heard me correctly.  I did in fact say, they were working together. He wanted me to share these with all of our friends. So, here you go.  :-)

I wanted to share a personal victory with you all.  You may or authorized not know that I used to body building, before I hurt my back.  Over the past 10 years,  I have allowed my weight to get a bit out of control. I was walking about 25 miles a week but with Lizze's failing health, I've not been able to get away.  Anyway, I have decided to make some more subtle lifestyle changes, so that I'm at least doing something.  I really try to watch what I eat but I make sure to include tons of whole grains, fish, fruit etc.  Something that I hadn't been paying much attention to was how much water I wasn't drinking.  For the past week, I've been drinking nothing but water and…

Elliott has a new fascination, er, more like obsession.  He absolutely loves the new game, Bad Piggies. This is very different from Angry Birds in the sense that it requires you to think, imagine and plan ahead.  Basically, you have to create these contraptions to help the Bad Piggies to navigate their world and complete objective.  This really is a thinking game and Elliott loves it.  Anyway, it wasn't long before he began pre-planning his contraptions by sketching them out on paper first.  Below are a few of his favorite ideas that he built inside the game and managed to successfully transverse the level.  If you haven't played Bad Piggies yet, grab it in the Google Play Store or in the App Store.  It's a free game,  and worth every…