A Bloggers Story For Inspiration

Hello there! Want to learn how I became a blogger? This is a bloggers story. My name is Joellene but my friends call me Joey. My Mom wanted to name me Joey with no middle name, nice and simple. However my Dad did not at all like the idea of a female with a male name so my Mom came up with Joel (my father’s name) lene (to make it feminine), hence Joellene. Much harder for a five year old to spell and for anyone to pronounce on their first try. My Dad did agree, so my Mom calls me Joey and my Dad O. This nickname came bout when my only little sister started talking. She had a hard time with the J sound and called me Oey. Dad must’ve liked that better than Joey, so he shortened it down to one loving letter, O.

As A Young Lady

I was born in the small windy town of Rock springs, Wyoming in the very early 80’s. Indeed, long before Blogging was even a thing. My parents only 20 moved from Illinois where they had grown up in the country and the cornfields. I haven’t met a person yet from there that is scared of the Stephen King Novels or Movies Children of the Corn, indeed they are the children of the corn! Anyway, they wanted to get out of there and headed west! My Dad had an Uncle whom was a coal miner and got a job offer, so they decided to give it a shot!

About a year after I was born Dad got yet another job offer at another coal mine in the even smaller town on the northwest corner of Colorado. It is at the base of the mountain in the valley of the northwest corner of the state. Beautiful place, yet very secluded. Everyone knows everyone there and their business! They bought a cute two story house in the middle of town. Then about two years later my little sister blessed our family. We are two and a half years apart, perfect if you ask me! We were then and still are the best of friends!

This Bloggers Story Has The Perfect Family

Everything remained flawless for the next twelve years, the perfect family! This bloggers story has a coal miner Daddy, a Momma at home cooking, cleaning, and baking, and two beautiful girls. After twelve years of marriage my parents made the decision to divorce. I was one of the few kids in my class that had married parents until that year. My Dad took it pretty hard and decided to go back home to Illinois. There he got back into farming with his brother and father. My Mom loved her house and decided to stay there and allow us to finish school.

During those years I dabbled in playing the clarinet in our middle school band, that was not a strong suite for me for sure! So then my best friend talked me into trying out for the Bull pups cheerleader squad. Little did I know at the time but everyone that tried out made it, the coach was only trying to see where we each were as far as athletics.

Like all sports programs within my school system we had to hold a B average to remain on the teams. To my dismay my best friend did not keep her grades up enough to continue to participate. With that being said, I gained new life long friends to whom I still talk to today. I had a lot of fun, learned about fitness, goal stetting, and most important to me team work! You do not want any trust issues when girls are tossing and catching each other!

OK, Not So Perfect

Of course there was a lot of turmoil within our little family for unfortunately quite a few years. Keep in mind My sister is what we reefer to as a “tween” now and I was just a new “teen”. We were indeed entering into a new chapter of our lives in so many ways. I understand that there isn’t a perfect family or even individual person out there so I will not bore you with all of the small details. It is important for me to mention that during the mid-ninety’s I saw the cutest boy in the world, and was not going to give up until I made him mine! To this very day more than 20 years later he is still the love of my life.

My senior year I was so happy and proud to be the Captain of the Cheer Squad, nominated by the other cheerleaders. Finished out the football and basketball seasons with my classmates and graduated. My husband now but boyfriend at the time had not grown up in the same place his whole life and knew there were bigger and better places out there.

A Bloggers Story Turns Into An Exciting New Adventure!

After graduating from high school this bloggers story brings us to the southeast corner of Missouri. When I was a kid I always said that I would never live in that state, but it really is a pretty great place! The residents all kind of knew each other and kept and eye for their community for sure! Very nice people in that area for sure!

For the first year we rented a small house, but the following year a friend of my husbands Mother put a house up for sale. You see, there really isn’t a lot of opportunity in the small town so people are not flocking there by any means. Anyway, about four years after buying the house we got an amazing yet very unexpected surprise! Our first bundle of joy, a beautiful and healthy baby girl! Being a first grand child she was without a doubt spoiled from the moment of her announcement!

You can say we are living the dream, Mid-Twenties, money in the bank, a house, two cars, and a sweet baby girl. What happens next will forever change all of our lives. The president of a very well known chair company, where my husband happens to work, dies. In fact, that one company employs a big chunk of the small town. It was then handed down to his sons. They decide to change up pretty much everything about the company, hurting most of the employees unfortunately. They restructured the pay, the way the chairs were being built, and where the material was coming from. Without a doubt this made my husbands salary decrease every year. Indeed making it harder and harder to make ends meet.

Surprise, It’s A Boy!

Funny thing is we happen to know the exact moment that this sweet baby was conceived. Trust me as well as your parents and teachers when we say it only takes ONE time! Everything was going great with the pregnancy until the six week ultrasound. There we got the super exciting news that this one is a boy, along with the horrifying news that his left ureter was pinched off at the kidney. This could result in fluid building up and the loss of his kidney. Luckily that was the worst case scenario and many humans survive with only one kidney.

Well, since my husbands career was looking to be on a steady decline we took a leap of faith putting in notice at our jobs and packing up the house. Being pregnant, working, a toddler, and now a move! This was by far the beginning of the most stressful my life has ever been! Knowing that our baby had issues was always in the back of our minds forcing us to make fast changes.

Where Will The Next Stop Of This Bloggers Story Be?

My Father-In-Law has lived in central Oklahoma for over 30 years and has been with his company for 10 at this time. This particular place is very small, a compilation of many companies if that makes any sense. My Father-In-Law works for one company with a specific specialty and my husband for another with a separate specialty in the same area. So, sometimes they work together but most times they don’t even see each other.

My Father-In-Law was nice enough to let us live with him for the first two years after moving. We had decided that I didn’t need to work through this pregnancy, especially with the baby not being as healthy as our first. The time finally came for him to come, four months later. He was three weeks early, but at a healthy weight. The doctors did an ultra sound right away to assess his tiny kidney.

My Poor Baby

I was finally holding my sweet boy in my recovery room! My husband, our daughter, and hubby’s dad are all loving on him when I notice something is very wrong. He is starting to turn blue! As I’m reaching for the phone to call the nurse she comes in and grabs him out of my arms. Without a word she dashes off with my tiny baby. Another nurse shows up telling us that they have rushed him to NICU.

Here is where this bloggers story gets sad. He is diagnosed with Sleep Apnea. For those of you who are not familiar that is a condition where breathing is not steady, it stops and starts. With a new born baby this is very serious! Needless to say, for the next three excruciating weeks I was only able to hold our son hooked up to a million wires.

He’s Finally Coming Home!

Yes! He is clear to come home! Unfortunately not free from the wires, he had an apnea monitor. This lasted a little over a month, the last day that thing went off will forever stay in my head.

It was a hot summer day so our daughter was outside in the back yard digging with the dogs, as I was washing dishes and keeping an eye on her through the window. I put our son into his bassinet and in the sunshine to keep jaundice away when the loud alarm sounded. Quickly grabbing a towel to dry my hands I rushed over to him. I tickled his foot to wake him a little, saw him smile and went back to the sink. Literally the second I put my hands back into the hot sudsy water it sounded again!

I grabbed the towel and rushed back to him. This alarm had been sounding a lot in the past week and I was starting to feel so helpless. This time I picked him up and squeezed him a little, with tears streaming sown my cheeks I prayed for God to please not take my baby yet, please let him grow and become the amazing person that I know he will be. As I stood there crying and praying he opened his eyes and smiled at me. I told him to be strong, I know that he is strong, with his little eyes closed he smiled at me again. That was the last time I ever heard the alarm and two weeks later the machine was gone! This bloggers story is looking back up!

Our Next Challenge Begins

Remember how I mentioned that our son had a pinched ureter? At six months the surgeries begin. To start they wanted to make sure that the kidney was functioning at all, so they put a tube into his kidney that had a bag attached to the other end so we could monitor urine flow. Thank goodness it is working!

This poor boy had a total of eight surgeries and three hospital stays to get that ureter and kidney working properly, but you would never know looking at him today! The last little thing our son had to endure was one more surgery to the outer muscle on his left eye. Still today he has a bit of a lazy eye when he gets super sleepy. As his Mother I love it and think it’s super cute!

This Bloggers Story Is Also Proud!

Now, let’s fast forward to August, 2017. After our son was all healed I went back to work, and it felt so good! I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that my husband and I have had the perfect marriage. We really struggled and almost got a divorce after ten years of marriage. We had taken each other for granted a time or two and lost all of our communication skills.

However, we really did some soul searching and decided that we truly are soul mates! We also learned some very important couple relationship things. First and most important is to always communicate! Holding things in never turns out good, if you are angry, hurt, or upset let the other person know right away. Not in a mean way but express your feelings! Second is without love there really isn’t any reason to put so much energy into it. Last is that marriage is not easy! Be open minded, don’t pick at the little stuff, and listen to each other!

I am so proud of my little family! My husband has built himself a career and both of our kids are amazing! So smart and talented in their own ways! Now a teen and tween I can’t believe how fast it is going! It’s time for a change! You see, I have been in food service my entire life. I started washing dishes and have held every position possible both front and back of house all the way to management. Don’t get me wrong I love so many things about this industry, however I also feel very restricted when it comes to family time. I do not want to miss out on my kids lives and years!

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