Thank you.

I have done some major self reflection lately. Mostly because I spend 90 % of my time alone so it gives me a lot of time to reflect. When I started this blog I had no idea that I had another brother, I didn't know that within months of starting the blog my mom would die or that in the following months we would lose everything we owned. I have written about all of it. I have shared and aired most of our dirty laundry on here. We have made a very stressful cross country move and I brought anyone reading my blog right along with us. Now I am done. I have come to a decision that I need to start keeping some of the private stuff private and maybe better things will happen for us if I keep my big mouth shut and just let it happen and stop writing/worrying/talking about it.
So many people have been so supportive and have said so many incredible things to me after reading my story, and for that I am forever grateful. Thank you for reading/following/commenting.
I hope that next time I am blogging it will be because we have had some wonderful, major life change and things have completely turned around for us. Until then these lips are sealed.
Thanks again.
xoxo
Nina

Not much going on...

So I felt like I should write a post but I don't really have a whole lot to say! Umm.. Oh, I know! I only have one more class until I am done and am able to test to get my real estate license. That is kind of exciting. Kind of nerve wracking at the same time. The whole test thing totally freaks me out but I am trying to get through it.

Things have been much better for me in Virginia lately. I am appreciating our little town much more. Enjoying the quaint, hill-y roads, the beautiful scenery as the weather has been nicer. It is not nearly as bad as I thought it was when we first got here. I still have yet to make any friends. I swear, I am not kidding not one neighbor has introduced themselves STILL and it has been over 4 months. Whatever. They are dumb. I really do wish I could make friends with some stay at home mom that I could meet at Starbucks and sit and talk to. Oh what I would give to say "hey, what are you guys doing tonight, do you want to come over and have dinner?" I love to entertain and I have been trying so many great new recipes since we have been here and I can't wait for the opportunity to have friends over to try them out. Although, I still hate this house. This house is dumb like the neighbors. That's OK though, it's short term and the term is getting shorter every day! Only 14 months left!

The kids are both doing well in school. I went to Gianna's parent/teacher conference the other day and all of her teachers (except social studies) say she is excelling and doing very well. She has made lots of friends and is really involved. Allison had an awesome report card and has been spending more and more time with friends. All of that makes me happy and so proud of how unbelievably well my girls have adjusted to this whole situation.

None of us feel like we will be here forever or even for too terribly long. Maybe that is what has made it so much more tolerable lately. Knowing that someday we will be somewhere else. I do miss my friends and family from home but we know that we will be visiting in the next month or so and that has helped make it easier too.
My girls and I are renting a booth at the Warrenton Spring Festival. It is a food/crafts/music festival here on our Main St. I am really looking forward to it. All 3 of us have been busy making things to sell. It should be fun. I will post pictures soon of some of the things we have made.
I am also considering posting a few step by step recipes of some of the new things I have been making. I love sharing recipes!

Warrenton Courthouse... where btw Clint Eastwood will be directing a movie this month, starring... Leonardo DiCaprio!

Oh my gosh, I went to court for the two speeding tickets that I got on the same day! Holy cow court here in Warrenton is quite an event. I swear I thought their were hidden cameras somewhere. The people were killing me, the police officers with their super strong southern accent were killing me and the way that they handled things was absolutely hysterical. I wanted to take pictures so bad but any kind of electronic device was strictly prohibited. The funniest part was when the court guy (swear, he didn't have a title... he wasn't a judge, he just kind of decided what you were going to be "charged" with) called a name of some guy that wasn't there and some girl who was waiting to see the "real" judge says out loud and I quote "Oh my gosh, is that Tyler?" to which the non judge guy says "Yep, Jessica, your brother had two tickets and didn't show up today" (mind you this is all going on in a court room filled with about 200 people) and she says "well what should I do?" and he says "well come on down and I will give you his paperwork, I will go ahead and lessen his charges." Hello Mayberry. How unofficial is that? Turns out that the non-judge dude was her daddy's best friend and he is real used to her and her brother coming in the courthouse with traffic issues. The non-judge guy ended up being named Wit. Seriously. Wit. the good news is that Wit was totally cool and knocked my ticket down from going 53 in a 35 to going 43 in a 35. That was nice. Southern charm.

So I think that's about it. Oh Allison is over at a friends house tonight. I think tomorrow they are going mud sledding and fishing. Shut up. For those of you who know Allison you know how funny that is. She is not a tomboy but she is super excited about the whole situation. I am super excited because she does her own laundry... bring on the mud!!

The Crew.

When I was a sophmore in high school I was lost. I was kind of a mess. I had struggled through my freshman year significantly and was trying my best to maintain a passing GPA in 10th grade. The summer before my sophmore year I started dating a boy that I had met in school in 9th grade. He had gone to a different middle school than me and had a whole different group of friends than I did. My friends that I had come to high school with from middle school were starting to veer off in different groups, some had dropped out, some were partying a lot and others had just made new friends. I needed a new group. Dating this boy was the best thing that could have happened to me because it introduced me to a whole new group of people. I don't remember how or when it happened but out of the new people that he introduced me to seven of us girls were drawn together. I think in the beginning it was just two or three of us and then as the school year went on it grew into the seven of us. These girls were my saving grace. They were exactly what I needed. They all knew each other from middle school. I was the only one that went to another middle school. I was kind of the out cast but they never made me feel that way. I connected with these girls immediately. All six of them in different ways.

Over the next 2 years of high school we became even closer. We got our drivers licenses, spent our weekends at the beach and drove inconspicuosly by boys homes. We were coming of age together. We went to our first concerts together, we had sleep over at each others houses and got to know each others families. Our junior year was so much fun and they made me want to be at school. Our senior year was everything high school should be. We went to Palm Springs together for spring break, we double/triple dated at dances, we celebrated holidays together and for graduation we went to Hawaii together. All seven of us in Hawaii. It was great.

When high school ended some of us went our seperate ways. Some of us have stayed in touch the entire time, never letting go of what we had 25 years ago. For whatever reason I am the only one that has stayed in touch with all of the rest of them. There have been hard feelings for various reason within the group over the years, I think that might be inevitable when you have seven girls all together. It makes me sad that some of the girls haven't spoken in so many years.

Yesterday I was chatting with one of them on facebook and she is in a similar situation to mine. She lives out of state, has lost most of her family since high school, married someone not connected in any way to our hometown. She and I have always been very close. I love her like nobody's business and would do anything for her. We were talking about how awesome what we had was. How when you move away and make new friends it is nice, but it's never the same. No matter how many friends I made in the desert, or how many friends I will eventually make here it will never be the same as the friends that knew you when you were young. I can talk about my parents, my brother, my family dynamics all day long but nobody will ever know but those girls that I grew up with. They were there. They loved my parents, they knew my brother and some of them had a crush on him, they were there for me when I broke my face on Mike's scooter. They remember what it was like to walk into my house and see my dad on the loveseat and my mom on the couch watching tv. They were there when Mike died. They saw the heartbreak on my parents faces. They knew how big of a loss it was. There is nothing like that.
Many of us went on to be bridesmaids in each others weddings. Our kids have met or if they haven't met they know about each other. They see pictures and hear the stories. Some of us are growing old together as old friends do.
I don't know how they all feel now, if they share my sentiments and if they realize how special what we had was but I know that even if I don't speak to each of them all the time each and every one of them has a special place in my heart. I will never forget my time with them. I will always be forever grateful for how they helped change my path.