Completely and Utterly Exhausted

    

     I'm sitting here having absolutely no idea what to write about. It's nearing the end of the semester where I think everyone is absolutely drained. I'm definitely thinking about skipping any morning classes that I have. I used to love staying late at school and just doing my homework there but now I'm racing to get home. I have been homeschooled my whole life, so I think this semester of college was a huge culture shock for me. My mom taught me a lot of the stuff I know today and I did online school for about two years. It still was hard work and with me doing gymnastics full time I definitely was extremely busy. However I have come to realize that there is nothing more exhausting than going to school for five hours and then going to work for four and doing that all over again. Every single day. I absolutely love school and I love learning and after this first semester I still do. But wow, I need a break. 

    I'm the kind of person to plan things to look forward to every week. Whether that be stay at home to read on a Saturday or hang out with friends on a Sunday afternoon. So for the end of my first semester at college I knew I needed to plan something to motivate me to finish off strong. I booked a plane ticket to Texas for the first week of January to go visit my cousins. I absolutely love going to the airport and just having little getaways by myself. I needed something more than just a few weeks off of school. I needed to get away from Indiana, somewhere where it's in the 50's instead of -10 in winter time. So even though I'm starting to end this semester extremely exhausted I know I just have to keep pushing through. 

Texas comes to Chicago

 

                Last Saturday my family went to go see my cousin play hockey. Some of my Dad's side lives in Texas and those are the ones I have always connected to the most. We grew up with them, went to our cabins with them almost every year. So you can imagine my excitement when I found out that Ian was playing in Chicago. He is extremely good at hockey and has won many games around the United States. So for our Saturday plans our whole family drove down there and enjoyed a great game of hockey. They did end up winning and Ian scored an extremely impressive goal. 

                As a tradition in our family, whenever we all get together in Chicago we always go to Portillo's. So after the game we went to Portillo's and talked about everything with each other. Whenever we get together it's like no time has passed between us. They have always moved from state to state their whole lives so we never saw them as much as I wanted to. But when we get together it never takes us time to warm up, we immediately start talking and never shut up. Sadly most of my family had to head home after lunch because my siblings had to go to work. However, my dad and I were able to stay for the next game that Ian had that night. 

                I needed that full day with them so badly. I have been going through so much lately in my personal life and I haven't been able to just fully laugh. I haven't laughed as hard as I did on Saturday in a very long time. Before the game we all just gathered together in the hotel and made the stupidest jokes and talked about our favorite memories together. I physically felt my heart become lighter. After hanging out for a little while we headed to the game and oh man. I could write about that game for forever. Long story short the referees completely cheated and the other team had about six power plays all together because they kept getting favored. But no body could mess with us, and after a horrible first period we destroyed them. 5-2, them only scoring on their power plays that they did not deserve. That's why I added that picture of my uncle taking a selfie. We were so excited. That day has been added to the list as one of my favorite days this year. 

Our Dog Business

        My family has had a dog business for eight years. People take their dog to our house when they are out of town or on vacation instead of taking them to a kennel. At first my mom started the business to pay for me to be able to do competitive gymnastics for four years. Competitive gymnastics gets extremely expensive once you have to pay for it every month. We needed the extra money and thought why not? We love dogs and all of us kids committed to helping mom out with all of the dogs. Eight years later and we have about 350 amazing reviews from clients and this has become our full time job. Sense my dad hasn't had a job for a few years and my mom only works part time, we have had to fully commit to this job and the income it provides. There are eight of us to provide for and we are so thankful that God has taken us so far with this job that we are able to depend on it. 

        We never thought that this small side job would turn into our family's full time job. My dad now helps my mom fully manage the business anytime my mom may be at work. The holiday's are our busiest times and sometimes we have ten dogs in our house at a time. After eight years we have found a really good rhythm and even though it can get really chaotic we always make it work and try to remain grateful. There would be absolutely no way we would be able to pay our bills if it wasn't for this job. Currently we are looking for a bigger house to invest in this business even more and have plenty of room for all of our family members and dogs. If you would have told us eight years ago that taking care of dogs in our home would become our full time job we never would have believed it. But it has become the biggest blessing in our lives and we are so grateful.