The life of a Dutch Scrapper

Bullied

In the next couple of entries I am going to share some memories with you.

I can't recall to have ever been a bully, or to have bullied someone. I was more the kid that took the kid that didn't fit in, for different reasons, by the hand and looked out for them or sat beside him or her to not give them the feeling that no one would want to sit beside them. I was a nice child and continued this in high school. I wasn't one of the popular girls, but I did hang out with the popular crowd, but also with the "nerds", "alternatives" and every other little group that was out there. I fitted in everywhere, but actually never was really a part of any group. I always felt I was looking in from the outside. I could have easily been a popular girl, if I would have dressed in Levi jeans and O'neill sweaters and such(that was THE thing to wear back than for that group), but I had my own style and that was one of the things that made me stand out from that crowd. I never mind, I was a happy teen for most of the time.

Then when I was 18 I went to Amsterdam to learn how to become a Graphic Designer. My best friend Gonda was there with me in the same class. We had a great class and a lot of fun with each other. Life was good.

I got my first "real" boyfriend, René, life couldn't been better at that point. And then on January third 1994, everything changed.

René died in an accident and was killed instantly. I never had experienced a death this close by and it shook my world to it's core. I was heartbroken. After the holidays I had to go back to school and tell everyone what happened. Lets just say that that day was horrible. Luckily at the end of the day my gym teacher said I should go home and stay home until I thought I was ready again to give school a try. I think I stayed home for almost two weeks, before I went back to school.

I became depressed and was angry most of the time. I had never learned how to talk about my feelings(we never did that at home). My grief was eating me up inside. At school things changed because I changed. They didn't understood what happened with the always happy and cheerful girl. Suddenly she was depressed, angry and not participating in any fun things they did. They began to avoid me and ignore me, talk about me.

I couldn't tell them how I felt so when it was night of the poetry, I decided I would make a poem about how I felt after René died. It was a very honest and very open poem, I laid my heart on the table when I went up to the stage and read it for the whole school. I broke down and cried a couple of times while doing it, but I wanted them to understand where I was at. Most of the people from my class cried while I was reading it.

I hoped it would have helped to open a door but never did anyone of them came to me and talk about it.

My best friend Gonda and I grew apart, another thing that hurt me a lot. We couldn't talk so I pushed her away and she let me. We broke up our years of friendship by a letter. I still regret this.

After the summer vacation I was finally feeling better again, not depressed and more myself. So I went back to my class, a bit more of the girl I was before René died. I wanted my life to be normal again. It was a shock to me that my classmates were still treating me the way they were when I was depressed, ignoring me, talking about me and pushing me out of the group. I felt very lonely. I had felt very lonely when I was depressed, but I also choose to be alone most of the time, to deal with my grief. Now I wanted to be around people again but still was lonely. We had some new people in our class and I tried to make new friends. My old classmates talked about me behind my back, they didn't wanted me to have new friends. Luckily for me, one of those girls talked with me and I told her what happened last year. She stood up for me and even went to a teacher to have them stop talking about me. She saved me. We became good friends.

I never became the carefree and happy bubbly girl I was before René died, but I guess this life experience made me grow up a lot faster.

My husband is the same as me, always rooting for the underdog. I try to teach my kids not to judge anyone let alone bully anyone. So far so good and hopefully they will never have the experience of being bullied like I was.

Corinnexxx 

ugh, don't you hate it when there is one screw short so you can't finish your IKEA dresser, grrrrrrr!

Sick.

Sick from the renovations on the house. Camping in the kids rooms is no longer fun when you literally can't walk in the rooms, that crowded with boxes etc.

The good thing is, DH is laying the floor in the attic, as I type this, so hopefully that will be done today. Still need to get a new bed and clean everything there(actually the whole house needs a good cleaning).

Also still lots of painting to do, but the BIG things are done, phew! On the 4th of May they will be laying my new floor in the living room, kitchen, hall and playroom, after that we can decorate the playroom/studio and such.

Sick. literally sick. Yesterday was Anthony's birthday party with his friends. He invited 6 friends. one of them was his cousin Naomi and a boy that lives close by. the other 4 were from his class. All of them had ADHD, PDD-NOS and what more. After 5 minutes I already was like: "what the hell was I thinking??!!!". But luckily the hyper from the first moment, was gone after 15 minutes and the rest of the afternoon went great :) . we went bowling for two hours, eating french fries and such afterward and they played some soccer till their parents came to pick them up. Unfortunately I got sick the minute we came home from bowling. I think I ate something wrong. I became sicker with the minute and got a fever attack and all evening I have been in the bathroom(let's leave it with that, no need for details, but you get it right?) I haven't felt this sick in a long time. Still do not feel OK right now, extremely tired and my stomach still does not like food in it.

Ok off to do a little nap on the couch, but want to leave you with some pregnancy pics from my friend Marcia:
 
More of this shoot HERE.

Corinnexxx

Happy Birthday Anthony!

OMG I am a mom of an 11 year old!! Where did the time go? I still remember everything from his difficult birth and every little thing that happened after this. He has had a challenged life so far, with many mountains to face. I am glad that in between mountains there were some pretty good times. Right now he is in a pretty good time, feeling good, doing better in school, having friends, which makes me a very happy momma :)

Anthony is so sweet and I think he is pretty handsome. When I tell him, he says I have to say that because I am his mom, but he thinks different about himself. I hope he will see how special he is someday.
Did a little photoshoot with him as well yesterday with his waveboard(he got that from my parents for his birthday):

 



 
I love you so much Anthony and I wish you such a good year ahead and ofcourse a wonderful day today.

Mammaxxx

Night out of hell

What the heck happened last night, OMG! So tired, so tired.

Let me start with the beginning:

I went to the WW. I went early for a change because I am always waiting in a huge line for 30 minutes before I can jump on the scale. So I drove my regular route and than bumped onto a roadblock, my road was blocked, so I had to take a different route(which basically was turn around and go back to Start). So I drove back by another route(I thought I was smart) and  can you believe me, to another road block, now on this route!! And after riding for 30 minutes I really was thinking of going back home, this must be a sign from God right? But no I HAD to weigh in. So I finally came there after 45 minutes(normally 12 minute drive!) and had to stand for 30 minutes in line again, sigh. Finally it was my turn on the scale. I gained 0,6 kilo. That was the highlight of my evening because I thought it was much more, pweh! Hopefully next week it will be gone, I am going for it.

Ok second part of the evening:
I came home. watched tv and relaxed with DH on the couch. We wanted to go to bed around 12, tired and all. As you know we are in the middle of renovation our attic/bedroom so our mattresses are both on Anthony's floor and one of us sleep there and the other in Jadenn's bed(who has slide out matrass under his bed where he sleeps on for the time we are camping with them). I notice that DH had let Jadenn sleep in Anthony's room on the two mattresses, so I told DH he could sleep there because I hate a warm bed. So I wanted to catch my pillow and already said to DH that it stinks in their room, and all of the sudden I reach for my pillow and feel something a mom doesn;t want to feel. PUKE! I turn on the light and there, I kid not, was a whole lot of puke on both of our mattresses, pillows and our bed covers. Next to it a sleeping Jadenn!! luckily he was clean, but that was the only thing that was :(
So we put him into his own bed and tried to clean up the mess|(by hand!!! because my father was in the midst of redoing the pipelines of my washing machine, which now at this point wasn't working!). Let's just leave it at that, but you do not want to know(I think we have to buy new mattresses).

So, finally(it is now past 1) we get into bed, me in Jadenn's bed and DH on a mattress on Anthony's floor. After 15 minutes, almost sleeping Jadenn pukes again! now in his bed. Change those sheets, rapidly before it hits his mattress.

So finally around 1.30 we all fall asleep, totally tired.
Is the night over you think? I think not.
At 4.56 I turn over.....and the bottom of the bed breaks and I fall down, takatakataka, was the sounds it made. I Hardly could get out the bed and I take my blankets and pillow and walk to DH thinking I could sleep with him on his mattress, spooning. He was too sleepy to get what I wanted so that idea didn't work and I had to lay on the other mattress which we didn't place back on the ground again when DH went to sleep, so it didn't fit. The rest of the night(one hour) I slept on a mattress in a 30% angle. I guess I was too tired to care.

So that was my night, how was yours :)

Corinnexxx

Things are progressing

The addition to our roof/attic is done and within a week we plan to be finished. Till than we have sleep-overs with the boys, switching from one room to the other day by day. Kinda fun, but please not longer than a week. Jadenn touching my face in the middle of the night(to check if I was there) woke me up and almost kept me wide awake the rest of the night. Sleeping at Anthony's means you get more than one chance that a stuffed animal will fall on your head in the middle of the night and also will keep you up the rest of the night. Thank God I love to read, talking or thinking to myself isn't the best thing for me.

Spring is here! The weather is so much better right now, lots of sun and a decent temperature. I think I am a Spring person. I hate Winter and can't stand the warmth of the sun in Summer, kinda like the Fall as well, but prefer Spring because of the new life and everything is blooming. Took these shots last year but saw them today as I was surfing in my own files with photo's, they reminded me of Spring(all shots are straight out of the camera):


Took this shot with a 300mm zoom lens. Anthony discovered them and asked me to take pics of them. I didn't wanted to come too close to scare them, so it was difficult to get this shot since there was so much in front of this shot, but I am glad Anthony pointed this out, too cute!

I love butterflies so much!

Ok need to go, since I am going into town with one of my best friends :), need a break from renovations and such, badly!

BUT,
I will not let you go with sharing these with you:

Remember I gave away a photo shoot last year? This is the girl that won and she rocked in front of my camera, so, so happy with how this shoot turned out, go check it out HERE.

And meet sweet 2 day old Fiene:
 
More of this precious little girl HERE.

Have a great weekend!

Corinnexxx
 
 
 

 

Little update

Crazy! It has been crazy the last few weeks, good and in a not so good way.

Let me give you a little update on things:

1. My computer is acting wonky again. Gave me a heart attack last week when it didn't wanted to get started. Brought it to a repair shop(a different one as last time, trust me). There it did start, pweh! but the cleaned it out and made it work so much faster :). But now at home it starts or it doesn't start, not sure what it is but I do not like it! And I can't back-up everything because the guy that cleaned it, also deleted some program's or such to get contact with my external hard-drive, ugh and I have no clue how to do it myself.

2. Edited lots of pics :)
 
Fimme, such a cute little boy :) check out the rest HERE. 

And sweet little Nick you can see more of HERE.
Still lots more to edited so stay tuned :)

3. Renovations
Yeah things are going into the right directions! The playroom/studio is done as far as it can be done. In may they will be placing the new floor so have to wait till than to decorate it and such, which is a bummer I think, but what can you do about it right?
Tomorrow they are placing an addition(we call it a dakkappel) on my roof which will give so much more room in our bedroom(the attic). Already they did a lot of things to make it look so much better than before and every step makes me happier. But still also here lots to do. When it is done I will show you before and after pics.

4. Weight-loss
The last few weeks have been difficult. With all the stress from work, renovations and such it was very hard to get my rhythm going. I forgot to eat or do groceries and also felt very stressed. I still managed to lose some weight so I am thankful for that. So far I have lost 10 kilo and dropped two sizes in my clothes!! People are seeing it now and make comments on how "good" I look, which of course is great :)
 
I have a chin again :)
Although it has been difficult the last few weeks I am back in full force as off yesterday. I think I can loose another 10 kilo before summer, that will be my next goal.

Corinnexxx

Seven.

Today my baby is celebrating his 7th birthday. He let me take some photo's of him yesterday as it was his last day of being 6.(all pics are SOOC! love the light in the new playroom, which is finished BTW!(well still have a lot to do, but the workers are done doing their part)


This year he learned how to read and write and he is a wonder with math.

He is sweet, funny and doesn't like to eat french fries or any other junk food. You would think he would like the healthy stuff than, but no, he is a picky and very slow eater.

He is hyperactive, can't sit still and doesn't seem to listen(wonder who he got that from ;). I know he doesn't do it on purpose, he really tries, but is distracted so easily.

He has friends and loves it when they come to eat at our home during break or when he goes to their house to eat a sandwich.

He has his swimming diploma's A and B.

He never wanted to be on a soccerteam, but now he is since his best friend also is on the team. he actually loves it and I love watching him running after the bal, not being afraid of anything that comes his way.

He has long hair, which he does not want to have cut. He still calls it his rockstar hair.

He loves to cuddle with me and always wants me to tuck him in at night and sing my lullaby for him while tickeling his back.

He wipes my kisses of with his hand, always(does that with everyone who kisses him) and tries to do it secretly.

He is open and spontanious and caring for others.

He can be cranky when I say no and cry easily when he doesn't get his way(still doesnt work though!).

He has a love/hate relationship with his brother, which he finds hard sometimes(and so do I!)

He is now 7 years old and I can't wait to see what this year will bring for him, the things he will learn and discover. I hope he stays the happy child that he is and for now I just want to say:

Happy Birthday Jadenn!!!

Love mom.