In a stepfamily, you are dealing with so many different family dynamics. You have two biological parents who are no longer together. You have a new spouse (becoming a step-parent) who may or may not have a good relationship with their spouse's ex. The new spouse may also bring children into the marriage and then you have more children with your spouse. The ex may remarry and it just continues with the family dynamics. It's a maze isn't it? It's tough work that needs all parties to agree to cooperate to make it work. Sometimes, dishonesty exists though in the most unexpected place.

What happens if your spouse cheats with his ex?

I have been sitting at my desk going through paperwork, paying bills, getting ready to take my state tests, etc. and Dr. Phil is on in the background. There is a husband on there who cheated on his second wife with his ex, the first wife! Could you imagine? Not me. What a rat!!

A spouse cheating is heartbreaking enough but if a spouse cheats with their ex, I think it magnifies that hurt tenfold. If it's with the one person who has tried to make your life and marriage hell, what do you do?




To me, cheating with anybody isn't an option. I honor my vows and I expect my husband to do the same if he wants to keep me and our family the way it is. If cheating were to occur with the dreaded ex after everything we've gone through because of her and others with her, no way in hell! The anger would magnify beyond reason I think. That is the ultimate of ultimate betrayals.

Good thing that DH didn't much like sleeping with her when he was with her so it's not even a blip on my radar but for some stepmothers, it may be.

How would you deal with it? Could you?

A friend sent me this video...

If you need a job and live in the Dallas area (or want to relocate to the area), there is a job site just for you called DallasJobSite.com. If you are an employer and want to review the talent in your area, there are Dallas resumes waiting for you here.

I loved Texas when we vacationed there. I didn't care for the red ant hills we almost stepped in, or the poisonous snake that was scaring the horses away from the pond, but the rest was all good. We saw a rodeo while we were there when we went with family from Dallas. We swam in the Gulf of Mexico. It was a nice place to visit with friendly people.

When a San Francisco couple put a puppy cam up on their puppies, they had no idea the hit it would make. As I type this, there is one going nuts over one of his toys...really cute.

If you want to see what this is all about, click here and check out the live feed on the puppies. These are Shiba Inu pups if you're wondering.

How many times have you stopped in the diet pills aisle at the store only to bypass it due to not knowing their effectiveness and not wanting to take the chance because they can be expensive? PricesExposed.net offers information on diet pills - product description, rating, additional benefits of a product, and the least expensive Internet price. Their site shows the 10 Best according to their information.

I have never taken diet pills because fear of the unknown stills my hand from buying them (though I could certainly stand to lose 20 lbs.). Having confirmation of the safety and effectiveness of anything I ingest is a must-have for me.

Do you use Entrecard? What do you think about it? Does it help your traffic?

I get some traffic from it but I'm not a big card dropper so I may not be utilizing it fully. I do have almost 4,000 Entrecard credits saved up so far. Should I advertise with them or can I hold a contest with them and give them away? Hmmm...not sure yet.

For the stepkids' elementary school years, we bought our own separate picture packages (separate because going in on pic packages together with bm and dividing things up was just too much cooperation for her to handle) so we would be able to have our own rather than depend on the BM to decide if dad warranted a wallet-size pic of his own kids. Now that they are older, the junior high and high schools don't work that way and bm sure isn't going to ask dh if he'd like any part of the kids' portrait packages to buy on her form (that would take too much cooperation, ya know?). Too many teachers, responsibilities, number of students, etc. that the personal relationship we used to have with the schools is now a bit impersonal. We get the interim report and report card and then a newsletter once in awhile (these are online so it's not a biggie) so getting a second picture package for each child is out it seems.

Anyhoo, I asked my stepdaughter the other day about getting a school picture of each of them. She said her mother was sending them out with christmas cards. She (stepdaughter) said she could try to get them earlier for us but that's not sd's responsibility so I just told her whatever her mom thinks is best and maybe sd could take a pic of her and her brother with her cell phone and text it to us, which she did right away.

What I was REALLY thinking is that this is their DAD, not an uncle or second cousin, which is how you send pictures out with christmas cards to other family relations, usually more distant ones. DAD! You don't hold school pictures for a couple months and send a wallet size pic of a man's children to him at Christmas! She's always treated the father of her children like he was nothing so I shouldn't be surprised.

4 Years, 6 Months, & 16 Days to go...

Well, there goes another one. I'm talking about positive celebrity role models for kids. My daughters are HUGE fans of the Cheetah Girls. They love the movies, the songs, the dances. I am sure when my 11 year old comes home from school today, she'll be talking about how one of them (Adrienne Bailon) had naked pictures hit the Internet. Supposedly, they were stolen from her laptop in an airport.

Um, if you are going to have naked pictures taken of yourself, shouldn't you make sure you keep that laptop in your own hands at all times out in public (or better yet, don't bring that thing out in public to begin with...it's not like she can't afford to keep her nekkid pics somewhere else) rather than leave it sit where somebody can allegedly steal it. I know I don't take my naked pictures out in public, lol.

Hmmm...stolen? I don't know about that. It seems like the girls who have naked pics stolen from them end up bigger stars. Look at Paris Hilton. She's useless but she's a huge celeb. because of the video.

Dumb things that people get famous for.

Here's the article.

My husband's truck hasn't been used in a couple months. The muffler is hanging and we can't afford to fix it right now. After opening the hood and jumping my own car a few weeks ago, now my husband's hood latch won't close and he couldn't drive it like that either way (we did have the hood latch fixed last year which obviously wasn't fixed right). Seeing that his car is sitting and will likely be sitting for at least another month, should we use a car cover to protect it from the elements?

It's definitely not like my sporty Trans Am GTA I used to have where car covers would have been a great idea. It's a truck. Should we still cover it?

I'm not sure but if we don't come up with the money to fix it soon, we should probably at least clean out the garage and pull it in there I guess.

Last week I was in Wal-Mart and there was this little baby (under one years old) that looked like my stepson did when he was a baby (he's 13 now). It hit my heart hard to see this infant. It made me very sad that things turned out the way they did when they never had to. Seeing this baby so sweet and innocent, reminding me of my stepson, made me hurt for the way things should have been.

When my stepson was an infant, he was a very good baby. His behavior didn't change negatively until he started feeling pulled and saying words in his toddler/pre-k talk about "mommy crying at home without me" and stuff like that. When he was put in the middle of a negative campaign against his dad and dad's family, his personality changed. He became angry, hyper, obstinate and distant. That followed him thru his elementary years and affected his relationships with teachers, students, and his own self-esteem and then followed him into middle school year and shows up in the D grades he receives and negative comments from his teachers. This bright boy who it was determined was above grade level in several important subjects now getting D's.

It never had to be that way. He should have been allowed to have a relationship with both of his parents and families without the interference and emotional warfare he grew up in. Sad.

If you have children, I think it is very important that you have life insurance to cover things like your mortgage. That way, if something happens to the insured parent, the mortgage is covered and the remaining parent and child or children have one less financial worry. Term life insurance is a very good idea if you have a mortgage. I would encourage you to get term life insurance quotes to make sure your family is covered should something happen to you.

We have term insurance, employer provided insurance through my husband's employer, and a universal life policy. I think we're pretty well covered so our children aren't left with nothing and sent to a family member's doorstep with nothing to care for them should the unthinkable happen. It's the responsible parent who does what they can to protect their children's future as well as they can. I was really surprised to find out how inexpensive it is too.

The things parents are aware of now, as opposed to years ago, leads some to decide NOT to vaccinate their children. They believe vaccinations are harmful.

My personal opinion is that it is up to the parents. I know children who have and have not been vaccinated.

What are your views on this as a parent? Do you vaccinate? Why or why not?

My husband and I have decided to go from a queen bed to a full size bed. Yeah, that makes it a little tight for two adults (can we all say "closeness" lol) but cozy might be nice. I think our headboard is still good for a full-size mattress but I don't know if our bed frame will adjust down. I haven't wanted to look under our bed to see if it will convert because it's scary under there (seriously, I imagine spiders hiding in all that dust) plus I don't know much about bed frames. It won't be so bad if we have to get a new bed frame as long as our headboard is still workable.

I wonder, though, what happens when I am mad at him...am I going to regret and miss our queen-size bed when distance is good? Hmmm...something to think about.

Not me. That's for sure.

With November around the corner, it is time to make family holiday plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everybody wants the family to get together because it is the holidays. My feelings are why would I want to ruin my holidays by doing that? lol

I don't see the point in spending all that money to head to out of state family's homes pretending to get along with certain people I don't want to see and stressing out my own family's holiday. What for when I can have a quiet holiday with my husband and kids in my own home? Sounds good to me! The downside is that you do miss out on seeing those you actually want to spend time with.

We didn't get the choice on who our family was but we do have the choice on whether we want particular members in our lives or not. Guess you know my choice.

I have thought, many times, about doing a detox to rid my body of everything and start fresh. I have never known how to go about doing that though. I'd also like to see if I'd lose any weight in the process (hey, I've had four kids...it's an issue, lol). We put so much trash into our bodies from our own hands, not to mention what the environment puts into our systems, that I imagine there are some nasties in our system we might not want to see.

I've read about orovo detox which is a pill that detoxes your system. I'd love there to be a way to safely rid my body of all the processed foods I've fed it over the years (and in my younger years, that was a daily thing). Like maintaining your car or clearing your household plumbing before it backs up on you, it seems realistic to think that your body might be hanging onto things better let go.

I'd like to know if anybody else has had success with detox and how you did it?

Is anybody else getting nervous over the upcoming election? I know I am. I dread and fear what will happen if one particular candidate gets elected. At a time of economic crisis, terrorism, and war, I think electing a person into office with no experience on any of that is close to national suicide. I really do. I don't understand how somebody with no experience in anything and the judgment of a donkey based on his past ties has a fair shot at becoming our President. Why? If not based on experience, what is it based on? I hope it's not just the color of his skin because that would be a very sad reason to elect somebody as the head of this great country. The fact that celebrities are endorsing Barack left and right should tell everyday citizens something since celebrities are so far away from reality that they wouldn't know it if it smacked them. The terrorists are probably all rooting for Barack Obama. It will make it easier for them.

The loss of life aside (which is huge obviously), this country can't afford another terrorist attack. Have we forgotten what happened to our economy after 9/11? We are teetering on the brink as it is. I certainly don't want the class wimp standing at the head of our country facing the terrorists who are just biting at the bit waiting for the chance to hit us again. My children mean too much to me to vote for a man with absolutely no experience.

Did you know that the bottle of baby oil that usually comes in that basket of goodies you get at your baby shower, or that you pick up at the store with the innocent expectation to soften your child's skin (or your own skin), can be fatal? Like all other hazardous products around your home, baby oil should be kept out of reach of babies and young children. Why? Because of it is inhaled into the lungs, it can be life threatening as it coats the lungs, preventing oxygen from getting where it's needed. Want to read more?