Stress Relieving Decision Making

I know, it's been a while since I've been on. It's been a tough year and a 1/2 and I just had to take a step back and re-examine my priorities. I had to stop and consider where I was going with my daycare kiddos, both blogs, my health wasn't getting any better (in fact my pain got way out of control for months) and I also had to consider what I was doing with Damsel in Defense since it wasn't everything I thought it would be. Here's what I decided & have done....

Cut It Out:

Damsel in Defense (this was an easy decision)
I love the idea behind the company but well, they needed to go. Enough said.

Cut back on it:

Daycare: I had my one stressful family (no communication and mom was hard to deal with) decide to get a nanny when they discovered they were expecting #3. Hopefully it works out for them.

My decision: to begin accepting infants, reset my rates and focus on getting 2 full time kiddos and leave slot #3 open for drop ins. We aren't going to be on the go as much since they are just babies. We'll still go to the park, go for walks and meet other kiddos to play with. I've been stressing the need for communication with parents at the interview & I've made the decision that I'm going to wait to make sure I can find the right family to join us - I want a team playing parent/daycare relationship! Please pray that I can find one more family. I'm going to need it badly and rather quick in order for me to continue to stay at home.

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Blogging: I have 2 literacy blogs and between them they were taking all of my time. I was often up to all hours of the night typing, setting up giveaways and tweaking the blog. I found I no longer wanted to read and wasn't meeting deadlines. I hated that. 

My decision: 
~ I am letting Classic Children's Books go. I am moving all new reviews for that blog over to this one (altho you can always access older reviews on that blog. I'll leave a button on the side bar and you can just switch on over to that blog if you'd like. All future and new reviews will be on this blog. Probably will not continue the Summer Book Club - it's a ton of work unfortunately.
~ I will continue with health related reviews & posts for people with Chronic Pain. 
~ Posts will not be daily, every other day or even weekly at this time. They will be maybe 2-3 times a month if I can get to the library. 

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Health: 
I'm still dealing with stress related headaches. Still going to the Chiropractor weekly. Still fighting my weight, exhaustion and frustration BUT due to some positive changes the exhaustion is finally under control and my pain is too (at least for summer). I've got to make sure I'm at the chiropractor every week or my pain goes way up and so do my headaches. 


My decision: I have begun learning about Essential Oils and using Lavender every night. My sleep has gotten so much better - I'm actually feeling so much more rested, sleeping the night through and getting at least 6 hours of sleep. I'll share more with you shortly in another post. I'm also cutting back on soda (which is huge for me!) and plan on taking the babies for walks every nice day.

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Stress - Financially, Health and Lifestyle
I am starting to consider what I'm going to do when I can't continue daycare. I'd love to continue to watch kids when needed & keep it a ministry - but I need to consider what's going to help me the most. I'm considering a possible move when these kiddos leave (they are 8 mo & 16 mo so that could be a while) - it would be out of state. Nebraska didn't sign up for Medicaid so I wasn't eligible for insurance (even tho the idea of low income people getting insurance was the whole idea between Obama's insurance plan.... ) so moving out of state even 10 miles away from where I live would mean I can get insurance (make any sense to you?).... I just don't know where the $$$ would come from for a move, to get set up and to cover the time it would take to get a few more kids to watch.

Anyway, Please stay tuned as I figure out where I'm going with this.... and leave a few comments. I'd love some prayer too!

Thanks!