Hey guys… We’re still here in the hospital. If you read my last post you know that we checked into the hospital on Monday because Aria had an infection in her neck. I also shared that my grandmother died that same day. I don’t think that I’ve fully grasped what has happened. I mean I know she’s gone but why am I not grieving right now? I’ll think about it and tear up but I think I’m just too numb.

Everyone from home is being so supportive and checking up on us. My best friend went through a similar situation where she wasn’t able to focus her attention on her grandfather’s passing because there were other things that her mind had to focus on. She told me not to feel bad because my mind and body are so focused on my daughter and that’s where it has to be. The tears will come later when we go home.

I just fear that I’m going to absolutely lose it. This whole thing is weighing heavy on my anxiety and depression. I feel like a zombie. I’m so grateful for the staff here… they’re amazing! The truly go above and beyond to make you feel supported and comfortable.

It’s just so miserable that during this COVID-19, no one can come and visit and keep us company. There are no visitation during this time. One person allowed with the patient and that’s it. I feel terrible that I can’t be more help to my family trying to plan my grandmas funeral during this pandemic. Everyone is pretty much on the island accept for my dads sister. So she’ll be flying down because she will have to 14 day quarantine here before we can have a burial.

This Barbie dollhouse has been her favorite. So, her dad went to Walmart and bought it for her. He’s setting it up so that she’ll be surprised when we get home. HOPEFULLY TODAY!!!!

Hi all! I’m sitting here in a hospital room with my 4 year old. About 3 weeks ago I had an enlarged lymph node in my neck. I had a fever for 1 day and the swelling went down. Turns out it was just a viral infection. The next week both my daughters had it. My older daughters healed itself but my youngest, Aria’s started looking worse on Sunday. So, on Monday before I went to work I gave her some Tylenol and when I got home from work took her straight to urgent care. They said that the recommended I go to emergency. And she got admitted because it looked like the swelling needed to be drained.

While answering a million of the same questions by about 5 different doctors and nurses and feeling beyond drained my cousin texts me that my grandma passed away. Right then and there where I couldn’t be anywhere or focus on anything but my baby. It was so hard to sit there and be strong for my scared daughter when I was literally breaking inside.

I’ve been dealing with this alone while trying to talk to doctors and having my daughter totally traumatized from all the poking and vitals being checked every hour and antibiotics going through her IV. I feel beat up emotionally. I feel guilty for not being able to mourn my grandmother in a healthy way. It’s building up and I just want to go home so that I can sit and feel whatever it is that I am holding in right now. I need to hug my kids.

On a happier note… my family, co-workers, friends and the staff here have all been a huge reason why I haven’t completely lost my mind. The support has been overflowing! Thanks to FaceTime I’ve been able to see and talk to everyone and keep them updated live with Arias progress. Her neck is looking a lot better now and we’re hoping to be released tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Hey guys! There’s been some changes in the last week. I’ve gone back to work. It’s just one client for now. Because I work in a DOE setting I am unable to provide ABA services to my students. But now, if parents are ok with the services then we are able to work. It’s really hard though because of the social distancing guidelines some students are unable to receive services. I pray for all these families of special needs children who rely on the time that their children are in school to do things like go to the grocery store, prepare dinner, clean their homes and even shower because those things are very hard to do with their children. I pray for them every day.

Even though I’ve gone back to work, sadly it’s only 12 hours a week. Better than nothing I guess. But I do still have the rest of the day where I’m catching up on real housewives and Netflix shows. In the last couple of days though, I’ve been watching these awesome YouTube videos of musicians collaborating in song cover videos. My gosh! I feel so happy when I watch these. I’ve picked out of few of my favorites from a playlist I have. If you haven’t seen these, I think no matter what genre you’re into you’ll like them. At least on of them.

“The Prayer” performed by Celine Dion, John Legend, Andrea Bocelli and Lady Gaga.

One of my favorite songs and when Celine and Andrea sang this in the past I fell in live with it. It’s so beautiful that every time I hear it I get choked up.

John Legend #togetherathome virtual concert.

If you have an hour to kill (who doesn’t these days) you can treat yourself to a little John Legend serenade session. His wife Chrissy joins him and of course brings the comedy. Then you’ll hear some requests from daughter Luna. I enjoyed this.

Jimmy Fallon, Sting and the Roots “Dont stand so close to me”

Another great song that I love! Jimmy Fallon has a couple of good collabs with other artist but this was my favorite one.

Jennifer Hudson “Hallelujah”

This song with that powerful voice! Goosebumps the whole time.

James Taylor “Moon river”

Another favorite song done by another favorite artist! James Taylor has many videos like this one and I pretty much love every single one of them. I chose this one to share because this song has always reminded me of my grandma. It definitely brought on the tears.

John Legend “Bigger Love”

Love love love this song! It’s not a cover, but definitely a feel good song that I can’t help but wanna dance to every time I hear it.

Ariana Grande & Justin Bieber “Stuck with u”

Again, not a cover but another great one that I’ve watched a few times. I love the message behind the video. I also love all of the personal videos shown throughout the entire video.

Well that’s all for now. I hope everyone is hanging in there my kids are no longer enjoying this… they are ready to get out there and have some outdoor fun. I feel terrible for them. I hope that we can resume as close to a normal life as possible soon.

Hi everyone! It’s been a minute. My family ended up getting sick these last couple of weeks and I’ve had to muster up all my energy to help with that on top of everything else. I know we’re on quarantine but I could use a vacation! We were so worried because there were swollen glands and fevers. I’m pretty tough when it comes to getting sick and still cooking and cleaning, so when I felt the fever and swollen glands and chills… I was terrified. Turns out we all had a viral infection. So the good news was that it wasn’t covid but the crappy part is there’s nothing they can give for viral infections so we’ve been doing a lot of fruit smoothies and soups. And Tylenol for the fever. We’re pretty much over feeling crappy but we still have our swollen glands in our throats. Has anyone else gotten sick and felt so paranoid that it was covid?

The kids are still doing distance learning for school. I still haven’t gone back to work nor have I received an unemployment check. So basically it’s Kahele’s paychecks that are paying all the bills right now. I’ve never felt this way before. It’s hard to describe… helpless? I’ve never not worked for so long. Even after having the kids I was back to work as soon as I wanted. Now, I want to work but can’t because I work at a school. And there’s really no way of income right now. Its frustrating and stressful worrying so much about money. We’re ok for now but if school doesn’t start back up until after summer I may need to come up with a plan. Maybe a summer job?

Some good news… next week Friday our state will be opening up businesses. They’re always so unclear about things so I don’t know if this will include malls and restaurant dining, but one can only hope. I told Kahele “the first thing I’m gonna do when the mall opens is buy a soft Parmesan pretzel with cream cheese and a frozen lemonade. Then find a massage chair and swipe my card for a 30 massage while eating my pretzel.” I can’t wait guys. I will document so stay tuned!

Hey everyone!!!! I haven’t posted in a while because I really have nothing to post. Six out of seven days a week we’ve been so routine wake up, EAT, watch tv, log on to school, EAT, play some PS VR games, EAT, play outside, watch tv, EAT…. I mean, it’s become pretty terrible. And every day I’m cooking and cleaning between all this because…

1. it’s cheaper to cook than takeout for a family of 5. We’ve been trying a lot of recipes that my 12 year old finds online. We’ve done the whipped coffee, flaming hot Cheetos fried mozzarella, jolly rancher slush, s’mores cupcakes…

2. Even when your whole family is in their PJs all day, the laundry load hasn’t changed since before the pandemic. It’s so weird! Why do I still do a load a day?

3. My youngest daughter has been really into building forts… IN EVERY ROOM! She uses all 300 pillows in the house, and about 20 blankets along with every couch, chair, shelf, doorknob and table! We can’t get to the damn bathroom without risking our lives. But we let her do it because she’s 4 and anyone with a kid around her age at home right now knows that it’s come to the point of keeping them active, creative and happy with whatever resources we have. I cannot wake up to those forts. It will ruin my whole day if I wake up to a mess… ask my family! So every night the forts get cleaned up just to be rebuilt the next day.

We’ve tried to reserve 1 day a week to take a drive around the island and let the kids jump in the water. Parks and beaches have been closed and people have been getting fined if they’re not in the water. I don’t like the beach or going in the ocean so this last week I was too paranoid to risk getting ticketed.

However, I did get an alert yesterday saying that parks and beaches are open BUT… you can’t be sitting on the sand and they playgrounds are closed. WTF?! How is that any different than the rules 2 days ago? I have no idea who’s writing this shit! It’s got me so upset that all day long I’m getting updates on the new rules just to see the rule pretty much saying the exact same thing! All day I’m reminded that school years been canceled, how unemployment is backed up, how many new cases, how many deaths, how many recovered. Reminders to stay at home and don’t forget mask and gloves when you go out. How does this reminder every day not make us nervous?

It triggers my anxiety! I can’t even meditate, literally can’t focus on my breathing half the time. At night I try to fall asleep at a normal time but I’ve been experiencing insomnia. I NEVER have a problem with insomnia outside of my pregnancies. Over the last month plus.. I’ve had a few migraines and usually I get them once every couple of months. My skin had just been terrible. I really try to drink only water all day but I feel like the alcohol intake at the end of the day may be doing something that’s causing the bad skin… or maybe it’s the sweets.. hmmm? There’s been insomnia, moments of anxiety, irritability, depression for a week or so after my son moved to Vegas and just all around low energy all day.

I feel like I should make a daily schedule… or maybe a daily bucket list and try to knock off as many things as possible. I gotta head on over to Pinterest and get some inspiration. Be safe friends…

Hi guys! This week has been tough… on Sunday evening I got a migraine headache that lasted til Tuesday afternoon. This made it really hard to spend time with my son and his family before they got on a plane on Monday morning to Las Vegas. So yes, already having a migraine I started to cry because they left, which didn’t help my headache at all and actually made it worse.

I pretty much stayed in bed on Tuesday and Wednesday. But on Thursday I was feeling better and needed some fresh air to lift my spirits. So we went for a drive and stopped off to let the kids swim in the water. We were able to spend about 20 minutes there because aria was ready and they are handing out citations to anyone not in the water. So we headed home to BBQ.

I hope everyone has a great Easter Sunday!

Yesterday we took our youngest for a ride. She was the only one up because my other kids have been staying up all night and sleeping all day. We drove towards the north shore. We didn’t quite get there because we could see the dark clouds rolling in and the temperature drop.

We pulled over for a bit so that aria could play in the sand. We didn’t plan to do this so we didn’t have any swim clothes for her. No one was around and it was the perfect spot to get some fresh air while she had fun.

On our drive home we pulled over to see some of the horses on the ranch. They’re so beautiful. Aria was in awe of them so up close.

Good morning! Yesterday was another lovely uneventful day ending with a great night. Some good news… aria decided that I’m the best mommy ever and wants to live with us again. Phew! I mentioned yesterday that she wanted to go and live with her grandma. I think she’s just craving her normal life at the park and beach.

I bought this DIY dollhouse off of amazon. I had no idea that everything was going to have to be constructed by me. I thought that at least the milk cartons and shelves would be prebuilt for me. Nope, I literally have to do everything!!! The box says that it’s about a 20 hour project. I’m sure it’ll take me a little longer. I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

Had to make another trip to the grocery store again. For some reason after all these years of me being the only chai lover in the house, everyone all of a sudden likes it too. It was on sale today so I bought a couple of boxes. I took this picture to send to my daughter. But it’s part of my quarantine journal so I’m including it.

My youngest has been really into building forts with our furniture and tons of sheets and blankets. It never lasts and she whines every time it falls apart. So last night I helped her to make one in my bedroom. we tied a cal king sheet to a shelf and put her toddler bed in it where it created a teepee like shape. She loves it!

Later on I was sitting outside and my neighbor was having a FaceTime party with her friends. She was drinking and singing and dancing all by herself in front of her laptop with all of her friends in the chat. I was cracking up the whole time because she literally had no Idea or didn’t care who could see her or hear her and she was just having the time of her life. It was the most entertaining nights I’ve had in a while. I love the idea of this!