9/11

This morning we turned on the TV to see the shows dedicated to the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. It brought me back to that day. As most people that were old enough to remember, I will never forget it.
It was exactly a month after my husband and I got married. I woke up in the morning in my normal routine. He was at work, I grabbed a bowl of cereal and turned on the TV to watch my usual shows. The first thing I saw was one of the twin towers with smoke coming out of it. They were saying they thought a small plane hit the building, there was a lot of confusion, the idea of terrorists wasn't there yet, at least not spoken. The feeling in the pit of my stomach when that 2nd plane hit is something I will never forget. The reporters went silent for a moment, everyone was just stunned. We were attacked. Then they started talking about the plane that crashed that they thought was headed to the pentagon. It made me, and I'm sure lots of other people, wonder what would happen next. How many more of these could there be, how many more places could be attacked, who did it and why? The scenes of people walking around the area covered in ash and debris were so surreal, something you see on the news in other countries that are seemingly at war, not something that you see here in America. Then the first tower fell, another moment of stunned silence and then waiting and knowing that the 2nd one would fall too. The thoughts of how many people were in those buildings and in the streets below was so overwhelming.
I can say that I was not directly affected by this. I didn't know anyone that was there, I didn't even know anyone that knew anyone that was there. But yet I talk about it 10 years later and still can't hold back tears. It's a moment that my grandchildren will study in their history class, and I'll be able to tell them about where I was and what I remember from that day.
Take a moment today to think about the mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, uncles, aunts, grandparents and friends that died that day, along with all the people who have lost their lives since then protecting us and making sure that it never happens again.



A Round Tuit

I seem to be much more of a procrastinator than I used to be...not sure how that's possible, but it's true. The words "I should..." or "I'm going to..." and such come out of my mouth MUCH more than they should. Unfortunately most of the time it's not often that the thing I should or am going to do actually gets done. For example, I have been saying since the beginning of the summer that I want to go through the kids' toyboxes and get things organized, throw away broken toys, etc... Well, here we are, summer is over, school has started again and, you guessed it, I haven't gone through their toys. We did get their rooms more organized and have gotten a lot of other things done around here, but not that.

Growing up, my grandma always had (and still does have) these silly things called Round Tuits. It's a circular piece of paper with the word "tuit" on it. I used to roll my eyes when she'd give me one after I uttered one of the phrases I just talked about. I think I need about a hundred of those right now, not to mention another 12 hours in each day would be nice.

Another "round tuit" that I need to do is get my butt in gear to lose weight. It sounds like such a normal thing, especially for a woman and mother of 4 kids to say, but this is a NEED type thing at this point. Since I had my youngest daughter and had my gall bladder removed, I'm no longer at the level of at least maintaining, now I'm gaining, not good. Unfortunately, for a procrastinator of my level, sticking to a diet and exercise program can fall right along the lines of impossible. Excuses pile on top of excuses... not enough time, it's too cold/hot to go for a walk, no money for a gym membership, I need to catch up on orders, we can't afford the healthy foods, the list goes on.... Not to say these things aren't true, they are, but I need to make myself get past these excuses and do it in spite of them.

My procrasination has gotten to the point where I actually don't even want to start things because I don't think I'll be able to keep up with doing them. A friend of mine recently went through what is called a Muchness Challenge. Basically it's 30 days of doing the things you need to do to get your muchness back (If you've seen Alice in Wonderland, you'll know what this means, if not, well, look it up cause I probably won't get around to explaining it to you, haha).  This is probably something I should (there's one of the phrases again) do, I definitely feel like I've lost my muchness recently, maybe I will discover what it is I need to do to get it back. Of course, I haven't started this because I don't have time! Oye Vey!

I think I will be changing my phrases to I WILL instead of I should or I want to. Maybe I need to write myself out a daily schedule so I can stay on track. It sounds so elementary to do that, but with 4 kids, a very small house to keep clean and uncluttered and only 24 hours in a day, it may be the only way for me to keep myself on track.

10 Years!

Today I celebrate 10 years of marriage to my wonderful husband. It's so unreal that it's been 10 years since our wedding day. I can't say that I remember it like it was yesterday, because, honestly I don't even remember some of it. It was such an exciting, crazy day that some of it just went by in a blur. Of course, there are specific things that I remember so well, like my little cousin (flower girl) crying because she was so nervous, sitting, standing and even laying while a friend too a good 2 or 3 hours to do the most amazing hairdo I've ever been able to wear, walking from the library to the sanctuary trying not to be drenched in sweat because it was well over 100 degrees that day (August in AZ is not the best time to get married). But most of all, I'll never forget the look on my husband's face when he saw me coming down the aisle or the amount of self control it took for me not to start crying because I was so happy. All in all, our wedding really went off without any disasters. I always hear people talk about how stressful weddings are and how everything always goes wrong, I never quite understand that. It was a pretty crazy day, but nothing really went wrong and I didn't feel stressed at all. I was just happy.
Here we are 10 years and 4 kids later. I can definitely say I am as much if not more in love with him today than I was then. We've definitely gone through the "better or worse" of things... much more "health" than "sickness" (thank God) and a lot more "poorer" than "richer", but through all the ups and downs that come with life, we've only grown closer and stronger together. If you would have told us that day that we would be who and where we are in 10 years, we probably would have looked at you like you were insane. We've sure had some interesting twists and turns, but the important thing is that we're still together and more in love than ever. Our lives aren't perfect, but we're happy and we have healthy, happy children and that's what matters in the end.

So there is my mushy tribute to the love of my life. Here's to 10 wonderful years and to many, many more. Love you honey!

On The Road

I wrote a while back about the "can I really do this with 4 kids" thoughts that enter my mind. Well, here we are on the road for approximately 20 hours with the kids. We're traveling to Arizona to visit with our families and have a short vacation, although I think when this vacation is over, I'm going to need a vacation from our vacation!
I've spent the better part of 2 days catching up on as many orders as I possibly can while getting our family ready for this adventure. The kids have their backpacks full of entertaining things and another bag with books and coloring books, some snacks and of course their video games. I've got my laptop and phone, we've got our music, so we have everything we need to run smoothly....hopefully.
We're about 3 hours into our trip and so far, we've had a diaper blowout (HATE disposable diapers!), a slight case of carsickness, Denver rush hour and construction and a small bathroom emergency.  At this point, I have no idea how this is going to go. Hopefully the part of the trip that is overnight will be filled with nice, quiet sleep, but I'm not going to count on that. I'm just figuring as long as we get there and nobody throws up or pees in their pants, we'll be all right. Now we're just getting in to Colorado Springs, it's so beautiful here it's hard not to be happy. In fact, I think I may want to live here someday. Now that the baby is sleeping, the 4 year old is sleeping and the older 2 are occupied with video games, I figured I could sit and do a bit of blogging, something I haven't been able to do in quite some time.  So, I'll have to try and keep up with it more. Maybe there will be some interesting, non disastrous tidbits to share on our journey to the Desert.

"MOM" is it me or taking "me" over?

Lately I've been feeling a bit unlike "me".  I realize that I'm so wrapped up in being a mom that there is nothing else in my life. I introduced myself to Cody's mom's friend the other day as "Cody's mom". Later I was thinking how odd that was. I actually said "Cody's Mom" like that was my name. Is that who I am? I remember when Mike and I were first married someone in his family introduced me as "Mike's wife" and I was so offended. I was saying in my head "what, I don't have a name, I'm just Mike's wife?".  It's an interesting battle I've got in my own head. Is being a mom who I am or is it taking over who I am? Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love being a mom, but there are times when I feel like I'm losing my identity as a person. I suppose since I stay home with my kids and don't have a job (yes being a mom is a huge job...that's a whole other blog though) I feel even more this way. I don't have activities that I do without my kids...ever! I don't remember the last time I did something without them, other than maybe a quick run to the grocery store. So, that brings up the question...is being a mom my identity or is it taking over my identity? I honestly can't answer that right now. Some days I love it and I'm happy that I can introduce myself as "so and so's mom". Other days I feel like I'm completely drowning in it all and that I'll never be me again.

Today I sat and watched Natalie grin up at her big brother as he made silly sounds at her. She got pretty close to a giggle a couple times. Watching things like that is so heartwarming for me and makes me ok with just being mom.

Am I The Only One??

My husband and I were talking the other day about how we've lived in Colorado for close to 3 years now, and we don't have any friends here. That seems weird. Don't normal people have friends, other couples or other parents to hang out with? We don't. I've realized that most of that is by choice. It's not like either of us are antisocial or anything, we just aren't social. I personally have noticed that it's because I don't feel like I fit in here. I've never felt like I fit in anywhere really. Starting when I was young and started a new school in 3rd grade...all the kids had gone to school together since Kindergarten, so I felt out of place. The strange thing is, I went to school with most of those people through high school and I still never felt like I fit in. Now I'm out on my own and still...I don't feel like I fit in anywhere! Most of the people in this town are in college, I definitely don't fit in there since I'm not in college and I have 4 kids. A lot of the parents around here are pretty well off, we're not at all there. I guess in most ways that wouldn't matter, but I'm always worried about being equal to others. I feel like I don't want to have friends because we can't invite them to our house. Truthfully, it's pretty embarrassing, I don't even really like having family members come to our house.
What is it in my head that makes me feel like this. I meet people that have groups of friends and fit in and just seem to have a great social life. I'm jealous of that, but at the same time, I don't want that because I don't feel like I would ever be completely included in any group. I meet people that don't care what others think, and I'm really jealous of that! I wish I could just be able to be myself, do what I do and have friends that accept me for that, but I am always thinking in the back of my head that they never will. I've had friends that I hung out with before we moved here and I felt comfortable with them and everything, but I always had it in the back of my head that they were thinking something bad about me. I felt like they looked down on me because I wasn't skinny, or because I didn't have money to throw around on whatever I wanted, or because I didn't have a nice car, or because I didn't have the nice, fashionable clothes. Obviously, not everyone I've been friends with thinks those things about me, so it has to be in my head. These are things that I'm unhappy about in my own life. I realize that, but what in the world do I do about it?
I was laying in bed last night thinking about this and I just kept wondering, am I the only person that feels like this? What is wrong with me? Why am I embarrassed about my life? I have 4 beautiful children, a wonderful husband who works his butt off to give us the life we have. We've had some hard times and things aren't exactly great financially. We live in a 2 bedroom house with 6 people, we don't have a crib for the baby to sleep in yet, our bed is in the living room so that the kids can have more space and not have to share a bedroom and my kids don't have all the things I would love for them to have. But (yep, I started a sentence with "but", so what?), all in all, we have a great life. We live in an absolutely beautiful part of the country, we can drive 10 minutes and be in the Rocky Mountains. My husband takes care of his family and we are very much in love after 9 years of marriage, there are so many couples my age that can't make a marriage last at all, so I'm definitely thankful for that. My kids are happy, sure they don't get a toy every time they see one at the store that they want, but at least I know they're not spoiled brats. So what is it about this unhappy feeling? Why can't I just accept things for what they are and go out and make friends that I can hang out with. Well, if I ever figure that out, I guess I'll be a much more self-confident person.
Of course, as I'm typing this, I'm thinking that I don't want to publish it because....yeah, you guessed it, people will think bad things about me because of it. Well, I'm doing it anyway. Let's just call it therapy and hope it's the beginning of me getting over it!

Decisions, conferences and whining, oh my!

I couldn't really decide what I wanted to write about today, so I decided, why not just blabber about all of it. My brain is running so fast I feel like I can't catch up with it, so I guess I'll attempt to try. 
We've had some difficult decisions to make lately. Decisions that would impact our family in a big way. Have you ever completely made up your mind to do something and then at the last minute sort of chicken out on the whole thing? That's what we've just done this week and I'm very happy that we did. I think our family would have been put in a very difficult position. Things in our current situation seem like they might actually start looking a little better, so hopefully we did make the right decision and things will improve. I know, I know, I'm being vague and those of you that don't know the details are like, wait, what the heck is she talking about?! Well, too bad I guess it would take a couple days of writing to explain the whole situation. I would also have to go about 2 years back in our lives to really explain everything. This has definitely been in interesting couple of years!
Today I went to the parent-teacher conferences today for my oldest 2 kids. My oldest son is in 2nd grade. He has a very nice teacher, and he's doing amazingly well. Somehow the kid got some math skills, no clue where those came from. My husband isn't great at math and I failed algebra...twice! But wherever it came from, I'm glad it's there. The interesting thing is that she said he is also a great writer. It seems like kids are usually good at math and science OR writing, but he seems to be doing very well with both so far. That makes me happy. Too bad they don't teach plain everyday-life type logic in school, he could use a little help in that area, but I guess that's something that happens with age and maturity. As for my daughter, well, we were debating putting her in school this year at all. Her birthday is the day before the cutoff date to start school. We were worried about her being too young. Our fears were somewhat realized, but I think she'll be all right. Her teacher said sometimes she gets very shy and babyish and it's very apparent that she's younger...but only sometimes. I'm hoping that the next few months will make that go away. I've noticed that she's matured quite a bit since she started school, so hopefully that will keep happening.
Now for the whining, and whining and whining!!! Why the whining you ask? 2 words....Halloween costumes!! My oldest decided he wants to be a mummy, fine with me, cheap, interesting and NOT a superhero! He won't be able to put it on at school so he can't do the halloween parade, but he actually doesn't even care, so no biggie. My older daughter wanted to be a princess...with wings...haha! I guess that just means generic, girlie whatever. Easy enough, she's got a few tutus, we can get some wings and sparkly crap and there ya go...generic, girlie whatever, not exactly original, but certainly easy. Now to the whining, that would be my 4 year old son. He wanted to be batman, then he wanted to be a firefighter, then he wanted to be superman, then he wanted to be a robot, then he wanted to be a pirate (again, they did that last year). We were looking at some pictures online at all kinds of things. Every other picture I had to hear "I wanna be thaaaat" whined in my ear. I wanted him to be a movie theatre popcorn box...I saw a cute pic online and thought it would be fun, even figured I could bribe him with being able to eat part of his costume, but nope, every suggestion I had caused a horrific "uuuhhhaaaahh" in a high pitched tone along with a stuffing head into the couch and curling up in a ball. OK, so I won't make suggestions for crying out loud!! The result of the whining...finally...he's going to be a biker. Fine with me, he's already got a leather Harley jacket, the rest will be a cinch!  Ahh, now this all brought up memories of last year's Halloween mayhem, check out my cute little pirates!

So, how's that for a boring, mundane mommy blog?! Days like this I wonder, is this really what my life is? This is just...boring! But what can I say, I'm satisfied with boring most of the time so I guess that will just have to do.