Plans

My children start to school on August 6th. ALL of them. Josh will be starting the 8th grade and Lukas and Jakob will be starting kindergarten. (We didn't start Lou last year because he wasn't quite ready yet...so now he and his brother will be starting together.) They will be starting on a brand new chapter in their lives. I will get them up in the morning, get their breakfast, get them dressed and take them to school. Then I will come back home to an empty house and .......what?

What will I do all day while my kids are in school? Clean the house? That doesn't take all day. Well, it kind of does now because I have to chase after the kids while I'm trying to get everything done. But when they start school, I will have roughly 6 hours a day, 5 days a week allllll to myself. What do I do? Oh, I know, I know!!

I will......

Write a book (the Great American Novel)

Paint the house

Paint my nails

Teach the old dog some new tricks

Train the cats for the circus

Start a social club...Soon to be Old Ladies in Fuchsia Hats

Eat.........no, never mind that one

Start watching soap operas......don't think so

Go back to working outside the home during school hours

Volunteer at the school library a couple of days a week

Aaaah, the opportunities are endless!!

But I think the first two days are gonna go like this:

Day number one: cry until they get home because I miss them
Day number two: enjoy the silence:)

BUT....that day is a couple of months from now, not today. And I plan on really enjoying the next couple of months closing out this chapter before the new one begins.

Peace allllll....................


PS By the way as of 11:30 tonight I will have been a non-smoker for TWO WHOLE MONTHS!!!!!!! Yay for ME!:)

Beautiful

My mom passed away when she was 65, 11 years ago this past March. In all of the years she was alive she never once colored her hair. She used to say that she earned every one of those grey hairs and she wasn't gonna cover them up. By the end of her life, her hair was entirely silver. She had crow's feet around her eyes and laugh lines around her mouth. She was a bit on the heavy side. And I thought she was warm and fuzzy and smushy, like a momma should be. I thought she was beautiful.

I've been looking around lately and sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed by the "let me look like a teenager until I am 90 and let me be as skinny as a corpse until I am one" marketing spiel. My mailbox has been inundated with ads from Oil of Olay, Avon, etc. and they are trying to tell me that the only way I could possibly be happy in this life is if my face is baby bottom smooth and my hair is 3 shades of rich, luxurious non-grey color. According to them I must look like this every day until the day the world ends and I must never gain more than 5 pounds and that must be during "that time of the month" and they've got something that will help me with that too.

I must drink energy drinks and watch "Sex and the City" and read Oprah magazine and take my children on "play dates" to be a content and fulfilled woman in this go get 'em world of today. I gotta be a MODERN woman.

Bull.......

What I MUST do is this: accept myself for who I am, make sure that I am as healthy as I can be, and make sure that my character speaks more to people than my looks.

What I MUST do is make sure that my kids know how to pray, that they know how to treat people with respect, and that they know their mom is always there for them.

What I must do is be able to look in the mirror every day, beyond the few grey hairs and the couple of crows feet and see someone that I really like, not necessarily someone with perfectly arched eyebrows who is still swollen from the latest botox injection.

I'm sorry, but I just can't be bothered to look the way some CEO in some office somewhere thinks I should. I have a real life here and somedays I kinda resent that CEO (and his cohorts) for making other people think that we should all follow the same cookie cutter standard of beauty. Instead of helping to pay his rent, I can be putting that money aside for my kids. You know, the ones who think I'm beautiful anyway.

A lot of women out there look like models......and a lot more look like mommas.

I look like a momma.

And no matter what I look like I know that God loves me, my husband loves me and so do my kids.

Now THAT's beautiful.

Peace alllllll..............................

Let's Hear It For The Boys

As the mother of 3 boys (and the wife of one) I gotta admit.....I love guys. I do. Don't get me wrong, I like girls and women just fine as well, but I really have a heart for the males of the species, bless 'em. And I often feel that in this day of female consciousness, that men get an often unfounded bad rap.

If you look at the mainstream media you would think that men wouldn't remember to breathe if they didn't have a woman around to remind them.

Case in point: television sitcoms. If you'll notice, most of them have the husband/father around as window dressing....scenery....just there for looks and not really anything else. They will portray the wife/mother as the emotional/spiritual/mental backbone of the family as the guy just walks around looking confused most of the time, the entire while being cuckolded by his superwoman/shrew of a wife. Is this really a reflection of our society as a whole? I don't think so.

If you watch the news, you would think that men are responsible for the decline of values in our society. Not so. It is shared equally. I know a lot of men who are smart, talented and responsible and yet they are not given nearly enough credit. Yet, when something goes wrong, who gets the blame most of the time? Sorry guys.

Yes, there are some sorry men out there......no good, irresponsible, lazy, abusive, unfaithful and a waste of time. Equally, there are just as many women out there with the same traits. However, you just don't hear about them too often do ya? There are a lot of single mothers out there.....there are also a lot of single fathers as well, raising the kids alone, working the two jobs, cooking, cleaning, etc. You just don't really hear about them do you? And when you do, most peoples response is "So, he's just doing something women have been doing for a long time." When can a fella catch a break? When can he get credit for doing something right?

I mean, they put up with us most of the time. And ladies,don't fool yourselves. We are not easy to put up with, no matter how hard we might try to pretend that we are. To most men, we are at times a pit bull/killer rabbit mutation that they have no hope of figuring out (and that's WHEN we're crying).

And so, if you have a good man...or know a good man (and chances are that you do, somewhere), take a moment and let them know that they are doing as good a job as they can with what they have. As for the rest of them....stay away....far away...from them.

Now, I'm going to go turn Grover over in his sleep and remind him to breathe before he suffocates.

Peace alllll.....................

P.S.

This picture of the boys here.....while I was taking it, instead of the standard "Say cheese" line, I told them "Say cheesedoodles!" They thought I said "Say cheese do-do!" which made their day. See? One of the many reasons I love boys!

HAPPY 60TH ANNIVERSARY TO THE STATE OF ISRAEL!!

Peace to you alllllll....................

MOMS!

To all:

Mothers.........
Those who have mothers,
Those who want to be mothers,
Those who have been mothers,
Single dads who are both dads and moms,
Foster moms
And all of you who act like my momma when I need it the most:)

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!!!

Hope it's a beautiful one for all of you and my wishes for a delicious meal, a manicured yard and a clean house....none of which you had to have any part in creating!!

Peace allll.................

Because

Because I know you just can't get enough of hearing about me:

1. How many people do you know with your name? 1

2. Do you still associate with the person you fell the hardest for? Nope

3. What do you want in your life right now? Peace, health and happiness

4. What do you smell like? Grass (as in I've been rolling around in it.....outdoor grass on the ground...not the other kind people)

5. What's your favorite Gatorade flavor? None....it's worse than drinking dishwater

6. What's your favorite thing to have on your bed? My kids....asleep

7. Are you wearing anything you borrowed from someone? Yes....I have borrowed a pair of my husband's underwear while I wash all of mine. What...don't act like you've never done it...or wanted to anyway. As long as he doesn't borrow mine we're all good. I KNOW that was TMI but.....eh, what're you gonna do, ya know?

8. Do you sleep in jeans? Not anymore

9. When are you normally on the phone? In the morning

10. Are you a cuddler? yes

11. Something you just don't understand? Hatred, rudeness and basic algebra

12. What is the last thing you bought someone? Gummi worms for the kids yesterday.

13. It's 4 in the morning and the phone rings. Who do you expect it to be? Somebody with nothing good to say.

14. How is life going for you right now? Pretty good if I do say so myself

15. Can you play Guitar Hero? Never tried it

16. Do you prefer warm or cold weather? COLD

17. What do you currently hear right now? The water dripping in the kitchen sink

18. What do you think your best friend is doing right now? Sleeping of course:)

19. Would you rather watch football or baseball? FOOTBALL

20. Do you feel like dancing? Not at the moment but let me stretch a little and then we'll give it a whirl....or a dip

21. Do you speak another language other than English? Yes

22. Where were you Friday night? Spending time with my guys

23. What is something you want right now...be honest? Peace for allllllllllll

24. Do you like the color orange? Yes

25. Sometimes do you wish you were someone else? No, I just wish I was doing different things sometimes.

26. Three feelings at the moment? Happy, content, satisfied......for now:)

27. Ever been kissed under fireworks? NO:(

28. Where's the weirdest place you have slept? In my car

29. Where can I find you at 7 pm tonight? At home probably but call first to make sure

If you've read this consider yourself tagged.......because I want to know more about YOU!

Peace alllllllll.................

My Guys

Okay, I have been a little remiss in posting lately......and this is why.....Jakob in the red and Lukas in the green, teal or blue-green, whatever you wanna call it. Who could resist when these guys ask you to come in the back yard to play? If only I had a laptop. Hmmmm.......Hey Grover? Honey? Where ya goin'?

Oh, yeah...Lukas isn't mad. The sun was just in his eyes:)

Peace allllll...........