Flowers, Friends, and What we do when our kids are away

My husband is watching a show on tv that is explaining step by step how air conditioners are made.  Step. by. exciting. step.  Would you like to know how interested I am in this? 

(Crickets chirping)

Yea, 'bout that much.  And now he's fallen asleep on the couch next to me.  I'm pretty sure that implies permission to take over the remote and change the channel, which I would not hesitate to do except he's holding the remote on his chest...nice.  If I try and take it out of his hand, I'll risk waking him up.  If I don't, I will have to endure this torture or get off the couch myself and do something that requires energy.....oh the dilema.  Guess it's the perfect time to babble on my blog!

We have been having a fantastic weekend!!  I planted all my flowers on our decks today ~ something I look forward to every year, and I am especially happy with how they turned out this year...

This afternoon was spent at a memorial day party at our friend's home.  My friend Kam is a fabulous decorator who shares my love of country decor...

...and her husband Dave is an amazing chef.  We feasted on grilled burgers & brats, homemade black bean & corn salsa, blueberry iced tea served in mason jars with lemon & lime wedges...

...and homemade strawberry & peach shortcake.  I'm talkin' homemade melt-in-your-mouth biscuits and real whipped cream......can you say YUMMO?!!  'Cause we did...alot.  I woulda/shoulda taken more pictures of the food but I was too busy eating with my eyes closed and moaning.  Good food, lots of laughs, wild kids armed with nerf guns, and a hysterical game of  "Leisure Suit Relay"...

And tonight, we shared a treat with the kids.....Vince and I found these Jelly Belly Sodas at the fruit market on Saturday morning, so we bought one of each kind and shared them with the kids tonight.  We each sipped a little of each one, decided which ones were our favorites, and then each of the kids finished off the bottle of their favorite flavor...

And, another hi-light of our weekend was some "just us" time.  The kids were all gone for the afternoon and overnight on Sunday (Kyle & Nick to a Twins game with their dad, and Vinny & Hope had sleep-overs with their friends), so it was just Mr. Wonderful and I at home to enjoy the day and evening.  And we did.  Dinner on the deck, Little River Band really loud, and a movie later (that I may or may not have slept through), followed by staying up 'til 2am...uninterrupted time, just us!

Embracing 40

Nothing like hanging out with 20 & 30 somethings everyday to make you want to hi-light your hair, lose a hundred or so pounds, and say "I know, right?" alot.  Such is life at my new job ~ which incidently I absolutely LOVE!  The kids are amazing, and everyone I work with is fantastic....everyone.   I am the new kid on the block, and also am one of the "older" ones.  Ewww...did I just say that?  I'm used to being one of the younger ones, or at least working with people who are mostly my age and know who Little River Band is. 

I'm learning alot.  Besides all the professional stuff, I'm having some other very profound and life altering revelations, the biggest I'd have to say is this...

No one wears big poofy hair scrunchies anymore.  You know the ones that you have that match all your outfits (oh wait, that's just me).  Yea, no one wears them anymore.  Why was I not informed of this?  It's all little elastic hair bands now, like I wore when I was 10, before the big hair and oh so fashionable scrunchies of the 80's.  I realize that I am probably a decade or two late in making this revelation, but seriously no one told me.

So, I guess it's time to say goodbye (sigh) to my favorite powder blue scrunchie that goes PERFECTLY with my faded denim vest - which I refuse to give up.  (Sorry, I will hang on to that with a death grip until the seams rip out, so everyone will just have to chillax about it). 

But it will not be goodbye forever.  Oh, no.  I'm stashing them safely away in my closet because someday... someday they'll be back.  Oh yes they will.  And when that glorious day comes, I'll be ready...armed with a rainbow of earth toned scrunchies that will look amazing in my big spiral permed hair...which I also miss terribly and needs to make a comeback.  I know, right?

In case you were wondering....

...why I fell in love with the man I am blessed to call my husband, this is why (click here to read his latest blog post, which makes me cry!)

I just have one question...

...actually seven.  I have seven questions.

1)  How much awesomeness did James Durbin have on Idol tonight?

2)  How mad am I still that Casey was voted off?  Best not get me started on that.

3)  I am intrigued by the show "Extreme Couponing".  Even though every episode that I've seen so far is basically the same with nearly the exact same ending, I still feel compelled to watch yet another episode.  However, someone please 'splain to me why some of these people have purchased so many items that there is NO HUMANLY POSSIBLE WAY to use them in any normal life cycle before they expire.  Seriously, could anyone possibly use 60 bottles of hot sauce in their lifetime? 

4)  Ok, I take back my previous question.  I just watched a woman purchase $1800 worth of groceries for $22.  I'm not even kidding, which leads me to my next question...

5)  Can I start couponing and sale-surfing and save us such a large amount of money that we can take our family of 8 on vacation to Aruba for $3.98...all without losing my mind? 

6)  Why are Nathan's hot dogs on the grill so RIPPIN' AMAZING??!

7)  Why does my husband have twice as many blog followers than I do, when he only blogs about once every four months now?  Sumpin's not right, I say.  Wait, did I type that out loud?  What I meant to say was how proud I am that so many people are aware and intrigued by how fascinating my Mr. W is :) 

I just have to share this quote by my son Kyle today, as he and Hope were getting ready to leave for school on their scooters...

"Hope, we have to stay together because if you fall I'll help you up.  And if I fall, I'll man it up, cause I'm just Kyle that way."

...and that's why I love being a mom!

Who needs an alarm clock when you have loud and ridiculously obnoxious birds living right outside your bedroom window, which you forget to close when you go to bed?

Yeah.

Such was my experience in the wee hours of this morning, which is why I'm too tired to blog tonight.  Sigh.  Time to go to bed early! 

I have decided to stop freaking out

We have lived in our house for almost three years now, and although I love the house and so many things about it, I have not been able to truly enjoy it.  Not really.  And it's all my own fault, and here's why...I have this terrible habit of continually focusing on how clean it's not. 

Am I a clean freak?  No.  But my kids will tell you that I am a handwashing nazi and I swear that is why we get very few colds around here.  (Yes, I know that four of us had strep in January....ssssh!)  I am not a clean freak, per se,  ( I didn't know that I knew how to spell "per se", but according to Wikipedia, I do.  I surprise myself sometimes), but I have this thing that I can't seem to relax and enjoy our home unless it is clutter free, dust free, and organized.  And since it is rarely all of those things at the same time, well, I don't often allow myself to relax and enjoy it.  I tend to look around and see the mess and the flaws and focus on them and sometimes allow it to make me cranky.  And when I am cranky about the house being messy, I typically react in one of three ways (sometimes a combination of the three if I'm feeling especially feisty):

1)  I yell at everyone and threaten to throw away their stuff if they don't put it away (yes I do...just keeping it real.  Would I ever actually throw away someone's stuff?  No, but don't tell my kids that.  I like to keep them in a healthy state of fear and panic). 

2)  I sigh alot and grumble under my breath, which may or may not contain colorful language.  Or,

3)  I declare that I GIVE UP! and flop myself on my bed and implode for a while.  This is a personal favorite of mine, because it's the one where I don't end up having to apologize to anyone afterwards :/

Am I proud of any of these reactions?  Not at all, and the part of me that wants to perpetuate the illusion that I don't ever behave in these ways wants me to delete this entire post right now.  But, I am allowing transparency and vulnerability to prevail in the hopes that someone will fess up that I am not alone in my dysfunction.

So, yesterday I made the revelation, and the subsequent declaration to Mr. Wonderful, that I am now and forevermore NOT going to freak out about the condition of our home.  Does this mean that I am giving up on keeping a clean and orderly house?  Au contraire (almost spelled that one right too...bada-bing!).  We will continue to hold the kids (and ourselves, eh-hem) accountable for picking up our things and cleaning up after ourselves.  We will still keep our "daily job chart" going, and make sure that things get done and stay caught up....especially the three stinky things (laundry, garbage, and dishes).  But, I am going to give myself a break...permission to enjoy our home and those who inhabit it, without obsessing about it being perfect.

And (this is a biggy) we are going to start INVITING PEOPLE OVER!  We have not been doing this as much as we really want to because I always feel like the house has to look perfect before we can let people in.

And perhaps an even bigger revelation that I have had in realizing all of this, is that I am all too often like that with God too.  I can't let Him in...it's too messy!  (As if the omniscient Creator of the universe doesn't know about my stuff).   I can't let others know what I really struggle with either, or they might not think that I am as strong in my faith as I should be, or maybe that they think I am. 

Oh dear.  This could go on for a while.  I should know better than to start blogging at 10:30pm...I need to get to bed!  I'll write more tomorrow...