We all need Friends!

Aren't girl friends the best!  They completely understand everything you are going through for the most part.  They understand your need to get away from your kids and they understand that sometimes you don't feel like acting like an upstanding citizen.  In fact a friend will get you out of jail but a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "Damn that was fun."  My best friend gave me a plaque with that saying.  In fact yesterday I was sitting in my room looking at a shelf on the wall.  There were five different plaque type things with different sayings about friends on them.  All five were from the same person so I got to thinking.  How does she keep track of all the sayings she gets me?  Does she have them written in a book somewhere?  Is it just by pure luck that she's never gotten me the same one twice?  Why does she have the thoughtful gene and I do not?  I should probably get her a plaque sometime.  But she knows how much I appreciate her right?

I love the fact that I can tell my friends exactly what I'm thinking when it comes to motherhood and they don't think I'm insane!  We are all so different and have different fears and beliefs when it comes to motherhood but we all understand one another.  I support my friends and their decisions when it comes to motherhood because just as we are all different people we are all different mothers.  I do enjoy listening to my mom, aunts, grandma's and mother-in-law talk about times when they were raising kids.  The things that happened, the situations kids get into and the close encounters with bodily harm and injury. It's amazing any of us survived childhood! Out of my three children only one seems to have a cautious bone in her body, my boys on the other hand would probably walk up to a rabid bear and try to pet it if they had the chance.

I have been very blessed with the friends in my life.  I've always had someone who understood me and liked me no matter what, we'll at least they like me to my face!  Some of my friends I see often, some not so much..but the ones I see not so much once we see each other we are able to pick up right where we left off.  Life would be pretty lonely without friends, lonely and boring.

“Friends are like bras: close to your heart and there for support.”

Socks with Sandals

My kids watch this show on Disney Channel called So Random.  It's sort of like Saturday Night Live but for kids.  They just do a bunch of skits and this one skit they've done just really made me laugh.  It was like a digital short and it was these two kids rapping to a song called, "Bringin Back Socks with Sandals."  I laughed my butt off to which my husband thought I was strange because I was getting a kick out of my children's tv shows.  I said to him "Don't even act like you don't remember Saved By The Bell."  Have you seen those reruns?  Wow, and we thought that was super good acting, however I still enjoying watching an episode now and then.  So these kids are wearing their baseball caps sideways, wife beaters, unzipped sweatshirts, chains, cargo shorts and socks with sandals.  It's hilarious.  My four year old totally wears socks with sandals.  He also wears clothes that don't match, he's always tucking in his shirt, he wears sweatbands on his wrists, he wears cowboy boots with shorts and he just doesn't care.  So then I thought why do we care.  If socks with sandals are comfortable then why shouldn't a person wear them?  Who cares as long as you are comfortable, right?  I mean as adults who are we trying to impress, we should be able to be ourselves.  I suppose in cities people really don't care but when you live in a small town and everyone knows you I think people tend to shy away from being themselves sometimes. 

Society likes to tell us things like 'normal people don't wear mullets' or 'upstanding citizens don't get tatoos' or 'only a crazy person would get an 80's perm'.  We should feel okay about expressing ourselves however we want.  I saw a five year old kid at the pool yesterday wearing two fake tatoos and I thought, Oh, I really want another tatoo.  Then I started thinking, am I too old for a tatoo, what will people think, will my kid's friend's parents think I'm a terrible role model?  Then I thought, who cares, I'm an adult and I should be able to get a tatoo without anyone's permission if I want.  I mean does a tatoo make me less of a person? 

I saw a woman at the mall a few weeks ago and she had dreads pulled up into a bun, she had those big holes in her ears, tatoos up one arm, a tatoo on her neck, a nose ring and she was there with her daughter and a mother's group that was put on by her church and she was the nicest lady.  Appearances can be decieving when we are bred to judge by them. It's really hard because I don't want my kids to be too trusting of strangers yet I don't want them to miss out on the opportunities to meet great people either.

"Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances." Wayne Dyer

The Mind of a Child

Once again my four year old son's brain is working overtime.  He walked into my bathroom this morning and announced he was going to start wearing 'oderant'.  He put some of his dad's 'oderant' on over his t-shirt.  Then while I was peeing he asked, "Mom why do you pee sitting down?"  I told him that all girls pee sitting down.  Then he asked, "Well does your friend Amy from Las Vegas pee sitting down?"  I told him that yes in fact she does.  As if we are the only two people on the planet that pee sitting down.

While on the way to town today he asked if rocket ships can fly to heaven. I told them they could not but they could fly to space which would be very interesting to see.  The questions continued on and on.  I've realized this summer I am already exhausted by the questions from all of my children yet I continue to try my best to answer every one of them.  Then I try to hide in my bathroom or outside so I can get some quiet.  Sometimes I just like to be alone with my own thoughts.

However, being alone with my own thoughts can be sort of exhausting too.  I started wondering why adults can't be more like children in the sense that we should always be eager to learn.  We should want to learn new things, learn about people, learn about our environment and our country.  We may be more understanding and more patient if we took the time to listen and learn.  That's what children do, they absorb everything we do and say and they want to continue to learn more.  I remember on the last day or so of sixth grade our elementary principal came into our room to give us a speech.  If I remember right the speech was about leaving elementary school and venturing off into the junior high/high school in the fall.  She said that we were like little Pac-men just gobbling up information.  I still think about that speech because the way she said it was funny and well, it made sense.  We should always want to be gobbling up information to better ourselves as people, parents, friends, employees etc.

As adults we should start asking the hard questions and looking for the answers.  I've also decided that when my kids ask me questions I do not know the answers too we'll look it up together.  For instance, my oldest son wanted a pet hawk and even though I did not want to let him get a pet hawk I told him we'd research it on the Internet.  Well we found out that it's actually illegal to own a pet hawk in the state of Iowa.  See we are learning new things every day!  :)

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.  ~Clay P. Bedford

Calgon Take Me Away

This morning my kids did NOTHING but fight.  I went upstairs and my daughter was mad because her brother was teasing her.  My four year old was standing in the bathroom wearing only a t-shirt and squeezing a tube of toothpaste into the sink because.."it's fun."  They fought over a remote, they fought over who got to sit in a laundry basket, they fought over what they were eating for lunch.  I finally got them to play a game since the weather is a little crappy today and I couldn't just shoe them outside!

Soon the middle child will be off to basketball camp for the afternoon and my youngest should take a nap.  Ahh, maybe some peace and quiet.  It's fun to listen to other mother's tell stories about their children.  I can laugh because I know exactly what they are going through and they in turn can laugh at me.  I swear my three kids are as loud and obnoxious as twelve kids!  I really have a lot of admiration for people who decide to become parents in the first place and for those that just keep having them!

I think the key is organization.  I try to have menus planned, activities planned, chores for them to do and even when they all go into melt-down mode at least everything else around me is somewhat in a tidy order.  I've always been a 'glass is half-full' kind of person so I can usually find the good in things and when I can't well that's when I feel sorry for anyone who has to be around me! 

I do think that grandparents see their grandchildren as payback to their children and I'll be honest, that's how I'll look at it when my kids have kids.  Becoming a grandparent in the far, far future is all part of my evil plan to get back at my kids.

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

As I watched my kids sleep the other night I couldn't help but think how precious and quiet they were.  They seem like such angels when they are sleeping.  I also couldn't help but think how they had their whole lives ahead of them and I wondered what they would be when they grew up.

Recently my husband and I watched a YouTube lecture called: Randy Pausch's Last Lecture; Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.  Randy was a 46 year old professor in virtual reality at Carnegie Mellon University and he was dying of pancreatic cancer.  His speech was absolutely amazing and inspirational.  My favorite part was how he kept referencing using 'head fakes' as a way of learning.  Basically 'head fakes' are a way of tricking someone into learning something they don't realize they are learning.  Make sense?  We do this to our kids all the time!  Anyway his whole speech ended up being a 'head fake' and I'd like for you to watch it to find out why.  Be prepared this speech is one hour and sixteen minutes long but this man is so inspirational that the time will fly especially if you can get it thru your Wii, X-box or blue ray on your TV so you can sit in the comfort of your living room.  Ah the wonders of technology!

His speech made me think about what my childhood dreams were.  I always wanted to work for Disney, not work at Disney, but work for them like in the public relations department or something.  I also wanted to be in the cast of Saturday Night Live and well unfortunately my memory isn't the greatest these days and that's all I can remember.

Now my adulthood dreams that I have not yet accomplished are to somehow get involved in intellectual property law possibly by tying it into the small business consulting firm I'd like to start.  I also want to become a bestselling author, host Saturday Night Live, become fluent in French, live in France for a couple of months each year and inspire everyone to achieve their dreams.  So as you can tell I have not grown up at all!

I just feel like we have one life and we should make the best of this life.  Find something that will inspire you daily to keep reaching for your goals in life!  One thing Randy Pausch did want us to remember was that there is something more important in life than achieving our dreams and that is family. Without your family living a dream isn't really a dream at all.

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people."
— Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)

 

"It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it's about how to lead your life, ... If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you."
— Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)

Practice What You Preach

I find it interesting now that I'm a mom I find myself with the double standard that my kids can be whatever they want to be but I can't.  Do you know what I mean?  I put limitations on myself because I'm a mom however I tell my kids that no matter what they can do whatever they set their minds to.  I guess that doesn't make me a very good role model does it.  I am going to try and change my ways.  My kids have always known that I love to write and that I'd love to put out a bestseller someday yet I feel like I've been very poor at managing my time lately.  I try to write posts for my blog two to four times a week, I run a company, I take care of my kids and the house and the bills etc. but I CAN find time to write if I REALLY wanted to and I should!!  I have a file of a bazillion ideas and I need to pick one and stick to it.  I need to take the time to polish my writing skills and increase my ability to paint a picture with words.  I lay awake at night thinking of different ideas and I tuck them away in a file on my computer.  Some of the more interesting ones I've actually starting writing but haven't finished them because I lack focus.  I always think of better ideas and will start a new book before I've finished the last one and that's not like me!  In every other aspect of my life I am organized, a logical thinker and like to finish projects before I start new ones but when it comes to my writing I guess my artsy fartsy right brain takes over.

In fact I'll share some ideas with you and you can feel free to comment on whether they are dumb or not.  Actually these ideas have already been sent as queries to an agent or two and I'm sure I'll be receiving my rejections shortly.  Also since there are only two people who read this blog, my mom and her cat, I'm not too worried about anyone stealing my ideas.  Actually my mom doesn't have a cat so only one, one person reads this blog.

1.  Shiloh Winter - An ex-CIA agent and her husband are on the run from the United States and Pakistani governments for allegedly stealing the 27 million dollar bounty for Osama Bin Laden's capture.

2.  SPC 101 - A 35 year old man decides to go back to community college to finish his business degree and enrolls in a two week condensed speech class that changes his life.  (This book would be humorous fiction and even though this will be fiction lets just say that I couldn't make most of this stuff up even if I tried!)

3. The Dawn of Darwin - A young doctor is burdened with the paranormal ability to save lives by taking them from others.

So now you've taken a peak into what goes on in my right brain.  It's a gift and a curse all in one.  Some people are more creative and others are more analytical and logical.  I would say that my left brain and right brain have been duking it out my entire life, in fact I took a test to determine which side of my brain I use more and my left brain won out 57% to 43%.  I guess I am more of a logical and analytical thinker even though I like to be creative as well.

"You can't process me with a normal brain." Charlie Sheen

The latest Craze... Cake Balls!

Before I begin my blog on cake balls I have to include a side note:  While driving in the car the other day my four year old announced that God lives in heaven and Satan lives in his sister's blood.  Nice!

Cake Balls and more at "from scratch, by niki"

My nine year old was upset when he found out that his sister and I would be making our own cake balls and not ordering them from my good friend's, Niki, baked goods business called 'from scratch, by niki'.  He said that it wasn't fair that Niki's kids got cake balls for free whenever they wanted.  I love to bake and try new things and for the most part my kids love my baking but I think they love Niki's baking more!  I told my son that we'd try to make our own cake balls but if they weren't good then I promised to buy some from Niki.  Well my cake balls tasted alright but they looked like deformed blobs!  If you love baked goods but don't have the time, patience or desire to bake or just want your baked items to not only taste great but look professional for a wedding, reunion, shower, graduation, family event, business meeting etc. I suggest you check out http://www.fromscratchbyniki.com/.  These baked goods are so delicious!  How delicious are they you ask well they are so delicious that I was really upset with her when she threw away cake balls that had dropped on the floor.  I realize she runs a professional business and there are certain sanitary guidelines she must follow but I'm her best friend....I'd eat her baked goods off the floor because they are that good!

She not only makes cake balls, she bakes cookies, bars, cupcakes, desserts and snacks.  Her sweet & salty snack mix is one another friend of mine orders by the gallon to take on camping trips.  Niki has baked for years and for years everyone has gotten really excited around the holidays when she delivers her cookie and candy plates.  Now we are extremely excited that we can order her goods from her whenever we want!  So check out her website at http://www.fromscratchbyniki.com/. I know you'll be impressed!

I love it when moms have a dream and they make that dream come true.  Failure is a scary thing in life but the only failure in life is the failure to try.  I failed at a few business ventures before I found my niche and I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way.  It only makes you more resilient.  I still remember a framed picture of Abraham Lincoln in a former employer's conference room that included a list of Abraham's failures before he was elected president.  It was amazing to think that this man never gave up and eventually became one of the greatest Presidents there ever was.  You'll never know your true potential if you don't ever try.

Really?

Do your kids ever do things and you think, Really?  Did you just do that?  This morning I was picking up the house and I saw a TV tray out with a hand towel nicely laid out on it.  I asked, "Why is this hand towel covering the TV tray?"  My oldest said, "Well the tray was sticky so I covered it."  I said, "Really?  You couldn't just grab a wash cloth and wash it off?"  Apparently that would've been too much work.

The other day I found an ice cream bar stick on the couch and I've found candy wrappers behind the couch and under my middle child's bed.  The garbage can is a few feet from the living room and my son has a garbage can in is room.  Really?  You can't just put your garbage in the trash?

I love it when one of the kids tells me that their chair is sticky or that there's a sticky spot on the floor and I have to say this, "Get up and walk over to this draw.  This draw contains square pieces of fabric I like to call wash clothes.  Then walk over to the sink and turn this knobby thing and water will come out.  Get your wash cloth wet and then use it to clean up the sticky mess."   Really?  Are we all that lazy that we just move to a new chair when one is sticky.  I have three kids so my kitchen seems to always be a sticky mess.

My four year old still says to me, "I have to go to the bathroom."  Okay well he hasn't worn a diaper in over two years and the toilet is in the same place it's always been.  Really?  He can just use the toilet, we don't make our kids ask for permission or charge a fee to use the toilet.

Most times adults are just as guilty as kids.  My husband throws his dirty laundry on the floor literally inches from the hamper.  I will put something on the stairs to the basement and walk by it five times down the stairs before I think to pick it up and put it away.  I wash the dishes and leave them in the sink even though it would take a few minutes to dry them and put them away.  I should be folding laundry while I watch TV but I let clean laundry sit unfolded in a laundry basket for days.  I also should do a better job at keeping my bathroom countertop clean.  I just leave all my crap out instead of putting it away in the cupboard.

I know we all have quirks but our own quirks don't annoy us, it's other peoples quirks that do.

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." Author unknown.