40 feels like 30!!

Who’d a thought! Well, the anticipated 40 has come and gone and I feel very much the same. Some of my conversations have changed and now include words like “Colonoscopy”, “Mammogram”, “receding gums”, “receding hair”, “grey hair”, “crows feet”, (that ones not knew).

I spent my happy 40th with my favorite people, my family! We all ran a 5k, yes all of us!! My sweet sister made signs for everyone that said “My mom is 40 and fabulous today!” or “My Aunt Kath is 40 and Fabulous”, My Wife…, My Sister…, you get the idea. And it wasn’t just a 5 k; our 5 k included pull ups, push ups and squats. Sam (my 4 year old) and I were the third to last to come in and Sam actually had to be picked up by the sweeper, (But only the last block) which was the best part of the whole race for him, the sweeper was the owner (Neil) on his Harley, Sam was ecstatic! The best part for me, as I said before, was being with my favorite people doing one of my favorite things.

This does not include everyone that was there!! We had a crowd!

Thanks My Family!! Love you all !!

"Peeing in the street causes a sty in your eye"

This is what I was always told as a child, every time I would have to go pee in the car my parents would say “you need to hold it, peeing in the street causes sty’s in your eyes” or if I happened to have a sty in my eye, “have you been peeing in the street?”.

Well, I am sitting on the porch with Sally blowing bubbles, and when I say blowing bubbles, I mean Sally trying to blow and bubble soap getting all over her and myself and the front porch, any who, phone rings “Kathi, Sam is on the corner naked” my sister says, “What?” was my response, and again “Sam in on the corner by McKnight’s naked!” Well sure enough up the street comes Sam with no pants on, luckily he did have a shirt on, but as luck would have it the shirt he picked out for the day happened to be a couple of sizes too small and was more of a belly shirt. So, instantly I knew that my son had peed his pants somewhere and found the wet pants to be to annoying to wear so chose to go commando around the neighborhood!! And yes, the story gets better; Sam then tells me that his pants are at the school park “OK”, over to the school park I go, and no shorts!! “Sam, come and show me were your pants are”, back over to the school we go, were he tells me that he has buried them in the sand. So we begin to dig with Sam saying “Mom I think there are here” “No, I think they are here” “Oh, here they are, just kidding”!!!! This goes on for about 20 minutes and no shorts!! We had just given up the search, resolved to the fact that I will be buying my neighbor a new pair of shorts because, yes, they were not our shorts (due to an accident he had at their house) and were heading to the car, when Sam says “Ok Mom, there at Livy’s house”, and in fact that was the case, and the shorts were found.

At Target a couple of weeks ago, “Mom, I really need to pee”!! “Mom, I need to pee really bad”, “Mom, I need to go now”!!, so we run to the restroom, where being the expert Mom that I am, rip down his shorts and plopped him on the toilet within seconds, but he could not hold it any longer and forgot to push his little pee pee down, and peed all over his mom (Me).

My son has peed at the park, on the grass, on a tree, in the sand, on the sidewalk, on his Mom, on the neighbor’s flowers, on my neighbor’s carpet, in the creek, in the car, and yes, in the road and NO STY!!! Coincidence? I think not!!!

Mothers Day

I have a great Mother. She is one of those moms that is fun, kind and I love just hanging out with her. Steve’s mom is the same way. So, Mothers day, I decided a long time ago, was not about me being a mom it was about mine and Steve’s mom. Mother’s day would come and the whole day I would just “try” and ignore the fact that it was basically the same as any other day (but secretly hoping that something spectacular was about to happen) and focus on The Moms. The key word is “try”! I should preface this by telling you what I expected on Mother’s Day, Basically I expect to do none of the jobs or tasks that actually deem me “Mother” in the first place, tasks such as dishes, cooking, changing diapers, breaking up kid fights, cleaning up spills, being told no, the list could go on… So as I am trying to focus on my Moms and not focus on my expectations, I start getting more and more agitated and end up ruining the day for my self because I have set my expectations so high as I secretly hope for this grand occasion where all of the sudden my kids realize that I am truly the best mom and peace and love surrounds us all, the house will be cleaned spotless by a magical fairy and war will end, blah blah blah blah. So basically if I am not feeling agitated for not being praised and pampered, I am feeling despair for all my failures as a mother, This is a lot of emotion packed into ONE DAY!!!!!

This year I tried something new and left town for a couple of days—Friday and Saturday—and came home Sunday right before church on Mother’s Day. This by far was one of the better things I have done in a long time. This basically left all responsibility for shopping and kids on Steve (which by the way he did a great job). And none of the responsibility on myself, which as I mentioned before, is my ultimate Mother’s day expectation. The house was not immaculate when I got home and Sally was worse than ever at church, my kids disobeyed throughout the day, and Steve and I even got into a little tiff about a lost gift, but I did not care!! It was a great day, full of family, cards, hugs and kisses, flowers and food. Two days of no mother duties was the key to a successful Mother’s Day at our home!!!

Everything is Amazing, but......

This is so true!! and Funny!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETv3NURwLc

Back from Bliss!

Again, crazy time in life!! I feel like I run from one thing to the next, and in the middle of it all I stand in the kitchen “at the ready” to make breakfast, lunch and dinner and all the snacks in between. If I am not wiping a nose, I am wiping a butt, if I am not doing laundry I am putting laundry away, and I always feel like we are out of milk. I am afraid that if I buy too much milk it will go sour, so I never have enough and end up making a 10:30 run to Smiths Saturday night for milk. Steve has tried to pull a fast one and make up some “Powdered Milk”, and I admire him for his ingenuity, but the kids are smarter than that, so then the powdered milk sits in our fridge for another week until I finally throw it out!!

In all the craziness of life, we have done some really fun stuff, we just got back from Newport were we always have a great time. Steve and I also got to go on a little weekend getaway which we have never done (not including trek) and we went snowshoeing with some really good friends and are going to make it a monthly event, if not more often!! I finished reading a number of great books (please join me on Good Reads) and for the most part the kids seem happy and most of the time think that we are pretty awesome parents (until we ask them to do something they don’t want to do), which I think is pretty typical for a kid. Sam told me that I was pretty the other day, which completely made my day, and then Bailey told me that I needed to go on the “Biggest Loser” which slightly brought my spirits down a bit. (Since I am not 400 lbs). So, on my emotional daily roller coaster it is nice to have good friends, good family, good books, DVR, and a grocery store that stays open late.

Socks or Sanity

We have currently taken on the task of matching all of the socks in the house to their correct mate. This may seem like a very simple task, but for some reason it is not!! I really have enjoyed, and thought that it worked rather well, our method of just putting all the socks (that don’t have matches) in a “Sock Bin”. All was going quite well until the socks could no longer fit into the sock bin and I was looking for other locations for the mismatched socks. Also, I got tired of my kids saying that they did not have any socks. I have probably spent over 500 dollars on socks and thousands of hours finding their mates (this year). Has no one come up with a way to keep socks together? With technology these days has no one come up with anything? Maybe even something like the clapper might work?

So my husband, of course, is full throttle on this project, he has never really supported the “Sock Bin”. We have hunted the house, done batch after batch of laundry, to no avail. We still have a bin full of mismated socks. Steve is going to throw them away, but I feel that he may be doing a premature throw away. I still feel that there are socks out there…. Somewhere, plus I think I may have some hoarding tendencies. Where do socks go? Is there somewhere they can get stuck in the washer? Are my kids coming home from friend’s houses with only one sock? Is it a sick game that someone plays on moms?

I will continue my search for socks, and of course I will continue matching what I can, but I have to tell you, I feel my sanity slowly slipping from me in the process. I have begun talking to the missing socks, “Where are you hiding?” “Did you slip down here?” “I can see you back there”.
And really if you think about it, does it really matter if you have matching socks, are there sock police? Is it really that embarrassing to have two different color socks on? Do people question your sanity, your intelligence, your mothering skills if you or your children are sporting mismatched socks? I think that it would show that you are frugal, worried about your children’s toes, and have a saucy style for fashion

SPUDMAN

We have once again signed up for the Burley Idaho “SPUDMAN”, now if we all can remember from last year, that my marriage took some rocky turns when Steve and I decided to train together biking. Being yelled at while clipped onto the death trap (bike), trying to shift, break and steer over rocks and cracks and cars is almost more than I could take. But once again we have thrown caution to the wind and put our names in for the exciting challenge of swimming, biking and running with hundreds of other people, in Burley, Idaho.

I am looking forward to the motivational “yelling” that I will received from my husband, and hopefully will not sustain any serious injury from falling off the bike again. But realistic thinking, just hoping that when I do fall, I can angle myself over a large bush or something slightly softer than the asphalt.

To begin our training Steve feels that we need to do “sprints” which we began last night, I purposely wore my headphones so to not hear any unsavory language (not from Steve, but that which would come from my own mouth). And so the training begins…….

A Little History

We went to see Valkerie with some friends, Great Show!! Wow, even knowing how the show would turn out, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and rooting for the good guy to win! But as we all know, he did not. But the show also made me start thinking about some of my ancestors, my Grandpa was a Jew and his mother was a Russian Jew that was smuggled out of Russia with another family during the reign of Stalin (who killed probably just as many people as Hitler), came to New York via ship, then married and had three children only to have her husband die. Due to some desperate times, she then put all three children into an orphanage. Now this is were the story gets really good, my Great Grandmother then remarried, not daring to tell her new husband that she had three children at an orphanage. She told him that she had two; they went and retrieved the two children leaving my Grandpa at the orphanage. I am not sure of the time frame, but the new husband eventually found out about the additional child that was still at the orphanage and promptly went to get my Grandpa as well. Soon after all three children were back with my Great Great Grandmother, the orphanage burnt to the ground, leaving no records or any information whatsoever as to whom the three orphaned children’s real father was, and my Great Great Grandmother never spoke of him.

I remember my Grandpa, even though he died very young, I remember how he would cut my French toast, how he would tickle us when we would get in bed. He collected wine bottles and they were the prettiest things I had ever seen, and he was a Jew and had a ring (that my mom currently has) that had all the symbols of the Masons. My grandmother searched and searched for information on his biological father and that bloodline with no avail. But I am very thankful for those who risked their lives to smuggle a Jewish girl out of Russia, and am thankful for a good man that happens to be my Great Great Grandpa.

Go see the show; it is one of those films that will stick with you.

I can also recommend "Forever Strong" (at Kaysville) very good show, and I just finished reading "Marley and Me", great read, not just for those of you who have dogs.