Finding My Happy Place

It’s time to get a little personal. I want to talk about the bedroom.
OK, not THAT personal.
Am I the only one with a complete pit for a bedroom?
It is no secret that, with five kids, housework is a constant challenge for me. I feel like it takes all I have to just keep things [...]

And His Imaginary Friend Complains that He Doesn’t Call Anymore

This weekend, Noah and Wyatt decided to write letters to Santa Claus. These were given to Sean with the instruction to mail them to the North Pole today (and then my instruction to save them since I could see him not necessarily thinking about the fact that THEY MADE LISTS since he isn’t the one [...]

Wherein I Go Shopping for Men’s Clothing and Fall Over Dead from Sticker Shock*

I got an earlier than usual start to my day today. This is thanks to the fact that Noah decided not to ride along with Sean and the other boys when Sean went to get donuts for a special treat this morning, then got bored/lonely when his visiting grandma went down to take a shower. [...]

It’s Not Too Soon for a Mid-Life Crisis

After I posted my letter to myself yesterday, I had a “so where do I go from here?” sort of a feeling. Then Jill (and then Nicole) commented that they would love to see me write another letter to the future me. So I started thinking about it.
First, I had to figure out who I [...]

Seeing My Future

January 13, 1993
Dear Me,
This is a letter to myself to let me, in the future, see what my hopes and expectations were when I was almost 16, and to see how my life met up to those dreams and expectations.
In two and a half years I hope to graduate high school and probably go to [...]

Gratitude

Last year, I made a challenge to myself to spend the month of November focusing on gratitude. I decided to do Thirty Days of Thankfulness on this blog by listing five things that I was grateful for each day. It was not always easy, but it was an incredibly positive experience for me.
About a month [...]

Excuse Me?

Next week, my little brother is going to a wedding where the groom is Hungarian. As we sat in my car on the way home from a long trip, I tried teaching him a couple of Hungarian exclamations that I know from my dear, Hungarian-speaking husband.
Today, I told Sean that it occurred to me that [...]

Losing My Stuff…And the Dog

It had been such a nice weekend. Really, it had. Every year, my community does a big festival the first week of October. Friday night there is a cruise-in, Saturday is a parade, and Saturday and Sunday are a street fair. Since my mother is up for re-election this year, we attended most of it. [...]

A Simple Kind of Life

First, let us pause to observe a moment of silence for Skippy the Squirrel, who tragically lost his life at his own paws yesterday when he decided to explore the breaker on the electrical lines in our back yard.
Skippy, we saw the light as you scampered towards it (and heard quite the pop, too). [...]

Important Life Lessons

As I was getting ready for the day this morning (shortly after scrubbing the carpet because I was stupid enough to put carpet in the dining room and, you know, orange juice BELONGS on the floor), my oldest three boys came running to me.
“Mommy, Mommy! We’re making a band! Can we have tattoos? We can’t [...]