Smiling Mom

This has been quite a year month for us.  Boy, what a year month!  Aside from a party, anni­ver­sary, and gene­ral sum­mer hoo­pla, we had to up and buy a bran span­kin’ new refri­ge­ra­tor. Ouch.

Um…Hello, unex­pec­ted cost!!  Didn’t see you coming!

The day our fridge died was the hot­test of the year thus far.

107 degrees in the shade.

And 65 degrees in our freezer.

Not a good thing.

Our past year has been much like our past month, Unex­pec­ted:  To date we’ve:

Repla­ced:

oven/stove, parts of our hea­ter, our water hea­ter, part of our fence, found a crack in the pipe under our house that must get repai­red (not done yet), a big com­pu­ter issue (read, would no lon­ger turn on)

Paid and need to pay for:

a new master’s pro­gram, a new year of preschool, an upco­ming vaca­tion, and a myriad of other small unex­pec­ted expenses

Wor­ked through:

a torn shoul­der, a repai­red shoul­der, an almost vasec­tomy, an actual vasec­tomy, and most recently my grandma’s imma­nent death of ova­rian cancer.

Wow.  Just typing makes me want to curl up in the fetal posi­tion and suck my thumb.

I’m tired.  And when I get tired, I retreat.  When I retreat, I become a bad mom.  When I’m a bad mom, I get angry.  When I’m angry, I become a bad wife.  And when I’m a bad wife, I become tired all. over. again.

On Thurs­day our family lea­ves for our first cam­ping trip of the sum­mer.  And it couldn’t come at a bet­ter time.  I hope to use my time to refo­cus on the impor­tant pie­ces of my life, (read: family and friends) and not sweat the huge gla­ring, pen­ding CRAZINESS going on back an home small stuff.  I hope to remind myself this to shall pass and some day we’ll look back on these years fondly as we remem­ber how we relied on love burri­tos and cheap wine and not much more to raise our kids to the best of our ability.

Some­day when my Master’s pro­gram is done, I’m back to work full time, and am armed with more know­ledge and matu­rity, I’ll pro­bably see that I didn’t have to have heart pal­pi­ta­tions, weeks of anxiety, and slee­pless nights worry as much as I did.

But for now, I’m in need of a few good vaca­tions.  And a whole lotta margarita!

First up: Our second annual cam­ping trip with our good friends.

Second up:  BlogHer BABY!!  Hey Roo­mies!!  So excited!

Third up: My dad’s con­fe­rence. Where I not only hope to enjoy the pool, but also learn more about being a good leader.

Fourth up: An adult Carib­bean vaca­tion WITHOUT KIDS. peo­ple.  without kids.  (Thank you air miles and nice sti­mu­lus check!)

Fifth up:  More cam­ping with Hubby’s family.

Ya.  So like I said, I’m in need of a vaca­tion, or five.

Just over a year ago right after my daugh­ter tur­ned one, I made a deci­sion to begin fee­ding my family healthier.  I’ve always for­ced low fat foods on my dear Hubby and chil­dren, but deci­ded to step it up.

Regu­lar sour cream??  They’ve never heard of such a thing! Whole fat Mayon­naise?  Naa, we go with fat free! If it’s made non­fat, I buy it.  (Except for cream cheese.  Fat free cream cheese is just dis­gus­ting. So I get the 1/3 fat.  A girl’s gotta have her limits!)

Any­ways, Last year I’d become pretty tired of sta­ring at the fridge and trying to figure out what I could make for din­ner, sighing, and pulling out a pac­ket of Mac & Cheese or those cute fro­zen dino­saur chic­ken nug­gets from CostCo.  I was so. over. it.

Since I was just exi­ting my ugly years.…you know which ones I’m tal­king about, preg­nancy, birth, nur­sing OMG did I even brush my teeth today??!! years, saying Bye Bye Boo­bie and gai­ning my sanity and self back.  I deci­ded that I need to take con­trol of my family’s din­ner­time chaos.

So I began meal plan­ning.  Insert choir music and ange­lic voi­ces here. Oh how life has chan­ged.  Once a week I sit down, browse allrecipes.com figure out what meals I’ll be making for the week and write my gro­cery list accor­dingly.  I don’t buy pre-packeged din­ners ever any­more.  And I rarely fret about what’s for dinner.

You know the grea­test thing?  I save buc­ket of money.  BUCKETS I tell you!!  I don’t buy bags of chips, crac­kers, or any other snacky foods anymore–with one excep­tion, Nutri­Grain Bars (Which I keep in the van for those hun­ger emergencies!)

For snacks my kids often get fruit, string cheese, or low fat yogurt.  I don’t buy high sugar snacks or anything that claims it’s fruit fla­vo­red.  They get two snacks, one at 10 a.m. and one after nap.

That’s it.

In addi­tion this Christ­mas my brother han­ded over his ama­zing jui­cer which I use almost every mor­ning.  I make a full mix­ture of some or all the follo­wing ingredients:

apple, carrot, cucum­ber, celery, orange, broccoli

And my family drinks it.  eClaire, BC and Hubby ALL drink it.  Hehe, I’m totally get­ting my kids to DRINK their veg­gies. More impres­sive, I’ve somehow mana­ged to hood­wink Hubby into drin­king his!!  he he.

Lately Hubby and I’ve been taking it up a level.  Buying orga­nic.  Not everything, but lots of stuff.  We got to our local farmer’s mar­ket most Sun­days to stock up on our weekly veg­gies, jam, and honey.  We always choose orga­nic when offe­red a choice.  And recently I’ve all but chan­ged my hou­sehold clea­ners over to all natu­ral products.

And I feel good.

Sure we still go on an occa­sio­nal fast food run.  But I try to keep it to In & Out, and NOT McD’s.

And best of all I feel like by teaching my kids healthy eating habits now, I’m hope­fully com­ba­ting a whole slew of health pro­blems down the road, most impor­tantly, childhood obesity.

And that my friends, is recently what I’m most proud of doing right for my family.

****I just loo­ked over to my right and rea­li­zed that I have a CostCo sized bag of pea­nut M&M’s open and partly eaten…  I’m SOOO not per­fect.  Excuse me while go do some emo­tio­nal eating as I pon­der this…

This wee­kend we had the por­tion of our fence repla­ced that blew over in the storm.

over $600 later…

Today we repla­ced our water hea­ter which, appa­rently, had been lea­king for months.

and that’ll be $500 more…  (Hubby was awe­some and deci­ded to rally together two friends to help him replace this water hea­ter, saving us $400!  Thank good­ness he’s cute AND handy.)

And on Mon­day we need to take our Civic into the shop because the light indi­ca­tor is on infor­ming us that our air­bags no lon­ger work.

cost: bet­ween $85 and $1500…

God, please please let us sur­vive this week.

If you are a fly and you live in Northern Cali­for­nia, be warned.

I will kill you.

I stalk you, wait patiently and hit when you aren’t looking.

I am good.

Do not set wing into my house or I’ll be for­ced to use my mad hand/eye skilzs and my trusty fly swat­ter to slice your body in half.

I swing hard and I swing fast.

I have no com­pas­sion for your kind and never any guilt.

I’ll even chuc­kle as toss the pie­ces of your body into my trash can.

I

Am

The Exter­mi­na­tor.

Be war­ned.