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.