You're Invited

I'm just going to outright admit it. I have never enjoyed children's birthday parties. Even my own kiddos'. In fact, I enjoy theirs the least. Before you lambast me as a horrible mother, I have to state that I do enjoy seeing my children and the other little ones I know celebrate their special day.

I just loathe the behind the scenes activities that need to happen to make that special day occur. 

With the advent of Pinterest, the stakes are even higher - you can search for color palettes, cake recipes, party favor ideas, gift suggestions...the possibilities are mind boggling. Here's what Pinterest does to me. I pin the ideas and themes I think I can do or would want to do and then in reality do NONE of them. 

I have friends who pin ideas and then actually implement them. Look up Lindsay Beach on FaceBook - I love you Lindsay! I see her party favors and treats and in amazement exclaim "wow, those are spectacular! But I just don't want to do that!" Then I think, what kind of mom does this make me, that I can't muster up the same desire? And then after this half second of self deprecation, I get over it. I simply realize that party planning isn't my forte. Doesn't mean I won't be on Pinterest tomorrow as I begin planning my soon to be 6 year old's party. Maybe this time, I'll actually follow through on a pin or two. Or maybe I'll just call Chuck E Cheese :-)

Eyes Wide Open

Go figure. I can't sleep on the eve before All Hallows Eve. Maybe it's the two dozen mini cheesecakes waiting for their homemade whipped cream hats, or the 50 hot dogs waiting to be mummified, or the pizza dough spider waiting to be constructed. Whatever it is, I'm waiting for the almighty sleep fairy to hit me over the head and knock me out and send my head spinning with miniature birds and stars rotating around me. Alas, no such luck.

I'm not sure I can remember the last great night of sleep I had. Friday night, Robert woke me up twice to tell me HE couldn't sleep. That whole encouraging your kids to share thing is overrated. Saturday night, Haille came home early from a sleepover, AT 2 AM. She knows the garage door code and let herself in after walking home by herself from across the street. Again, why are we teaching her self suffiency if it's going to impact my slumber. And tonight, who has joined me on my eyes wide open journey, Philip the 3 year old, patiently waiting for me to complete this blog so he can play on the iPad. The only kid I can count on to not wake me up is the almost teen, Emma. That's just because she never leaves her bedroom anyway.

So what's my point you ask? I'm sure you're waiting with bated breath for it. Well here it is....I've got nothing. What else do you expect at 3:30 am? :)

No Cutting!

I found myself in an heated exchange today - with a stranger at a McDonald's drive thru. An afternoon snack run turned into my losing my temper and f-bombs apparently flying out of my mouth. As I've said many times in other situations, it wasn't one of my finer moments.

Here's the scenario. I needed sugar. In a bad way. Therefore a vanilla cone, regular coke AND chocolate chip cookies were ordered. Unless you've been holed up in a cave for the past decade, you know most McDonald's drive thru's have two lanes, I'm assuming to better manage traffic flow. I blissfully ordered my diabetic coma in waiting and patiently waited for my turn to curve around the bend to pull up to the pay window. I carefully nudged my SUV around the corner in front of the other car in the other lane. However, every time I moved forward, the other car tried moving in front of me. Now, drive-thru etiquette with two lanes requires that every other vehicle takes turns. I just assumed this was universally understood. The other driver apparently wasn't aware of this unspoken rule and decided to call me a f*cking bitch.

I have to give this girl credit. She was quite the multi-tasker. She was able to curse at me, cut in front of my car AND twirl her hair, all without ever putting her cell phone down and ending her conversation on it. That's talent!

However, being the mature, level headed individual I am, I couldn't let this atrocity occur without speaking out against the injustice of her cutting in front me. Oh no not me. Naturally I yelled (and my husband swears I said this) "why don't you put your f*cking phone down and pay attention" I tried spewing out a few more choice words but I simply ran out of space to move my car. It was my turn to pay. Thank goodness for that, because all 4 feet, 11-3/4 inches of me was apparently itching for a fight :-) Not really. I simply realized fighting about whose turn it is at McDonald's was just a little bit lame. Again, not one of my finer moments. But dang it if my vanilla cone, Coke and cookies didn't taste all the more sweeter.

It Does Take A Village

One of the few times you'll hear me agree with Hillary Clinton is that I do believe it does take a village to raise children today.

In our tribe, there are 4 kids, yes I know, Chris and I aren't very bright :-). They are busy and involved in many activities - soccer, karate, basketball, baseball, softball - you name it, they have or are doing it now. Sometimes we have to rely on others to help get them to their various events.

This made me think of the other "villagers" we rely on to help shape and form our children. This includes, but is not limited to: teachers who spend 5 days a week, 8 hours a day with them, coaches who encourage them to play and work hard, and friends/neighbors who help shuttle and babysit at the drop of a hat.

Every time our kiddos come home from school and run out to play with the neighbor rugrats, I am grateful for our little village here on Legler Road. Philip is usually with Macy and Julia at the Loes' house. Robert is outside with Connor and Mitchell. Haille is zooming around on her bike with Riley and Chloe. And then Kenzie and Emma are holed up in Emma's room watching tv or listening to music. Didn't I just list more than 4 kids? Can you guess which are mine? That's the point, you can't. Children run back and forth everywhere, getting popsicles here, having juice boxes somewhere else. And I actually love it.

Does our village get overrun by the little natives at times? Absolutely. But that's when we tribal leaders (parents)take council at the Hargrove hut for a cocktail or two. Or better yet, we retreat to sacred sites like Hereford House for a peaceful dinner sans kids and yes, more cocktails. :-)

I Spy

With the advent of social networks like FaceBook, Twitter, Linked In etc. we can find out just about anything we want to about our friends and family members.

I will confess that I have gone through my FaceBook friends' friends list to see what's going on in people's lives that I either a)don't want to be friends with or b)just plain being nosy. Is this spying? Maybe a little. Is this an invasion of privacy? Again maybe a little. But if you use social networks and aren't capable of setting your privacy settings to control who views your information, I'm going to have to place the blame more on you :-)

A few of my girlfriends and I were having this discussion last night. One prefers to not be on FaceBook at all and prefers to have real person to person conversations. As in pick up the phone and talk! I know, talk on the phone, that was so 2 years ago :-) Why talk when you can text or inbox on FaceBook. The results are so much quicker and you don't have to waste any time with the Hi, how are you formalities.

How and why do you use your social networks? Personally, I like seeing pics of everyone's kids, vacations and quick snapshots/updates of people's lives WITHOUT having to have long, in depth conversations. In today's ADD society, I imagine many of you are similar.

Behind the Behind

I'm just going to say this and you can agree or disagree with me at will, if you're a woman over 30 years old, you have no business wearing any sort of sweatpants, shorts, boxers, etc. with the words "HOTTIE, CUTIE, WOW" whatever on them.

I was walking down an aisle in Walmart today (another blog topic as well), and I saw a woman who was about 10 years too old and 30 pounds too heavy, wearing a pair of bright red jogging shorts with the words "HOTTIE" spread out over her backside. Now, if I was going to wear apparel making such a statement, I would make sure I looked like a Victoria Secret model before heading out the door, but that's just me. I just can't understand why women tell themselves "I look good" when donning something so silly. What goes through their minds.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about personal expression. Tattoos all over your body wouldn't cause me to bat an eye, O.K. maybe it would a little. Personalized license plates are an effective way of telling the world a little something about yourself as well. Mine says "6 PAK".

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're 6 or 21 years old, by all means, have words sprayed across your derriere, it's appropriate. Maybe I'm just jealous. Maybe I should try it myself before I make the statement that we women over 30 should know better. Maybe if they made a pair of shorts with "MOM, MOM, MOM" over them, I'd wear them. And yes, my behind can accomodate that many words. Tell me what you think about this, I'd be interested in hearing.

Who's Account-able?

My husband and I share a joint checking and savings account. Always have, always will. Years ago, when we lived with one another before getting married (yes, we were one of THOSE couples), we had separate accounts. I was always confused during this period too. Whose income was responsible for what? Who would pay the electric bill? Who would pay for groceries? Since we were making comparable incomes, we essentially split expenses. But, after a month or so of trying to figure out who was accountable for what, we decided to go ahead and pool our resources and just pay everything from one account.

Here's why I bring up this topic. A friend of mine, who has been married for over 20 years, informed me that she and her husband have separate accounts. Essentially, her income and his income go into one account in HIS name. She maintains a separate checking account from income earned at another part-time job, income which is not sizable by any means. Her husband pays all household expenses from HIS account and when she needs extra money, she has to ask him. I asked her repeatedly, how is this possible? In this day and age, how many more husbands and wives are out there in similar situations?

I am by no means demeaning anyone if you are in this type of situation. I just wonder how you make it work. My husband and I decided that the best solution for our family was to put everything into one pot, regardless of who made more and regardless if the income was supporting children from previous marriages. I have to give my husband credit, he has never once told me I couldn't spend any amount of money on the children just because they came from another biological contributor. Telling me to quit spending so much money on the children altogether, now that's another matter :-).

So who's account-able in your marriage? For my family, we're going to continue doing what we've always done - my husband's money is my money, and my money is my money too.