Sunday Reflections 7/31/2011

So I'm headed off to visit the Pacific Northwest on Wednesday and I'm so excited!  I'm not really looking forward to the plane trip alone with 5 kids ages 11 and under, but it is always fun to visit grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins.  I'm sure we'll be picking not so ripe blackberries, visiting the ocean and playing games.  I guess the best two things are:

1.  My oldest sister's husband won't be around while I'm visiting her and our kids are older now and don't need all our attention and so it will kind of be like an all girls weekends
2.  My other sister is in transition now and living with my parents until her move in September so I'll get to spend a lot of time with her too.

My sisters and I are only 3 years apart and so we are fairly close.  I have to admit though, that growing up these older two always excluded me and I hung out with my younger brother more, but over the years we have all grown closer.  I wish I could have my siblings as my neighbors.  Okay, maybe not neighbors but it sure would be nice to live closer.

While I am there, Brad will be visiting Alaska.  That is all he can think about.  He has been tying flies constantly and has turned my office into a disaster.  Which brings up some major differences between my husband and I.  Brad can work in total chaos.  When he cooks, nothing gets picked up until the very end.  His garage looks like a tornado went through it when he is working on a certain project, sawdust everywhere  and his desk right now....I'd take a picture of it if I had my camera.... where he is tying flies, well let's just say that everything is out and on the floor and has been for the last few weeks.  2 times a week I carefully vacuum around his mess so as not to disrupt his creative nature.  If I go in and start picking up while he is in the middle of something, it drives him CRAZY.  So I have learned not to touch his messes.  He will clean them up all in time.  Me, I do not work well in chaos.  The more mess there is the more frustration I feel.  I pick up and put away as I go along, even when I know I'll need that something later. 

My cooking funk may have gotten a little better this week, but it may also have to do with the fact that Brad and Jordan took off for the weekend for a boys camp trip (can't wait until the others are old enough to join them) so I didn't have to cook formal meals while they have been gone.  Friday it was Papa Murphy's, last night it was cup o'noodles or cereal (kids choice) and today, we had biscuits and gravy.  The kids love this.  They actually look forward to these days where they get to pick the meals and what mother doesn't enjoy some down time from cooking.

So I made a mistake yesterday.  I brought 4 children with me to JCPenney and Safeway.  I know all you mothers out there are shaking your heads.  All I can say to defend myself is that a moment of temporary insanity must have overtaken me.  I KNOW not to do this.  Though my stops were to be "quick" I realized my mistake when in JcPenney Kenzie had a break down and at the same time let go of Jake's hand, who she was assigned to hold onto NO MATTER WHAT, and we had to search for him for 5 minutes...which as I looked at all the doors that he could escape out of and all the people in the store seemed to expand to an eternity until we found him.  I realized my mistake again, when Riley hit his younger brother, Jacob, because he wanted to sit in the car cart in the grocery store and it was one of those carts that only held one (I usually don't get those carts for this reason alone because even with the two seaters there are fights with my boys over who gets to sit in the driving seats) and so I revoked his privilege to watch a movie with the family which ensued in a Riley wailing and gnashing his teeth, digging in his feet to stop me from going forward with the cart, hitting and punching me and unloading things from my cart as I go along.  Although thoroughly embarrassed at being the mother with the screaming, misbehaving child, I survived the moment and will remember for a long time to not put my children in those positions again, no matter how quick the stop will be.  One child at the store at a time, that is enough, no?

I finished the last and final book about Lisbeth Salander entitled, The girl who kicked the hornet's nest.
It was a great mystery/suspense novel but I don't think that I can really recommend any of these books to my friends because of the moral values in the book.  The worst was the 2nd book, but the 1st and 3rd had some things that I just can't ignore enough to tell any friend of mine to read this series.  It's a shame, because the story line is really good.  It's too bad we can't edit these books and just take some pages out.

I also rented Steel Magnolias from the library to watch this weekend.  I haven't gotten to it yet, maybe tonight.  It is one of my favorites.  I haven't seen it in a long time, and I don't think I've seen it as a parent so it will be interesting to see if it still remains my favorite now that I am 15 years older.  Funny how becoming a parent changes everything, or is it just that I'm getting older?