Day Planner
Every evening I come up with this giant laundry list of things that I didn't quite complete for the day. I just end up "rolling it over" to the next day. Funny how I always seem to think I have more hours in the day or that all my tasks will just take five minutes. No matter where I'm driving I always plan 15 minutes. I need to go to the bank...15 min. I need to go to the mall...15 min. I need to drop something off in Florida...15 min. I don't know why, but I end up setting myself up for failure and I never get through a whole task list! NEVER! I have high expectations I guess.

Today Mihya gave me a brilliant idea. She made herself a task list that looked something like this:

1. get dressed
2. eat
3. play with Tait
4. rest
5. play wii
6. change Taits diaper if it's wet, not poopy (good to be specific)
7. wait for Emma to come home
8. read a book
9. wait for dad to come home

Do you know how successful I'd feel at the end of each day? "hmm...did I get dressed?.....check! Did I eat?.....double check! let's see here... oh, forgot to check off resting, and I did that!...check!" Seriously can you imagine Josh coming home at the end of the day and me saying "oh, thank God I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to complete my task list but now that you're home I can check off waiting for you!" Better yet "Dinner? oh let me see here, nope! not on my task list today!" My family would surely think I'd need to be admitted to the loony bin but I'd sure feel great about my accomplishments wouldn't I?

Many years ago I read a book called Professionalizing Motherhood. The author did suggest that you write out everything you do in a day so even if you didn't complete each task, you'd still feel good about what items you did complete. I'm not sure she wanted to suggest going as far as putting "get out of bed" on the list, but maybe what I've been trying to accomplish in a day is just way over the top. Maybe that is why no matter how much I get done I still feel like it wasn't enough. I think today one of the things on my "to do" list will be to sit down and rework my "to do" list. Until then, I will just sit with Mihya and wait for Josh to get home!

Pet Peeve
Playing the "stupid card" is one of the biggest pet peeves I have concerning women and girls. It drives me so nutty that anytime I see some female in public playing that card I just want to call her out on it! "really, I mean, really are you seriously that stupid or are you thinking somehow acting like that will benefit you in some way?". It has always bugged me too, this is not something that came with parenting four girls and aging. Nope, I remember this one girl in particular in high school who drove me crazy because she thought being stupid made her appealing in some way. Now that I am raising four girls what you should know and they have all already figured out, is that nothing sets me off faster than one of them playing the "stupid card". As a matter of fact I go off on a whole little tangent on why this is absolutely not OK under my roof! It goes something like this:

"Do you realize how many other women before us fought to get the men of this country to understand that we are just as capable as they are to make decisions concerning our freedoms and rights? Do you get that when you act like you are an uneducated female that it is a direct disrespect and slap in the face to each of those women who fought for us! Do you realize that you leave room for the men of this country to second guess the law that was put forth so that we had voting rights? not only that but what exactly do you think you will gain by acting like you are clueless? It is neither cute or funny to play that 'stupid card'. You may gain a laugh but you will lose respect, and what is more important to be respected or to be laughed at? By acting dumb you will gain nothing positive...nothing!"

Each of my girls can probably quote this verbatim because unfortunately I have come to realize in the last couple of years that sometimes people just really are clueless. As a matter of fact one of my daughters (omitting her name although if you know us well I'm sure you can pick her out..ha!) is just this way. Boy does she drive me crazy, and I promise you she really doesn't try at all to act like a dumb blond. What you have to know too, is that she is so freakin' smart it is unbelievable, but book smarts and common sense are as different as the sun and moon and I know that first hand!

Just last week this daughter had to go potty as soon as she ran in from the school bus. She raced upstairs and sat down, pottied and then I heard her say "mom, the toilet sprayed all over me" Knowing who this child is I braced myself for what I would find. By the time I got into the bathroom one of my other daughters is frustrated at her sister saying "why do you think you got wet?" shoulders shrug "well duh you didn't put the lid up!" Seriously? I think. she did not put the seat up and could not for the life of her figure out why her pee didn't go IN the toilet? Then just this morning I was loading the dishwasher as the kids were sitting and eating some cereal. This daughter of mine was talking and holding the milk jug and not paying any attention to the fact that all the other kids still needed milk. I said to her "please put the milk on your cereal so everyone else can start eating." what did she do? looked at me with a puzzled look, then proceeded to try and balance the jug of milk on her cereal bowl! OH MY GOSH! I said "what are you doing?" she answered very sincerely by saying "you said to put the milk on my cereal" OOps, my mistake I needed to say pour some milk on your cereal then hand the jug over to someone who has not yet had any milk. I have finally gotten her to stop putting her winter coat, shoes, earrings, etc. in her hamper too. Yes, she used to do that because I was always picking up every one's clothes off the floor and made the mistake of ranting "if you wear it, it is your responsibility to get it from your body to the hamper!" Boy, did she take that to the extreme! Logically she has to know that I am not going to throw her earrings in the washing machine and fold them up and put them away in her jewelry case. I swear to you, it is like living with Amelia Bedelia. Love the books but have to say it gets a little old always being taken so literally!

So, the whole point is, if you to are like me and have the pet peeve of "the stupid card" just know that sometimes, no matter how hard their mothers have tried some girls are really just so book smart that they sacrifice their smarts in other areas. Besides..... it might be just a bit entertaining!

Realization
There are times in life when I have a certain plan in mind and yet I just can't seem to get everyone else to conform. For instance, vacations. When we go on vacation I have everything planned out to the minute. I know what we will be doing each day and exactly where we will be eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner (because I've made reservations far in advance to assure the plan will not be altered). I know when we will wake up, when we will go to sleep and what we will be wearing. When we are at Disney World I even plan out what rides and shows we will be doing in order and leave plenty of time the second day at each park in case we get off schedule on the first day. Josh refers to this as being a control freak, although I really just like to say that I'm a "planner". With seven kids this, for the most part, is a really great trait to bring into the mix. If I wasn't this way we'd look something more like a hurricane than a family of nine. Typically this "passion to plan" works out flawlessly and I pride myself on how smooth our life runs even with the burden...ur I mean ...blessing of seven kiddos. BUT (you knew the but was coming didn't you?) on some rare occasions.... few and far between... when other people are involved besides myself the "plan" does not go off without a hitch. No actually, sometimes it ends up being a total disaster! Not because of any other reason but that I do not know what is coming next and if I don't know what is coming next, than neither does anyone else (because Josh is organizationally challenged so I know he doesn't have a clue). We wouldn't from the outside look like we were fumbling like idiots but on the inside I just KNOW we are outside the plan and I'm totally out of (oh, shoot I cannot use the word control here) sync with the original plan. Like I said, when people aren't involved what I want to have happen is no problem, it just so happens that for the most part people are involved!

Not to beat a dead horse but in my recent "friend" situation I've come to a realization. (I'm assuming by all the inquiries on facebook, the phone and email that no one is tired of hearing about this!) A realization that no matter how much I plan things, other people have a plan too. I've been in turmoil surrounding this situation and (I'm admitting this out loud) feel absolutely out of control. My desire is to help my friend even with all the pushes against this. Unfortunately for me, I have come to the realization that this one is just really not up to me. No matter how much I do, if he isn't wanting my help, forgiveness, understanding, resources, etc. then I am just as good as an umbrella in a flash flood. All my effort would turn out to be meaningless and just a waste of every one's time. My "plan" to help and be someone he could turn to on a rough day and seeing that he continued to fight the battle he has ahead of him was clearly not his plan. Boy, what a hard reality for Josh to beat into my ....I mean...for me to finally realize on my own. Good that I have such a great hubby who stands behind me, encouraging me to see things for what they really are.

Enlightened!
(.....continued from previous post)
Some times in life you will be picked up and turned in a new direction without ever even realizing it's happened. Other times you are totally aware that "Wow, this will be a pivotal moment in my life!". While still numerous other occasions you are left thinking "this will change me, I just don't know how yet". Right now, I've been left in the dust somewhere in the middle of the ladder two emotions.

Thursday my friends supposed flight came in around 2:15. He had insisted on renting a car, although we had extended use of our vehicles for them to use while they were in town. We were planning on meeting for dinner and then heading back to our house where we'd settle down for the night. My kids had school on Friday and the meeting that was bringing he and his wife into town in the first place was occurring on Friday and I had assumed after a long day of travel they'd be tired anyway. I received a text at about 2:30 our time from him stating that his layover had been extended 2 hours due to mechanical issues on the plane and that they were on their way and would be landing about 5 our time. I asked if they were still up for dinner and he replied yes they would be and that his daughter was sleeping and should be in a good mood upon arrival. We discussed the plan for him to call when he had the rental car and I'd leave the house so that we'd arrive at dinner around the same time. After a few banters back and forth by each of us he explained the flight attendant was getting on him and he needed to power off his phone. That was the last I heard from him!

At around 5:30 I shot a text to him asking if they'd arrived. At around 6 I decided to pick Josh up from the office just so we'd be ready when he called. At about 6:30 Josh and I checked the flights from the airline he was flying and saw that everything was due to arrive on time. Periodically we tried calling and his phone was still off. I resorted to the fact that maybe the flight left there at 5 and he would be arriving at 7. When 7:45 came and went, I had a fleeting thought that maybe his cell phone had died and information only had our home number so we'd better get back to the house. After checking caller ID I realized that was not the case and I'd better feed my starving kids. We went out to dinner fully expecting for he and his family to meet up with us and for us to have to apologize for starting without them. After getting the kids to bed around 9 and explaining (as I had been doing for the past 3 hours) that "this is just not like him". I started to panic. We called every hospital, tried to get information from the airlines, contacted the police department and finally decided to call it a night at about 11 pm. Clearly, everything possible was running through my head! I was deflated and left wondering "Was this all fake?".

Yesterday, Josh and I went into P.I. mode! Since Josh had taken the day off of work to be with our guests, we had plenty of time to spend uncovering the truth. Our findings were both shocking and disappointing to me. The first and easiest thing to do was look him up on MYspace and sure enough he had and account and sure enough it stated he was single, worked for a totally different company, and had no child! I found the pictures of his supposed wife (boy would she be surprised to know she has a facebook account and she's married) who probably doesn't even know who this guy is! Like I said before this was devastating to me! Why had he lied? Why had he contacted me after 14 years? Why hadn't he kept up the lie and said they missed the flight or that they got sick. Had that happened I never would have questioned and searched for the truth. The more I thought about it, the more I was searching for the motive!

To me, it wasn't good enough to say he had "turned into a whack job" as my husband so eloquently put it. I knew that! For me, however, I needed to hear more than just that. I needed the motive. I needed the "why". Really any excuse would do because I knew this was so out of character. I know it sounds crazy, but I knew in order for him to have become such a "whack job" he had to be hurting and in good conscience I couldn't walk away from that. I sent him an email letting him know that I had uncovered these lies and so far I haven't received a response.

Last night I got the answer to my search of motive. Last night I cried for my friend who I knew was hurting. Last night I explained grace and friendship to my kids. Last night I was enlightened by the fact that what I once knew as pure is not eternal. Last night it was made clear again that addictions hold captive our good intentions. Most of all I learned that my search for things like meaning,acceptance and purpose are all relative to who I choose to keep company. I know I have a purpose in my friends life and I intend on making myself ever present to him until that purpose is fulfilled.

Searching!!!
If I were to ever write a book I think the title would be Searching. It seems like in life (at leaste in mine) that I am always searching for something. Searching for shoes, searching for reasons, searching for emotions, searching for keys, searching for kids, searching for friends, searching for purpose, searching for acceptance, searching for an easy way, searching for money, searching for revenge, searching for an open mind, searching for understanding, searching for grace, searching for adventure, searching for time, searching for peace, searching for fun, searching for words, searching for memories....I really could go on and on about it, although right now what is important is that I am searching for a motive.

I really fell short on blogging regularly because I had gotten into this "facebook rut". I was honestly having so much fun seeing every one's lives being played out before me on the computer screen each and every minute of the day. Sometimes I was given the insight that maybe, just maybe someone had a tougher battle in life than I did. Sometimes I saw that some people never change! Sometimes I saw the raw truth. The best part of facebook, though is just recouping old friendships that had been pushed to the side for one reason or another.

One friendship in particular I was overjoyed to have reconnected with. You see, when I was just 8 years old this friendship started on the school playground with a secret, moved to a kiss, followed by a punch and onto an understanding of loyalty and pure commitment. This friendship lasted even through a two state move, where every break we visited and weekly letters were received with complete joy by both of us. Never was this a love affair although we are opposite sexes. When we lost touch 14 years ago because I was getting in the groove of married life and he was joining the military, I knew in my heart that someday we would pick up where we left off.

Back in August we did just that! I had been on facebook several months when I received his friend request. Obviously I accepted and called Josh talking 100 miles a minute so he too could share in this joy. Since August we've talked weekly by phone and facebooked or emailed several times daily. We shared stories of family and our twists and turns of life. Just so happens he lives in Texas were Josh is on business frequently so we talked of getting together for dinner sometime. About a month ago his life happened to be bringing him back to Colorado, so clearly I opened our home to he and his family. Dates were set, plane tickets were purchased and for the previous month all we've talked about was what we'd be doing on this long weekend visit.

Yesterday was the day of arrival, met with sheer anticipation and excitement on my part. Over the years and especially in the last couple of months the kids and Josh have heard childhood stories of this friendship and I was thrilled for them to put a name with the face and to finally meet the wife and daughter he talked so highly of. Funny thing is.....he never showed up! Yep, you read that right...HE NEVER SHOWED UP! I know why to!
(to be continued.....)

What is That Smell?
About a year after Mikael and Kayela started living in our house we started to smell
some wretched stench every time Kayela was around. We'd smell her armpits, her buns, her neck...I mean you name it, we were smelling it. We tried to no avail to find the "stink" radiating from our child. I'd scrub her several times while giving her a bath. I started using adult deodorant soap on her baby skin. I started using powder in her diapers. I mean she just stunk like I cannot even begin to describe and yet we couldn't really pin point where it was coming from. Finally, I came to the conclusion that it was her breath and not only would I scrub her teeth several times a day with mint and baking soda toothpaste but I'd sometimes just hand her a toothbrush with the paste on it to sit and suck on. It was so bad that I made several appointments with our pediatrician who agreed she smelled horrid but he himself couldn't pinpoint why and went with my assumption of bad breath. I tried several homeopathic type things that supposedly cured bad breath, and yet my little three year old still wreaked. Our family and friends would come over and because they weren't used to the smell would be blown away by it and some even would tell her to go brush her
teeth. It was pretty sad and yet at the same time it was so awful that you couldn't help but try to get rid of the stink. This went on for months and months until a good friend of mine was at her hairdresser one day. I don't recall how it came up but Kayelas stink worked it's way into my friends conversation with her hairdresser. The man sitting next to her just happened to be a doctor and overheard her conversation about my stinky child and immediately said "It's her nose, somethings in her nose" and with that my friend called me to see if I wanted to check it out. I most certainly did and made an appointment with our pediatrician again. (Imagine me on the phone with the receptionist "yes, I need an appointment with the doctor, my child smells! yes, yes, she's been seen for this before") Sure enough Kayela had been storing the fuzzy from blankets, sweaters, pillows, etc. in her nose! It was rotting in there and you have no idea how bad it smelled when the doctor pulled out about 3-4 cotton ball sized fuzzies from her nose. It was so bad that all the other kids were gagging! (you know it stinks if kids gag) The room immediately smelled like a much, much stronger version of what we'd been smelling for the past several months! The doctor was amazed and each of us adults were trying to hold Kayela down without throwing up all over the room. Once we calmed her down from the trauma of pinning her on a table and reaching clear into her nose with tweezers, Josh picked her up and she took a giant sniff of his armpits. She then blurted out "you smell so good daddy!" Oh my gosh can you even imagine smelling that stink for as long as she had? Everyone in her presence had thought she smelled awful and yet she had front row seats 24/7!!! For weeks she walked around sniffing her nose in the air smelling and saying "that smells so good!".

Here's the catch...in a mega family like ours, once you are tagged as the "stinky one" you forever are blamed for every smell that crosses the room. I think probably on a weekly basis I will smell something we just can't quite put our finger on and call her over to peek up her nose. So, today when she was eating lunch and I kept smelling some awful smell around her I did my weekly sneak peek but found nothing. Then I remembered I had thrown some cooked cabbage away in the kitchen garbage can last night that I probably should have put out in the garage. Poor Kayela, I wonder if when she's at school and the teacher or one of the kids say "EEWWW...something stinks!" her heart races just a little bit faster?

Treadmill
I just realized that it has been five weeks since I last blogged!! Even when I went to sign in to add a post, my computer had forgotten who I was. Good thing I was having a good moment and could remember who I was all by myself.

I am at this strange place in life at the moment, that everything I look at seems to be "unfinished". Basically, my life is like running on a treadmill. Ya know, I keep going and yet I really never get anywhere!

For starters, our adoption for Tait is moving along at a snails pace. Their are still no "guarantees" that we will be his forever family but we are so hopeful that it hurts. I have told Josh he may need to start a new career in Mexico and to be keeping an eye out for opportunities just in case we must run for the boarder! I'm not so sure hiding out with seven kids will be an easy task but I am very creative and our kids are so adaptable.

To top it off my kids are in some sort of a rut where I think they are playing a really cruel joke on me. I am almost sure that they got together one evening while I was out and decided to do something over, and over and they are testing how long it will be before I need to be admitted to the psychiatric hospital. Really, I can totally predict each and every day what I will be saying to each of my kids! It goes something like this:

"Mihya get your dog"
"Kaidon, did you brush your teeth?"
"Emma, get on your soccer stuff"
"Graysie, quit looking over your glasses, look through them"
"Mikael, why are you crying?"
"Kayela, you do not ALWAYS need to be talking"

I could put those few phrases on a recording and just hit "repeat" and it would be fitting at any given point of the day. It is crazy how all of a sudden everything I am saying seems to be on their short term memory section of their brains.

Oh, well, I'm just going to keep running on this crazy treadmill of life and hopefully at some point someone will pull the emergency stop for me so I can take a break. Unlike, real treadmills, I'm thankful that eventually I will get off and somehow realize I've made it somewhere!