and baby makes 6!

Now if it would only get cold

Mia is prepared for the ice age.  She has her UGGS now, and is ready for global warming to reveal itself.

I am confident that we will be waiting for a long while here in South Texas.  We are prepared though, and we know Mia’s feet will be safe and warm.

“Hey, you! Don’t even think about trying to gobble me up…even though I am fully aware that I just might taste like a big, wonderful cupcake with lots of buttercream icing on top.” 

It has begun

Horses have made their way into our home.

What is it with little girls and horses? 

We now play “barn” several times a day.  I love watching her move the horses around, and feed them.  I want to gobble her up in one big gulp.

Can your heart explode from watching too much cuteness?  If so, I am in BIG trouble.

Now….or never

My guess now is, never.

I started keeping a journal about my dream here.  I was bad about updating it.  But you get the jest.  I felt like I had my mouth taped shut.  I wanted so badly to tell everyone about our plans, but I couldn’t. 

As soon as we have some time to travel again, I will be updating that blog again…..right now we are waist deep in soccer and cub/boy scouts. 

I just have to keep telling myself, if it is meant to be, it will happen.  Right now, it appears that it is not meant to be, ever.

And you know what?  That’s okay.  Really, it is.  I have everything I could ever want in my husband and kids, and what more could I ask for?

Not to mention I have a nifty sign hanging in my living room to remind me of all the fun we had dreaming and scheming.

Chaos

My newest post is up over at Larger Families.  The topic is “chaos”. Come take a peek.

Do I need to add that I am totally kidding in the post?  Well, sort of.  ;*)

The title of this post? Let’s call it “Not exactly what I had in mind, but if I still have you honey, I will go wherever the hell you lead me!”

I have so much to write about, and so very little time. 

Work continues to suck the life out of me, and my time at home goes 100% to my family.  On my days off, I take some time in the morning to read blogs, chat with a friend (the UGGS got here….they are to die for.  Be sure and order some for L) and do catch up with my husband, kids and chores.

We are making some changes here at our house.  Benefits (such as medical, life insurance, and disability) became very important to us in May.  His current job has no benefits.  He gets a paycheck, a 401K that is losing money, and the kiddos and I pretty much get free doctors visits.  That is it.

So, after much soul searching, several job interviews, and a possible move to the coast that was so close, we had contract in hand and had found a new house (good Lord, it was so wonderful…I still tear up thinking about it), an excellent job popped up within 30 minutes commute.  Great benefits, security for our family, and the clinic is very busy and it appears Bill will be something of a clinic coordinator.  Oh, and more pay!

He took it.

Behind the scenes at ”and baby makes 6!” has been wild.  Back in November, Bill and I had decided to pull a Travelogue and take a year off of work and travel with the kids across the US, Baja and Mexico, surfing every surfable spot along the way.  We made our plans, bought the trailer and truck, began preparations, and in May, all that came to a heart breaking, screeching halt.  You know why, so I will not say the “S” word.

So, we switched gears and decided that a move back to our home in Galveston was in order.  He interviewed for a job, along with 16 other people, and they hired someone that they could pay less salary to.  We were VERY disappointed.  Jobs in Galveston are hard to come by right now, as the big hospital there just had a mass lay off of over 1500 employees.  Not exactly a stable work environment.

Next, we focused in on the Corpus area, found a good job, interviewed, and Bill was offered the job.  Great benefits, the beach!!!! and the house (sob) was amazing.  The problem was the time off…….he would be on call 50% of the time, and would only have 4 days off a month.  Not a great choice for my husband, who, you know, had an event….

The morning after we turned the job down (and they are still calling, offering more and more $) I was sitting at the nurses station charting, and I overheard the doctors talking about finding a PA for the downtown clinic…..I spoke up that I knew of one, and the rest is history.

Although I was in need of a change in a big way……I choke up as I write this, because I was mega, mega psyched up for the move into the 5′er and the adventure of traveling, then when that fell through, I was ready for a move to the beach……this job just dropped out of the sky and landed in Bill’s lap like a gift, all wrapped up in bright colored wrapping paper and a huge bow of benefits.

Another turning point,

A fork stuck in the road. 

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go……………….

I could almost see the Father’s Holy breath

At work today, I had the honor of being present while someone, who has walked this earth for more than 7 decades, took their last breath.

I am so very humbled. 

Maybe with some practice

Henna Feets, originally uploaded by nirakara.

Home

Yesterday at work, I cared for a boy much the same age as my son Cody. He had to have emergency surgery, and while caring for him post op, all I could think about was my son. I pictured him in the same situation, and so I tried to care for him as if he were my own.

Last night when I came home, I showered and dressed for bed as usual, and Cody came into the room. He asked me if I had to go to work again in the morning and I told him, no, I did not. I informed him that I did not have to go back for 4 whole days.  He smiled and hugged me, then ran out of the room. 

After I had climbed into bed, he slipped in the room and snuggled into bed beside me.  He hugged me tight and said “You are such a good mother.”

Stunned, I turned to him and said “Thank you so much Cody. Could you tell me what it is that makes me a such good mother to you?” and he replied “Because you are so nice to us, and you love us, and take care of us………and you are so much fun. I just love you.”

My day had been filled with self doubt and disappointment in myself for not being there for my kids. Anger at myself for working and spending so much time away from them.  I had cried and cried in frustration as I drove to work in the dark at 6am, wanting so much to just be at home with my kids.  To wake up to my daughter curled in my arms, and my husband with his arms around us both. 

I have something to say to my son.  The son who was so sick as a child, we thought he had leukemia.  The son that I sat by the phone for, holding Bill’s hand in a death grip, waiting for the call from the oncologist to tell me whether his 15 month old blood had blasts in it… a tell tale sign of cancer.

The son who cried when I had my first miscarriage. He had named the baby Sarah already. I told him that we could name the next baby Sarah and he said “No, this baby was Sarah. There won’t be another Sarah”. He was 5yo.

The son who is never the first to let go when hugging. 

You are such a good son, Cody.  You are a good son because you have learned how to tell when someone needs a hug. You have learned how to be kind.  What more could a mother want for her child? 

Steve Irwin

I am very saddened my this news.

My kids are so sad.  We watched his shows religiously.

What a freak, freak thing to happen.

When is the honeymoon over?

In honor of our 16th anniversary, and the 3 weeks after in which Bill and I rode mountain bikes all over hells half acre, I will be writing some entries about our life together before kids.

Here is a post that I wrote many moons ago, and I am resurrecting it for those who are not obsessive like me and read every archive available when I find a new blog. 

————-

I was talking with a friend recently about marriage and the subject that came up was “when is the honeymoon over”?  Is it over when you fart around each other? Or is it after you have kids and the one-on-oneness is far and few between?

No, I’ll tell you when the honey moon is over.  It is over when, on your honeymoon (which is a month long camping/mountain bike trip through Utah and Colorado) your husband eats pumpkin seeds in the wilds of the Utah desert, and, upon exit, said pumpkin seeds cut his anal sphincter, better known as his butt hole. 

An abscess develops, as does fever and chills, so you head on into Moab to see the doctor, whose name is Dr. Red.  Dr. Red is about as country as country gets, and, as he presses on your husbands butt abscess, smiles and says, “I’ll bet it hurts when I do this”.  Dr. Red explains with glee that it needs to come to a ‘head’, so he tells DH to “soak it”. It is decided that DH needs a real doctor, so we break camp and start the drive to Durango, Colorado. 

On the trip over the mountains, DH is in agony having to, of course, sit on the abscess while driving.  He gets a tickle in his nose, and sneezes, and lets out a huge scream.  See, sneezing has pushed the abscess into the ‘head’ Dr. Red gleefully talked about.

We arrive in Durango and check into a hotel.  In the middle of the night, Bill awakes in agony.  The pain in his butt, it is huge! He takes 6 aspirin and downs a warm beer he fishes out of the back of the truck, and spends the rest of the night in intense pain.

Morning comes, and we get to the local clinic, where his abscess is lanced and drained.  An hour later he emerges, wick in place, and we head back to the hotel.  Cycling is canned, no pun intended, for the rest of the trip.  I am disappointed, but Bill could care the less, as his butt is 100% better.  We stay long enough to have the wick removed, then head on home to Texas.

So, when is the honeymoon over?  I’ll tell you.  It’s when your husband of 2 weeks pulls his pants down, bends over and says to his new bride “Honey, will you take a look at this?”  THAT is when the honeymoon is over. 

16 years ago today

Never Die Young
James Taylor
We were ring-around-the-rosy children
They were circles around the sun
Never give up, never slow down
Never grow old, never ever die young

Synchronized with the rising moon
Even with the evening star
They were true love written in stone
They were never alone, they were never that far apart

And we who couldn’t bear to believe they might make it
We had to close our eyes
Cut up our losses into doable doses
Ration our tears and sighs

You could see them on the street on a Saturday night
Everyone used to run them down
They’re a little too sweet, they’re a little too tight
Not enough tough for this town

We couldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole
No it didn’t seem to rattle at all
They were glued together body and soul
That much more with their backs up against the wall

Hold them up, hold them up
Never do let them fall prey
To the dust and the rust and the ruin
That names us and claims us and shames us all

I guess it had to happen someday soon
Wasn’t nothing to hold them down
They would rise from among us like a big balloon
Take the sky, forsake the ground

Yes other hearts were broken
Other dreams ran dry
But our golden ones sail on, sail on
To another land beneath another sky

Happy Anniversary my love.  It has been fabulous!  Here’s to 40 more!

***edited to add:

From Long Ago and Far Away by Timothy White, published in 2001 about Never Die Young:
“Some think of it as being about young people who have died and gone to ‘another land beneath another sky’ and that’s not true,” said James. “It’s actually about one person looking at an idealised, mythical couple, and while there’s envy there, the person is rooting for them and saying, ‘Hold them up!’ and praying they’ll make it. The emotional foundation of the story is the person telling it, saying, ‘I don’t have a chance of making it out of what-have-you – a dying steel town, a barrio, an addicted existence, a war zone – but I hope to hell they make it, and survive,’ and that they ‘Never give up/Never slow down/Never grow old/Never die young’.”