More clarity?

Alright, so the morning after my last post I got calls from my mom, mother-in-law, and sisters.  They were worried.  And then that night I got an anonymous treat delivery (always welcome, thank you!!!) on my porch with a poem attached.  I told Jeremy last night I better write another post letting people know we are ok.  His response, "Are we?"  So, yes life has kicked us in the teeth a little bit lately.  All part of being parents, right?  Ok, also part of being an autism parent.   We became aware of some situations with our kids which led to tough conversations which have led to some tough decisions.  But, overall we are doing well and life is moving forward as always. 

I did paint my dining room blue, and I love it!  The boys finished their ski lessons, and made great progress.  We survived winter break, a week off in the middle of February, which should only exist if you are going to Hawaii for the week.  According to Matthew, 3 kids in his kindergarten class did just that.  Three, really?  I asked him if they were triplets to make myself feel better that only one family went.  We now have two trips planned for the month of March.  Provo, UT and Spokane, WA.  Practically Hawaii!  Woo, hooo!!

To Clarify

I have not actually cried about Whitney Houston.  I guess we do know what happened there.  This is your brain on drugs.. Remember the frying egg?  But, I do feel sad at the loss of so much talent and potential, just wasted.  Because I feel like that sometimes.  Ok, I'm not a druggie, yet, just kidding, kind of.  BUT sometimes I do feel like I am not using all of my talents and potential either. Hmmm, what to do about that.  I think that hard work has gotten lost on my generation.  Or, maybe it just got lost on me!!  That is a scary thought.  Wow, this is a dumb post.  This will not be included in my next blog book.  By the way, I was thinking of entering an essay contest about motherhood.  Jeremy says I should use some of my blog posts.  I don't know.  All I really have to say is motherhood kind of stinks most of the time.  It is not what I thought it was going to be.  It is soooo hard.  Life is so hard.  Why is life so freaking hard? So, not too inspiring.  Of course at the end I would say how awesome my kids are.   But not after this weekend.  After this weekend I was looking up boarding schools.  How about that for an essay topic? 
Motherhood: Boarding school or Bust.

To Summarize

Hello, I'm back.  I've been a little busy spending my time listening to Whitney Houston songs while crying and wondering, what happened there?  Give me one moment in time... when I'm more than I thought I can be.  I hope you sung that as you read it, while crying.  Also, I spent last weekend in San Diego with the best girlfriends anybody could ever hope for, and I have been busy spending my time since convincing my husband we should move to Cali.  We will be happier there, I know it! He keeps trying to tell me, of course you were happy there, you were in a beach house with your best friends without kids.  Molly, you were on vacation.  He is so smart.  And handsome.  Well, that about sums up my week.  If you haven't worked out to I Wanna Dance With Somebody, please do so now.  Your welcome.

We will find you snow

We went on an a family outing on Saturday to find snow after morning chores.  Somebody forgot to bring boots for the baby.  He wore his crocs, but that was not going to stop him from stomping around.  The only bummer is that we did not plan enough time for them to play.  They could have lasted hours.  It was a gorgeous day, and reminded me that boys need to be outside to roam free and discover.  It was lovely.

Resolutions??

Well, it is that time of year where everybody is depressed.  You know it's true.  The January blahs.  I always start the year feeling so inspired.  If you could see my thoughts they would scream, "This is going to be THE BEST YEAR EVER!!"  And then 2 weeks into January I am already done with this year.  Well, not done totally, the summer still looks promising.  Anyway, I would like to tell you about two resolutions I am making good on.  First of all I have launched my food blog again, using that term in the loosest kind of way.  Not that I ever really had a food blog.  But, still, it is now gluten free/dairy free, which I'm sure all of my 10 blog readers could care less about.  Oh well.  It was a personal goal, and let's call it good.  If you are interested, I will be posting recipes that fit my son's diet, but some are just regular meals everybody can enjoy.  Enough said.  Wait one more thing, I might stop doing this after about a week.  Let's keep those hopes nice and low where they belong. Also, two weeks ago when I was still shouting about the best year of my life, I bought blue paint for my dining room.  I decided to go blue walls, gold curtains.  Those are much easier to come by, I might even be able to find the sparkly shade I have been dreaming of.  If it turns out, I might post pictures.  Painting is scary.  How are you doing on your resolutions? 

Enjoy

So, I made it to the gym this morning before the Snowmeggedon began.  While there I happened upon a cooking reality show.  Yes, I sometimes watch cooking shows while working out.  I'm sure there are some deeper issues there, but mostly I just like to pick up cooking tips wherever I can get them.  Anyway, I am watching this show and they are throwing a party for somebody.  This somebody is wandering around and getting annoyed why they haven't started serving the food at her fabulous party yet.  Then it happened.  She said something AWESOME.  It went somethuing like this.

Where is the food?  I'm starving!  In fact, now I am just hangry.  You know, like, angry hungry.

What?  Angry hungry?  Yes, I do know.  I have been to the angry hungry place.  My kids go there all the time.  You can actually see the hunger turn angry.  It is not good.  But I just love the idea that she was talking about it.  There you go, as you embark on all your new diets this year, don't get hangry.  It is not pretty.  Well, unless you are on a reality tv show, and then it is still pretty because you have a team to keep you pretty.

Two is Magical

We had such a fun birthday celebration with Nathan last night.  It was so simple, and so lovely.  We had nachos, his favorite.   Everyone got their own bowl of salsa and a mini bottle of sparkling cider.  What a hit! Matthew made him a hat, Jeremy put two red lines on the cake and called it a baseball, and it might have been the best party ever. 

Keep Reading for Resolutions

Hello all!  One last post of 2011.  How was your Christmas?  Mine was hectic, and lovely, and food-filled deliciousness.  I played a killer game of uno with my boys, lovely walks with my Mother-in-law, dates with Jeremy, and I got a Kindle.  I am in love.  I have to eat a little bit of crow because for the past few years I have experienced some bitter feelings about books going digital.  How can you not hold a book?  I wanted a kindle as soon as my local library signed up at the end of November to let you borrow books digitally.  What?  That is crazy!  I don't even have to go to the library?  This is astonishing to me, and I am still giddy about it.  I "borrowed" my first 3 books last night, with several more on hold.  With my kindle I have read 5 books since opening it Christmas morning, along with several samples of books I hope to read in the future.  I am an obsessive reader anyway, but now I might become worse.  Poor children, poor husband.  I did make sure to get dinner on the table last night and keep up with the dishes to give the impression I had been working all day instead of reading.  Today I again did the dishes and cleaned a bathroom.  That should fool them all.  This morning I finished reading Tina Fey's book.  I told myself I wouldn't get it, because I knew it had some questionable language.  Oops.  The sample had me laughing out loud, and I might have accidentally pushed the purchase button at the end.  Oops. Today I am reading a book about the first ladies and the florist that worked at the white house.  Intriguing. 

Now, onto resolutions.  Well, besides maybe not reading so much.  I am happy to say that I accomplished all of my resolutions from last year.  At least I think I did because I can't find where I wrote them down.  But, I am sure I did.  Why wouldn't I?  This year I am excited about some new projects.  I am switching my cooking blog over to a gluten free/dairy free blog.  I want to try and post regularly.  But I'm not sure my heart is in it mostly because I don't like taking pictures of the food I cook.  What a pain.  Because they need to be really good pictures, and I don't have time to cook the food, feed it to my family, and take amazing pictures.  Ok, so scratch that.  That is not a resolution, just a thought.  Next, paint my living room wall.  I have been thinking about this for at least 2 years. I can't pick a color.  I wanted blue, but my sister in law convinced me to try gold. It is really hard to find gold.  I want actual gold, sparkly gold on my walls.  Is that too much to ask?  So, don't count that one either.  I don't know if I have the stamina to find the right gold color this year.  Let's see, eat more vegetables?  Pinterest keeps shouting at me to go on a 60 day juice diet.  That could be interesting.  I don't have a fancy blender.  So, forget that.  I guess I will try again next year.  Good luck to all of you.  See you in 2012!

Card Me

A friend gave this card to me for my birthday.  I love it so much I can't even stand it.  Obviously we are BFFs.  She totally knew how much this would crack me up.  Do you love it?  Wait, don't answer that.  No really, do you love it???

He comes back every year

Samuel the Lamanite always makes an appearance in our nativity scenes.

Holiday Cheer for Me

I bought this for myself today at Target.  Because, well, do you know how much time I spend shopping in the boys and mens departments?  Holy cow, it is unbelievable actually.  I mean really, really.  When I think about it, and how many more years I will spend shopping for these men in my life I just have to run directly to the girls section and throw things in my cart.  There was a sign above this nail polish.  You know how I love a sign attached to my product telling me how to use it, because I don't have time to figure these things out.  This nail polish claimed to dry in 45 seconds.  Sold.  Because that is about all the time I have to get my nails dry before I need to go fold more boys clothes.  Did it work?  Like a miracle!  So dry, so fast.  Go buy yourself some, they had fabulous holiday shades like grey, purple and a lovely deep blue.  Treat yo' self!

December Pics

Northwest Tour

What did we do for Thanksgiving? We got rained on, a lot. I mean, a lot. And it was the BEST week!! We had so much fun on our Northwest Thanksgiving Tour Week. First we headed to Portland, and the boys decided to play outside despite the constant downpour. The boys had fun with their grandparents and fabulous Aunt Stacey. Then we headed to Seattle for Thanksgiving with our friends the J family. They have four girls. We are a perfect match, obviously. They were amazing hosts, and we had so much fun and stayed up way too late. We had one glorious sunny day in Seattle and got to hit the downtown and ride on the ferry. We also made it to the aquarium. This past summer Jeremy and I drove 16 hours to Seattle in a 24 hour period to hit the U2 concert. I decided I really wanted to take my kids to this fantastic city and added it to my bucket list. Cross that off, we did it!! Rain, Schmain, we don't care. Thank you to both cities and households that hosted us, we couldn't have had a better week!

It's Gone

Anybody know anything about crop rotation? I can't wait to see what we get next year. I just hope it's not Wal-mart. Oh, that would be a good post.

The Dipper

Nathan likes to dip his food. He will eat just about anything if there is something to dip it in. I will not own up to how much ketchup this child has consumed.

Peaches

I am still catching up on some old blog posts I meant to do. Sometime during the summer I canned peaches. We took the whole family to the peach orchard for a nice family outing. We hit the Jackpot because the farm had just finished picking, and they said we could go glean whatever was left on the trees or ground. I became a crazy peach lady. Free peaches? I went totally nuts. The boys were done after about 10 minutes, but I could not walk away. I only brought a box or two, and they were falling apart because I overloaded them. I just started filling my shirt and carting them to the car and dumping them in the truck. Jeremy kept trying to get me to leave. Probably because of the whole filling my shirt thing which was pretty embarassing. But how could I? There were these lovely peaches they had left on the trees, but you had to climb pretty far to get one lone peach left there. Jeremy and I were climbing trees and the boys climbed some too. Not safely. It was weird, dangerous dangling, monkeys should only do this, climbing. It was great fun. When I finally got the resolve to leave, I kept making Jeremy stop the car as we drove away. "Wait, I see one more. Stooop!" He would stop(love him!), and I would run over and start grabbing again. Can you believe I hate shopping at Ross? I should love that place after this behavior!

Brothers have good toys

Nathan loves playing in Spencer's room. Of course he knows it has the best toys. Spencer has more of a toy collection now, but Nathan knows they must be the best since they are kept up high on a shelf just calling his name. He sneaks in every day when the boys are at school and yells, Mom, Mom, while pointing until I give in and hand him a toy. Nathan loves playing with his brothers. He is obsessed with Beeeeeeeeee! That is short for bumblebee. He prefers him in car mode to robot mode. Too cute.

This never looks like This

Ok, maybe it does. But why? Why? Why does my family room always look like this? I have tried so many different organizing tips. It just doesn't matter how well I organize or store things. They dump it all out. They love pulling the couch cushions off. This drives me crazy. CRAZY!

The costumes

I do need to showcase Jeremy here because he made that Captain America shield from a kitchen pot lid and painted it. Fantastic. Also, Sam's costume ripped after the first Halloween event and I stitched it back together. That's practically like making his costume, right?

Corn

So, in case you noticed I got a little behind on my blogging. Everything got crazy when school started, but I feel like we are finally settling into our routines. Except here come the holidays, so whatever. Anyway, the other excuse is that my computer lost it's ability to download pictures from a memory stick thingy and we can't find the plug for our camera to do it that way. But Jeremy finally tackled the problem for me, and there you go. Now I have a few blog posts I want to get out of the way. We did not have onions in "our" field this year. Whew. They planted corn, which was lovely. Although they still haven't harvested it and now it all looks dead. The whole situation has become down right perplexing. Jeremy thinks they are growing popcorn. What do you think? Is that how we get popcorn, they grow it? That seems very strange to me.

Happy Halloween!

Passion, you got it?

Things I'm passionate about.

Being Passionate. Seriously. Get excited about something, really excited. Get mad about something, get seriously bummed out. Whatever, just feel something!

Bold Statements. I love these things. I make them all the time. They get me into trouble sometimes. But in general I believe if you feel something, say it. If you say something, stand behind it. Be Bold.

Being a Dancer. In my mind. I am awesome!

Food. There are no words.

Music. In my soul. Deep, within my soul, love, need, crave music. There is a soundtrack to every moment in my life, not just the big ones.

My Faith, my Religion.

Jeremy.

I am Flawed.

I am sooooo flawed. Doesn't that word sound weird when you say it a lot? Flawed, flawed, flawed. Remember how I told you how much I love a good pity party? Well, you are all invited. I am feeling the weight this month of a lot of responsibility to be a good Mom, Wife, Sister, Friend. And of course, I seem to be coming up short. A lot. Now remember, a good pity party does not require you to make me feel better. In fact, you are uninvited if you feel the need to tell me how awesome I am. I know, it is tough to hold back. If you want to come to my pity party, you need to tell me why you feel you stink too. Because you do. We all do. Ha, ha, ha. I feel better now. Thanks for coming!

Questions with some Answers

Well, I feel like it is time for another post about my son Spencer, who has autism. I had some interesting discussions with family members this summer and realized there are so many questions and relatively little knowledge about my son's condition. Which stems mostly from the fact that the medical community feels the same way. There are so many unanswered questions, they don't even know the cause of autism and why it is spreading like crazy. And every child with Autism is completely unique. The saying goes, If you have met one child with autism, you have met one child with autism. So, here is my update about my son.

Spencer is starting 5th grade this year. He is in a regular classroom, at a public school. He does very well academically, which is becoming more clear as his brothers have begun school as well. He is the most amazing speller. Maybe some of you parents can appreciate this, but we basically have never gone over his spelling list with him through all the years, and he aces his test every week. Lets not talk about vocab, but if you say any word to him, he can probably spell it. Fun, huh?

We have the highest hopes for Spencer. The FAQ's I get all the time, will Spencer go on a mission, will he get married, will he do well in college? I understand why these get asked, I ask myself these questions all the time. But really, can you answer these questions about your 5 year old, your 7 year old, your 10 year old? I'm sure he will do all of that, and more, or maybe not, because you know things happen in life and don't always work out the way you plan or dream. I am learning to roll with things. This is hard for me, but he is the most amazing kid! Spencer is our best job kid. Maybe its his age, maybe not. You give him a list of jobs, and BAM, they are done. Done really well. Spencer goes to scouts, he has gotten all of the awards, no thanks to his Mom that's for sure. Spencer plays the piano, he skis, he swims, he is the best older brother. Spencer loves babies. Thanks goodness my sisters are keeping that going because he is loving it! He cooks, he cleans, he asks to have sleepovers.

He may not always answer your questions when you ask them, but keep talking, keep asking. He is not ignoring you, he doesn't always know how to respond in social situations. And the truth is, if he doesn't find the conversation interesting, he just won't participate. He is not great at social small talk, but that's ok, right? He doesn't really understand vague questions like, how are you? How was your day? If you ask specific questions, you will get a lot more answers. Spencer loves to talk about all that stuff that 10 year old boys love to talk about. Start that conversation with him, and you are golden. If you don't know what that is, take a look around his room. It is all Spencer.

Chalk Art

So, sidewalk chalk art is the thing now. Did you know that? It is. All the rage. Get on board. We did for family night. Each family member was given a sidewalk square. There were prizes involved. I wanted to go for the graffiti look. I won the most emotional and passionate award. Spencer decided to make his about symbols. He won best effort because he was into it the most and really tried to be creative. You can also see Spiderman made an appearance. Very cool.

Sam finished first with his tic tac toe board. He won for best use of space and lines. Matthew drew me watching fireworks. How can you not win a prize for that?

Jeremy drew our house. And of course wins the prize for most artistic. Nathan made contributions to all the drawings. He really liked to use his feet to blend the colors.

Phone Wars

I wanted this phone from pottery barn for many years. Then about 5 years ago Jeremy bought it for me, for my birthday. It has been sitting in a cupboard up in my bedroom for the last 4 years because I, I, I don't know. I love it. I am going to bring it out of the dark. And on top of that I am thinking about switching all of my phones back to corded ones. Let me tell you, me and cordless phones have not had a good relationship. You can never find them. They are always out of batteries. They beep at you, and get fuzzy and weird. Did I mention you can never find them? The latest corded phone set I have has 4 phones. FOUR, and trust me I can never find a single one. I can't even blame the kids because they don't talk on the phone. It is me, I have a problem with phones. I have heard rumors of a friend who went back to a corded phone. I was thinking of doing this in at least my kitchen so I would always know where a phone is. Now I am thinking of putting one in every room. Tell me I'm crazy. Why should I keep buying these cordless phones? I have to think about this again because 2 of my 4 cordless phones aren't working anymore. And you know I always pick up the broken ones. Every time. I'm in the middle of a call, oh wait, I need to go hunt down another phone this one is broken, hold on. Echhhh. Lame. And what about this idea of getting rid of your home phone? Apparently I am living in the dark ages because I still have a home phone. Well, let me tell you people, I am thinking of getting rid of my cell phone and only having a phone attached to a wall, with a cord. What do you think about that?

Utah or Bust

We just got back from the most incredible trip to Utah! We managed to fit in his sister's wedding, his Grandma's funeral, and an amazing week in park city with Jeremy's family, and even made it to Temple Square for a day. Hope you all are having fun trips too!

I know you agree

Cream cheese and sour cream should be in the same place in the grocery store. This has bugged me for years. I just stare at all the dairy products and wonder, where in the world is the cream cheese? Oh, by the cheese. Which is always across the store from the dairy. Bug, Bug, Bug. Anybody else?

Blog it, Baby

Kohl's is a super weird store. What is up with that place? I can't figure it out. Jeremy and I have this rule we try to live by, which is get the house speciality. For example, when we go out to eat, order what the place does best. If you are at a burger joint, get a burger. Do not try their fettuccine alfredo, you will be disappointed. We break this rule all the time, and we always remember why we had the rule in the first place. Get the speciality, it's what they do best. It will be good. So, Kohl's baffles me. What is their thing? First of all, the women's clothes are pretty weird there. Their shirts seem to be really drapey and they have weird designs on them. Am I the only one? Department stores in general really confuse me. I used to know exactly what to do with them. Head straight to the juniors department. Well, that's over, let's face it, right? So what is up with the women's section at these stores? They are divided into sections with weird names and take up several floors. What is the meaning behind all of these sections? Can't they just have a section for pants, skirts, shirts? I don't get it. I am kind of stuck in a Gap funk. I don't really know where else to go. Not a bad place to be stuck in, but I feel like I have been there for 20 years now.

What is up with celebrity Moms? I'm so tired of them trying to tell us what great moms they are. They always have to tell us, really tell us that they spend lots of time with their children. And they do it without "much" help. Oh, and we definitely send all the help home during the night, because we are not crazy! All of the great Moms I know have never had to tell me that they are great and then convince me that is true because they spend so much time with their kids. And I totally buy into it because I am pretty much running away from my children, literally hiding in the closet with chocolate in hand. Oh, and by the way my celebrity friends who I don't have but might be reading this blog. I'm sure you have never done this, but don't give your 18 month old a bowl of spaghettios to eat all by himself while you blab on the phone to your sister. He will smear them all over himself, and then dump the rest of the bowl on his head.

Summer Talk

Some things to chat about. I've lost control over feeding my family. They are all eating so much! Feeding a family of 6 is ridiculous. These growing boys are already eating me out of house and home. My grocery bill is out of control. kiddie meals don't cut it anymore, nobody is sharing anymore. We have moved on from 1lb. of ground beef being enough. Don't even mention couponing. Been there, done that, don't want to talk about it. Also, cooking in the summer has kind of been not fun this year. I just want to hang out at the pool every afternoon, but then we come home and everybody is starving and we just eat cereal. I know, boo hoo, I have to hang out at the pool and nobody is cooking for me!

I just switched my insurance and went from paying $150 a month to $60 a month. I know I shouldn't share such info, but isn't that crazy? We have been with Geico for 8 years, and then they hassled me over a bill on the phone and I threatened to leave. I knew that would really get them! Ha, ha! I immediately got off the phone and switched over to Progressive. Those commercials really got me. Anyway, easiest switch in the world, I did it all online in a few minutes, and can you believe the savings? Seriously. Think about it people.

I really liked summer until it hit 98 degrees. Now summer is not that fun anymore. The fighting is nonstop and nobody wants to play outside anymore. Oh, and the ants have arrived. Did you know I get my milk delivered? I have been doing this for about 6 months and I love it. No more last minute runs to the store when I run out of milk. And we drink a lot of milk, They are also drinking me out of house and home. What does that mean anyway? That saying makes no sense. It should be they are drniking me out of cute clothes and fun vacations. For them of course.