frazzled & frumpy

Oprah and I have something in common. Nope, not wealth or fame. We both have second homes. I know, you're shocked, but it's true. Here's hers (in Hawaii)- And here's mine (not in Hawaii)- Honestly, I'm there so much, I should keep a toothbrush and jammies in the bathroom. I realized on Saturday that maybe I'm a bit too comfortable there. I was shopping with the Hunk when he said to me, "Looks like it's prom night." Well, I expected to see some couple in their prom outfits walking around. With the way they do dates these days, I wouldn't be surprised. What I saw instead, was a young mom. She was decked out. She had on one of those long dresses that are so popular right now, the kind the rest of the world wears alone, but here in Utah they wear them with a t-shirt underneath. It was cute, but what got the comment from my husband was her hair. It was in an up-do. Not just a pony tail or bun, an honest-to-goodness, lots-of-bobby-pins-and-hairspray...

Sometimes, my friends make me feel lousy. They don't mean to. It's my fault, really. If I didn't compare myself to them, I'd be fine. It's hard, though, not to. Compare. I just feel like I don't get much done compared to them. For instance, I have several friends who are runners. Two of them ran the Ogden Marathon on Saturday. 26.2 miles . I was going to go to the marathon, not to run it for heaven's sake. I'm lucky if I can drive 26.2 miles without getting tired. I wanted to be there at the end, to congratulate them. I forgot. Was I so very busy with all my glamorous life that it slipped my mind? Sure, if you consider laundry and plasma donation glamorous. So, instead, I heard about it afterwards. (Sorry for not showing up, I was thinking about you and you're sweaty accomplishment.) Today isn't much better. I'm sitting here in my pj's, my hair in that lovely 'just-got-up' style that makes my kids cringe. I've bee...

Four years ago today I did something I'd never expected to do. I drove to the dollar store and bought a pregnancy test. (Yes, they sell them there and, yes, they work.) Not that I never thought I'd take a pregnancy test, I'd taken a bucket-load of them. It's just that, as I said in my last post, we wanted 6 and we were done. I'd spent all of Mother's Day holding this secret in my heart, wondering if maybe we weren't done after all. The test was positive. Now, my 'baby' is three and I'm not sure what I'd do without him. We spend our days together while the others are at school. (Thus, his desire to carry a purse and have his nails painted.) I love the way he crinkles his nose when he smiles and how he gives me kisses. He's spoiled, it's true, but that's the way the cards were dealt. Thinking about Mother's Day made me ponder all the time I've spent on my children. I don't mind, it's all I ever wanted to do....

It seems whenever I run into someone I haven't seen in a while, the conversation always goes the same. "How are you?" "I'm fine." (I don't like that response and have made a goal to say something else, like 'fabulous') "So, how many kids do you have?" "Seven." "Oh. My. Gosh. I can't believe you have seven kids!" "Yeah, some days I can't believe it either." It's not like you start out your family thinking about the end result, anyway I didn't. We always said we wanted six kids, but did we consider the logistics? Nah. We just really wanted a baby. So, we did. And he looked like this- He's cute and sweet and you love him soooooo much. So, what do you do? Yep, you have another one. And he looks like this- And, he's cute and sweet. He doesn't sleep much and he's very demanding (refusing to be weaned from nursing until he's 11 months old and causes you bodi...