I miss my husband. A lot. I miss talking to him in person because we have hardly anything to say on the phone (mostly because he's afraid of scaring me with whatever things they're doing with/on/around/in rocks - but we carry a lot of insurance so it's okay*. A LOT of insurance). I miss the little things that he does, like take out the garbage and recycling once a week, and pick up the dirty diapers that have just been thrown into the garage, and clean up the yard without me saying anything, and wrestling with the boys, and holding the baby so I can have 2 freakin' minutes to myself. But I think what I miss most of all is the illusion of help - when he is gone I can no longer believe that the dish-fairy is going to come and clean up my kitchen, or that the discipline-dude is going to yell at my kids so I don't have to; it's all on me.

All day.

Everyday.

And all night.

Never ending.

No breaks.

This is starting to sound like a pity party so I'm going to quit and go read. Please remember that misery loves company, so don't leave me "feel better" comments. If you comment it better be along the line of "yeah, that blows..."

Kendra - tell me you feel my pain. Or am I the only one who puts the kids to bed and eats cookies 'til it makes me want to puke?

*for those of you who think I am callous and insensitive - I take comfort in the fact that we are sealed forever. And I would be lost without him...this is that whole sarcasm thing we were talking about, remember?

If you can't tell, my kids are all in bed and I'm blog-stalking.

Is this me?

I'm not sure I actually aspire to be a public health employee....

Someone Else's Blog

Ummm, never been a fan of looking at random people's blogs, 'til I found this one. She's freakin' hilarious! I especially like the post about what not to buy, because I've thought about buying at least one of those products (I'm not telling which one), and I laughed so hard when I read what she wrote about it.


Okay, I like this one too.

Scripture Power

In my quest to gain a brain I have decided to re-enroll myself in seminary. Why? you may ask. Well, I'll tell you: when I was a teen we had seminary in the basement of this old couples house at 6:00 in the morning. There was no release time seminary, and there was no CES teacher, and there was no grading. Mostly you passed because you attended about 50% of the time. Maybe there were more stringent guidelines, but I doubt it. So my seminary experience is not what it could have been. In addition to this is the fact that I was NOT (nor am I currently) a morning person - so I didn't really apply myself - or care at that hour of the day.

Anyway, I bought the seminary manual for the student and the one for the teacher and have been reading them and came across the following:

"The real value of knowledge you gain from the scriptures comes when you live what you learn. Greater closeness to the Lord and feeling the peace He gives are just some of the blessings that come to those who live the gospel. In addition, the Lord said that those who live what they learn will be given more, while those who will not live what they learn will lose the knowledge they have."

Huh. Maybe that's my problem.

But probably (hopefully) not.

FYI: I'm studying the Book of Mormon this year - just barely started if you want to jump on my bandwagon. I know there are adult programs out there - but, eh?!

End of the School Year

Caden has officially passed Kindergarten. We were never really in any doubt but still, nice to have it down on paper.

On Friday Caden's school had a last-day-of-the-school-year picnic at Pavilion Park in Liberty Lake. There was food, and a water park, playground equipment, and lots and lots of people. This is the kind of thing that I normally avoid if the parent to child ratio is not 1:1, but we went anyway, mostly because Caden's best friend Trevor (and his mom, my friend Leslie) came with us. It was a lot of fun at the picnic, and then we all came back to our house afterwards and played for a few more hours. It was fun for the boys to get together, and Lincoln and Megan (Trevor's little sister) also had a good time (they're about the same age), and I GOT TO TALK TO A GROWN UP FOR SIX HOURS STRAIGHT! It was the most fun and relaxing day that I've had since Ryan left. Thank you Leslie! Of course, I neglected to take the camera so there will be no pictures of the event, but I couldn't post them now if I had anyway...disposable camera and all. Oh well. Sigh.

In looking over the calendar for next school year I noticed that Caden's school starts August 12th this year (we have him enrolled in a basically year round program within our district) so we (probably) won't be able to go to Stephanie's wedding the following weekend, which means we'll also miss Andy and Kendra when they come, which I'm so bummed out about! Unless we keep him out for the whole first week of school, but I don't know...it seems like a lot to miss...I guess Ryan and I have some discussions to hold when he gets back.

Two weeks down, two to go.

Disclaimer

I have always preferred the phone to the written word, because I find it difficult to bring my particular form of sarcasm to the written word. I may be having the same problem with blogging....if you read something here and it sounds depressing, like I'm on the edge of a great abyss looking down, then I'm not doing it right. Take everything I write with a grain of salt and remember that I LOVE SARCASM and that my own personal philosophy is this: if the choices are to laugh or cry, I will usually choose to laugh.

Jumbled Thoughts

I'm thinking about running away. For a month. I'll bring the baby 'cause I still like her, but Ryan's gonna have to keep the boys. For a month. I think it's only fair to play with his sanity since we're playing with mine first.

I've been thinking in all my spare time about all the things that I need to be doing, and then I stupidly compared that list to all the things I am doing and realized that there is quite a defecit between the two.

I am having a crisis of confidence in my mental abilities. Lately I feel SO STUPID...it's pregnancy stupid without the pregnancy. I am stupid to the point that I don't remember how long it took after the other kids to start feeling smart again. Do you think this means that I never got smart again? that I'm in a perpetual mental free-fall? This is brought on in part by these two wonderful young (twenty-nothings) ladies in our ward who are just on fire spiritually, and I can't remember things that I know that I already knew! Like the difference between immortality and eternal life. I used to know the difference, and I do know the difference, but I recently forgot the difference in RS on Sunday and made a STUPID comment, which just goes on to prove my point. Wait, did I have one?

On the whole boring/vanilla thing (read Raelene's blog if you're lost), the more I look at my life objectively, the more boring I seem. I really don't do anything that very many people would find interesting. I have all these aspirations and good intentions (we know what road those will pave) but I just don't know...I feel very Jack-of-all-trades-but-a-master-of-none. I try to rationalize that I have a lot of different interests, but if I can't commit to becoming highly skilled at any one thing, then what does that really say about me?

I think that my self-esteem may have fallen into the toilet with my sunglasses. :)

I'm looking for some input....who are your favorite LDS singers? I want to expand my horizons beyond Michael McLean. If you've got favorite albums or songs then list those too... and if you can tell me what kind of catagory they would fall into style-wise that would also be helpful. Thanks!

Thursday

Let me tell you a little bit about Thursday...I woke up at 7:15 and thought, "I don't have to be up for 15 more minutes"...so I went back to sleep. I was in and out of sleep and I kept hearing this noise, a high pitched squealing, like a car was running outside with a belt that needed to be replaced. At 8:00 (whoops, overslept) I got up and went out into the living room and realized that the squealing is not a car outside, it is coming from down in the basement. Oh, crap. The only thing that could be making that noise is the flood alarm. Sure enough, I go downstairs and the laundry room has flooded out onto the carpet (this is like 8th time or so since we've moved here). So I go up and call the landlord (remember Ryan is gone), then I go see if the breaker is tripped (nope), then back downstairs to shake the pipe on the pump to see if that helps. Nothing works so I finally just unplug the pump and plug it back in - the pump kicks on and the water starts draining down. Great. Now I've gotta get all the kids up, fed, dressed and ready to take Caden to school (his school runs until the end of next week). So since Lincoln is potty trained I send him in to go while I'm changing Aile. All of a sudden he starts crying: this in and of itself is nothing new. So I ask him what's wrong as I lean back and look into the bathroom. He's standing at the toilet with his "hose" pointing at his feet and I realize that he has accidentally peed on the floor. Super. So into the bathroom I go to help him take off the wet pajamas, etc. I get the pajamas off and glance around and realize there is pee on the side of the cabinet, all over the toilet paper, on the front of the cabinet and on the counter top. It's like somebody turned on a firehose and didn't control it. I unroll the toilet paper that's been sprayed and use it to sop up what's on the floor, toss it into the toilet and flush. And now the toilet's clogged. By the time I got everything cleaned up, unclogged, and disinfected, I was feeling pretty close to the edge. It's 8:20 now and I can't believe this day, so I called my mom and related our morning. She just laughed and it made me feel better. I would prefer not to repeat this morning EVER.

Pampered Chef

I'm having a Pampered Chef party and thought I'd give a heads-up to those of you too far away to attend. If you're interested you can go online here and browse through the catalog. Anything you decide to buy can be shipped directly to you. If you decide to look, after clicking on the link follow these steps:

1. click on the "order products" button on the bottom left of the screen - this will take you to the catalog.
2. clik on option 1 (to order off my party)
3. type in val, or carter, or val carter
4. go thru the process of browsing and purchasing (if you so choose)
5. choose to ship directly to you.

Many of you may know that I LOVE PAMPERED CHEF, but I realize not everyone feels the same way. So if you need something, order, if you don't, don't.