The Trials of a Busy Mom
Ryan keeps giving me updates on how long we’ll have to wait. I guess we’re down to 5 days now.
It’s just a little something we like to call our Sunday night date. You know, some nice together time as we watch the amazing adventures of the race. How about you? What do you and your sweetie watch together?
John just said to me, “If you don’t know how to say ‘Mom’, then you don’t know how to love.” Wow! How sweet it that?
Thanks to facebook, I’ve gotten in touch with one of my mission companions this week.
I had kept in contact with her for a while through Christmas cards, and then,like most people, she dropped off the radar. But through the magic of the internet, she’s found me. And what do you know, she’s living in Germany?! After we emailed, she called me, and it was so much fun talking to her. That brought back such great memories of the fun times we had in Germany. So, then I had to go and look up the pictures.
This is where we lived in the great city of Duisburg.
Nice area, right? That’s what we thought. We were in a Turkish neighborhood, which was interesting. But we were always able to find a good Döner kebab, and got invited in for tea with the neighbors a few times.
We worked hard trying to find and teach people the gospel, but we also had a lot of fun.
This is a picture from one day when the Elders must have been out of money before they ran out of month. They called us in despiration, “Sisters, we’re starving and we don’t have any money.” I’m guessing they had used their money buying kebabs. We were kind and made them lunch. It looks like it was pancakes. And why are we eating off an ironing board, you might ask? Well, we didn’t want to out and out break the rules, and the rule was the Elders were not allowed in our apartments. So we had to come up with a creative solution. I think this was in the hallway or back landing or porch or something like that.
Gosh, don’t we look young? That’s because we were young. I was about 23 at the time. As much as I don’t like to admit it, that was a long time ago.
We were allowed one day a week to do our personal stuff, like laundry, letter writing, grocery shopping and the occasional outing. It seems like most of my pictures are from that personal day, since that’s when we were allowed to let loose and have some fun.
And after I became “friends” with my old friend Tammy, face book recommended a couple of other people that I might just want to be friends with, and I found a couple of Elders from the mission, too.
So here I sit at the computer. In my pajamas. Not going to church today because Megan and I are still getting over our bout with the flu. And I’m looking over my mission pictures and laughing.
Memories…like the corner of our minds….
The other day I went to a soccer game with my soccer playin’ daughter, Megan. Indoor, soccer, in case you were wondering what kind of insane team plays in the frigid weather and the snow. We were joking before the game that she was a Jedi knight, and the other soccer players would come to her and say, “Help me Obi Wan Megan. You’re my only hope.” She hit my arm and said, Maaa- ommmm. Typical response.
But during the game, I looked up from my book (yes, I do read at my children’s sporting events. Doesn’t everyone?) and saw that they had put Megan in as goalie. My little, not quite 5 ft tall, 80 pound 12 year old was playing goalie. Why is she playing goalie? That’s not her position. Eek. Needless to say, I put the book away.
Every time the other team got near their goal, my stomach tied itself into knots. Argh! No! No! Get back in the goal! Nooooooo! My little Obi Wan Megan WAS their only hope, and it wasn’t going well. Not only were they outsized and outplayed by this older, better team, but now they have my tiny little daughter as goalie. I felt like standing up and screaming, “Use the force! Use the force Obi wan Megan!” but I didn’t. I let her play out her stint as goalie with dignity.
About 1/2 way through the period, the coach switched her out and let someone else take a turn at the carnage, and I could breathe again. I much prefer watching her dashing across the field kicking the ball instead of trying to use her body to stop the ball. When the game was over, I braced myself for the disappointment and sullenness that might follow a loss such as this one. After the game, I met up with my little jedi and said, “Good game. How was that, playing goalie?”
“It was kind of fun. But I’m not really tall enough to be a good goalie,” and that was it. No sulking, no anger at the loss. Just joy to be able to play soccer.
Now if only I could make piano a sport.
Because of Ryan and his unfortunate illness this week, we decided to postpone Jenna’s baptism. She was a little disappointed, but was very good about it.
And not having the baptism on Saturday actually made our weekend much more simple. The girls got to go to their basketball and soccer games, which they were willing to miss, but were happy when they actually got to attend. Especially since it was picture day. But we still wanted Jenna to feel like her birthday was special. On Friday, her actual birthday, she got to go out to dinner and go shopping with her grandparents. She picks the restaurant, and she picks the presents. She came home with a Los Hermanos t-shirt, a balloon from Toys R Us, a light bright and a small stuffed animal. I think she did alright.
Saturday cake master Julene brought over the cake she had made as per Jenna’s request. When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she said she wanted “a bunch of white bunny and one orange bunny.” I have no idea why. But when I told Julene that’s what she wanted, she wasn’t deterred. She ended up making the bunnies out of cookies, with one orange cookie bunny in the middle. As usual, it was darling. 
After we went to Dinosaur Museum we came home and had a quick dinner and then ate cake. 
The only problem is–there’s too much cake. It was just the seven of us, instead of the 40 people we had planned on helping us eat the cake. And we don’t need to be eating all of that cake.
I’ve joined in a Biggest Loser Challenge with my sister and some of her friends, in fact, and cake is the last thing I need. But I did save all my points for the day so and passed on the pizza that the kids were having and ate a salad instead, all because I wanted just one piece of cake. And it was indeed extremely yummy cake. A bit too much frosting, which I scraped off, but oh-so-yummy. But I am not made of will power. If there is a cut up cake sitting on the counter for more than 30 minutes, I may find myself snitching. So, first we loaded up a paper plate with six big pieces of yummy cake and took them over to the neighbors. Let them eat cake! They were appreciative, of course. Then I took that cake and portioned it out into individual serving sized containers to be frozen or taken for lunches. It looked like this.
So now that cake is out of sight, and hopefully out of mind.
Friday night Ryan and I had plans to go to see Lord of the Dance. I won the tickets back in November, and it’s been on our calendar for a while. Yes, it was on Jenna’s birthday, but we scheduled something fun for her so she wouldn’t mind that mom and dad were gone. Well, Ryan didn’t want to go, so at the last minute I threw out the invite to a few friends, and my friend Lisa was quick to respond that she wanted to go. So she was my date for the evening, and we had a great time.
The show was incredible! It’s a show basically about good vs. evil, and the dancing is amazing. How do they do that, I’d like to know. And from now on, I think all wars should be fought like that. We select our best dancers and have a dance off to fight our wars. No one gets killed, there may be a few injuries but no casualties, and we all enjoy a real good show. How about it, world leaders?
So, even though our weekend wasn’t what we had planned, things turned out well. We’ll get to do the baptism next month, and hopefully everyone will be healthy and happy then.
Winners!!! I let random.org pick the winners for the CD contests, and our winners are Becky,
#49–Becky Says:
January 27th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I’d like to win either. Here’s my comment to enter the The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra CD. I love catching them on PBS.
and Mrs. Mommy.
#29–MRS.MOMMYY Says:
January 26th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
the wow looks great
Thanks to everyone who entered, and I hope to have another contest soon.
Today is Jenna’s birthday.
When she was born, the other three kids were very excited to have a new sister.
And what cutie she was!
She really is a joy. She tries to make others happy, and she wants to do what’s right.
She has big goals in life. She wants to be an actress or a singer, or a veterinarian, or a doctor, or a teacher, or a mom.
She’s a good sport.
Jenna is the only one in our family to break a bone, and she had a good attitude about that, too. She loved that wheelchair.
And she loves her animals. I’m proud of Jenna. She is a special little person and I can’t wait to see what kinds of things she accomplishes in her life.
Happy Birthday, Jenna-boo.
Oh, it’s a rough morning here at the Erickson house.
Wednesday nights are rehearsal, which is great. But it’s exhausting, and I came home with an aching back, partly from ringing bells all night, and partly because I used 8 pound weights in my workout class on Tuesday instead of my normal 5 pounds weights. When I came in the house, I started the dishwasher, and then went to say hi to Ryan in his office. Only he wasn’t in his office. He was in bed.
Seems he’d had a violent reaction to something he ate for lunch at Apolo Burger (let’s hope it wasn’t peanut butter), and he’d been in and out of the bathroom all evening. Enough said? So, he was in bed not feeling happy. Well, I got ready for bed, too, and came to bed to try to sleep.
Here’s the thing. Ryan doesn’t usually go to bed at the same time as me. He is a night owl and I’m usually crashing into bed at the earliest possible moment. Seriously. If we don’t have anything going on that night, as soon as I get the kids in their pajamas, I get in my pajamas, too. Then once they are in bed, I’ll crawl in bed to read or watch tv and go to sleep. I’m not one of those people who say, “I get SO much done after the kids are in bed!”. Nope. After the kids go to bed, I breathe a sigh of relief and say I’m done for the day, and enjoy the quiet. But Ryan is one of those putterers, who works on projects at midnight or 1 am. I’ve tried to convince him that it’s not healthy to stay up so late, and he gives me the story that he’s not sleepy, and why go to bed when you’re not sleepy? Whatever.
At any rate, we’ve gotten into this routine that I usually go to sleep alone. In the quiet. With no one breathing or coughing or changing position to try to get comfortable. Get my drift? I like to sleep in the quiet. And when it’s not quiet, or someone happens to be there sleeping at the same time as me, I can’t go to sleep. I can try. I can pretend I’m asleep and hope that it happens. I can lie there thinking of all the things I need to change or work on in my life while silently hoping I’ll get so bored that I’ll eventually fall asleep. So, that’s what I did. For an hour or so. Until Ryan got up and visited the bathroom.
“Great!”, I thought, “now I’ll fall asleep while he’s in there, and then I’ll be asleep, hooray!” But, no. Sleep didn’t happen. I just lay there listening, wishing I knew where my earplugs were, and wondering how long he was going to be in there.
Eventually I gave up. I said goodbye, that I was going to sleep downstairs, but I would reheat my wheat bag so he could have warm toasty feet. Wasn’t that nice of me? I was sacrificing my own warm and toasty feet so he could have warm and toasty feet. Really, my feet were already warm, and he had cranked the heat up to -like-69, so it was plenty warm. I grabbed some blankets and went to go sleep on the couch. Nice plan that it was, I couldn’t really sleep on the couch, either. I must be getting old and stuffy because I want to sleep in my own bed. Sigh.
I did eventually sleep, but when one of the kids woke up to use the bathroom at 5:30, I decided I might as well haul myself back up to bed, so that when they all get up they won’t come and poke at me. I think I also must have turned my alarm off, so that it wouldn’t wake Ryan up when it went off. Oops.
I woke up at 7:26 with an “Oh, crap.” I hobbled down the stairs hoping that my kids had been responsible without me there telling them what to do. Sure enough, they were all gathered around the counter in various stages of getting ready for school. I told them I was so sorry I had slept in and wasn’t up helping this this morning. “That’s ok, Mom,” Megan said, “you were up late last night.” Wow. I had time to brush some girls’ hair, sign some homework, write a check for lunch money and have a prayer before the first group left for the bus at 7:30. I was impressed that they got up, got dressed and got breakfast without me. At least I think they got breakfast. I hope they got breakfast. The Jr High kids left a few minutes later and I breathed another sigh of relief. They did it without me.
That makes me wonder, what am I getting up for? They could just get ready and go to school on their own while I languish in my nice warm bed, right? Ha, ha, ha, ha! Things do not always go so smoothly.
But today I’m thankful that my kids can be responsible enough to get ready (at least today) without any prodding from mom. And I’m hoping that my sweet husband gets feeling better soon. So that I can sleep.
Our little family video/LDS bookstore/post office is a thing of the past. Now we have no post office in our city. Again. And I have a package to mail to my friend in Arizona that may NEVER get to her, now.
I don’t know what it is about that little strip mall. You’d think that a business could stay there for more than a few years. Last spring I went to the dance store to buy tights, and found that the dance store had been replace with a tanning salon. Oh! I’ll admit I had never been to that dance store before, but I knew it was there.
I’ve been to this family video store many times. I have even bought things other than just rented a movie. I have used the post office many times, also, and I am confused and sad that it’s not there.
What do we have to do to get a post office in our city, I ask you?
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