Mommy of Many®

The last couple of days have been consumed with all things, 8th grade graduation. I’m still working on the girls’ memory boards and have until this afternoon to be finished. Then they go onto Memory Lane, where each of the graduates has all their special items set up for all to see.

This week is filled to the brim with kid stuff. Yesterday the 8th grade went to Disneyland. After school, today, many of them will head to Soak City. Tomorrow is the dance and then a party. Whew! By Friday we will all be more-than-ready to have graduation and call it quits.

I managed to grab a couple hours, yesterday, to take Gabi to a friends’ house to be outfitted for a Poodle Skirt. The preschoolers have a special Father’s Day performance on Friday and Gabi is the lucky recipient of a fancy, new skirt. It turned out SO cute!

Such a busy week! I love projects, but I hate deadlines! I’ll be glad when these boards are finished up and the girls have graduated. Then the work of getting them set up to start high school begins.

Doing the Dance of the Children, One Project at a Time~

For the last 3 days I’ve been browsing craft stores and sitting, for hours, at my computer, pouring over pictures of Arianna and Maddi. All of this in the effort to get started on their 8th grade, graduation, memory boards.

Did I wait until days before they were due because I didn’t know what to do or what to expect? Heck no! These are the 4th and 5th boards I’ve done and a year ago, when they finished 7th grade, I told myself I should start prepping the photos so I wouldn’t be rushed or anxious. Ha! It’s just that everything got away from me (whine, whine, whine, excuse, excuse, excuse). I was single-parenting, due to deployment and I spent the summer days keeping the kids busy. The nights were spent trying to catch up around the house and to get a little sleep. Then the Fall came and I went to work (more excuses). I spent each day juggling school, housework, sports and a work schedule. Then February arrived and my brother came to stay. Life got a little easier. I looked around at all I was behind on, thought of the girls’ graduations that were merely months away and did another load of laundry.

Fast forward to the first weekend of June…Uh…it’s time!

This week is a little crazy and I’m feeling overwhelmed. But, the girls will graduate. The boards will be done. Life will move on.

So-deep breath and a glass of water for this M.O.M. and tomorrow I will tackle a little more. And hopefully I’ll learn from my great dislike of anxious feelings and not do something like this again…

Somehow I have a feeling I’ll be writing like this again. There are lessons we just don’t learn.

Doing the Dance of the Children~

It’s been 2 weeks since JJ graduated from High School and only a few days afterward, he and his class, along with a few chaperones, got on a plane headed for Spain. Each person was outfitted with a new bike and a few essentials for the long road ahead of them. They are heading out for a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

This journey takes them through Spain and into France. I have to admit that, even though I’d heard about the trip for a whole year, I hadn’t given it much thought. Sure, I took him to the post office to get his passport and I sent money for the new bike, but I hadn’t looked into the route or researched the journey. I knew that the Senior classes before JJ’s had done this trip and that it was a wonderful experience.

Yesterday I finally sat down at the computer and typed “Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela” into my Google search box. I was fascinated with what I read and saw! An excerpt from the book,
Pilgrimage to the End of the World states-”A satellite image of the pilgrimage routes provides a little reality check to the bland abstractions of a traditional map. But even this isn’t enough to convey the toughness of the trail. The daunting mountain ranges of the Pyrenees and the Cantabrians speak clearly enough of the great challenges the pilgrim must overcome.” I’m in awe of these boys, on bikes and with little in their pockets, taking on this trek!

There’s been no word from the boys, so I’m going with the phrase, “No news is good news” and trusting that all is going well. I can’t wait for JJ’s return home so that we can hear all about this adventure, both spiritually and physically. I’m just more proud and pleased than I can convey that the boys are having this experience!

I truly hope that each of my children gets to embark on experiences like this one!

Doing the Dance of the Children and hoping to foster their dreams and nurture their souls~

This morning Luke-Xavier (4 yrs. old) comes in a asks if it’s a school day. I told him it wasn’t. Then he asked if we had church. I told him there was no church and no school, that it was Saturday. He went running to Gabi (5 yrs. old) and excitedly exclaims, “Gabi there’s no school and no church today. No nuffing! We can just watch Smurfs (they just recently discovered them) and do nuffing!”.

Ah…to be a lil kiddo, enjoying a Saturday, again. Little do they know that those Saturdays of doing “nuffing” are fleeting.

So, while Gabi and Lex do “nuffing” today, M.O.M. will be catching up on laundry and paperwork and tackling the things needed for the girls’ graduation.

Happy Saturday! Try to find a moment to “do nuffing”~

This afternoon Luke-Xavier and I had some “mommy and me” time. We had to stop at the grocery store and after shopping I held his little hand and we walked across the parking lot. He spotted a mom, with a baby in a front-carrier, loading groceries into her car. Here is the conversation that followed-

Luke-Xavier-”That mommy has a baby. She’s carrying her funny.”
Me-”That’s how I used to carry my babies, in a front carrier. I carried a lot of babies that way.”
Luke-Xavier-”You carried me that way because I was your baby.”
Me-”That’s right.”
Luke-Xavier-”…and Tristan and Max and Gabi were all your babies.”
Me-”yep, all of you.”
Luke-Xavier-”But I was the leader of the babies. I cracked first. Then I looked inside and I saw Tristan, Max and Gabi.”
Me-”You ‘cracked first’?”
Luke-Xavier-”Yes, my egg cracked first, so I was the leader.”
Me-”I thought you were each in my tummy on your own and I didn’t know you were inside an egg.”
Luke-Xavier-”Yes, we were in eggs. God put them there.”
Me-”What about Kateri, JJ, Mariah, Anna and Maddi?”
Luke-Xavier-”They’re big kids. Big kids weren’t babies….were they?!”

Gotta love the way kids make sense of it all.

Doing the Dance of the Children, one cracked egg at a time~

My M.O.M. brain is overloaded with end-of-the-school-year obligations and projects and the prep that goes into 8th grade graduation…x2! I’ve written my list and I’m adding to it all the time. Little by little I’m getting things crossed off, which keeps me from freaking out about all that’s on that stinkin’ list.

One of the items that I’m having trouble with is pulling a funny M.O.M. story from out of the depths of my overworked brain. I know I’ve had plenty of laugh-worthy experiences and that I’ve blogged about the things that could only happen because I’m dragging a bunch o’ kiddos behind me somewhere. But if you think I could come up with even one such story…when I’m being asked for it…forget it!

This is where you come in. If you’ve followed the blog and can think of a story that made you chuckle or if you know me and my family and can jog my brain on a funny experience you’ve witnessed, could you share it with me? I’ve been asked to share one of my funny experiences of being a Mommy of Many™ for an interview and well…nothin’!

Alright then, while I have you all picking your brains for something I can share, I’m going to go back to the scanner, printer, photo albums and the memory boards. Anna and Maddi graduate next Friday and I need to pull out the creativity to make these boards something they’re going to be happy with and that represents each of them accurately.

I’ll be happy when this school year is over and I can catch my breath during summer. Though that thought is a bit silly because the minute summer starts, I have to start thinking about getting everyone set up for next year…~sigh~

Doing the Dance of the Children and hoping not to miss a step~

The long weekend is over. Back to the regular routine. I have to admit that I’m SO ready for summer to be here. It seems weird that 2 of my kids have finished up their school years, but that the rest are still at it. Now that Kateri has returned from Gaming, JJ has graduated and is on his European, biking trek, one sister has moved to San Diego and I got to have a weekend of visiting family and friends, I’m ready to forget the daily grind and move into bbq and beach mode. Soon! But before that can happen I have to finish up all the details for my 2, 8th grade graduates. The rest of this week will be a frenzy of memory-board building. I better make sure my printer is full of ink and that my scanner is ready to work overtime.

I hope you each enjoyed the long weekend. I know we did!

Now, back to Doing the Dance of the Children~