Getting to Know Why We Are So 1950's- Who We Are

Before I share the things I’ve learned over the years, I should tell you about myself. Tell you about how average my family is and how we got to where we are.

I’ve been a wife to the same man for 16 years and a mother for almost 15 with a current total of 4 children, 2 boys (14 and 5 yrs.) and 2 girls (10 and 1 yrs.).  How, in this day and age can we manage? How can we afford it? How do I keep my sanity? Why would I choose this? Lots of these questions have been asked or hinted at by friends and acquaintances, or maybe that’s just what I think they say when just one of their eyebrows juts up to almost touch their hairlines.

I have had a plan, since I was a little girl reading ‘Little House on The Prairie’ books by none other than Laura Ingalls Wilder. I wanted to get married, have kids and have a house with a white picket fence and a dog like the one on ‘Littlest Hobo’.

Instead, I married a Rock star that I had dated from the age of 16, got married 2 weeks after my 18^th birthday (as soon as I could without my parents consent) and ended up working 3 jobs to make ends meet in a tiny apartment with used furniture and no car. I was pregnant by October with Keith 'Carebear' (he was planned). I would kill my kids if they chose to do this now!

Thank God that my Rock star, now Husband, was also a computer Genius, a closet Geek, before Geek was synonymous with Cool (I should have clued in when he ‘borrowed’ my computer for 2 years.) His genius saved us, he worked his way up and our home was, and still is, cluttered with thick reference books like Introduction to Algorithms, Art of Computer Programming, and The Pragmatic Programmer, to name a few. Much to his chagrin, I often use them to prop my daughters’ crib up if she has a stuffy nose.

I am proud of my Hubby though; he was once on CNN and has also been mentioned in a section of a book entitled Hacking the Xbox. However, I still refuse to move to California so he can be part of a ‘Goldmine Startup’ company. California is going to fall into the ocean sometime, probably the minute we moved there.

And so we started clawing our way up the ranks of society, moving away from our childhood towns so we could become successful. Getting great jobs, higher educations, better pay. Dual income, one kid, that was us… for about 3 years, then we fell in love with the baby of a friend from work and before you know it I was once again perusing What to Expect When You're Expecting and eating fruit like a sailor fending off scurvy.

Here is where I must pause my Story, my groggy-headed one year old is sitting up like a Weeble in her bed. I can’t wait to continue, even if it’s only my lovely children that ever read this when they’ve grown.