The End of the Beginning- Finalizing the intro.

Ruby

They perfected cloning and I was one of the first human subjects! Haha! Not really, but we did have baby number 4. Ruby Elizabeth Rose was born a couple of weeks early weighing 8 lbs, 1 oz. She looks an awful lot like me.

A year passed, my maternity leave finished and I gave notice to my employers that I would not be coming back to work. I have a wicked budget worked out, which we HATE to follow, but we are much more disciplined now than we used to be. Vacationing is with a pop-up tent trailer, which we hope to upgrade eventually, but it's perfect right now.

I clip coupons, order free samples, bargain shop, bake, cook full meals, clean my own house, garden, drive a van that is paid for but has some 'personality'. We see the fancy cars and people traveling abroad and know that one day, that will be us. We'll save for it and it will be that much more special.... After the kids move out, then we will pine for the days when the house was full of noise and we had a meal plan for the 'troops' each week. Then the giant blocks of cheese will go moldy, the bread stale and I will make enough food at one meal to last us a week.

The dog 'Kitty' and Ruby playing

Anyhow, here we are, the six of us, a dog, two cats and two fish. The Sheltie was replaced by a mutt named 'Kitty' (tell me that won't confuse the heck out of the baby!) and the cats have come and gone.

My Family

I think the people in the 1950's were a respectable bunch with admirable lifestyles. Their reluctance to get help for abuse and alcoholism, and smoking while pregnant was slightly negligent, but outside of that, they had a good deal going. My job is full time, we could hire a platoon of people to do it, but it's just little old me. Mike shares his Genius elsewhere, mine is doled out here, making giant cardboard houses and chocolate chip banana bread.

I'm not sure if it's the fact that my mom and dad were from an older generation (mom was born in 1935, dad in 1924), or if it's just my personality but I am in love with my life the way it is. I've not talked about so many important events and people in my life that have made me the way I am. That will have to be next portion of my blog! In addition to any interesting links and articles I find.

Me and Rockstar Hubby

Stay tuned, you never know when you will see your name! Or an old photo!!

If You REALLY Want Something, It Will Happen. With a LOT of Work!

Family in 2006

With the insertion of the third child, the eyebrows started going up and while on maternity leave, I tried to figure out what I was going to do. Working full time and paying daycare for 3 kids didn’t make sense. I had to work from home and take care of the kids AT THE SAME TIME! Just like in those ads that we see, it was a perfect idea in theory.  This is where the 1950’s, stay at home mom mindset started burrowing it’s way into my brain.

I borrowed a bunch of money from the line of credit and started my own business selling something new and slightly higher end than Avon, called Arbonne. Quality stuff but there is really a great selection of Quality Stuff out there. I really tried to sell it, I had Arbonne parties, I had a display table at the local fair, I made beautiful full coloured fliers. And for how long can we kick a dead horse? I kicked for about 6 months and my maternity leave quickly drew to a close. I did a little accounting and HR work for my husband for a small paycheque.

As a lot of businesses did back then, my Husbands little piece of heaven closed up due to lack of funding. We panicked and then buckled down and did what we had to to pay the rent. Just like in the good ol' 50's. Mike installed cable and job hunted and I worked at a call center from 4 pm to 1 am. It was Christmas time too, that was a tough one to say the least.


In a few months my husband landed a Sweet Job and I was able to quit the call center and worked instead part-time at the post office. Thank goodness we lived near family, I enlisted my mom and niece to watch the kids for the hour that Mike and I were both at work.


The summer after we had almost lost everything Genius Husband decided that we needed a house. I thought he was flat out CRAZY. We had barely survived just months ago at a rented apartment! A house is a MUCH bigger commitment (I think I hesitated about the decision for children much less than I did for the house decision). Well, he pointed out why it was a good decision (he has always put a lot of thought into these ideas and I'm sure he gets annoyed when he has to spell it out for me, which is often), and we were off to 'Try' for a mortgage. Shockingly, we had weathered the storm with good credit and we were approved.


About 2 days before my 30th birthday, we took possession of the house. I was there! Married, with kids, a white picket fence and a Sheltie dog (she was smarter than Littlest Hobo). How did THAT happen?! The Love of my Life celebrated our house and my 30th with a Surprise Party, 'My Little Pony' cake and everything

Sure, we were scraping by with much less money than when we lived away and both worked full time, but suddenly my career wasn't my primary focus. I think it was an Oprah show about balance or something that helped me recognize my priorities. Our parents and grandparents fought for equality in the workplace and fair representation. But I wanted my kids to have ME, I wanted their memories to include our day trips. They may not be to far away, exotic places, but I can go to their fun fairs and choir practices and wave at them from the audience. 


I certainly DO NOT frown upon women that chose to work full time and have kids. Some of us would like to stay home but just cannot afford to. I really do consider myself blessed to be able to do this. And my first two kids spent a lot of their formative years in daycare. 


UGH! I'm wandering again! In my story I'm actually still working! I've gotten ahead of myself! Something very important has happened to us in the past couple of years....

All the little Children....

Alycia and Keith

Woken up with a ‘Thump” and a crying one year old on the floor at 7 am, I have everyone fed and can continue my story for a bit longer.

My second pregnancy did not make it past the first trimester. Miscarriage is a difficult thing to deal with. I read as much as I could about why it had happened ‘to me’ (Miscarriage: Sharing from the Heart). I discovered (from an ultrasound technician that had had a few miscarriages herself) that almost 50% of pregnancies are miscarried. It is only in the age of Super Sensitive pregnancy tests like the Clearblue Easy Digital Pregnancy Test, that we actually know about pregnancies so early.

We kept trying and 4.5 years after our first son, Keith, was born, we welcomed our daughter Alycia. All 8 lbs 11 oz. of pure Diva.  Now, this is where some books come in handy again. Perhaps Bringing up Girls: Practical Advice and Encouragement for those Shaping the Next Generation of Women or  Girls will be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters would have come in handy as a baby shower gift. I am definitely gifting these to anyone I know that has a baby girl!

I digress, with two children, we were still on our path to success. I continued my crazy life. College courses in the evenings and working full time in an office during the day. Somewhere in there we managed to clean the house and I worked my way up from Receptionist to a Human Resources Generalist.

My Rock Star, Genius Geek husband has a bit of rebel in him. Which allowed us to strive for more and has led us to take risks I would never, ever consider. In the overall scheme of things, this has been a good thing. Fantastic even. But in the year 2004, due to some less than Fantastic choices, we had to take our little family back near our hometown where the cost of living was less. I will go into more detail at a later date, this is supposed to be an intro! Needless to say, I think I perused Dr. Phils’ book Relationship Rescue: Exercises and Self-tests to Help you Reconnect with your Partner and I think Mikes’ mom gave me Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus to help me understand why we do some crazy things.

Every relationship has some rough patches (insert wobbly smiley face here). We rented an apartment, Genius Husband and his buddy from a past work life start up a company in our basement doing what they do best. With help from Incorporating your Business for Dummies or some such thing, they moved into a rented office space. I commuted to a well paying Customer Service job 45 minutes away and 4.5 years later we welcomed Jonny Awesome into the world at 9 lbs. 6 oz. Our Blue-eyed boy with the great one-liners.

Ah, snack time for the tots. I’ll be back on in two shakes of a lambs tail.

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.