Smell that?

Just my husband and I. My husband is fixing the dishwasher and has all the dirty water in the trap, in a piece of connected pipe to the sink. He fixes it. I just got all ready to go out, but before I leave I decide I'll help put all of the stuff under the sink. So I make my way under the sink, under my husband. Then I feel it. Something wet. Silence. "Do you smell that? You might want to go take a shower". No funny then. But I laugh about it now. I love my husband!

Being A Mother

Eleven years ago I had my first child. Man it makes me sound old when I say it like that. It seems just yesterday I was bringing her home from the hospital. I was pondering this the other day. How different it was then compared to now with my new little one. Not just the obvious things like how much younger I was then. Man, my body bounced back a lot easier back then. But mostly friendships and where I was in my life. Eleven years ago being a new mom, home all day with a baby, was, well, rather lonely and boring. I remember one time being on the computer and feeling guilty that I wasn't down on the floor playing with my beautiful baby, who would just lay there most of the time. I was very lonely. I desperately wanted friends and to go places. I did have friends, but non that I would really do anything with. I met my best friend Brittany two years later, and she would always comment how I would want to go places all of the time. I did. Want to go places all of the time. I would do anything to get out of the house. But I didn't really have any friends to go anywhere with. It wasn't until I had my second child that I really had friends to go anywhere with. And did we ever go places.  My house rarely got clean. But it wasn't from the baby, obviously...it was from two adults. I can't believe I'm actually admitting this. But its the truth, and I know a lot of you out there can relate. Ok, back to my point. Flash forward eleven years. I have my fourth child, a boy. Five year gap between him and his brother. I have some awesome friends. No, I have amazing friends. When someone wants to do something I sort of cringe inside. I don't want to go anywhere. Is that bad? What's wrong with me? I used to be all about the parties, the outings, the dressing up. Now I'm about staying in my yoga pants, laying on the couch, and the thought of going out sounds exhausting! Does that happen to you? I don't feel lonely anymore. Is that because I have more friends? Or is it because I'm more comfortable with who I am? I'd love to hear what others have to say about this. My best friends used to tell me how I was up to doing things, and I was such a fun mom because I was always doing something and I was always so laid back. I'm not laid back. I don't know if I ever was. But I'm glad someone thought that. Maybe I should be more of that mom now, the one I was way back then. Maybe I was more fun. who knows? One thing I do know. One thing that I have come to learn over these past eleven years. Motherhood is the most wonderful job in the entire world! I'm not perfect. I have a TON of things that I need to improve on. I don't get everything right, and I surely don't have the perfect house or perfect children. But I love them more than anything in this entire world. I would do anything for them. Some times I think I'm on their side too much, well, according to my husband. I wouldn't trade my stressful, hectic life for anything in this world. Even though its a tough job, I would do it all over a million times again. Nothing is more rewarding than being a mother. I'm learning as I go, but man, what a ride!

Once in a Lifetime

My daughter LOVES to read. She reads about everything. She is really into the Heros of Olympus series and couldn't wait for the final book to come out. Turns out the author was doing a book signing in Austin (3 hrs from us) on Oct 13 and the kids didn't have school that day. She begged me to take her. To be honest, the thought of driving 3 hrs with 4 kids, one of which is 6 months old, did not sound fun AT ALL!! But, being the great mother I am, I did. Her grandmother actually bought her the ticket and also bought herself one so she could take her. The day before my husband got sick with a little stomach bug and so he took the monday off. Guess what that meant? Yep, gotta leave 2/4 kids home. YAY! (I do love them, I just didn't want to drive all that way with them. alone. ) . We arrived to find a nice large line forming so we stood in line until my mother in law arrived and then I went off to shop with my little man for 2 hrs.
When I picked her she couldn't stop talking about how awesome it was. She got a tshirt (which she wore the next day to school, and also that friday) and she got her book. She enjoyed having a one-on-one experience with her grandmother. So, even thought I was pretty much the taxi driver, I was glad to be able to let her have this once in a lifetime experience.

PS. I just pray she remembers I did this for her when she gets older :)

Garth Brooks

I was listening to my awesome Garth Brooks station on Pandora this morning and the song "Unanswered Prayers" came on . I started thinking, this is a great song! Not just because I like Garth Brooks but because of what its saying. "Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers". We really should do this more often. I should do this more often. There are times in our lives where we pray for something, sometimes praying very hard, and we just can't understand why its not coming. We are absolutely sure that we need that one thing, or that one blessing. When in reality God knows us better. He really is the only one who knows what we "need". So the next time you're frustrated that God hasn't answered your prayer, try and remember he knows you best and maybe, just maybe, there's something better around the corner.

                                                      "Unanswered Prayers"

Just the other night at a hometown football game
My wife and I ran into my old high school flame
And as I introduced them the past came back to me
And I couldn't help but think of the way things used to be

She was the one that I'd wanted for all times
And each night I'd spend prayin' that God would make her mine
And if he'd only grant me this wish I wished back then
I'd never ask for anything again

Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you're talkin' to the man upstairs
That just because he doesn't answer doesn't mean he don't care
Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

She wasn't quite the angel that I remembered in my dreams
And I could tell that time had changed me
In her eyes too it seemed
We tried to talk about the old days
There wasn't much we could recall
I guess the Lord knows what he's doin' after all

And as she walked away and I looked at my wife
And then and there I thanked the good Lord
For the gifts in my life

Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you're talkin' to the man upstairs
That just because he may not answer doesn't mean he don't care
Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered

Some of God's greatest gifts are all too often unanswered...
Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

Do You Really Want to Hire Me?

My husband wrote this for a job he was applying for back in 2007. I thought it was brilliant. And yes, it's all true. 

Do You Really Want to Hire Me? 

 If you already have someone who knows how to skin a possum in the office, you may not want another. If you already have someone in the office who knows the reasons not to skin a cotton mouth, you definitely won’t want another (and you probably wish you didn’t have the first). I fear that my personal biography will either sound like a b-movie or a book in Oprah’s Book club. I will give you as many facts and lessons from my life that I can and only hope that they won’t scare you away.

            I was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, for which I have always been grateful for because it’s easy to remember. I am the younger oldest in a family of 7 kids. I call myself the younger oldest because I have an older sister but she always made me do the hard jobs like look to see if the coyotes were getting close at night.  I am the son of a dreamer and an optimist. My mother claims to be a bit more practical but we know she’s enjoyed the ride. When I was about six years old my father’s job with an oil company fell through. My father took the money that he had saved up and put some down on 40 acres of land in remote Oklahoma. He had dreams of turning it into a gravel pit company or make adobe bricks or other endless varieties of business ventures. The whole family moved into a camping trailer for about a year while we tried to build a home with what limited income my father could gain from scrapping old metal pipelines that ran through the property and other odd jobs. I was never happier than when I was running around those acres. We had no running water and no real plumbing. We got electricity after a year and a half but before that nothing. My father was always happy so we were always happy. We would run all over the place discovering abandoned brick yards and heavy equipment, running from snakes and playing in the lake. We built a hot tub one winter out of a horse trough and piece of plywood with a fire underneath. It was great until it got too hot. We knew we didn’t have anything but when we were at home it didn’t matter.

            My father did eventually understand that he had to go back to school in order to really support the family. My Mom might have done some pressuring on that subject but I was out in the woods so I don’t really know, but I know how fast a copper head can run.  He started back at the local community college and then eventually the family moved to another property in the middle of nowhere near Oklahoma State University. Here we moved into a house that was 50% completed, which means it had exterior walls plumbing and electricity but no interior walls. This was an upgrade of sorts. My bedroom was in the basement which constantly leaked water. I probably had an average of about 2 inches of water on my floor for the 4 years we lived there. You could get a real shock from getting to close to the clothes dryer. Here again we had the run of the surrounding countryside and wheat fields. Here was where I learned how to skin a possum and perfected my snake skinning. I also started learning to run. My neighbor had a bike but I didn’t. So, when we wanted to go to the river 3 miles away I would hold onto the side of the bike and run. It was a lot less painful then riding on the middle bar or trying to balance on the screw heads of the back tire.

 But I was in middle school now so it was starting to matter what clothes I wore. Being a nerd in a little school is hard. There is no where to run to. I played football up to my freshman year because that was what you did to be cool. I weighed only about 120 pounds my freshman year. The football pads alone probably weighed as much as I did.

 At the same time I marched in the schools band as a drummer during the half time shows. I would just march in my football pads. I am sure I looked strange on the field completely engrossed by football pads. I was given a pair of tri-toms to march with (three drums of different pitches). I still remember my exasperated music teacher telling me “I don’t care what you play, just do it in time”.

I won a local 5k fun run and got the nick name “steroid boy” but even a cool nickname doesn’t help when you’re lined up against a 300 pound one-eyed-Indian in tackling drills. That was the last year I played football. I did get a varsity letter but that was only because there was 18 people on the football team and I was the varsity bench warmer.

  I started running track in middle and high school and they gave me a much needed ego boost. The school had no track to practice on so I trained on a dirt path behind the school. This was a little difficult because the football player also ran on this track and it seemed to get smaller everyday, and if you lapped them they might throw you in a ditch. I had one great coach at that school. He was getting pretty old and was using a cane to walk. He was once a great mile runner. He was the first teacher to ever tell me that I was good at something. He gave me the best athlete award for track season and declared in front of the small auditorium full of parents that I would be going to state some day if I worked hard. I always wished I had the chance to learn from him for than just that year.

I got lucky in high school, we moved to south Texas. I learned the true meaning of humidity and learned to live with giant cockroaches. My father had graduated from college and got a real job working for a large corporation. I got a chance to start over at a new high school. This high school was the polar opposite of my little high school in Oklahoma. My first day at school I saw a gang jump a car in the parking lot of the school. They smashed all the windows and pulled the driver and riders out through the broken windows. At my lasts school there was only one black kid, Scooter, he was a friend of mine. These guys were nothing like Scooter. The school was about 1/3 white, 1/3 black and 1/3 Hispanic and all crazy. The school band was more like a military organization. They were very strict, very tough, and very tight nit. Within the band hall walls there was safety. I don’t know why but I loved this school. It was a bit of a culture shock but the school was fun and accepting.

I became the captain of the schools track team my first year there. Our coach was an old basketball coach who had never run or coached track. The school didn’t want to fire him so they moved him into the neglected track and field department. We loved him but I coached the team. I took what I had learned on the dirt track and running by myself, plus a few books and questions of other schools coaches, and I gave out training assignments and coached the team. We were a tight nit group of friends. We ran together and talked together and looked out for each other. Our school had such a bad reputation as we ran through town on our daily runs people would roll up their car windows if they saw the school name on our shirt. I never made it to state. My senior year I had a tooth ache that somehow got into my blood stream and landed in my hip. They called it a septic hip. It first appeared the morning of district finals for cross country. I was unable to run because of the pain. It took the doctors about 2 painful months to discover what was wrong. I did not walk properly for about 3 months. I came out of surgery weighing about 110 pounds in November and with only scant muscle left on my right leg. I was able to walk on my own by about the end of December. I regained a lot of muscle and worked very hard to prepare for the up coming track season in April. At the end of track season I was back to setting personal best times. I was the fastest at our school and of the nearby schools but I never made it to state. I do not regret this except I would have loved to prove my Oklahoma coach right.

I graduated Cum Laude from that high School by showing up sober in class everyday. I was not the best student. I learned how to make friends with a diversity of people at that school. I did excel as a drummer at this school and became school Peer Leader.

After High school I attended Oklahoma State University for a semester before returning home to work full time to earn money to serve a volunteer mission. I spent 2 years in Brazil, learned Portuguese and served the people. It was like being back in the woods of Oklahoma again, I didn’t have much but I was having fun.

From this point on my life is pretty normal I worked as a P.E. teacher to the mentally handicapped before moving to Provo to attend BYU. I started BYU in the summer of 2000. I got married in December of 2000 and I now have 2 kids. I have had to take night school courses and work full time throughout my college career. I have worked as a Pawn Broker, Framer, Noodle Slinger, Cancellations Manager, Mold Remediation Technician, and I owned my own home improvement business.

Some things that I have learned from my life is the value of a good education. I have sacrificed much in order to gain the education that I have. My life goals include more education. At some prompting by my father I began to look into the field of law. I participated in some debates in classes and learned that I excelled at them and that I really enjoyed a good intellectual debate. I am not a fan of arguing nor do I like to argue. But I do enjoy organizing, researching and presenting a good sound argument. I am currently preparing to take the LSAT in hopes of gaining admittance to a law school. My life goal is to lead an interesting life, but with plumbing this time.

I hope I haven’t scared you away. I take great pride in my unique childhood. I know that a lot of what I wrote was really about my father’s life but you must understand that I am my father’s son. I own an old house that is constantly under repair and remodel and I wouldn’t have it another way. I have drawn up countless plans for major renovations that I know I can never do, and I would love to own a gravel pit in rural Oklahoma, but my wife won’t let me.

P.S. The reason you can’t skin a cotton mouth is because they stink. I mean they really smell bad. It’s been almost 20 years and I can still smell it. Please don’t try it! 

Mothers

Perception

As I walked into my laundry room today something hit me. I looked down at the pile of clean laundry overflowing the basket and all of the stuff piled on top of the counter top in it's rightful convenient place. The floor was full of dirt from the dog and kids running in and out of the back door. There was dirt on the walls from grubby little hands bracing themselves as they put on their shoes. The shoe basket was overflowing with shoes and you had to step on the ones that had "fallen" out of the basket. You could see into the bathroom, which I'm sure the seat was up and it hadn't been flushed. There's a spot of paint that has been pealed off of the wall in there thanks to my nine year old. The white cabinets have dirt marks on them from my six year old using them as step to wash his hands. What perception do I give people when they come over? I'm sure you can guess my answer. I'm sure most of you are the same. There's no way my laundry room would look that way if I knew someone was coming over. I would take the laundry upstairs and throw it on my bed, or onto the sofa that already has piles of laundry on it. Mostly folded but sitting there non-the-less calling my name. I would take the piles of "stuff" to the garage, because most likely that's where it belongs. I would sweep and mop the floor and wipe down the walls. I would put the shoes back in the basket and push the basket under the shelf. I'd paint that spot where the paint is missing and wipe the dirt from the cabinet. I would put the seat down and oh yes, flush the toilet. So who am I kidding? My house is never clean. never. well, I shouldn't say never. Maybe for a beautiful second where I can sit down and enjoy it. Then the kids will come home and it will be begin again. This isn't just about the laundry room of course. That's just the room that triggered my thinking. All of my rooms are like this. All of them. Even the babies room. So am I really fooling anyone? Doesn't everyone know this? So am I just attempting to convince myself? Do I pick up my house before I have company? For sure. I was taught that it was the proper thing to do. But let's be real people. I have four kids, a husband a dog and a cat. There is laundry always to be done, dishes to wash, floors to clean and noses to wipe. I wouldn't have it any other way. One day, when my kids are grown and gone my house will be clean. I will miss their little hand smudges on the walls from where they brace themselves to put on their shoes. I will be miss their little voices as they laugh and play outside, running in time to time to "get something" or to tell me something funny or weird. I will miss the little shoes covering the floor. I have to remind myself of that. Because if I don't I will go crazy trying to give people the perception that my house is always clean.