If I could, would I?

At some point in this process, I was asked by my bishop if I could go back and make changes, would I? I answered him at the time that I would go back and change things, but not in the way he thought. I would have gone back four years ago and gone through this while the kids were younger.

I've thought about that a lot over the last few months. Tonight through some studying and meditation, if you want to call it that, I've come up with some different answers. There are times when I wish I could go back 11 years and make much, much different choices. But then I look at the 5 beautiful faces around my dinner table and know that I wouldn't do that. And if I could go back 4 years ago and stand my ground and do this when the kids were younger, I wouldn't have. I needed these 4 years to try. I had to know this is what was the best thing.

Tonight is a bad night. I really want my mom. I really want to just hand all this over to someone else and say "you feel it, I can't feel this anymore. It's too much."

Made me giggle

Carter was laying on my bed with me while I was on the computer. The following took place.

Ragu Commercial: "Who's getting more veggies in your house?"

Carter: "Me."

Mommy: "You? What?"

Carter: "I'm getting more veggies. Not the dog."

Mommy: "Huh?" I rewind the commercial to see a little kid feeding his veggies to the dog. I hear Carter say under his breath: "I wish the dog was getting more veggies."

My kids are AWESOME!!

We've had a good weekend, and I must say, we've been due for one! The kids didn't have school on Friday, but I did, so Doug took half a day off to spend with the kids which allowed me to attend my afternoon classes. Earlier in the week the kids had been begging me to build a fire and roast hotdogs because the weather has been so nice. However, it has snowed like crazy but the kids were insistent that we still do the fire. So while I was at school, the boys cleared off the deck so we could do the hotdog roast! Eric and his kids came over, and Chase and Garrett each invited a friend and we had our 6th child over, Mr. Brayden, so all in all I think we had like 11 kids total. We roasted hotdogs and drank kool-aide and listened to Garrett's friend, Braden Oler tell hilarious stories.

After it started to get a little dark, we took the kids to Orchard where there's a little hill by their track. We all went night sledding and had so much fun. The kids were hilarious, orchestrating "wrecks" and doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

On the way home, I had the car full of boys. I introduced them to "Chinese fire drills", not anywhere dangerous, and it was absolutely the funniest thing I've ever seen. All these crazy boys running around my car, giggling like crazy people. I loved it.

Saturday was spent doing chores. I've introduced a "check system." The kids earn a check every day for keeping their rooms clean. They can earn extra checks for doing extra chores, like helping with household chores or extra big chores like cleaning out the garage or things like that. At the end of the week, they're rewarded with a prize. It's been working fairly well. Of course, Chase is the most motivated because he's my pleaser. Mckenzie and Carter are pretty motivated because they want stuff. Ethan is somewhat motivated, but not really. And Garrett is completely oblivious. He just does what Chase tells him to do because they share a room. However, everyone at least got a check per day and were able to go to the store and buy something. They were pretty creative in what they bought. The boys are collecting Pokemon and Mckenzie is collecting Littlest Pet Shop. We had Carter's little friend with us who bought lots of gum and a soda... I apologize to his mother.

Today was our relaxing day, Mckenzie and Carter slept with me last night so we ended up just staying in bed this morning watching TV. I like to watch whatever the kids are watching so I know if it's appropriate or not. I've gotten a kick out of shows like Spongebob and a iCarley. They make me laugh out loud. I don't know if that's because I have a simple mind or because I'm exhausted 99.9% of the time. The scripts are actually pretty witty and quick. But I'm actually surprised at how many inappropriate shows are out there aimed at young kids. WOW! Anyway... the kids have been raving about this show called Big Time Rush and apparently the son of one of our ward members is in the cast. So I watched a couple episodes with the kids and it is actually pretty funny. Garrett can pretty much repeat the script verbatim, which is kinda funny. As a trade off, since I had to watch their shows, I made them watch one of my shows.... Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. We spent a good part of the day laughing our heads off.

I was reminded at how fun my kids are, how much we laugh together. The last few months have been so stressful that I've just been in survival mode. It's been nice to just hang out and relax and enjoy everything again.

"Looks like two pigs fightin under a blanket"

Ok girls.... Lycra and underwire. Seriously. Is it that hard to put it on when you're gonna be in public? I'm all for comfort, but there's a line, I'm not talking about the panty line.

I was raised by a woman who will not leave the house unless she is in full make up and dressed, including jewelry and matching shoes. I have been known to disappoint her by wearing sweats every now and then to the grocery store. I have also been known to not shower until after noon. I've even been known to NOT wear makeup all day. However, I am a well endowed woman and I draw the line at NOT wearing a bra in public.

Why am I ranting about this? Today I ran into two rather large older women who were swinging quite freely in oversized T-shirts and stretch pants. If they were wearing any kind of supportive undergarments, it was not visible to the casual passerby. It was a little disturbing, considering they had heavy footsteps and there was a little bit of jiggling involved. It was also a little chilly in the building and.... well, I'll just leave the result of that to your imagination.

The cost of supportive undergarments ranges from inexpensive to very expensive... but there is something to please all women, so there is just no reason to NOT slap a little lycra on the thighs and some underwire under the girls. And trust me, cheap T-shirts and stretch pants DO NOT cover up anything!!!

I hate to sound judgmental, but I'm a little scarred. One word ladies. SPANX!!

Ewwwww & an almost FREAK OUT!

A few weeks ago I bought Ethan a couple pairs of shoes from Shoe Carnival. They were having a sale and they have the kind of shoes that Ethan loves. The brand is Zoo New York and the shoes come with these key rings that Ethan also loves. I do not love them....

So, I'm doing laundry tonight and go to check the dryer and out pops these key rings. They scare the crap out of me because guess what the key rings are..... cockroaches. Big, fat, ugly cockroaches on a key ring. And out popped 4 of them. Ethan had left them in his pants and they'd fallen out. Ick, Ick, ICK!!! I'm usually ok with icky stuff because, well, I have 4 boys and we are abundant in the icky stuff in our house. But I'm not ok with bugs and big, fat, ugly cockroaches are in that category.

What made my boys roll around on the floor with laughter was that after I'd found them and jumped and squealed, I was pulling clothes out of the dryer and I stuck my head in to get the clothes stuck in the back of the drum and there was one stuck at the top of the dryer, just hanging there. It scared me too death and I squealed again.

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

My New Favorite

This may sound silly, but I've already bared my deepest feelings on here, so what's one more deep, dark secret? This past weekend, I finally saw Avatar with Eric and his son. My boys went to see it with their grandpa while Mckenzie and I went to see Princess and the Frog with my mom. I've kinda wanted to see Avatar, but it hasn't been at the top of my list.

However, I was completely blown away. Not just by James Cameron's obvious genius, because let's face it, the man is a cinema god. But I was completely touched by the story. It was sort of predictable. This marine who is basically performing espionage on this indigenous people falls in love with them and wants to save them, but I was more touched by the background story of this native people who are spiritually connected to the earth and to each other. It was very inspiring. I absolutely loved it. There were so many different underlying themes and stories to learn from. For anyone who hasn't seen it, I totally recommend it!

My Own Blindside

The last two days have been probably among the most heart-wrenching I've had to deal with so far. I don't know quite how to begin explaining it, so we'll start with the tantrum to end all tantrums.

Yesterday, Doug took the kids overnight so I could have some time to study for my sociology midterm. I'd been making cakes all day and didn't really have a chance to study in depth. When the kids came home from school, we were decorating cakes and Doug came by to help. As kids were finishing up, he asked them to pick out clothes and PJ's to pack for his house. The kids all obliged except for Carter who had a tremendous meltdown. At first he said he didn't know what to pick out and Doug told him to just get pants and a shirt, like always. He came into the kitchen, furious and told me that his dad wouldn't help him. I told him that wasn't true and if he needed help, I would help him after I finished helping Ethan. Carter then got completely unreasonable saying that when he asks for help, no one helps him and stormed off into his room and proceeded to have a crazy, stormy tantrum.

I was busy helping the other boys and left Carter in his room, passing the tantrum off as just a fit he was throwing because he was tired. He often gets belligerent when he's tired. He eventually calmed down a little and came downstairs. He wasn't totally calm, he was still crying and refusing to get his clothes for his dad. I asked him what was really wrong and he said that everyone was making him mad. I asked him how I was making him mad and he said that I was making him go to his dad's and he didn't want to.

This is not a normal response for Carter. He loves to go to his dad's house. I assumed he didn't want to go because it wasn't a normally planned day to go and he doesn't do well with schedule changes, and I hadn't had time to explain to him why he was going.

Then he said "If I go to dad's I can't see you and if I stay here, I can't see Dad." Doug and I were a little stunned and tried to fumble around for something comforting to say. I offered to let him stay home with me, but that seemed to make him even more upset and he stormed off to his room again.

I followed him to his room and laid down on his bed with him. He didn't want to talk to me at first but finally started to open up after I tickled his back for awhile. He started talking about how he wanted to sleep in his own bed, and wanted his dad to live with us, and how he missed me when he was at his dad's. Doug came in while Carter was talking and all we could do was say we were sorry for our circumstances and that we both still love Carter so much and we're doing the best we can.

Doug promised to bring Carter over in the morning before school so he could see me and I promised to check him out of school so he could spend time with just me. Carter perked up enough to make it to the Blue and Gold Banquet. Doug said Carter fell asleep on the way to his house and everything seemed to be fine this morning when he came to see me.

Today I took Carter to McDonald's for lunch. He asked if his dad could join us, so we picked up Doug on our way. We had a pretty good time, talking about math and stealing each other's fries. After we dropped off Doug and we were on our way to take Carter back to school, I felt like I needed to remind him that it's ok to be mad or sad about the divorce and that if he needed to talk to us that he could. Then we had the following conversation:

Mommy: "It's not your fault that we're divorced."

Carter: "It's not?" (and he starts to cry and then I start to cry....)

Mommy: "No Baby, it's not. Do you know why Daddy and I are divorced?"

Carter: "No."

Mommy: "We just fought too much and we thought it would be best for everyone if we lived apart so we didn't fight as much. It's not because of you or your brothers or sister."

Carter: "You fight about me."

Mommy: "We don't mean to fight about you. What we're really fighting about is stuff like money and schedules and stupid grown-up stuff but we're not fighting because you make us mad."

Carter: "Ok."

I think at that point in time, my already very broken heart broke into a million pieces. My beautiful 6 year old baby boy has been carrying around the burden that this is his fault. I'm his mother. I'm supposed to fix the pain, not cause it. I'm supposed to soothe it and take it away, not be the source.

When we got back to the school, I asked him if he knew who the most important person in the world was. He said: "Me. And Garrett and Chase and Ethan and Mckenzie too, I guess. I know that, Mom."

At least he knows that. But it's little comfort at this point. Of all the casualties and fatalities of this divorce, I was not prepared for this. I thought Doug and I were making our best effort to help the kids feel secure. I just wasn't prepared for the blindside and the ensuing agony. Last night, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Carter's precious face as I laid beside him on his bed. His big eyes looking at me as he told me why he was mad and begging me to fix it. I wish I could fix it the way he wants it. I'm so sorry for these circumstances and making my children victims of this mess.