directions to where I am

Start in Salt Lake City on the very day that Nixon proclaims to the world, "I am not a crook." Have an older brother who keeps waiting for you to go back where you came from. Be adored by your Grandpa and have him set aside special gifts just for you. Find yourself the princess of quite a lot until that red-headed brother is born and steals your thunder. Love him in spite of this. Be immersed through your Mama in classic broadway shows such as "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and "Cats". Learn at an early age that you cannot sing. Sing anyway. Be the only girl in a family of four boys. Realize you can run just as fast as the boys can. Embrace your tomboyishness.

Go to kindergarten proudly with a plaid lobster on the front of your jumper. Love your bearded kindergarten teacher who makes his own banjos and guitars. Laugh a lot. Talk so much that they stick you in a special class to help less "social" kids acclimate. Fly from the swings on the playground into salty, coarse gravel. Feel the freeing wind in your hair as you run. Fall off a skateboard and scratch up your face. Run through the sprinklers in your front yard. Try not to cry when your dad goes hunting and comes home with a deer. Go camping with your family at Trial Lake. Be given a box of chocolates in fourth grade by a boy. Have sleepovers with girlfriends and spend hours whispering and giggling. Grow tall early on, and find (to your dismay), that you are taller than all the boys most of your life.

Fall down while roller skating and severely break your arm. Have the first of six surgeries on this arm. Discover how grueling physical pain can be. Spend hours climbing the tree in your Grandma's front yard, collecting the "witch nose" pods that grow there. Pick fresh vegetables from her garden and listen to her Jazz Singer record over and over. Cry the first time you hear this record after your Grandpa dies. Sleep over at the cabin with all your cousins. Dance your heart out to the Footloose soundtrack. Savor the juicy sweetness of ripe peaches. Eat hamburgers at Hires. Go home and cry when boys begin flipping back bra straps and you are caught without one. Feel very womanly the next day when you arrive at school wearing your first bra. Be a little disappointed that no one ever tries to flip yours again. Never really make peace with your many freckles. Discover your love of literature.

Go through the awful stage where your body gets ahead of the rest of you. Be called ugly and fat by mean boys, and believe it for many years. Stuff your bra. Kiss a few very awkward boys. Fight with your parents. A LOT. Slam doors. Cry more than you want to. Pour your feelings into a journal. Feel so unsure of yourself that you wonder how you'll survive. Get on an airplane for the first time right after high school. Go to Chicago and win nationals in FHA. Go to college. Like a lot of boys. Learn to begin liking yourself. Send several boys off on missions, proclaiming your devoted and undying love for each one. Live with six girls and be glad you never had any sisters. Discover that you are a runner.

Meet a smart, cute gymnast quite by accident. Date him for only six weeks before getting engaged. Find that no one around you is shocked or even surprised at the shortness of time - because it just feels so right. Marry this man early one morning, surrounded by all your friends and family. Decide you are finally old enough to no longer pretend to like roller coasters. Move for the first time in your life to Minneapolis so your husband can attend graduate school. Make new friends.

Wonder if it will ever be your turn to be a mother, and blink your eyes to find that you are one. Cherish your babies, each in their turn. Sing each one to sleep with show tunes and John Denver songs. Make chocolate chip cookies and lots of peanut butter sandwiches. Kiss them every night before you go to bed. Wish it wasn't going so fast.

Move from Minneapolis to Seattle to Boston to San Diego. Be thankful for good friends all over the country. Be preparing to move to Missouri for the man you love. Look around and realize that you lead a charmed life. Spend as many days as you can at the beach. Re-learn the painful lesson of what happens when you don't wear sunscreen. Relish the sound of your kids playing so well with each other. Know that you are loved. Take a sip of diet coke. Over the phone, tell your husband just how great your day was. Miss him a lot. Blog. Write this. Wait anxiously to read other posts like this one. You're here.

This post was inspired by my friend, Annie, and her own life roadmap. I was fortunate enough to meet Annie while we lived in Boston, and my life has been richer ever since. Now it's your turn - how do we get to you?

There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's aloe vera

Admission for four to Sea World: Free, thanks to our annual pass (well, I guess not free, but free today, you know...)

Refilling our Sea World cups inside the park: $1.50

Two plastic swords for the begging little boys: $6

One pink dolphin necklace for a cheeky princess: $5

Walking around all day dripping wet as Shamu's salt water slowly erodes my sunburned skin down to the bone?

Priceless (and totally my own fault).

Wanted: Lost Brain Cells

Do you ever have days where you wake up and swear you felt dumber when you got out of bed? [Sadly for me, I have more than my share of those days.]

I woke up this morning and made pancakes for the kids. Got busy unloading the dishwasher and burned the first batch. And not just crisp mind you, but burned so badly that the poor little pancake CSI unit would need dental records to even identify them as former pancakes. I was not at all paying attention - totally forgot what I was doing. Which I never do. [At least not when it comes to warm, delicious hot things first thing in the morning.]

Then I went to exercise. Due to my inability to stay on top of my Netflix queue, the only movie I had to watch while running was "Little Man." Anyone seen this Wayans Brothers movie? I'm sure at some point in time I thought it might be good for a laugh. I'll tell you right now that, no, it isn't. I'm pretty sure I heard brain cells jumping off my shoulders as though my head was the Titanic and they wanted a fighting chance. Can't say as I blame them.

Next came our errands. My cell phone had been charging all last night, and I forgot to stick it in my purse before we left the house. Which led me to miss the phone call from our floor contractor telling us they found "water" when they were removing the kitchen floor in the new house. When I tried to call him back to find out just what he meant by "water," he was already gone for the day. Was it standing water? Water damage? Ruined-new-house kind of water? I could just tell that the brain cells weren't even wearing life vests this time - they were committing suicide in droves.

And the icing on the cake came this afternoon when I took the kids swimming at the pool. We had the pool to ourselves (bonus to living in a condo complex where hardly anyone has kids) and it was such a lovely day. My usual post at the pool? Sitting in the shade with a magazine. Today? Swimming all day like a fish. It was fantastic except for one, teensy, minor detail. Sunscreen.

Sunscreen on the children? Oh, umpteen times. Sunscreen on me? Nada. Yes, sadly, I had multiple chances to apply some and did not. I don't know what I was thinking. I always wear sunscreen. I am a fanatic about EVERYONE wearing sunscreen. Today I was out in the sun for about four hours without a stitch of UVA/UVB protection. And I'm paying for it tonight.

So I sit here shivering, blisters already forming on my red skin and wondering what happened to my brain today. Wondering futilely if the manager up there will hurry and put a light on - in case some of those lost cells try to make it back home. I really need them. Me no likey being so dum. Me like to be suhmart. Help!

Aunts, Uncles, and Kids, Oh My!

One successful Mud Run.
Two trips to the beach (still not enough).
Three tired and happy kids.
Four aunts and uncles to play with.
Five grown-ups in all.
Six rounds of Polly Pockets for Marta and Hannah.
Seven songs from our own Neil Diamond impersonator (always never enough).
Eight seats filled with sand in the car.
Nine games of Mannequin (oh yes, Josh, the game lives on).
What we'd give our weekend? A perfect Ten. It was so much fun and we wish you were still here. Missing you already and hoping for a safe drive home.

[P.S. Hit refresh on your browser if the slideshow doesn't show up - still trying to figure out what I'm doing!]

A home for his birthday

As of nine o'clock central time this morning, my husband is no longer homeless. I have made fun of him nonstop due to his homeless state. He's been frugally bunking it up in some not-so-nice hotels for the last two months - loading everything he owns into his car, then heading to the airport for his weekend trips here. And two weeks from today, the kids and I will join him in our new home. Here's one more look at our house (because now it seems real to me and I'm getting so excited):

We've got some remodeling that begins on Monday (starting with the replacement of all the floors on the entire main level). Once we get everything done, I will post some before and after shots. You will be impressed, trust me.

So happy birthday, baby. No more standing on a street corner with a cardboard sign for you. You now have a place to leave all your junk (at least until I get there and hide it away). See you soon.

Definitive proof that he shares my genetics

We've got some guests coming to visit tomorrow. Josh's brother Pete (and his wife Anna), and Josh's sister, Marta (and her husband Dan), are coming down to compete in the Camp Pendelton 10K Mud Run. We are all extremely excited about this as, frankly, it gives us something fun to do. Josh will be closing on the house in St. Louis this Friday, and will stay the weekend there to ready it up for the remodeling that begins on Monday. Since it is way too early to get packing, it's nice for me to have some company. Plus, we just adore P&A and M&D. And what better excuse to make some "Peterskeevers" and spend a few days at the beach?

Now, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I am a slightly neurotic, mildly OCD (okay, CRAZY) clean freak. My disease becomes especially symptomatic when I have guests coming. I like to present a clean house. One with dusted baseboards. And wiped-down ceiling fans. And organized closets. And tile grout scrubbed with a toothbrush - you know, what any normal, sane person would do for fun on a weekday. Chase was all excited to help me clean - which I figured would translate into him either watching me clean or spraying an entire bottle of 409 into the toilet. Being the nice mother that I am, I let him help.

With some surprisingly decent help on his part, Chase and I got the kids' bathroom done (which will be the guest bathroom this weekend). I mentioned in passing that maybe the kids should use my bathroom from now on as theirs was now clean (and I did not want to have to clean it again tomorrow). Chase took my warning VERY seriously and intended for others to do the same.

I came down the hall a few minutes later to find the bathroom blocked off with yellow police tape, warning all trespassers that it was for "imarginsy" use only.

Seeing his eagerness to safeguard his hard work, I now feel confident that I did indeed get the right baby at the hospital seven-and-a-half years ago. He is so much like me.

Hannah, though, made sure to promptly sneak in and use the facilities, despite the obvious warning.

Which provides conclusive proof to me that she truly IS Josh's daughter. (And not the mailman's like we thought.)