These are all quotes about being a boy mom that anyone raising a boy, or two, or seven, will enjoy. I created fun pictures for some of them too so you can save them on Pinterest. I tend to save more funny quotes than I do helpful articles. Ha!

Or I save the helpful content on Pinterest, but I do not actually ever get around to doing them… So these are just for fun and encouragement.

#1. Mark Twain and his struggling mother….I guarantee you he was right, and she enjoyed it very much. I know I adore raising these children, no matter how hard it is.

#2. No one is as indestructible as a boy in a Batman costume.

Who knew Plato had jokes?

#3. This one sounds exactly like my life and is from a fellow mom blogger:

You’re going to miss this someday – I whisper to myself as I’m shot in the butt with a Nerf Gun while unclogging the toilet.”

~Lauren @https://simply-well-balanced.com

#4. Princess Diana:

#5. I actually said this one, and I stand by this statement:

But “somewhat?” No. I feel seriously accomplished!

#6. Embrace the messy. This one came from a blogger friend named Julie, who actually has five sons.

#7. I get to focus all of my fashion efforts on my OWN wardrobe

You can read more about the benefits of boy momhood here.

#8. Okay. THIS one from Kenny Rogers is one of my ALL time favorites, and it sums up most of my problems from the past seventeen years. Ha!

#9. I found my son skateboarding on the trampoline, and I feel like that sums up how dangerous raising boys actually is.

#10. Pure wisdom from Proverbs:

#11. This next one!!! I mean because it is like shoveling snow in a blizzard sometimes, especially when they are little.

#12. “Raising boys is a lot like raising lion cubs.”

I said that when I took all of them out in public together one time when they were all little.

This was the whole story:

The manager gave us a tour (of a rec center). Of course, the boys couldn’t keep their hands off each other, not in a mean way. It’s just that boys are very physical.  Raising boys is a lot like raising lion cubs.  At one point, all three hunched over JD, making googly faces at him. They were all smiling, and JD was whacking them in the face, just as happy as he could be. They loved it!

Don’t worry. I don’t condone toddlers smacking people in their faces…

#13. The sand, the kids running in opposite directions, the exhaustion, the safety concerns, I will never forget, one does not simply take four little boys to the beach by yourself.

#14. I left him alone for five minutes to run upstairs and grab something. When I came back downstairs, he was covered in chocolate and was laying upside down, asleep, half on the floor, feet in his chair.

That carpet never stood a chance.

#15. This one is so sweet, and it is the truest of true boy mom quotes. They will be heroes in our eyes!

“You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes.” – Wally Schirra

#16. Amen to this:

“I used to give my friends who have kids advice all the time, and they would look at me like I had three heads. And then, when I had two, I literally apologized to all my friends.”

-Jennifer Lopez

#17. I found this quote on Pinterest from another present day writer. It is such a good reminder!!

“The only part of their childhood that lasts forever are the memories, so we better not be too busy to make them.” –Casey Huff in this post at Her View from Home

#18. Being a boy mom is all about wrestling, cookies, video games, and endless energy. The endless energy is theirs. You will gradually have less and less.

#19. You have boys. Congratulations! Your toilet will never be clean again.

#20. I will end on this one because it sums up my life from 2005-2013, when I was having one baby boy after another. My oldest son, around age seven, actually said to me, “Wait. If we go inside, we have to stand still and be quiet? Oh, I can’t go then. I am not made to stand still.”

“If it requires my child to sit still and be quiet, I can’t come.” -Unknown

This was also how we picked churches in the earlier years. No nursery for church service? Then we will have to attend a different church. Sanity matters, y’all.

I hope you enjoyed these boy mom quotes.

There is nothing that has brought more joy to my adulthood than being a boy mom to my sons. Now listen, I would also have LOVED to have daughters. I tried to do so, in fact. So please don’t troll me about that because I wanted a daughter very badly. Who knows? Maybe someday God will still give me one.

But I would not trade a single boy in this house for any daughters, puppies, or quiet time. Raising these boys is the greatest blessing we have ever had, and I know you feel the say way about your own, both daughters and sons.

“Praise the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.”

Psalm 106:1

The post 20 Boy Mom Quotes That Will Make You Smile appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Welcome to 2021, my friends!

For my first blog entry of 2021, I thought I’d share a funny story that is sort of at my own expense. I’ve found it’s best to stick to that sort of tale to avoid angry phone calls or emails… Haha!

Sometimes I can be a little oblivious to my surroundings. It is true. This is how my brain works. I am that rare woman who finds it necessary to focus on only one thing at a time. Sometimes this leads to an extreme form of tunnel vision.

Yesterday my mission was this: Operation Unpack All My Suitcases

All four boys had already full unpacked because they had to do so before they could go play.

Alan was also completely unpacked because he is Alan. He hates to pack and waits until five minutes before time to go to do so, but when UNpacking, he is the speediest.

Me, I can do some serious unpacking procrastination, but not this time. It was day one from the road trip, and I was all in. I had three suitcases to unpack: my clothes suitcase, my extra stuff suitcase, and the Christmas present suitcase. All were packed to bursting with Christmas galore.

The first suitcase was the present suitcase, and I was halfway through it.

I came to the stack of Christmas stockings. Each one had a few things left in the bottoms. In dismay, I realized that our youngest two boys had about 100 tiny Nerd candies in the bottom of theirs, no longer in any kind of box. There was not even a box in the stocking. Just loose Nerds–who does that!?

Being the thrifty, non germ-phobe that I am, I decided to pour these Nerds into a sandwich bag. Why waste good candy?

As I was doing the pouring, about three or four individual tiny Nerds escaped onto the carpet. Drat.

I decided the floor must be vacuumed promptly so that these candies didn’t end up smooshed in the carpet, eventually turning into brightly colored stains. So like any good, logical housekeeper, I trudged downstairs and retrieved our vacuum cleaner from the coat closet.

The Kirby

Our vacuum is a heavy eleven-year-old upright Kirby. It still has excellent suction, but it has caused me several different problems in recent months:

1.) It weighs so much it is hard to lug up and down the stairs. With six people at home 24/7 this year, this is a significant issue.

2.) The Neutral/Drive switch jammed. Alan took apart the vaccum and fixed it for me.

3.) But then the on and off switch actually broke. It can no longer be turned off. You have to unplug it to turn it off.

4.) Did I mention it is heavy? Also it smells like dirt, so I have to spray the carpet with essential oils each time I use it.

I just don’t love my vacuum anymore, obviously, but it does still work.

Ignored Warning Signs….

I noticed that in front of the vacuum there were big dirt smudges. See, I’m not always totally unobservant. I shrugged it off and hauled Kirby on up the stairs.

Usually, I stop to check and see if the bag is full before I start vacuuming, but I wanted to get back to unpacking my suitcase, so I decided to skip it. Mentally, I criticized myself even then for skipping this step, but I forged on nonetheless.

As soon as I turned it on, I noticed the air in the room seemed to be filling with dust. What in the world? This I also shrugged off and kept on going. It seemed like some dirt was just getting blown around and there was more dust than usual, but that served to only make me vacuum harder.

Once I finished vacuuming my room, I unplugged the vacuum, and shook my head at this monstrous machine. I was sneezing. This was ridiculous. The old thing needed to be replaced soon!

I got out my Flonase nose spray and then popped a Claritin. I didn’t know why the air was full of dust, but I did know I would end up sick if I did not manage my reaction to it.

John David was in his room across the hall. He called me in there, and that’s when I looked down at the hallway behind me!

OOPS!!

The entire hallway, which is thankfully hard wood floor and not carpet, was covered in hair, dirt, and dust bunnies. It was dirtier than the floor under an old sofa. “What in the world??? John David, look at what this old vacuum cleaner did. Man, what is wrong with this thing? It was blowing everything out from behind the whole time I was cleaning. Gross.”

Clean up from the clean up

So then I had to go downstairs and grab my Deebot. That is the robot vacuum I bought this fall. I love that thing, but it cannot handle thick carpet. It handles hard woods expertly though. I had to clean all my (constantly shedding) red hair out of the brushes, and then I set the Deebot to work on cleaning up the hallway and hall bathroom from the massive vacuum cleaner incident.

Now most people would stop and wonder why that dust explosion happened and stop to examine the offending vacuum cleaner.

But I am not most people. Ha!! This was my chance at a new machine, and even Alan would surely see that!

I hopped right online, researched the best bagless upright vacs of 2020, picked one, and ordered it, all in less than ten minutes. I may be oblivious, but I can be very decisive.

Next, I finished unpacking all three of my suitcases. Feeling all sorts of accomplished, I headed on downstairs, where I forgot all about the vacuum cleaner until I told Alan about it a few hours later.

We all sat down to eat dinner, and I literally brought a list of things to talk to Alan and the boys about. At the very top of the list was this story.

I did not get halfway through my story when Alan said, “There was no bag in the vacuum cleaner.”

“Huh???”

“It was not even zipped shut! You didn’t notice?”

Oh.

Well, that does explain the whole back blast thing.

I defended my purchase anyway. My new one will be lighter and easier to carry.

Later I came back upstairs and looked for myself. Sure enough, the vacuum bag compartment was wide open with no bag at all inside. I shook my head at myself. How did I never even notice? Why didn’t I even look?

So in conclusion, don’t ignore your conscience when it tells you not to take shortcuts, like skipping checking the bag.

And if you ever need to borrow a vacuum cleaner, I guess you should come see me because I now own several. haha! We will just call it my New Year’s present to myself.

We hope you all had a jolly Christmas. It has been a long time since our world was this ready for a NEW year. I hope your 2021 is off to a wonderful start.

The post How Three Tiny Nerd Candies Got Me a New Vacuum Cleaner appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Normally on this blog, I tend to visit new places and post photos of them. I also go house hunting every 1-3 years, since I am a military wife, that has been our lot. Since nowadays we, like everyone else in the world, stay home all the time, I thought I would give you a tour of my house instead, or at least the interesting parts of my house. I am officially not allowed to show you the boys’ rooms. Not everyone loves to share their life on the internet. Huh. Weird..

Now this will not be a tour of an envy worthy home full of hand crafted Good Housekeeping decor. No, no. I wish. This will be true photos of a house FULL of children who have been at home for over a month. It is like summer, but with long sleeves and school work. Messiness does abound, especially in the Easter basket aftermath.

Welcome to our lovely home. Notice how the blinds on the second floor do not match. That irritates me. It does, but I have been too cheap to shell out the few hundred dollars to fix it. Plus, I prefer white. And yet, I know that the dark window blocks more more morning light, and those particular windows do happen to belong to the youngest children in the house, you know, the ones who still like to rise early, so the dark blinds are quite functional.

I also have high hopes of changing those shutters to some shade of blue this year. They are faded, and also they are brown. Bleh, brown. Other than that, we just love this house. I mean who would not love this front porch?

Notice the new wood around the garden? Alan built that the very first week of quarantine.

He did an outstanding job. That looks like quite a project. I can’t tell you much more about it. Wood craft is far outside of my areas of expertise.

We have a lovely tulip tree that is almost finish blooming now. I have always loved these. We had one at our southern Alabama house too.

This large cherry blossom tree is just beginning to bloom which means it will be gorgeous this week. That brings me so much joy. I will have to take extra time to sit on my front porch and just look at that this week.

This is all very classic quarantine, don’t you think? An Amazon package is on the doorstep, and the entire porch is covered in chalk art. They do such lovely creative things when I make them get off of video games. The pictures shown here are Daniel’s.

I just realized I still have a winter welcome mat out. Oops. The thing is I do not own a regular one to replace it…

When you enter the house, you will find yet another Amazon package, and no, they are not essential items. Well, I mean, they are as essential as a cake keeper and a new game of Sorry can be.

The very first week of quarantine I went around the main floor of the house and stuck Bible verses everywhere. I figured we were all going to need these reminders.

In the office you will find book boxes. I had to make these for silent reading time. Now that spring break is ending, I need to switch out a few of the books again. I tried to put variety in each box.

Hobby time: I do not have more free time than usual. I actually have less free time than usual by far because of managing four different school routines each day, but I still squeeze in time for my newest hobby. My whole life–okay my whole teenage plus life– I have wanted to learn to play the piano. Now I am finally doing it. I am still only in the first beginner book, but I am making progress.

My kitchen table is a symbol of another quarantine problem. Doctors can only see you for emergency type problems, so I was turned away from getting a badly needed steroid shot for my plantar fasciitis/heel spur problem. It is so bad I cannot go on any walks at all, not even short ones. Even working around the house is difficult. So my mother-in-law told me about tart cherries. I did a little research, and this is a real thing. If you have an arthritis problem you cannot shake, try eating a large amount of tart cherries each day. It may take a while, but it is supposed to help.

In our living room, you will often see our little whippet mix standing at the door, waiting to come in or out. This dog seems to go in and out about 99 times per day. Sometimes it’s annoying. And oh yeah, electronics are everywhere. We are having a few days of spring break.

Baking galore! I am still going through my Mary Berry cookbook. These are coffee cakes I made from it. Next up is a Battenberg cake. I will be sure to take a photo of it to show you when I finish it.

I finally changed out the hallway flowers to spring flowers. Once Easter hit, I realized I had left out my winter things for far too long.

The dining room has been completely taken over by Lego projects and school supplies. That room is so bad it is downright embarrassing.

Here was the kitchen table all set up for Easter morning. My oldest son stayed up late and helped me fill eggs, and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed that. Fourteen is full of new milestones.

You can often find a little boy in the corner of the dining room because that is where the charger is. He likes to play Mario and Minecraft.

Our kitchen still has happy birthday signs up from our March birthdays. That just dawned on me yesterday. I guess I should take those down.. These two are celebrating that I was going to make sweet potato casserole. Sweet potatoes are rock stars at our house.

And in the living room, here are the boys in their natural element, the cushy LazyBoy recliner sofa. We love that thing. I have been a hero with the youngest this week because I helped him figure out how to “make things enchanted” in Minecraft. Then I helped them friend each other so they could play Minecraft together, in each other’s worlds. They have really had a ball.

See this? This is the boys’ end table. You have the toys, the books, the charging station, and the toy box overflowing. If you think that is bad, you do not want to see the dining room (aka craft table/Lego table/ school table). I will spare you that.

Sometimes the office looks like this. The children have taken over every single room in this house.

I could not be more thankful for this backyard. On the good weather days, we can all go outside and do so many things.

I hope you enjoyed the tour! My Facebook newsfeed is full of people making jokes about quarantine and how much they are over being stuck inside. There are even one or two conspiracy theorists, but I gotta tell you, I am enjoying the at home time. Everything is cancelled! That’s like a dream come true. Because we did not lose our income, this is fun to me. I do feel terrible for those who have lost their jobs, though. That is a totally different thing. For them, I will be happy when things begin to transition back to normal, and even happier when people have work again.

How is your quarantine going?

The post Quarantine Family Home Tour appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

There was this one particular Sunday, about two months ago, that I was sitting with our 6-year-old in church. John David was in rare form that day, just bursting at the seams with thoughts to speak and questions to ask, all during the sermon, of course. I actually sat in the pew and jotted down the hilarious things he said while it was fresh on my mind, for your reading enjoyment:

“Mom, in the past, did they have doctors?”

“Did they have wood?”

“Did they have metal?”

I briefly answered these questions, and then I handed him a stack of post-it notes and a pen.

He made a chain of the post-it notes and fashioned it into a sort of horn. Then he proceeded to make noise out of his created instrument. I quickly took that away, as well as the pen as he was making noise with it too.

John David then made a pair of binoculars out of the post-it notes, looked at me through them and whispered loudly, “How much longer?”

I gave him back the pen, hoping he would finally just draw.

By this point, he had attracted the attention of his oldest brother who began to give him strongly disapproving scowls every few minutes. Little brothers are so embarrassing.

J.D. was undaunted by the opinions of others. He went right back to work and wrote one thing on each sticky note and then stuck 5 or 6 of the notes to his arm rest.

Needless to say, once the service was over, I cleaned up our row of seats and left quite willingly without making eye contact with anyone who was sitting near us that day.

But I have to admit, I was a little amused.

The post Sitting in Church with My 6-year-old Talker appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I am definitely an alone-time hoarder. I am always hoarding, saving, and guarding alone time. This isn’t something I became because motherhood is exhausting either. This is simply who I always have been.

What do I mean by “alone time hoarder?”

An alone time hoarder is a person who jealously guards their alone time. They love and cherish being alone. In fact, they will go to ridiculous lengths to keep being alone.

An alone-time hoarder is an awkward name for a hermit or a loner, I guess, but not as extreme as a hermit. A hermit is a time-honored title for the town “weirdo” who lives by themselves and never socializes.

I hoard alone time. I crave it, protect it, seek it, and will beg, borrow, cheat, and steal to get more of it. It’s like how a drug addict must feel about drugs! That’s how I feel about sweet, sweet solitude.

For 13 years, all I got was nap time, and this year allll the boys went to school, and I must be making up for lost quiet.

Here’s how to know if you also are an alone time hoarder:

-You ignore almost all phone calls while the house is empty. Call people back once the house is already noisy again.

-You run home at every opportunity.

-Get a job?? Only if you can work from home….alone.

-As much as possible, you try to not be too early to events because you do not want to be the first person there and have to make awkward small talk with the other first people there. (Now this does not apply to friends. I’m talking about when you are with strangers or acquaintances in a new atmosphere.)

-Your favorite part of the day is when you are alone.

-Being bored is a concept you cannot even imagine. How could anyone ever be bored!!?? There is an endless amount of things you’d like to do at any given moment.

My best work is done best with no interruptions….which is about impossible, but I managed to pull off a victory with these pecan pies.

-You get waaaaay more work done when the house is quiet and no one is around than when other people are around. In fact, having a house full of folks is fun, but it makes your productivity shut down because you feel like you need to focus on the people.

-You are highly reluctant to sign up for new things that will take away from your precious alone time.

-You don’t get enough sleep because there are so many other things you want to do with those hours after everyone else goes to sleep!

-Anytime you are riding in the car, and the person you are with stops to run an errand or go in a store you say, “Can I please sit in the car while you go in?”

Can you relate? Okay, maybe it is an introvert list. Maybe this is even normal. I don’t know. What do you think?

We introverts/loners/alone time hoarders/shy people have to be careful though. The hitch is that humans need other humans. We are a social species. God created us that way.

I will isolate the heck out of myself, and then I’ll find myself out at a function, laughing my head off. Then I am always reminded, “Oh yeah, I DO love people.”

I have always been this way. When I was a child, I loved nothing more than to sit in my room and play Barbies. Once I tired of that, I’d read. I also loved zipping down the road on my bicycle. I adore being in my space, alone with my thoughts. Mom said if anyone wanted to talk to me, they always had to go looking for me first.

I LOVE being alone. Until all of a sudden I don’t.

It takes a large amount of seclusion before I finally reach that point, but then all of a sudden I HAVE to find companionship or at least get out of the house.

If we were always alone, we’d be miserable– even if we don’t think we would be–we would! And we’d miss important moments like this one. This is Daniel making face-down snow angels. Why face down? To be as close to the snow as humanly possible, I suppose.

The problem is I don’t realize I’ve let myself become isolated until I’ve pushed it too far, and I actually become sad. People who spend too much time isolated can become terribly depressed and eccentric.

I suppose there’s a fine line somewhere to be found. Where that line is exactly, I have no idea, but we each have to recognize it and get back out into the world. As much as I’d love to be at home cleaning, writing, and creating forever, without everyone else I think we eventually run out of inspiration and good sense!

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to change anytime soon. You should see this awesome La-z-boy reclining sofa we got. I could sit here and blog for days, well, you know, at least until I start to get sofa butt. Yep. That’s also a thing.

I hope you all manage to get some quiet today. I personally just spent the day alone with four boys on a snow day, bundling and unbundling them, trying to convince John David that snow bibs aren’t evil, drying their clothes, cooking their meals, and settling their disputes. As you might imagine, all my daydreams currently are of a quiet hotel room with a t.v. and room service. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

The post Are You an Alone Time Hoarder? appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Jeopardy World Tour App: The Good, The Addictive, & the Ugly Privilege

This summer Alan and I found an app we actually both enjoy. Jeopardy World Tour app. We love this thing. Truth be told, Alan keeps saying he’s getting tired of it, but I super hope that’s not true because I just now finally made Tier 8 and have enough tokens to play some bigger cities.

We’ve already pulled so many of our friends and family in to this app.

***When you purchase items through links on my site, I do collect advertising fees.***

The funny and sometimes frustrating thing about this game is that it does not let you waste an entire day playing it, not unless you are truly a trivia genius or you’re feeding it a bunch of money.

Yes, you can play the Jeopardy World Tour app for free.

We try not ever spend any real money on it, and the sad thing is that if you spend all your Jeopardy app money on one expensive city game and lose…no more Jeopardy for your for four more hours. Yep. They pay you more “dollars” every 4 hours. There’s a countdown until your next pay.

Just now I had $160,000 Jeopardy dollars. I spent it all on one game in Paris, and I lost. Now I have to wait four more hours before I can even play again.

Sadness.

When I first started playing, I always played the cheap cities, so this didn’t happen so much. The only thing about that is that when you do it that way, you level up like 100 times  more slowly than you do playing the expensive cities.

But here’s the good news when you’re out of Jeopardy money.

There’s another part of the app where you can play your friends. Don’t have any friends? You can have it match you to opponents. That works just as well. The app gives you 3 hearts every 4 hours, and you use your hearts to play games.

You won’t level up from friend challenges, but you will gain experience knowledge which you can use in your other games. Plus, you can meet the daily challenges, which will give you more money to play the city games.

Gems, Gems, Gems!

You collect gems according to what category you’ve answered correctly. This part is neat because you can click on your profile and learn which category you are best at. For example, I keep around an 80% accuracy level in the vocabulary category, but I’m only around 55% accurate in my literature/arts category.

The gems enable you to level up to different “tiers.” Each tier higher you go, the more money you get every 4 hours.

So you want to hear a funny and ridiculous April and Alan playing Jeopardy story?

All Jeopardy accounts are not created equal. There is some serious UGLY privilege going on here.

Alan was whipping through the level and gem tiers faster than I was, and I was feeling jealous and miffed. See, the thing was that it was completely unequal. His Tier 2 would get like $50,000. My Tier 2 got more like $10,000. What the heck!? And each time Alan would graduate to the next tier, they’d double the money he got! Meanwhile, my amount would go up some paltry amount in comparison.

As we compared our games, I began to feel an extreme sense of injustice. I decided to write the app a letter and demand answers to this privilege situation that we had here. Horribly unfair!

The app people sent me back a message saying that my husband has a “test version” of the app, and that there will be many great changes in store.

Only there were never any changes that created equality amongst the app versions. He continues to get over $300,000 every 4 hours now at Tier 9, and I get $60,000 at Tier 8.

Alan’s mom signed up for an account, and her app version is even worse than mine. She gets paid the same, I think, but her cities will never pay her any more than she pays in. Alan and I get paid extra every time we win with a higher score than some set number.

I did notice that Alan and I are on totally different leader boards though. For example, we could both be #500 at the same time and not see each other on the leader board because we aren’t competing against each other. That is some consolation.

Just know if you download this game, you may get the amazing version that lets you play tons of games, like Alan, OR you could end up with the more limited regular version like me.

When addiction to the app goes too far:

One night Alan was going on an on about all the money he was rolling in and games he’d won, and I reminded him that he had all this privilege though because I don’t even have a chance to play all the games the way he does with the tiny amount of money they were giving me, but still charging me the same amount to play the game.

It all made me truly empathize with every underprivileged person ever. I mean it seems ridiculous, but I got it.

I told Alan he should apologize for bragging or at least admit that he had an unfair advantage. He did not wish to admit his advantage, and I got all kinds of upset!

And that’s how you know that you’ve taken your app obsession too far…. Haa!!! That was months ago, and Alan has since admitted that I and his parents do have the short end of the stick.

So I wholeheartedly do recommend this game because it will keep you sharp, sometimes make you feel stupid, and make you realize just how not-well-read you are. Yet at the same time it is awesome sauce, and it will suck you in and leave you wanting to play more.

For another fun app review, see this one I wrote about Township.

The post Jeopardy World Tour App Review: The Good & The Ugly appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

10 Truths About My New Stay at Home Mom Life

(with 4 kids in elementary & middle school)

Disclaimer: This is a totally different existence than staying at home with preschoolers in your house all day. I’ve waited 12 years for this.

#1. I had this ENORMOUS lists of things I thought I’d accomplish once all my kids finally started school.

I called it my “Back to School Bucket List.” You can read it if you like, but I will warn you. That list is so very me. How? Well, I had about 20 different things I thought I was going to accomplish. It’s a highly ambitious and idealistic list because that is simply how I roll. There’s no fixing it.

…..And instead I mostly blog and go to the grocery store.

Seriously. I do an outing. Collapse on the sofa. Do the chores  some of the chores. Collapse on the sofa. It’s all over surprisingly quickly.

#2. I’m relishing this quiet house.

All I can hear is the air conditioner (because this is the summer that never ends… Die summer, die) and the sound of my fingers typing.

Is it as wonderful as I thought it would be? Oh yes, honey, that part is heavenly. Literally I could take a nap right this second.

#3. Somehow someone needs something from the store every single day.

I’m not actually going to the store every day, but there are enough needs/wants/requests that I could. I told Alan this morning, “Look, I can’t keep buying groceries 3 times a week. The budget can’t take that.”

There has to be a way to streamline the store thing. Inevitably, I always miscalculate just how much we eat.

#4. There are no more excuses to not exercise.

This part is irritating. Not a single excuse will do. No one is distracting me. I do have the time. It was raining today, but I have a small collection of workout DVDs as well as YouTube. We even have a free gym membership on post.

There’s just no excuse at all. Except “no energy.”  But the sad thing is that you have to give energy to get energy, so again, no excuse at all.

Does that mean I exercised today? Well, according to my Fitbit I got 25 minutes of cardio in already by going to the grocery store. That probably won’t work for most of you though. It only worked for me today because I forgot to take my heart pill, and when I do that my heart beats too fast, convincing my Fitbit that I’m in “cardio.”

Our sofa is oh so cushy cozy comfy.

#5. I cannot tell a lie. My sofa is seeing a lot more of me than it used to.

I like to sit here and use my computer. Maybe I need to drink more coffee and sleep more so I can make myself do less of this. But I’ve waited 12 years for this!!!

#6. My kitchen and living room are still tidier just because they get a 7 hour break from the children.

It still doesn’t look perfect. I mean my entertainment center hasn’t been dusted in a few weeks, and there are already stains on this rug that was brand new in May, but guess what. There are no stacks! Say what!

Okay there’s still stacks downstairs on the desk, but it doesn’t count because #6 is about the kitchen and the living room.

Yes, there are bags of groceries sitting in the kitchen at this moment. I put up all the cold stuff. The rest can wait until my next energy arrives.

#7. I do need to get more social interaction.

The hermit thing that I do sometimes is starting to happen. I’ve had multiple people in the neighborhood say to me, “Hey! You’re out! I never see you.”

I DO want to see my friends, but John David (my 5-year-old) always insists that I leave every social function early. Plus, I’m lazy about initiating outings. Add this item to my back to school bucket list: go see friends.

#8. You would think I would be cooking and baking more.

That’s another thing perhaps I don’t have an excuse with. Why am I not cooking more? I don’t know the answer to that. It gets in the way of my blogging time on my couch?

#9. I haven’t gone into town even once yet.

I said I was going to ride the train into town and explore D.C. on my own, and it was going to be such a fun adventure. Four weeks later, and I mostly only go to the Commissary or Target.

Sometimes I have to get up from the left side (my favorite spot) of the sofa and go sit on the right side because that’s where my computer charger is. That’s my level of adventure this week.

#10. Walking the kids to school and back is my best exercise, and it’s exhausting and sometimes impossible.

I am a serious advocate of walking or biking to school when you live with a school right in your neighborhood. It’s the best. According to my Fitbit, I now log about 300 active minutes a week. Back when we lived in Georgia, I was only logging 50-100.

It’s healthy for the kids too, so we enjoy doing it. If only the weather would cooperate!! Yes, I’m whining here when I say this, but 90 degrees has been the average temperature at 3:15pm for the past 4 weeks, and it has been BRUTAL. Most days I needed to change clothes 3 times and take 2 showers a day. I didn’t actually take 2 showers a day, but it was bad enough that I could have.

When it wasn’t scorching it was raining, and our house is 0.75 miles from the school, going at a kindergarten walking pace because I do have a kindergartener.

So here’s what a typical day actually looks like.

-Oversleep.

-Get the boys ready for school, complete with snacks, one lunch box for Daniel (who saves me so much money), 3 water bottles, and all papers signed.

-Put John David’s shoes on for him because 4th babies are insanely spoiled.

-Spend 3 minutes standing in the yard deciding if we can handle the walk in this weather today.

-Pick up a friend on the way to school.

-Arrive at school 20 minutes later. Convince John David to walk into the school building.

-Walk home.

-Collapse on the sofa.

-Read my Bible. Answer emails.

-Pinterest time.

-Do the dishes.

-Brush teeth and put on my contacts.

-Sweep a room.

-Collapse on the sofa.

-Blog.

-What! It’s 3pm already!?

-Rush out the door to get kids.

And that’s my truth. Tell me I’m not alone. Ha! This phase is far easier than those years of preschoolers. Man, those years were hard core. Yet, I still never feel like I’m doing enough (a lie from the devil).

I do miss cuddling with babies. So much!!  I miss babies, but at the same time I’m okay, you know? This phase is just a different kind of good.

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