Thanksgiving 2010

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and its 80 degrees


I’m wearing a T-shirt, flip-flops, and capris

I’ve broken a dish, I’ve burned my hand

But the dinner is coming along just as planned

My kitchen is full of the scents of Thanksgiving

My house could be featured in Southern Living

The Turkey is buttered and seasoned and cooling

The thought of it all sets my mouth to drooling

Friends and family will soon come to the table

To eat and to eat ‘til they’re no longer able

When the table is cleared and the dishes are done

And the kids are outside to play, scream, and run

We’ll turn our attention to the Black Friday Ads

Making out lists for our kids, moms, and dads

Some will lie back and soon they’ll be snoozing

While others will talk about whose team will be losing

And when the guests head out to go back to their houses

And we’re left all alone with our kids and our spouses

We’ll clean up the kids and get them into their beds

With thoughts about Christmas now in our heads

Thanksgiving’s a time that I forever will treasure

My blessings have been too many to measure

I’ve got 4 great kids and a husband I love

Great family and friends who were sent from above

Warm clothes and a home which is much more than most

Of my blessings on Earth, I truly can boast

I’m thankful for family, for friends and much more

And my God has more treasures for me in store

The Lord has provided His mercy and grace

And no earthly blessings could dare take His place

So tomorrow when gathered with family and friends

While reflecting on all of your life’s dividends

Remember to thank the Lord for his love

And for all of the gifts on this Earth and above

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!!

30 Days of Thankful

Alot of my friends have been doing this wonderful thing on Facebook where they post what they are thankful for for 30 days straight. I wanted to do it too, but I am just now getting around to it, and I am horrible about consistency so here are my 30 Days of Thankful all in one list:




1) I am thankful that I have a God who is merciful and forgiving and loves me even though I fall short daily.

2) I am thankful for my husband who works a job he dislikes, on crazy shifts, including many weekends, so that I can stay home with our kids.

3) I am thankful for my 4 beautiful, smart, hilarious kids who drive me to the brink of insanity and keep me grounded all the time.

4) I am thankful for loving parents who try to help and support me anyway that they can, even when it is to tell me I am wrong.

5) I am thankful for truly good friends -- the ones I see nearly everyday, the ones I see a few times a year, and even the ones that I never see anymore.

6) I am thankful for all of the teachers who have impacted my life. There are the traditional teachers, and there are the teachers who impacted me just by being in my life.

7) I am thankful for a roof over my head, clothes in my closet, food in my fridge, and a car to get around in.

8) I am thankful for the soldiers -- both past and present -- who defend my rights to have all of the above and to do with it whatever I want.

9) I am thankful for my country. Despite all of the flaws in our government and the more obvious flaws in our politicians, it is still the BEST country in the world.

10) I am thankful for family -- my extended family is absolutely wonderful (and a little crazy).

11) I am thankful for Facebook -- I have reconnected with so many people from my past and it has been a great joy to hear what has happened in their lives over the past 10, 20 or in rare cases 30 years!

12) I am thankful for coffee -- to God for creating it, to the man who discovered it, to the genius who decided to roast it and pour hot water over it...

13) I am thankful for my digital camera. I cannot literally freeze time and keep my kids from growing up, but with it I am able to hold onto those moments.

14) I am thankful for TV -- there are days that I just need to escape into an alternate universe for an hour or so and there are many choices on TV (if I can locate my remote).

13) I am thankful for my DVR -- there is rarely a time in my day that I can sit down and watch TV uninterrupted for even 10 minutes, so being able to record, rewind, fast-forward through commercials, etc. is a true blessing.

14) I am thankful that I can cook. I have eaten at enough people's houses to know that this is actually not as common as one might think.

15) I am thankful for my health and the health of my family. I pray daily for those who do not have this blessing.

16) I am thankful for electricity. I am not the pioneer type.

17) I am thankful for my cell phone and I honestly do not know how I ever lived without one.

18) I am thankful for Nick Jr. -- the only kids network that airs shows buffered by songs, dances, etc. and NOT by commercials for the latest Lelly Kelly Shoe ad or Bendaroos or any of the myriad other craptastic things that I will not buy for my kids.

19) I am thankful for disposable diapers. I know that it isn't very environmentally conscious of me, but I don't care (refer to number 16).

20) I am thankful for sippy cups that actually don't leak.

21) I am thankful for easily accessible carpet cleaners for sippy cups that DO leak.

22) I am thankful for the Library. I devour books, and if I had to pay anywhere from $7 to $35 for all of the books that I read I would be even more broke than I am now.

23) I am thankful for grocery stores. If I had to make, grow, hunt, or otherwise obtain the food that my family of 6 consumes in a single week, we'd probably have all died of starvation years ago.

24) I am thankful for consignment stores. Not because they buy my "gently used items at a fair price" (because they don't -- they cheat me), but because I can buy their gently used items at a fair price.

25) I am thankful for college football. It allows an outlet for pent up aggression for 4 months out of the year. (War Eagle)

26) I am thankful for soap, shampoo, and deodorant. I know that this one might seem a little weird, but think about what we would endure without them.

27) I am thankful for seat belts and car seats and airbags and the fact that I have not had an accident where I had to rely on them to save me or my family.

28) I am thankful for nature. I may not like to be immersed in it, but I do admire it from a distance...

29) I am thankful for heat and air conditioning -- I am very fickle when it comes to body temperature and I often have the heat on in the morning and the air on by noon.

30) I am thankful for everything and everyone in my life. I tried to imagine as I went through my day "How hard would this be if I didn't have 'X' to do it with?" and I realized that I am one very blessed individual.



And there is my list. All 30 days of Thankfulness. I may have done this all at once, but I really do thank God for everyone of these things almost daily.  If I had done it daily, I am certain that it probably would have been more cynical and I am positive that it would have been more focused on what was going on that day -- something about the kids, of my husband, or my dog.  But this is a better reflection of the things I am most thankful for.  Take a moment (or two) to reflect on what you are most thankful for, and have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving!

Let Us Stand and Sing....

One Sunday at church, I had one of those parenting moments. This was before Jackson and before we moved here to Texas. It was Gary’s week to help serve communion, so I picked the kids up from their classes and went to sit down. Lorelei had entered her "noisy" stage -- she would sing and talk all the time as she had just recently discovered that she could, so I opted for the "cry-room". If you are not familiar with this concept, it is a glass fronted room in the back of the auditorium where you are meant to “train” your children how to behave in church.


The problems started when the kids realized that Daddy was not going to be sitting with us until the sermon started and got worse when they realized that they weren't going to be sitting in "our pew”. Then they thought that since we were in the cry-room, they could run around and make noise. Lorelei was getting increasingly hungry and therefore fussy. So picture me holding and trying to calm and pacify Lorelei, snapping my fingers at the other two to sit down and behave while they are running in different directions all over the room. Finally, communion is over and the sermon is about to start, so here comes Daddy. As soon as he walks in, I leave to go feed Lorelei in the nursery (I DO have a little bit of modesty left, I was not going to breastfeed IN church.) I was gone maybe 15-20 minutes. I missed the first half of the sermon. When I get back with Lorelei, my husband immediately says "They want you to take them to the bathroom." So I pass off Lorelei to him and head out with the other two. As soon as we get out of the cry room they start running -- one to the left and one to the right. I finally wrangle them into the bathroom, where they fight over the stall -- now, there are probably about 12 stalls in this bathroom, but my kids want to use the exact same one. I tried to be the good mother and explain that all of the toilets were the same and that it didn't matter which one they used but we finally went with Isabella gets to go first because she is younger and might pee on herself. Potty issues solved, we proceeded to the sink to wash our hands -- 4 sinks, 1 argument over who gets to go first. Since Isabella got to pee first, William got to wash up first. Then they wanted lotion, since the good ladies of my congregation had kindly supplied the lotion, I gave them each a squirt. While I was washing MY hands, I turn around to see Isabella using her lotion to paint the full-length mirror on the door. I take some towels to try to clean it up, but only end up making it worse. So now we are finally ready to go back to sit down. Once again, I open the bathroom door and they are off like a shot across the lobby; giggling and squealing all of the way. Trying to maintain at least the "illusion" of control, I rush to catch them and steer them into the cry-room and sit down -- just in time to hear the last two words of the sermon and stand for the closing song.

As funny as that may all be, the ironic part came when we got into the car and my husband told me that the sermon was entitled "Discipline in The Christian Home." Wow.

Remembering Halloween the Way it WAS

**Disclaimer:  I was feeling pretty nostalgic about Halloween this evening and I sat down and just started typing.  I rarely do that.  Usually there is a whole blogpost in my head before I even pull up this site, but this one...this one is purely for me. 
I remember alot of Halloweens growing up.  Probably one of my first memories is when I got my 1st store bought costume.  I think I was 3.  We went to the Big B store on the corner of Sparkman and Jordan Lane and bought a Mickey Mouse costume.  What I remember about it was this -- it was cheap.  The mask was uncomfortable plastic that was so thin and stiff, you could probably cut yourself on it.  The "costume" was also plastic and you stepped into it and it tied in the back like a hospital gown.  I remember that the mask cracked before the night was over and that a couple of the ties broke when we put it on.  Maybe that is why I didn't have another store bought costume until I was 14 and needed something impressive for a friend's Halloween party.  One year I wore a purple sweat suit and painted my face purple -- I was The Purple People Eater.  Another year I wanted to be a ghost, but mom wouldn't let me cut holes in a sheet, so I was some kind of incredibly politically incorrect version of...well, I don't know what I was.  I wore a shirt that my grandparents had brought me from the Caribbean, holey jeans, a gardening hat of my mothers, and I carried a coffee can with beans in it like some kind of drum/maracca hybrid.  It was horrible -- but I walked around the neighborhood like a panhandling migrant worker asking everyone for candy.  One of the most memorable costumes I ever made was when I was about 12.  I was a robot.  I painted a huge Whirlpool Dryer box with silver paint, as well as a smaller square box that I affixed to the top for the head.  I raided my dad's garage and found all sorts of weird looking bulbs, wires, etc to form a face, cut the sleeves off of an old shirt, attached gloves at the ends, stuffed them with newspaper and duct taped them to the sides for arms.  The most ingenious thing I did though was to push dozens of Lite Brite pegs through the front of the box, so that when I lit my flashlight on the inside of the box and swung it back and forth, the costume came alive.  I did not go trick-or-treating that year -- I went to the Halloween party at our church and won the costume contest.  I have been thinking alot about my childhood and how much holidays like Halloween have changed since we were kids.  The idea of having "decorations" for Halloween beyond a Jack-O-Lantern or two was ludicrous for our family and our neighborhood.  No one had Halloween lights, or stretched fake spiderwebs over their bushes.  Occasionally, we might come to a house that had a blacklight in their porch light, or a scarcrow on the porch, and I think that there was one house that had fake ghosts hanging in their trees one year.  But for the most part, a grinning Jack-O-Lantern was it (not the elaborate pumpkin sculptures that you see today, but just triangle eyes and nose and a jagged grin).  The Jack-O-Lantern went out the night of or the night before Halloween and went into the trash the next day (unless your mom was like mine and made it into pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, or pumpkin muffins). 
We have become so commercialized as a society that a simple holiday that used to be comprised of a $5 pumpkin and a homemade costume has become one of $50 kids costumes, $200 inflatable spiders, and month-long celebrations.  People rarely have ONE Jack-O-Lantern, but instead they have several -- many of them fake and plugged into the wall.  I love Haloween.  Fall is one of my most favorite times of the year, and Halloween is consumate "Fall" with pumpkins and apples and red and gold leaves.  The crisp Fall air that is cool and dry and the coming of Halloween go hand in hand, and you know that soon after will be Thanksgiving, with turkey, sweet potatoes, family and football, followed closely by the holiday of holidays -- Christmas.  I really miss the simplicity of the holidays the way we used to celebrate them -- Halloween was like a warm up of good holidays to come.  The candy we collected was an appetizer to the rich foods of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Now, people decorate more for Halloween than they do for Christmas and many families never see each other -- even on Thanksgiving.  (sigh)

Growing up at Central

As a Southern woman raised in the Church of Christ, a lot of people believe that I am rigid -- believing that I am "saved" and you are not.  I have heard all of my life that "those Church of Christ folks think that they are the only ones going to heaven" but I have never been taught that -- it has never even been implied to me.  I even attended a Church of Christ private school from the age of 4 through the 8th grade and I never heard it there either.  I was taught what it took to get to heaven based on the scriptures, no more, no less.  Prejudices about other faiths was not part of the curriculum. 

I grew up as a bonified member of the Central Church of Christ in Huntsville, AL and I loved it there.  I do not know what others who grew up in the church went through, but for me, it was a blast.  I loved the people and the building and the quaint downtown atmosphere.  I was baptised there and on a cool, sunny, Saturday in October 1998, I was married there.   A lot of this will not make sense to you unless you also attended church and some of this will not make sense unless you attended Central. 

We were not an affluent church, full of monetary wealth.  No, the riches of Central lay in the hearts of its members.  As a young child, I worked hard in Sunday School to impress David and Marlene Thomason, Tim and Jimi Johnson, and even Marrietta Neiland (even though she never taught me personally, she was like the "Matriarch" of Central's youth).  I opened my heart, sharpened my wit, and delved into more serious theological questions with Mike and Lora Porter, David and Laura Bell, and Dorthea Thompson as a teen.  I learned to respect my elders -- Henry Bragg, Clyde Jones, Richard Brown, D.O. Matthews, J.D. Jones, and countless others.  I wrote a letter to the elders when I was about 12 asking to be moved into the teen group early because I felt I was "much more mature" than the kids in my current class.  I have no idea what it said, I would love to read it now for a laugh, but it worked, (much to my older sisters chagrin who had hoped to avoid me encroaching on her territory for at least 2 more years).  I do not know if I impressed them with the words in the letter, or simply by the act of writing it.

I do not remember how old I was, maybe 8 or 9, but I still remember a lesson that J.D Jones taught about singing.  What I remember about it is this:  Singing is important.  It is as important as praying and sitting still and listening to the sermon.  He told us that it was important to not have instruments crowding out our voices as we lifted them in praise to God.  And he told us to breathe which I thought was a little unnecessary until he explained further.  We shouldn't all breathe at once so that a song sounded like this:  "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound (GASP) That saved a wretch like me! (GASP)..."  It is an odd lesson to have stuck with me for so long, but it has, and I still try to practice the intermittent breathing when I sing at church now.  We had no organ, no piano, no bass guitar or drums, but on a good Sunday with Ed Smith or Gerry Binford leading the singing you would never miss them.  We sang, we clapped, we stomped our feet to the rhythms of "In My Father's House" and "Amen" until I thought that we would raise the roof or at least blow the doors from their hinges.  We had an inner-city ministry, a class for divorcees, a jail ministry, a class for single parents, and 2 college ministries -- one at UAH and one at A & M.  On any given Sunday, you could look out at the congregation and see people from as many as 4 or 5 races and 10 or 12 countries all side by side smiling right back at you.  We had no qualms about race that so many churches in the South do even today. 

The building was old (still is) but it was my playground every Sunday and Wednesday night.  I would hold onto the brown metal poles that stretched to the ceiling as part of the staircase and swing from the 3rd or 4th or 5th step while holding onto the bottom pole in an impressive display of upper body strength that would make any stripper proud.  I swung like a monkey on the silver painted poles that barricaded the parking lot across the street with my long brown hair dragging through the dirt.  I begged every Wednesday night to walk to Gorin's for a waffle cone after church and was usually told no.  I took great care in my hard soled Sunday shoes to pop as many seeds that fell from the huge tree out front.  That tree is gone now.  Its huge roots were buckling the concrete and its towering branches stretched high over the church roof.  I wriggled in my seat as the invitation song, the announcements, and the prayer were concluded so that I could bound from the pew and run to the gym (we called it "The Family Life Center," but it was a gym).  I would play while my mom and dad visited (or fellowshipped), and then I would whine when it was finally time to leave.  I helped decorated that gym for the Harvest Banquet every year, and hosted several Parent Appreciation Dinners there as a teen.  Some of my fondest memories are of the Halloween parties that they used to have there -- popcorn, Abbot & Costello, and costume contests.  I won the year that I made a killer robot costume out of an old dryer box, silver spray paint, and light bright pegs. 

For those of you not raised in the church, this might sound odd, but when you are raised in the Lord, surrounded on all sides by Him, even before you choose to be baptised, you have taken Him on like a reflection from those around you.  I always knew that I would choose a life with Christ, and at a weekend teen retreat at Henry and Melba Bragg's Elk River cabin, I decided it was time.  I was 14, and I was baptised by Clyde Jones at Central the Sunday morning after we got back with my parents and grandparents looking on.  It was a good day. I didn't know it at the time, but the first real attack on my faith was just a few months away in the form of "The Boston Movement" where I saw our congregation that was bursting at the seams one Sunday go to a meager gathering of the faithful just a few weeks later.  Although I have prayed alot about forgiving those responsible, I will never get over the effect that it had on me.  It was my first experience with church "politics" (for lack of a more universally understood word), and in many ways it left me cynical.  I am certain that the church had its problems before that, but I was oblivious to them.  Sometimes, growing up sucks.

I know that I have romanticized the building, the grounds, and even the people in my head, but they are still the standard by which I judge other congregations.  Central, in all its glory, warts and all, is "Home."  There will never be another church that I can walk through and feel so at ease, so comfortable, like I belong.  The people who taught my Sunday school classes, now teach my kids when we go home to visit.  Ed and Gerry still raise the roof with the singing.  Kids still swing on that banister.  It is a constant comfort to me to know that it is there -- growing, flourishing, changing, yet always the same.

Letting Go

I have been working on streamlining things around my house lately -- getting rid of the junk, the old, the worn out.  Today I tackled the linen closet.  I finally bagged up all of the old hooded baby towels.  It looked great when I was done, and it no longer takes excellent hand-eye coordination to open the door and put in the clean towels and washclothes so that the entire contents don't come spilling out onto your head.  But as I looked at the pile of old towels I had removed, many of them grayish with the wear and tear of 9 years worth of use and washing, I got a little pang of regret.  I mean, these were the towels that I wrapped William in after his first bath, the washcloths that I washed Bella with for the first time, the towels that Lorelei and Jackson played "super-heros" with just last year, and I was bagging them up to give to Goodwill.  Some stranger is going to buy these and probably use them to wash his car or his dog.  How could I let that happen?  These are precious mementos of my kids, of too many "firsts" to count, and they are destined to become someones "rags".  

I know that you cannot hold onto everything.  It is a lesson that I learned after we moved and I realized that we had too much "stuff."  With 4 kids, I cannot hold onto every picture that they draw, every card that they give me, or every cute outfit that they ever wore.  And the truth is, why would I want to?  I used to think that I would hold onto their "special" outfits and give them to them for their own kids some day.  Then my mother moved to a new house and gave me a virtual trunk load of MY old baby clothes.  Now, I was a child of the 70's -- there was NOTHING in the things that she gave me that I would ever put on my kids unless the only other choice was that they go naked.  The same will hold true for my kids in 25 years or so.  They are not going to want to dress their kids in the height of early 21st century fashion.  And since I know I am not having any more children, what would be the point of holding onto a bunch of clothes that they will never want and that I will never need? 

Memories.  Of course I hold onto the things from when my kids were little because they will never be little again.  William is already catching me in height, Bella's attitude and wit rivals my own, Lorelei is growing like a weed and Jackson (who was never little to begin with since he was over 10 pounds at birth) is almost as big as his sister.  I tell myself to hold on.  Hold on to that sleeper, that blanket, that towel, or whatever it may be as if their childhood is somehow magically contained within the fibers.  It is a HARD lesson to learn that those things are just things.  They are not my kids.  They are not even my memories.  My memories of those times are not going to Goodwill -- just some old gray towels.

So I paused to think about those precious times that are long gone now as I folded each item and placed it into the bag.  I remembered the way each one of them squirmed in my arms all slippery with soap as I gave them their first baths, how clean they smelled as I sang to them wrapped up in those now old towels, and I cried a little as I reflected on how they will be constantly growing and changing.  It is one of the hardest things about being a mother, a parent -- letting go.  I WANT them to grow and change.  I want them to mature, to learn, to try, and to sometimes fail because that is how they become adults.  It would be nice to freeze time and hold onto them for even just a little while longer as they are, but it is not possible and it would be going against my job as a parent.  My sole responsibility to them in this world is to help them grow up -- to teach them how to be responsible, contributing members of society.  I cannot do that if they never grow up.  So I am learning how to let go.  It is a daily struggle, and it isn't getting any easier.

Moms and School -- the TRUE Story

I did not write this, but I soooooooooo  could have.  Whoever the woman is that penned this masterpiece is a champion of truth.  I know I should have posted this a couple of months ago when school was actually starting, but hey, I'm lazy.  A friend sent me this in an email about 3 weeks ago and I JUST read it today, so you are getting it as soon as I could get it to you, enjoy! (And Thanks to Cari for sending it in the first place!)


10 Misconceptions of Moms and Back-to-school



Misconception Number 1: Moms miss their kids when they go back to school Seriously. I’ve had enough of you by now. Every morning with the “what are we going to do today, Mom?” is finally over. I’ve had looked at your face twenty-four seven for the last 77 days. It’s time to go learn something. No more asking me about the pool, when is the next snack or if you can stay up late and watch a movie. It’s over….You’re going back to Hogwarts and I get to have a life again. There is a Christmas morning for parents and it’s called “back to school”.


Misconception Number 2: Moms like to go school shopping. Are you freaking kidding me? Why do I pay taxes?…so I can rack up a 200 dollar bill at Staples for crap that we have laying around my house in junk drawers. Why does it have to be new pencils? What’s wrong with the chewed up, broken strawberry shortcake pencils sitting in the bottom of the toy box for the last 6 months? And how many subject books can you possibly need? What happened to reading, writing and arithmetic. If they added a couple of things for parents to that list I wouldn’t mind so much….why not pencils, erasers and vodka …..or some Nyquil.


Misconception Number 3: Moms like back to school night. Why must we do this every year? I got it already. You’re the teacher…I’m the parent. My kid is either going to be smart or dumb. If he gets a certain number or colored dot on his discipline chart, he can’t get a prize from the prize box. Pretty simple stuff. Listen, I’m pretty old school. If he doesn’t listen to you…you can throw something at him. I don’t care. But I got a lot of work to do at home and I’m paying a babysitter right now. Plus, I’m pretty sure you are going to assign some project on wigwams made by some Indian tribe I’ve never heard of, so I need to get home and start my research. So, I got it. We’re all here for the betterment of the kids. Blah Blah Blah. Can I leave now?


Misconception Number 4: Moms like school paperwork. How many trees are you planning on killing to tell me the same stuff I had to pay a babysitter to listen to the other night? You know our name, where we live and our emergency phone numbers. He doesn’t have a nickname….call him “stinkbutt” for all I care. We don’t have any “special circumstances” that you need to know about. He lives in a home with two parents who may or may not like each other at any given time and they will fight. If that qualifies as a reason he can’t get his homework done on time then he won’t be able to function as an adult and have a real job so you may want to “educate” him on that life lesson.


Misconception Number 5: Moms like covering books in that annoying sticky paper. What exactly will you be doing with these books that I have to cover them in a plastic laminate? Do you often teach in the rain? Or while the children are drinking soda and eating soup? Do you know how long that takes? Has any parent in the history of education been able to do it without any air bubbles in it? From now on I’m covering it the old way…brown paper bags. That way I can cover the books and pack their lunches at that same time. Who says moms can’t multitask?

PS. Please tell my son if he can’t find his lunch to look in his science book.



Misconception Number 6: Moms like helping you with your homework. What? I am scared out of my mind. I’m pretty sure that I forgot everything I learned in fifth grade by the time I was in sixth grade. I have no idea what you are talking about most days. I don’t really know my 12 times tables, I read the cliff notes to all your summer reading and I don’t know how to conjugate anything but I do know that song “conjuction junction what’s your function” if that helps at all. And please don’t even say the words “new math” to me. What the heck was wrong the old one?


Misconception Number 7: Moms can’t wait to pack your lunch every day until we die.I hate doing laundry. Making dinner every night is the bane of my existence, so making your lunch every day for an entire year, in terms of “mom fun”, lies somewhere between brushing plaque off the dogs teeth and scheduling my annual pap smear. Listen, as a child I hated what my mom packed me for lunch. But, like every kid before me, and every generation to come you will find a kid to trade with…I’m sure someone likes sardines.


Misconception Number 8: Moms love after school activities. I don’t know who made up this idea of organized clubs and sports but they should be the ones in charge of carting your ass around. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against all after school programs. I just wish they would offer it during hours that would work best for me so that dinner wasn’t at 8:30 at night followed by 4 hours of homework. Why not do it on the weekends and call it “after-hours activities” so mommy and daddy could actually go out one night and pretend that we have a life of our own. Don’t worry about us though I’m sure that me and “what’s his name” will be married a very long time.

Misconception Number 9: Moms don’t mind taking you to school if you miss the bus. Your bus comes at 7:10 am….which means that you should be standing by the door at 7:05 am. Not eating breakfast , chasing the dog around the house or in the bathroom, asking me to check your homework while I’m taking a shower. Get it together! I don’t like running down the street in my jammies at 7:12 screaming “Please wait” or “If you stop I’ll show you my boobies.”


Misconception Number 10: Moms cry on your first day of school. We do cry but they are tears of joy. I have done my job. I have successfully kept a human child alive for at least 5 years without doing any major damage. Motherhood is the hardest job in the world!! Sure, doctors save lives and CEO’s run million dollar businesses but…you teach a kid not to poop their pants and then you can say you’ve made the world a better place.”