"ANTONIO!"..."Bring me another Bon, Bon please!"

I feel the need to use my blog this evening as a platform, because it is my blog and I can do that! ...I am using it as a platform for sharing my families flaw....a flaw that infuriates me...a flaw that I know other mother's share.....a flaw that brings me to the point of meltdown....

My four year old thinks this cleans the house.....

My twelve year olds think she lives in our house.....

and my husband wishes this cleaned our house.............

 Well guess what!...None of those people clean the house.....it is this person who cleans the house

 Yup...I don't have wings, I don't wear a uniform and go by the name of Alice, and last time I checked I don't have a french maid costume hanging in my closet....

Okay, Okay I take some blame for this. I have been a stay at home mom for awhile now and as a stay at home mom I feel it is my job to keep the house in working order. It is a pet peeve of mine when wives choose to stay home and somehow expect their husbands to do the bulk of the housework....is not my job as a housewife to take on the household chores? Now, with that being said if both partners are working then chores and housework need to be divided up equally. I have enabled my children and husband at this point though...I have taken the chores for so long that it has become expected that I do them 100% of the time. If I want help it is never volunteered..it is either done by me asking or nagging to get it done. I have created a monster is our house...the laziness monster!

Socks and dirty dishes are never put in the sink or laundry hamper. Toys and shoes are left strewn around the house. Dishwasher needing unloading is left loaded, bathroom sinks and mirrors are left with splattered toothpaste, and the kitchen garbage is spilling over... yet I look around and I see all these things left for me to do and everyone else is watching T.V., playing on the computer, and reading a book, and suddenly I feel my insides bubbling up, I feel my eye start twitching, I feel my mouth start quivering...and the next thing you know...

the "DEVIL'S" mother comes out....and then my family just stares at me with those blank stares...that stare that tells me that they think I have lost it or just have a serious case of PMS...they get up and pick things up and go back to what they are doing and the next day they forget about my rant and tirade about how they need to chip in with household chores.

I will be going back to work in the next few years.....so I have a couple of options...

(A)....I stop enabling my family and I start expecting more of them...I need to be tough, consistent, and expect that they help!

or....

(B)....I hire me one of these...

....I think I will name him...."ANTONIO"!........

Traveling With The Brands

"There's this thing, this phenomenon that happens whenever Jon and I travel together. And I don't know if it's because hotels are trying to save money wherever they can and therefore scrimp on some essentials, like, you know, functioning toilets. But without fail, every time we travel one of us clogs the toilet. And we have to make that humiliating phone call to the front desk." ~Dooce

This is part of a story that came from one of my favorite blogs...Dooce. You can click on the highlighted Dooce to read the rest of the story. I laughed, chuckled, snorted, and had to share this story with my husband because we have a phenomenon in our house...without fail, whenever we travel...a toilet will get CLOGGED!

Let me back up a little and share a glimpse into the Brand household. We have a child in our house that has been nicknamed "TC". "TC" stands for toilet clogger. Now because of "TC" we have had to purchase a toilet that advertised that it can flush 12 golf balls. It is the Cadillac of toilets, it is the throne that men envy. Now, "TC" can still manage to clog this toilet on occasion..YES...she can clog that 12 golf ball flushing toilet! As a result I have also had to invest in the Turbo 2000 toilet plunger so I can unclog the toilet.

When we take off to go on our family vacations "TC" will inevitably plug the toilet at our temporary location. I actually have discussions with "TC" before we leave, it goes something like this....

Me: "TC"...please...please use another bathroom when we are out, like a public restroom, clog that toilet...please do not use the one in our hotel room...I don't want to have to call the front desk for a plunger! PLEASE! ........don't plug up our only toilet.....pleasssseeee!

"TC": Oh mom...I won't plug the toilet.....

Me: Yes..you will...you always clog our toilet and then we are having to figure out how to get it unclogged.

"TC": Oh mom...I won't plug the toilet.....

*and sure as hell within 24 hours at our location she will plug the toilet*

Me: I told you not to plug the toilet!

"TC": Sorry....but I had to go.....

This is our life...this is what you experience when you travel with the us..a clogged toilet.

In fact just this weekend we traveled and "TC" struck again ...we had to get a maintenance guy to unplug the toilet. He started with the wimpy plunger, he left and came back with a stronger plunger, and then he left again and he brought the Turbo 2000 plunger and finally we had toilet victory.

So here is my solution to this dilemma. Since I can not expect our vacation destinations to be equipped with a toilet that flushes 12 golf balls, I think in the future I will be traveling with my Turbo 2000 toilet plunger because that is the only way that toilet will unclog quickly and I won't have to call the front desk for help.

If you see me in an airport with an industrial plunger under my arm...you will understand....that "TC" will strike again!

A Perfect Birthday Get A Way

Back in early summer we decided we wanted to go camping sometime this summer. Before children, Adrian and I used to throw a tent and some sleeping bags in the car and head out, and then children came, and it began to feel like you had to pack the house and then move that house into a tent. I came to a point where I said, either we need a small trailer or we are going camping somewhere where we can get a cabin because I am not moving into a tent anymore. We have not been camping since Makenzie came along...that was 5 years ago so we were well overdue for some campfires, roasted marshmallows, and the great outdoors.....in a cabin!

My good friend Rachelle has talked about Moon Lake for awhile, it is a tradition in her family. So I figured why not try it out, and they have CABINS! I set up the reservations earlier this summer and paid for our camping excursion. We decided to go the weekend of the twins birthday...they were thrilled!

The cabin's are very basic...they have the essentials and because I have children and I have to pack my house when I go camping it had all the room I needed to move into it comfortably. We had enough beds for everyone, a kitchen, and a bathroom...perfect! This was our amazing view and I will say it was perfect because the basketball court, volleyball court, and horseshoe pit were right off our porch and I could easily keep an eye on the kids and they had somewhere to play.

Our cute perfect little CABIN!

She is so darn CUTE!

Our first night we decided to roast hot dogs over the fire. For some reason hot dogs taste pretty darn good roasted over the fire?!

Our friends came up with their trailer and stayed in the campground. They have a little girl that is Makenzie's age and Makenzie was thrilled that she had someone to play with. You could see the lake from our cabin but not the beach part..we all figured it was going to be a rocky shallow edge on the lake that kids could climb on some rocks and throw some rocks in the lake so we headed down the trail to the lake....

When we got their we all were surprised...it was huge! If you didn't have the mountains around you it looked like some of the beaches you get on the Oregon coast...soft sand, sand dunes. The water is freezing and not for swimming but the kids had fun wading in it with their feet and playing in the soft sand.

See....Makenzie thrilled that she had a friend to play with!

Ten times better than any of the beaches at Bear Lake or Mirror Lake

See..even drift wood like the Oregon Coast!

Me and Baby Girl

My birthday girls..12 years old.....I can't believe it either! We did Hostess cupcakes with a candle and sang Happy Birthday ( I will do a proper cake for them this week). I love these girls with every inch of my body and they are changing into amazing young women...Holy Cow! I have girls in Young Women's now......time goes by to fast!

I snuck in a few minutes with just me and the birthday girls on the beach..Kaitlynn took this picture of me hugging Cheyenne...I love this picture...my preemie babies are taller than me now...."sigh"

Playing in the sand at dusk on the beach

roasting some marshmallows.....

Last night by the campfire......

and this...this what your children become when you feed them ice cream, Hostess cupcakes, and large marshmallows...the wild, giggle creature in them comes out...........

The view leaving Moon Lake. It was a great weekend get-a-way...we needed this, we really needed this weekend away! We laughed and talked and just spent time as a family.....I love this family!

Blue's Clues Story

Before you watch the above link let me give you a little background regarding the above link. When the twins were between the ages of 2 and 4 they were obsessed with a T.V. show, with a certain dog in it ....Blue...Blue's Clues to be exact. When Blue's Clues came on T.V. they would run to the T.V. and sit motionless for the 25 minutes that it was on. If I believed in religious alters I would have made a shrine to Blue, I would have prayed to the Blue Gods and gave sacrificial offerings of animal crackers and apple juice because it was the only time of day that my twin toddlers sat in peace and were not dismantling my home.

Their grandma gave them a Blues Clues pajama set from Avon that looked very similar to the above picture. They lived in this outfit, I know I have pictures of them in it in my pile of pictures but the thought of going through my pile of "Twin" baby photo's seems overwhelming at the moment. They had numerous Blue toys including a mechanical Blue that came to you when you called it, so all day, everyday, you would hear, "C"mere Bu.....C'mere Bu.....Bu....C'mere Bu!" We had Blue's Clue sheets, dinnerware, underwear, and outerwear.

Steve...Steve was Blue's owner on the show. He wore the same striped polo and khaki pants in every show, he danced and sang, and Steve talked to those kids through the T.V. and the kids were mesmerized. Then tragedy struck..Steve went to college. They made an hour and half program out of it...Steve left the show! I heard the news and because I literally had no life at the time..no... seriously.... my life revolved around Spaghettios, cleaning up blue's clues toys, laundry, and trying to figure out what various sticky substances found its way on to my walls....I had to figure out how I was going to tell the girls this horrible news. Blue's Clues was the never the same after this ...Blue's Clues died the day Steve left.

The link above comes from a non-profit organization called, The Moth. It is heard on NPR and podcasts and it is dedicated to the art of storytelling. Famous people, not so famous people and everyday people gather to weave stories and share their life experiences. I am a storytelling junkie. I am enthralled by those who can orally weave an amazing tale. My father, uncles, and family in general are big story tellers and since I was a small child I was fascinated by people and the stories they have to tell. I think that is why I love reading blogs, because it is someones story, they are telling their story.

Anyways... look who shared his storytelling on The Moth...Steve...my Blue's Clues Steve.  Come to find out Steve is a musician now, even toured with the Flaming Lips. His storytelling made me smile today, him and his recollections of Blue's Clues opened a flood of memories for me

 "C'mere Bu....Bu....C'mere Bu....C'mere..Bu...Bu"

         It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

                                                 -Italo Calvino

What A Lucky Girl I Am!

Oy Vey! That is what I would say if I was Jewish but I am Mormon so what would an appropriate Mormon say, "Well, Heck!"....yup that describes my last two weeks in a nut shell...."Heck"...lets call it what it is, "Hell"!!! So I briefly stated in my last post that Adrian is in the unemployment line again so lets back up and look at my life over the last couple weeks.

August 24: I had just cleared out my kitchen for the beginning of our kitchen remodel. This was going to be done about four years ago but we went through unemployment and the money that was set aside for that was used to live on. Anyways, we had bought the tile back in May and because Adrian had never laid tile and we wanted it done right we had to find someone that could do it on a budget...someone who knew what they were doing but not expecting a fortune but some extra cash in their pocket. My brother-in-law Shane came to my rescue ( Thank you Shane for offering your help, you have no idea how much I appreciate your offer). I had just finished cleaning out the fridge so we could move it out of the kitchen and then Adrian calls and says, "I have been in an accident"..........

August 25: Adrian drives truck and an "accident" is not a word you want to to hear.. you imagine the worst...you picture in your head the above picture....but....he was not cited....no damage to his truck..minimal damage to the other car. The other car clipped his back rear trailer in a construction area but because the car had the right away "technically", Adrian's company would have to pay for any damage. The highway patrol was certain the other driver was going to fast in a construction area, and tried to cut Adrian off and ended up clipping his car....Adrian was still responsible. We had to hold off on the remodeling because eventhough we were certain Adrian's company would be fine with the accident because no ticket was given.....you just never know....I personally did not get out of my P.J.'s that day and I cried and cried because I am tired of life kicking me in the butt.....

August 26: Nothing said at work, they acted like it was no big deal and continued giving him work. I showered and got dressed and put a smile on my face eventhough I was a mushy mess of emotions on the inside.

August 27: Hey...Adrian can you work for us Saturday?...Adrian worked Saturday from 7am till 5pm that day...nothing said...the comment made "Accidents happen, you were not cited and sounds like you could have done nothing to prevent it".....I went with Adrian that day, I needed to spend some time with Adrian and let him know that I will support him and we will make it through whatever the outcome will be.

August 29: Monday comes and they give him his work for the day...still nothing said...Adrian gets back from his run to Vernal, they bring him in the office.. the boss says, "I have not gotten the police report, but we are going to go ahead and let you go because of the accident"............the accident that wasn't his fault? The accident that the highway patrol said that Adrian could have done nothing to prevent? That accident...Are freaking kidding me?.....What about the guy that ran over a parked car? Or the guy that dropped a trailer in the middle of the road?...oh wait, that guy goes and hangs with guys after work at the bars?.....Honestly, the new manager had hired to many drivers and Adrian was the easiest to let go.........I changed back into my P.J.'s and crawled back in bed and cried because I am tired of life kicking my butt....so I cried some more.

August 30: Adrian files unemployment, and I get showered and cleaned up, put a smile on my face but I am still a mushy emotional mess on the inside.

August 30: We finally move stuff back into the kitchen and start making adjustments and dealing with life...I am still a mushy emotional mess.

August 31: Adrian has a job offer...

September 1: Adrian goes for prescreening drug test for the job and we stop by his dad's work to tell him the good news and then we find out Adrian's uncle is in the hospital and in critical condition...blood clot in the leg...his uncle passes away hours later.......the job....it was very long hours, for very little pay, and always on the road.....a mutual decision to turn down the job offer.....A very sudden death, and still no job.

Today: We went to Larry's  funeral today. What a kind, generous, sweet man....prayers for his wife, children, grandchildren, siblings, and extended family....Heaven truly received a special spirit when he arrived.

I was a mushy mess of emotions today and not because of unemployment or unremodeled kitchens but because today the really important stuff......that which is right in front of me mattered! I can give them a hug, hold their hands ..tell them I love them.....they are the things that truly matter today...they are all that matters today, tomorrow and for eternity.....What a truly blessed girl I am!