Our Family Project May 1, 2012

Our project may not be Southern Living or HGTV worthy, but it’s coming along.  Here’s what we started with:

This was the beginning of what we have dubbed our “garden project” which led into the “tree house project” – only to be later combined into one grand plan of making both projects one big entertainment area for our family.  It has taken a lot of hard work, and we’re not finished, but we got so much done over the weekend that I’m just itching to share it.  Here is a look at what we have accomplished so far.

This was the start of the garden – we fenced it in and Ronnie built the planter boxes.  The kids painted the fence (well, they helped me paint it).  Next, we decided to put an arbor over the entrance.  We made the garden rabbit-proof with the wire (which was a terrible, hot, tedious job) and we moved the rabbit house in to house our pet rabbits.

Ronnie built the exact swing set I imagined, and we planted our first vegetables and flowers.

With the garden finished, we started on the tree house.  Since it’s so high off the ground and Max is such a little, adventurous guy, we decided that a ramp would be the safest way to access the tree house.

The tree house was plain old hard work.  Ronnie and I did the whole thing together.  I told him what I wanted, and he not only made it happen, but also taught me how to use all the tools and think like a carpenter.  Here’s what we have right now:

Now we have a garden and tree house.  What we are working on right now is the area surrounding both.  Here’s our progress from the past couple of weekends.  We are tired!

We still have so far to go!  The next step, of course, will be grass everywhere that is currently dirt.  We’ll build a fire pit in right between the garden and tree house.  I have an idea for an outdoor chalkboard for the kids to draw on.  The tree house will have a mail box.  Oh, and the tree house will look like a true house in a tree when it’s finished.  We’ll have strands of lights suspended from the trees.  Oh!  And the obstacle course!  How could I forget?  The kids will have an obstacle course through the woods.  And a zip line coming off the back of the tree house.

We still have so much to do, but look at how far we’ve come!  Nothing makes me happier that walking out to the garden with Ronnie, watching our bunnies hop in and out of their hutch while the kids laugh and swing and run up and down the tree house ramp, and just being a family.  There’s absolutely nothing like sitting back and enjoying the fruits of good, hard, honest labor.

I can’t wait to go back out and work my butt off to finish.  It will most likely take years.  And I’m okay with that.  I have so many ideas, and my husband has the know-how.  And the willingness to teach me.   And the patience to let the kids help.   And the willingness to come home after a long week at work to put in an even harder weekend.  That’s just who we are.  And I couldn’t be happier.

Confession: I’m not the Mom you Think I am April 12, 2012

Somehow, unintentionally, I have given some people the impression that I have it all together. I appreciate the compliments – I truly do. But, I feel a little hypocritical in accepting them.
Let me tell you why.
I washed all of our bed sheets on Saturday. I finally put ours on our bed this morning (today is Thursday). We’ve been what we call “camping out” all week. That really just means we’ve been sleeping on sheetless beds on top of and under whatever covers we can scrounge up that are actually clean.
I have done an additional four loads of laundry this week, and all of the clean clothes are piled on a couch unsorted, unfolded, and un-anything else that is responsible and motherly.

We have eaten out every night this week – not because we love eating out but because I never made it to the grocery store to buy ingredients for proper dinners. We also are down to the last roll of toilet paper. I really need to get to the store.
My son’s favorite meal is macaroni and cheese from a can. Most people don’t even realize macaroni can be bought in a can. I actually feed it to my child.
I forget to feed the dog sometimes.

My poor husband had to dry off with a hand towel after his shower this morning.
The kids’ rooms look like disaster zones. I only care when I go in them. And I only go in them to tuck them in or to put their laundry away (obviously, a rarity).
The thing is, nothing is perfect around here. Actually, nothing is even remotely close to perfect. I feel like I never have it together. If I get the house cleaned up, the outside is a wreck. If I get outside presentable, then my car is a mess. I don’t think I’ve ever had it all done, and I don’t think I ever will.
I am a working mom. I have to remind myself constantly that I leave my house between 7-7:30 in the mornings, depending on the day of the week, and I get home sometime after 6 and usually before 7. When I get home, I have the family and animals to feed, laundry to do, a house to clean…I could go on naming the mundane tasks that keep a household running, but I won’t. More importantly, I have a family to love and take care of. I have projects to start and try to finish. I have a garden. A tree house. Bunnies. And a dog.
I am so blessed to have a husband who doesn’t demand a spotless house and meals on the table when he gets home. I have a man who doesn’t mind helping me search through the mountains of clean clothes and maybe the drier too to find two matching socks to wear to work. We decided together that we can’t have everything perfect and still have time for our kids, our projects, and fun. So, we compromise. We keep things presentable, but not perfect. When they start to get out of hand, we all work together to get it decent again.
I’d so much rather drop my kids off at the garden on the way home so they can play in the tree house. I’d rather go inside and take off the uncomfortably professional attire I have to wear to work and put on my holey jeans and my Crocs so I can go join them.
I’ll get to the laundry eventually. It can wait.
My family shouldn’t have to.

Search That! April 10, 2012

People have arrived at my blog with several very unusual Google searches.  My favorites so far are…

ugly scene kids,

march 10, 2012 mudwrestling,

i will be late to work in the morning,

snot nose babe,

girl building treehouse,

flushed tetra,

i have littered,

redneck activities in ohio,

it’s wednesday wake up and get it together, and

fake campfire.

Some of these baffle me a little bit.  What are these people thinking?  Some of them I understand a little better than others.

For instance, take “ugly scene kids” – I can imagine a frazzled mom somewhere just home from a particularly bad grocery shopping trip wondering if she’s alone in the world.  Surely, there are kids out there as bad as hers.  So she Googles it to make herself feel better.

The “march 10, 2012 mudwrestling” is a little weird.  Unless somewhere in the world there was a mudwrestling tournament that lasted several days, and some Googler somewhere missed the March 10 match and needed to know the stats.  I’m sure that’s what it was.

“I will be late to work in the morning.”  Hmmm…did this person really think this was the way to let his employer know?  Google doesn’t really work that way.  Hope he figured that out and made that all-important phone call.

“Snot nose babe” – weird.  Weird if they meant a baby, and even weirder if they meant a babe as in a swimsuit model.  I know people can have inexplicable fetishes, but snot – really?

“Redneck activities in ohio” was easy to figure out.  Obviously, a redneck from South Carolina was sitting around with his buddies and they were a little bored.  Hey, I wonder what activities rednecks participate in in Ohio?

I feel kind of bad for the person who Googled “it’s wednesday wake up and get it together.” I think he could seriously benefit from some motivational CDs, a little less alcohol, and maybe a puppy.  Hope that day turned out okay.

In the spirit of self-promotion, I am now going to write some phrases that I’m positive will be searched in the near future by some of the readers who stumbled upon my blog with the aforementioned phrases.  I am trying to build my readership, after all.  So, here’s to my newfound friends, the unusual Google searchers:

kids worse than mine

mudwrestling championship match

i won’t be at work today because i’m sick

hot actresses caught with slimy boogers hanging from nose

redneck activities in canada (I’m sure those guys have finished the fifty states by now…)

it’s friday stop being such a lazy bum get a life i need a friend or a puppy.

I can’t wait for my Googling friends to see what I’ve done to entice them to my blog.  Happy searching!

Oh, and Googling friends, once you do find me again – the surefire way to find this blog again is to follow it!