Living Life and Loving It!: A Momma of Five. . .

A couple of years ago, I was at an Easter party and a woman said, "You have four?!" She continued with something like, "Aren't you supposed to have this wild eyed, crazy face look?" Well, now I am a momma of five, and I love it. That is not to say that I don't have my down days. I have plenty of them. Those of you who have been to my house will recognize this picture and if you are around me enough you know that I am always giving myself the "I can do this" pep talk.

Some days though, despite my best efforts, just don't work out like they should. Some times this puts me in tears, but laughing is so much more enjoyable than crying so I try to find the humor in it. Sometimes, like this past Monday, the humor was pretty easy to find. . .

First some background:

Friday night: We get home from soccer games a little after 9pm. We pack for our weekend trip to Washington DC. Last minute, we remember to grab our swimming suits that are hibernating in our crawl space and find that our hot water heater has leaked all over our crawl space. After doing an initial clean up of the water, we leave shortly after midnight and check into our hotel around 3:30AM.

Saturday night: We are passed out across our hotel room, completely exhausted. Around midnight, I hear banging at our door. It was security. Apparently our late arrival Saturday morning caused our reservation to be canceled and nobody was supposed to be in our room. Why they decided to check it out at midnight, I haven't figured out, but we did get extra points out of it. . .

Sunday night: We go see Jenny Oaks Baker play at the temple's visitor's center. It was amazing!! Shortly after midnight, we return home to a soggy basement and a broken water heater.

Then Monday morning happened. This is how I described my morning via email to my dear friend. This really isn't me at my best, but sometimes life happens.

Today I looked like what everyone expects a mamma with 5 children to look like.

First we go to violin lessons minus our music books and one violin. We turn back around to try again only because we have a REALLY nice teacher and a piece to practice for church on Sunday.

While J1 & J2 are at lessons the rest of us go to Michaels. After feeding Eli who is in a starved panic we head in the store and I notice that my children are wearing church clothes from yesterday. None of us showered or changed because, well, for one, we didn't get back home until after midnight and two, even if we had time to shower and dress we don't have any hot water. . .
Anna's cute dress makes her look like she just walked out of a Gap commercial except for the messy hair, the stinky diaper, the chocolate milk stain from dinner last night that covers all the front of her dress and tights, oh yeah, and don't forget the missing shoe. . .
I'm looking pretty fly myself with messy hair, no contacts and pants that don't quite fit yet but are all I found this morning in my closet (minus Reed's jeans which somehow found their way to my shelf but really are of no help to me on a morning like this.). Yes, the jeans really finished my kit especially when my hands were completely taken with merchandize and I couldn't keep pulling them up which means there were a few knitting grandmas who I'm sure blushed when they got a peek of what was hiding underneath. . . ;)
We were making Joey look like a GQ model which is saying something since we all know what Joey is comfortable wearing out in public. . . I'm just glad they didn't stick to the "No Shoes, No Service" policy when I sent Anna through with my 3rd coupon and $10 bill.

Despite the crazyness, we had a great weekend.

We went to the Air and Space Museum with some friends of ours - it was really cool!

The kids enjoyed watching some planes land from the tower.

The temple grounds are so pretty at Christmas! It is a favorite Christmas tradition for us.

We got on the 4th row to see Jenny Oaks Baker. She is one of our favorite violinists. You can hear her at our home all year round!