I'm not just a mom, you know...

Well, I'm not. I am, but I'm not. It would be safe to say that "it's complicated". I'm a stay at home mom that also sells Scentsy, AdvoCare, and co-owns an online boutique with her best friend. Interestingly enough, it's called Just Two Girls' Boutique. We decided on that name because back in January we did a fundraiser for an old classmate of ours. We had gotten to know his wife a little bit recently and when he was critically injured in a car accident I felt like I needed to help in some way. Our fundraiser turned into a huge event and as people were pulling us in all different directions to decide on this or take care of that I simply reminded people that we were "just two girls". We didn't know what we were doing, we didn't know what proper fundraising protocol was, we didn't know anything other than we wanted to help. We were, and still are, just two girls. And I am just one girl, a mom, with a little extra on my plate. Most days I get up and take the dogs outside, start little Jared's shower, go wake him up, get him in the bathroom and then I go downstairs to make his lunch and get him some breakfast. I make myself some Spark and I grab my iPad. My second alarm for the day goes off and I walk him to the end of our driveway and we wait for the bus...send him off and head back inside. Usually 2 of the others wake up right after I walk in, so we watch cartoons and wait for the 3rd to wake up. Then its breakfast and chocolate milk and I check a few emails, check my texts that Leslie sent me over night. She works late at night, sends me the orders that I need to work on and I work during the morning or day, whenever I can fit it in. I do a little Facebook stalking, change a diaper or two and go about the rest of my day. A lot of times I forget that I'm only one person. I can't do everything, and I don't HAVE to do everything. I don't have to sell AdvoCare or Scentsy, and I don't have to sew for money. But I do. I'm not the top in sales, not even close. It would be nice, but then again, lots of things would be nice. I should probably give something up, that or learn to cut myself some slack. It's not easy for me to just not do something because it would be easier to not do it. For example, grocery shopping. If I wanted to, I could ask Jared to watch the kids and just go by myself on Saturday mornings. But that would just be too easy now wouldn't it? If I did that then there goes 2 hours of our weekend time together, or I would be giving up the one morning that I don't wake up to an alarm. So instead I choose to endure the mental and emotional beating of taking Wylee, Russell, and Wyatt to Wal-Mart first thing on Monday mornings. 6 times out of 10 I end up crying at some point during our trip. Every SINGLE time as I am loading them into the car I tell them that they are NEVER EVER EVER GOING SHOPPING WITH MOMMY AGAIN! EEVVVEEERRRR!!!! Until the following Monday, and we repeat it all again. Every Monday I swear that I'm going to start grocery shopping in the middle of the night or at the crack of dawn on Saturdays. That never happens though. It probably never will. Every day I follow the kids around asking them to 'pick this up' and to 'put that away'...most of the time they don't do it and after asking 10 times I do it myself because I CAN'T STAND for stuff to just be laying all over the place. I hate it. I hate it more than I hate grocery shopping with the kids. I hate my kitchen floor because even if I mopped it every day it would still look like a pack of elephants just muddied up their giant feet and trampled all over the place. I hate doing laundry. I hate doing dishes. I don't mind vacuuming except that our vacuum is broken right now so I've been trying to vacuum the house with a tiny bissel that we bought for the camper. So, yeah, that sucks. I hate clutter yet you will not find a single room in my house that is without it. This house is pure chaos, I just try to keep it nice and organized and tidy. Tidy chaos. I rush around the house when I know that Jared is about 30 minutes from being home. I put away everything that the kids wouldn't, and load the dishwasher with the things that are left in the sink. I do my best to have the house clean and smelling good when he walks through the door. I like to have dinner ready either when he gets home or shortly after. I'm so disappointed in myself on the days that the house is crazy, the sink is full, and dinner isn't even thawed out yet. Here's how things have been going lately... *The sink is usually full of dishes. *I'm STILL in pjs when Jared gets home. *The kids are STILL in pjs when Jared gets home. *You can find a diaper that didn't make it to the trash in at least 3 out of the 4 bedrooms, with a few more throughout the house. *You can find a sippy cup with yesterday's milk in it under at least one of the couches. *I let the kids accidentally break something because I wasn't paying close enough attention. *Guess what Babe? We're having cereal and milk for dinner again...but not a lot of milk, because we're almost out and I need enough to put Wyatt to bed with. *That load of laundry that's in the dryer...it sat in the washer for 2 days and I rinsed it 4 separate times but it still smells a little bit like crap. But, hey, I dug that BoxTop out of the trash that you threw away! After all, its worth like 15 cents. *Don't worry about that dirty diaper smell in the playroom, the dogs found one of the diapers that didn't make it to the trash can so they shredded it in there. I cleaned it up though. Remind me if I get pink eye, it was probably from that. This week, however, I am on day 4 of wearing REAL clothes and Make-up and my hair looks pretty decent! Monday morning we decided to go have lunch with Jared in Paris, he asked what made us decide to do that and I said, "Well, we all had real clothes on..." We laughed. And I died a little inside. We all had real clothes on. A Gold Star kind of moment if there ever was one. I try to keep it pretty real on Facebook. I don't make my life out to be some giant rainbows and unicorn fest over here. It's not. I make jokes about the fact that Wyatt is butt naked outside waiving to the cars that pass and Russell is elbow deep in potting soil. Jared and Wylee are fighting over something, or everything, and I'm about to pull my own hair out. MOST of it is pretty funny if you can just let yourself laugh about it instead of cry. Should Wyatt be naked outside? No. Before I take him in to diaper him I'm gonna watch him run 5 steps and then stop to make sure everything is still there, and then run 5 more steps and check again...cause its funny. I don't want people to think that my house runs like a well oiled machine and that if you drop by unannounced I will be wearing my best pearls (if I had any), the kids would be treating each other kindly while they play in the playroom and there will be a freshly baked, homemade, apple pie cooling in the kitchen window. Most of the time when Jared walks through the door I don't run and give him a kiss on the cheek with my heel kicked up. I'm usually borderline mental by the time he gets home. He would argue that borderline is being nice. I survived another day though! There's a plus. I have so much to do, so many mouths to cook for, so many headbands that need sewing or hats that need embellishing. I have orders to place and people waiting for me to bring their stuff to them. I have piles of clothes to wash and fold and beds to make and dishes to clean or to put away. Each room holds a different mess, just WAITING for me to tend to them. I have too much going on. I can admit that. What I can't get past is the fact that there are plenty of people who have way more going on and they still manage to do it all. There is no room for slacking, no matter what. Why should I be any different from those people? I have some AMAZING nieces and nephews, but you know what? I ALWAYS forget to send birthday cards and I never call. I hate myself for that, and I try to change it and I slack again. Sometimes (a lot of the time) I don't answer phone calls because there is so much going on at that moment that I just can't add a conversation to my plate. Text me. I can usually handle a text message. I have over 300 unopened emails because I can't check them fast enough. I have unopened Facebook messages because I was too busy to read them and now they have been pushed so far down the line that I don't even know where they are and I don't have time to sit and scroll through them all. I don't listen to my voice mails. Ever. I have some sitting on my phone that have been there since February. What was the point of this blog post? Maybe I'm afraid that people give me too much credit sometimes... they need to know that I'm just a whack job of a mother with some whack job children that are lucky they are cute and a total whack job of a husband. Or MAYBE my fingers typed this so that I would read over it and see that I usually have stuff under control. Lately, I've been tired. Trying to do too many different things will do that to a person. I can figure out a balance...I can. My kids and husband deserve the best, and even though I'm just one person I CAN figure out how to do it all and do it all with a SMILE on my face (and my best pearls on). First, I need some pearls...