Party #2

My birthday also happens be in March. I know, I'm the mom, and mom's don't have parties, right? My husband, sister and parents did an awesome job throwing me a birthday party. I turned the big 3 - 0 this year. Growing up the milestone birthdays were:

"I can't wait till I'm 10 and in the double digits!"
"I can't wait till I'm 13 and then I'll be a teenager!"
"I can't wait till I'm 16 and then I can drive!"
"I can't wait till I'm 18 and I can buy my own lottery ticket..or buy cigarettes!" (I was bad then..smoking is so nasty!)
"I can't wait till I'm 21 so I can drink!" (I'll just say that there are a few years that are still a little hazy...."
"Holy Crap! I'm gonna be 30! WHAT?!?!"

I ended up taking some time off of work to embrace the beginning of my thirties. You know I had to make sure that I wasn't getting any grey hairs or anything.

Working full time, going to school full time leaves me with a lot of "Mommy Guilt". I'm constantly feeling as if I'm not doing enough or being there for my kids. I love that my mom is able to take care of my kids during the day, but I have a little voice in the back of my head that nags throughout the day "Did Patrick wear his belt today? Did Patrick get his medicine? Did Wyatt remember his book bag? Did Patrick get his homework done? I hope they don't forget their lunches"....they may seem like little minuscule things, but it really eats away at me. I swear I was born in the wrong time period. I would love to stay at home and raise my kids, clean, do laundry, and have a dinner on the table at 5pm. I'm weird...what can I say?

I got to play "stay at home mom" while I was off. I got to experience NOT getting up at 4:30-5am. I was able to get the kids up, dressed, fed, and off to school. I got to run around town and do errands. I kept thinking to myself "so this is what stay at home moms get to do..how fun is this?" I must say that I do have to work on my time management skills...Patrick was late to school 2 of the 3 days that I took him - Oops! Oh well..whatever.

My time off also allowed me to volunteer in the kitchen at Patrick's school. I was on clean up duty. It sounds bad, but I have to tell you, I had SO much fun. First of all, I got to spy on my son & my nieces. They had no clue I was there; I was the fly on the wall. To make it fun; when kids came up and dropped off their plates I seriously checked if they had eaten their vegetables. There was one boy, he must have been in 2nd or 3rd grade; when he brought his tray up I said "Uh-oh..someone didn't eat their vegetables..? He looked so stunned, and he actually started to pick his tray up from the pile. Don't worry, I did stop him, but it was funny.

Secondly, I REALLY want the dishwasher that the school has. It has the hose thing that hangs down to spray/rinse the dishes off. I loaded the dishes on to a big blue plastic tray and are then slid into what looks like a metal box. Pull the lever down to shut "the box" and the dishes are cleaned in less than 3 minutes. It was AWESOME!! I can be amused so easily I tell ya.

Getting to my party. I haven't had that much fun in a long time. Just hanging out with friends, family and whole lotta' kids. There may have been more kids than adults, but I don't think it bothered anyone. I did get to show off some of my mad skills of the "two-man somersault" to some of the kids...I'm sure they thought "what in the world is this crazy old lady doing?"

I was really proud of myself that I was up past midnight. Usually, I can't stay awake to watch the 9 o'clock news. I stayed up playing the Domino Train Game with my mom, sister, her boyfriend Mike, and my Little BIG Brother aka LBB Jamie. Eric was nice enough to take the kids home for me. Poor Jamie revealed to Mike that our dad made him and my older brother wear a helmet when they played goalie in soccer. I didn't realize how horrible it was fun him. I'm soo glad I was never forced to wear a helmet... We may or may not of made fun of him until almost 3am. His birthday is coming up...we may have to invest in helmet party hats...yeah, we are that bad!

The exciting life I lead...till next time...